CHAPTER VI—THE YONDER LAND

What did we hope to find that autumn morning when we slipped through that narrow door, forsaking the walls? It was all a guess to us—what lay beyond; but we knew that it must be something splendid. Of one thing we were quite certain: that at the end of a few days we should have grown tall; we should return to Pope Lane a man and woman. The little house would be there waiting, magically built in our hours of absence. Perhaps work had been begun already upon the babies that Ruthita wanted.

For the first time I had kissed her that morning, awkwardly and shyly, feeling that somehow it was proper. At any rate, Hetty and our gardener always kissed when they got the chance and no one was looking.

Monsieur Favart’s door swung to behind us. We ran as quickly as our legs would carry us. The fear of pursuit was upon us. Pinned to the pillow of each of our empty beds was a sheet of paper on which was scrawled, “Gon to git Maried,”.

When at last we halted for breath, we seemed to have covered many miles of our journey. We were standing in a long, quaint street. On one side flowed a river, railed in so we couldn’t get near it. On the other side stood an irregular row of substantial houses, for the most part creeper-covered. No faces appeared in the houses’ windows. No one passed up or down the street. It was as yet too early. It seemed that the world was empty, and that we and the birds were its only tenants. We turned to the right, half-walking, half-running. I held Ruthita’s hand tightly; the feel of it gave me courage.

We must have made a queer pair in the mellow autumn sunlight. Ruthita wore a white dress with a red cloak flung over it. On her head was a yellow straw poke-bonnet, which made her face look strangely small. She had on black shoes, fastened by a single strap, and black and white socks which, when she ran, kept dropping.

We had no idea of direction, but just hurried on with a vague idea that we must keep moving forward.

Presently we came across a drover, driving a flock of bewildered, tired sheep. He was a lame man. He had an inflamed red face and one of his eyes was out. When he wanted to make his flock move faster, he jabbed viciously at their tails with a pointed stick and started hopping from side to side, barking like a dog. He passed right by us, saying nothing, waving a red flag in his left hand with which he would sometimes mop his forehead. We followed. We followed him through streets of shops all shuttered; we followed him up a broad-paved hill; we followed him down a winding lane to a bridge across a river, beyond which lay marshes. Then he turned and called to us.

“Little master, where be you goin’ and why be you followin’?”

To the country, I told him, to find the forest. I wanted to show Ruthita the unwalled garden through which my uncle had led me.

The man screwed up his one eye, and gazed upon us shrewdly. “You be wery small to be goin’ to the forest. But so be you’re travellin’ along my route you might as well ’elp an old feller.”

We made our bargain with him. We would help him with his sheep, if he would guide us to the forest. We ran beside him across the short, crisp grass, imitating his cries to prevent the sheep from scattering. He told us that he had driven them from Epping up to London, but that times were cruel bad and the farmer who employed him had been unable to sell them. “It’s cruel ’ard on a man o’ my years,” he kept saying, “cruel ’ard.”

When I asked him what was cruel hard, he shook his-head as though language failed to express his wrongs: “The world in gineral.”

There was one of the sheep whose leg was broken. It kept lagging behind the rest, which made the man jab at it furiously. Ruthita’s eyes filled with tears of indignation when she saw it. She stamped her little foot and insisted that he should not do it. The man pushed back his battered hat and scratched his forehead, staring at her. He seemed embarrassed and tried to excuse himself. “Humans is humans, miss, and sheep is sheep. It makes an old chap, made in Gawd’s h’image, kind o’ bitter to ’ave to spend his days a-scampering after a crowd o’ silly quadrupeds. But if yer don’t like it, I won’t do it.”

The river wound round about us. Sometimes it would leave us, but always it came flowing after us, in great circles as though lonely and eager for our company. On its banks stood occasional taverns, gaily painted, with wooden tables set before them. The grass about them was trodden bare, showing that they were often populous; but now they were deserted. Big barges lay sleepily at anchor, basking in the sun.

The drover commenced speaking again. “I’m an old soldier, I am. I lost me eye and got lamed in the wars; and now they makes game o’ my h’infirmities and calls me——”

The name they called him was evidently too dreadful. He sighed heavily.

“Poor man,” said Ruthita, slipping her hand into his horny palm. “What do they call you?”

“Old-Dot-and-Carry-One, ’cause o’ the way I walks. It’s woundin’. It ’urts me feelin’s, after the way I’ve served me country.”

We seated ourselves by the muddy river-bank, while the sheep grazed and rested. Far in the distance trees broke the level of the sky-line, so I knew that we were going in the right direction and our guide was to be trusted. Dot-and-Carry-One produced a loaf of bread from his pocket and, dividing it into three pieces, shared it with us.

Little by little he gave us his confidence, telling us of the world as he knew it. “It’s a place o’ wimen and war. To the h’eye wot’s prejoodiced there’s nothin’ else in it. But your h’eye ain’t prejoodiced, and don’t yer never let it git so, young miss and master. I’ve seen lots. I wuz in the Crimea and I wuz in h’India, but I never yet seen the country where a man can’t be ’appy if he wants. There’s music, an’ there’s nature, an’ there’s marriage. Now music for h’instance.”

He produced from his ragged coat a penny whistle and trilled out a tune upon it. While he played he looked as merry a fellow as one could hope to meet in a day’s march. The sheep stopped cropping to gaze at us. We clapped our hands and asked him to go on.

He shook his head and replaced his pipe. “Then there’s nature. Just now I wuz complainin’. But supposin’ I do drive sheep back and forth, how many men wuz up in Lun’non to see the sunrise this mornin’? I never miss it, ’ceptin’ when I’m drunk. I knows the seasons o’ the bloomin’ flowers, Gawd bless ’em, and can h’imitate the birds’ songs and call ’em to me. That’s somethin’. An’ if I don’t sleep in a stuffy bed, which would be better, for me rheumatics, I can count the stars and have the grass for coverin’. And then there’s marriage——”

He paused. His eye became moist and his face gentle. “I ’ad a little nipper and a girl once.”

That was all. We wanted to ask him questions about marriage, but he pulled his hat down over his eyes and lay back, refusing to answer.

Ruthita and I guarded the sheep and kept them from straying, while he slept. We made chains out of flowers, and, taking off our shoes and socks, paddled in the water. Then Ruthita grew tired and, leaning against my shoulder, persuaded me to tell her the story of where we were going. Before the tale was ended, her eyes were closed and her lips were parted. My arms began to ache terribly; I wondered whether it was with holding her or because I was growing. I hoped it was because I was growing.

Dot-and-Carry-One woke up. He looked at the sun. “Time we wuz h’orf,” he remarked shortly.

We had not gone far along the river-bank when we came to a tavern on our side of the water. Ruthita said that she was thirsty, so we entered. The drover spread himself out on a bench and, soliciting my invitation, called for “a pint of strong.” Good beer, he said, never hurt any man if taken in moderation.

We must have sat for the best part of the morning, watching him toss off pot after pot while we gritted our feet on the sanded floor. For each pot he thanked us, taking off his battered hat to Ruthita and blowing away the froth from the top in our honor. He explained to all and sundry that we wuz his little nipper and girl wot he had losht. He losht us years ago, so long he could hardly remember. The tavern-girl entered into a discussion with him, saying that we could not be more than nine and that he was at least seventy. He became angry, demanding whether a man of seventy hadn’t lived long enough to know his own children, and what bloody indifference it made to her, anyway.

It occurred to me that it might be just possible that he really was Ruthita’s father. I had no idea what dying meant. I had been told that the dead were not really dead—only gone. So I thought that death might mean not being with your friends in the garden. I half expected to find my mother in the forest, just as I had hoped to bring her back on the magic carpet. So when Dot-and-Carry-One was so positive, I asked him if he had heard of the Siege of Paris. He was in a mood when he had heard of everything, been everywhere, and had had every important person for a friend. Of course he had heard of the Siege of Paris; if it hadn’t been for him, to-day there wouldn’t be any Paris. When I told him of General Favart, he wept copiously and called for another pot.

The tavern-girl told him that that must be his last, and he said that it was cruel ’ard the way an old soldier were persecooted. When we had paid for his drinks, we discovered that we had only three shillings and eightpence left of our little stock of money. The tavern-girl said we were poor h’innercent lambs and she should set the police on him. The drover told her that spring, not autumn, was the lambing season.

All through the long and drowsy afternoon we wandered on. Dot-and-Carry-One seemed in no great hurry to reach his destination. Beer had had a transfiguring effect upon him. He lurched along jauntily, his hat cocked sideways on his head, winking with his one good eye at any girls we met in our path. His cares and sense of injustice were forgotten. He told us tales of his wars, painting tremendous and bloody scenes of carnage. He slew whole armies that afternoon, and at the end of each battle he was left alone, wounded but dauntless, with the dead ’uns piled high about him. He went into grisly details of the manner of their dying, and stopped now and then to show us with his stick the different ways in which you could kill a man with a sword. Cockney lovers on the river gaped after us, resting on their oars. They saw nothing but an intoxicated old ruffian in charge of a flock of sheep and two small children. But we were in hero-land, and Dot-and-Carry-One was our giant-killer.

When Ruthita got tired, he hoisted her on to his shoulders, where she rode straddling his neck, with her hands clasped about his forehead. The forest, like a green silent army, with its flags unfurled marched nearer. The sun sank lower behind us; our long lean shadows ran on before us till they lay across the backs of the sheep.

We left the marshes and entered on a white dusty road. Carriages and coaches and wagons kept passing, which made the sheep bewildered. They kept turning this way and that, bleating pitifully. Ruthita had to walk again, while Dot-and-Carry-One barked and waved his stick to keep the flock from scattering. The night came on and we were hungry. At last Ruthita’s legs gave out and she sat down by the roadside crying, saying that she was frightened and could go no further. Then Dot-and-Carry-One drove his flock into the forest, and borrowed a shilling from me and left us, promising to go and buy food with it.

The sheep lay down about the roots of the trees, and we pillowed our heads against their woolly backs. The silence became intense; the last of the twilight vanished. I was glad when Ruthita put her arms round my neck, for I too was nervous though I would not own it. We waited for the drover to return, and in waiting slept.

I woke with a start. The moon was shining; long paths of silver had been hewn between the trees. The fleece of the kneeling sheep was sparkling and dewy. Far down one of the paths I could see a limping figure approaching. He was shouting and singing and stabbing at his shadow. As he came nearer I could distinctly see that he held a bottle in his hand. Something warned me. I roused Ruthita, telling her to make no sound. We ran till we were breathless and the shouting could be no more heard.

Trees grew wider apart where we had halted. Far away a flare of light shone up; as we watched we saw that people passed before it. Hand-in-hand we advanced. Something groaned quite near us. We commenced to run, but, looking back, saw that it was only a tethered donkey. We came to the outskirts of the crowd. We wanted company badly. Burrowing under arms and legs we made our way to the front. A great linen sheet was stretched between two trees. Set up on iron rings before it was a line of cocoanuts. On either side flaring naphtha-lamps were burning. About thirty yards away from the sheet a woman was serving out wooden balls. Between the sheet and the cocoanuts a man was darting up and down, dodging the balls as they were thrown and returning them. The man and woman were calling out together, “Two shies a penny. Two shies a penny. Every ball ’its a cocoanut. Down she goes. ’Ere you are, sir. Two for the children and one for the missis. Walk up. Walk up. Two shies a penny.”

Whether a cocoanut went down or stayed up, they continued to assert in a hoarse, cracked monotone that it had fallen. Their faces were dripping with perspiration. The man returned the balls and the woman served them out again mechanically. The throwers took off their coats and hurled furiously, to the accompaniment of the shrill staccato chatter of the crowd.

Ruthita and I stood blinking in the semi-darkness, our eyes dazzled by the lamps. Suddenly I called out, and pushing my way between the throwers, commenced running up the pitch. The man behind the cocoanuts, realizing that the balls had ceased coming, stopped dodging and looked up to see what was the matter. Just then an impatient thrower hurled a ball which went whizzing over me, missed the cocoanuts, and hit the man on the head, splitting his eyebrow. I was terribly afraid that he would topple over and lie still, like Dot-and-Carry-One had told me men did in battle. Instead of that, when I came within reach of him he clutched me angrily by the shoulder, asking me what the devil I meant. The blood, creeping down his face in a slow trickle, made him look twice as fierce as when I had first met him with my Uncle Obad by the gipsy campfire. He drew me near to one of the lamps, smearing his forehead with the back of his hand. He recognized me.

“Oh, it’s you, you young cuss, is it?”

Just then the fortune-telling girl came up, whom I had seen before with the baby on her back. She was carrying Ruthita.

“Here, Lilith,” he said, speaking gruffly, “take ’im to your tent.”

Then he commenced again, “Two shies a penny. Two shies a penny. Every ball ’its a cocoanut. Down she goes,” etc.

I was glad to creep into the cool darkness, clinging close to Lilith’s skirt. I was a little boy now, with scarcely a desire to be a husband. When I looked across my shoulder the game was in full swing. The woman was serving out the balls; the crowd was paying its pennies; the man was dodging up and down before the sheet, avoiding the balls and returning them. I heaved a sigh of relief; then he had not succumbed—he was not yet a dead’un.