CHAPTER XV—THE FAERY TALE BEGINS AGAIN

The memories of a man are of the past. A child has no past; his memories are of the imagined future. His soul, in its haste for new experience, rushes on, outdistancing life.

After his false awakening by Vashti, the world which Teddy annexed for himself was composed of sky and pigeons. Often as he watched his birds rise into the air, he would make his mind the companion of their flight. It seemed to him that his body was left behind and that the earth lay far below him, an unfolding carpet of dwarfed trees and houses as small as pebbles. By day his thoughts were of wings. By night, gazing from his bedroom window when the coast-line of the clouds had grown blurred, he would watch the Invincible Armada of the stars, plunging onward and ever onward through the heavens. The little he had learnt of life had pained him; so he took Mr. Sheerug’s advice and remade the world with a hobby. When the stars winked, he believed they were telling him that they knew that one day he would be great.

His pigeons and the wide clean thoughts they gave him, kept his mind from morbid physical inquiries. The school he attended in Eden Row was conducted by an old Quaker, a man whose gentle religion shamed the boys of shameful conversations.

The inklings of life which he had gained through Vashti, made him re-act against further knowledge. Love in her case had begun with beauty, but it had ended with the wretched face of a woman and a policeman’s bull’s-eye staring down on it. Perhaps love always ended that way, causing pain to others and ugliness. He shrank from it. Like a tortoise when its head has been touched, he withdrew into his shell and stayed there. He was content to be young and to remain incurious as to the meaning of his growing manhood. The days slipped by while he lived his realities in books and pigeons, and in his father’s paintings. Not until he was fifteen did he again awaken, when the door unexpectedly opened, leading into a new experience.

It was an afternoon in July, the last day of the summer term. The school had broken up. The playground was growing empty. With the last of the boys he came out of the gate and stood saying “Good-by.” They had told him where they were going—all their plans for the green and leafy future. They were going to farmhouses in the country and to cottages by the sea. Some of them were not returning to school; they were going to the city to become men and to earn money. He watched them saunter away down Eden Row, joking and aiming blows at one another with their satchels.

From across the river, softened by distance, came laughter and the pitter-pat of tennis. In the golden spaces between trees of the park, girls advanced and retreated, volleying with their racquets. Their hair rose and fell upon their shoulders as they twisted and darted. They were as unintelligible to Teddy as if they had spoken a different language.

What was it that he wanted? It was something for which he never found a name—something which continually eluded his grasp. He was haunted by desire for an intenser beauty. All kinds of things, totally unrelated, would stab him into yearning: sometimes a passage in a book; sometimes the freedom of a bird in flight; and now the music of girlish laughter. He was burdened with the sense that life would not wait for him—would not last; that it was escaping like water through his fingers. He wanted to live it fully. He wanted to be wise, and happy, and splendid. And yet he was afraid—afraid of disillusion. He feared that if he saw anything too closely, it would lose its fascination. Those girls, if he were to be with them, he could not laugh as they laughed; he would have nothing to say. And yet, he knew of boys——

Hitching the strap of his satchel higher, he smiled. These thoughts were foolish; they had come to him because he had been saying good-by. They always came when he felt the hand of Change upon his shoulder.

Before his home a cab was standing. On entering the hall he heard the murmurous sound of voices. A door opened. His mother slipped out to him with the air of mystery that betokened visitors.

“How late you are, darling! Run and get tidy. Some one’s been waiting for you for hours.”

As he made a hasty schoolboy toilet he wondered who it could be. His mother had seemed flustered and excited. No one ever came to see him; to him nothing ever happened. Other boys went away for summer holidays; he knew of one who had been to France. But to stir out of Eden Row was expensive; all his journeys had to be of the imagination. When one had a genius for a father, even though he was unacknowledged, one ought to be proud of poverty. To be allowed to sacrifice for such a father was a privilege. That was what Dearie was always telling him.

The room in which the visitor was waiting was at the back of the house. It had folding windows, which were open, and steps leading down into the garden. Evening fragrances drifted in from flowers. In the waning sunlight the garden became twice peopled—by its old inhabitants and by their shadows. On the lawn a sprinkler was revolving, throwing up a mist which sank upon the turf with the rustle of falling rain.

A man rose from the couch as he entered—a fair, thin man with blue impatient eyes and a worn, wistful expression. He looked as though he had been always trying to clasp something and was going through life with his arms forever empty. He placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders, gazing at him intently.

“Taller, but not much older. In all the time I’ve been away you’ve scarcely altered. Do you know me?”

“Why, of course. It’s Mr. Hal.”

“No, just Hal. You didn’t used to call me ‘Mister.’ You can’t guess why I’ve come. I’ve told your mother, and she’s consented, if you are willing. I want your help.” Teddy glanced at his mother. Her eyes were shining; she had been almost crying. What could Hal have said to make her unhappy? How could he, a boy, help a man? In the silence he heard the sprinkler in the garden mimicking the sound of rain.

Hal’s voice grew low and embarrassed. “I want your help about a little girl. She’s lonely. I call her little, but in many ways she’s older than you are. She’s living in a house in the country, and she wants some one to play with. I’ve been so long out of England that I’d forgotten how tall you’d been getting. But, perhaps, you won’t mind, even though she’s a girl. It’s a pretty place, this house in the country, with cows and wild flowers and a river. You’d enjoy it, and—and you’d be helping me and her.”

“Sounds jolly,” said Teddy; “I’d like to go most awfully, only—only what makes you and mother so sad?”

Hal tried to appear more cheerful. “I’m not sad. I was worried. Thought you wouldn’t come when you heard it was to play with a girl.”

“He’s not sad,” said Dearie; “it’s only that, if you go, we mustn’t tell anybody—not even Mrs. Sheerug; at least, not yet.”

Teddy chuckled. At last something was going to happen. “That’ll be fun. But how glad Mrs. Sheerug must be to have you back.”

Hal rose to his feet. “She isn’t That’s another of the things she doesn’t know yet. I must be going. Your mother says she can have you ready to-morrow, so I’ll call for you.”

Teddy noticed how he dashed across the pavement to his cab. He felt certain that his reason was not lack of time, but fear lest he might be observed. He questioned his mother. She screwed her lips together: “Dear old boy, I’m not allowed to tell.”