The Cruise of the Make-Believes. Gallon Tom
right with her, to my everlasting damage."
"You know perfectly well that she'd never look at me," said Mr. Tant. "She's a glorious creature – a wonderful woman, and in your own sphere of life; I can't see why you neglect her as you do."
"I have been told ever since I was a mere boy that at some future date I should marry Enid – if I were good. It's just like a small boy being offered anything – if he is good; he begins to loathe the idea of it at once. Enid is all that you say – and I like her very much; but if I've got to marry her I'll choose my own time for it. At present I'm in Fairyland – and I mean to stop there."
"What do you mean by Fairyland?" asked Mr. Tant testily.
"You wouldn't understand if I told you," replied Gilbert. Then he added quickly, and with contrition – "There – there – my dear fellow, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings; you're not really a bad sort, if you'd come out of your shell sometimes, and let the real wind of the real earth ruffle your hair a bit. I must talk to someone – and I'm not sorry to find you here to-day; only you mustn't tell anyone outside."
"Of course not," almost snapped Mr. Tant.
"I came here in the first place, Tant," began Gilbert, seating himself again on the table, "with the expectation of finding that I had got among commonplace people – and not nice commonplace people at that. Then I saw this girl – this mere child, that even a hard world and a hard and sordid life had not changed, struggling on day by day to make a living – not for herself, or for any selfish reason – but to keep those who should by rights have kept her. And I saw her, above all things, doing something else, and doing it rather splendidly."
"I don't understand you. What else was she doing?" asked Jordan Tant.
It was growing dark in Arcadia Street, and the lamps were being lighted. With the dying of the day a sort of hush had fallen upon the place; the sounds outside were subdued, as though even Arcadia Street might be inclined for rest. Gilbert had walked across to the window, and stood there, looking out; his face was turned from his friend.
"This child to whom life was a mean and sordid struggle had taught herself a lesson – had shown herself how best to live another life. You'll think it mean and commonplace, perhaps; but this little drudge – child alike in years and in thoughts – had learnt how to make-believe to perfection; knew how to gild the commonplace bricks and mortar of Arcadia Street so that the mean houses became palaces – the mean back gardens places of beauty, wherein one might stroll beneath the light of the moon, and listen even unto nightingales. Think of it, Tant; this child who had never known anything but the mean streets of a great city had yet learnt how to dream, and almost how to make her dreams come true. I tell you, man, you've only got to look into her eyes to understand that there is in her that brave spirit that defies poverty and disaster – that brave spirit that aims straight for the skies."
Mr. Jordan Tant sat still for a moment or two without speaking. He was used by this time to this impulsive friend, who was for ever doing unconventional things; and now, with this new unconventional thing to face, he had no words either of reproof or admonition. Very slowly he lifted first one foot and then the other from the wooden rail of the chair, and stood up; picked up his hat, and brushed it carefully on his sleeve.
"I've nothing to say to you," he said at last. "I expect, if the truth were known, you'd find that the lady who dwells in Fairyland in her spare moments has a scheming mind, and a money-grubbing soul; you'd find she thought more of the price of chops than she does of all the romances that ever were invented for fools to read. What am I to tell Miss Enid?"
Gilbert Byfield laughed good-humouredly. "Tell her," he said, "that I shall come and see her very soon. But you need not, of course, say anything about – "
"About the Princess next door? I suppose not." Mr. Jordan Tant walked to the door of the room, and laid his hand upon the handle. "It'll be all right for you – and you'll give up this madness, just as you have given up many, many others. But what about the – the Princess?"
"You don't understand in the least," said Gilbert, a little hastily. "She thinks no more of me than she might think of anybody who was good to her – kind to her."
"But so very few people have been good or kind to her, you see," Mr. Tant reminded him, as he opened the door.
"I'll come with you, and find a cab for you; you might get lost," said Gilbert. "And pray get all those silly notions out of your head; if you knew this child as well as I do, you'd look at the matter in a different light. At the same time, as people are so apt to misunderstand even our best motives, perhaps you'd better not say anything to Enid – or to her mother. If there's any explaining to be done, I can do it when I come to see them."
He found the cab for his friend, and saw him drive away. Walking back slowly into Arcadia Street, he determined that he would if possible see that little Princess next door that very evening – if only to assure himself that she was the child he knew her to be, and he her big friend – years and years older and wiser.
CHAPTER II
THE KING OF A LEAN KINGDOM
ARCADIA STREET is noted – locally, at least – for its "gardens." By this term I would not have you understand that hidden away in that corner of Islington are bowers of beauty, or that you may stroll at eventide under the drooping branches of trees, what time the soft scents of flowers are wafted to your nostrils. Rather let it be said that attached to each dingy house is a dingy plot of ground that is only a "garden" by courtesy – a place where the primeval instincts of man have from time to time urged him to dig in the earth, for the sole reason that it is earth, and in the mad hope to raise from it something that no other London garden has yet accomplished. The moon that looks down on each slip of ground at night knows differently; she has seen the thing being done for generation after generation, and finally given up in despair. Also the cats look on tolerantly, because they too know how it will end, and that the victory will be with them easily in the long run.
You may look into many such gardens, and may see for yourselves how bravely they began – with what high hopes. Here, for example, is what was once intended to be a summer-house; and it has long since fallen into decay, and become a place where the shabby things that are not wanted even in a shabby house have been tossed from time to time, and left to ruin. You will see creepers that started well, and intended great things, and clung quite bravely to walls; until the London atmosphere and neglect and one thing and another put an end to them. And you may see rows and rows of pots, wherein nothing grows nor ever will grow, and wherein the very earth that fills them is of a consistency known nowhere else. Here and there, too, a bit of trellis-work had been put up and painted; in Arcadia gardens it is generally found to be an easy hanging place for cloths and doubtful-looking garments.
In the gardens of Arcadia Street was one exception. That exception was the house, behind the front window of which, the wistful face of a girl had looked out at Mr. Jordan Tant – that girl about whom he had heard so much from his friend Gilbert Byfield. The house itself, poor and shabby though it was, was neat and scrupulously clean; but the real triumph of it lay in the garden. Not, perhaps, in the artistic sense, but rather that it was a garden of surprises – a place where it was impossible to say what you might meet next, if you wandered carefully through its circumscribed length, and took it seriously.
Yet to anyone to whom the mere name of garden means so much, what a pitiful place! For there was nothing really garden-like about it; it was a place of rags and patches and pretences. The few pitiful plants that struggled out of the black-looking earth here and there seemed to do so not because they liked it, but because they had a desperate desire to show what they could do, even against adverse fate, when they were put to it. Half a dozen things that could not have been named even by the most careful student in botany stood in pots under the kitchen window; and in front of these, spread out on the earth itself, was an old and very ragged carpet – a trap to the unwary, because of the many holes it contained and the uneven surface it presented on the uneven ground.
With the idea of hiding the carpet as much as possible, and at the same time of giving an air of luxury to the place, an ancient staggering table on three legs had been placed in the centre of it; and on either side of this table a chair, long since set aside