  Produced by Al Haines. MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING BY C. E. LAWRENCE AUTHOR OF "PILGRIMAGE," ETC. LONDON TO CONTENTS CHAPTER
CHAPTER I DOWN FAIRYLAND WAY Fairyland! Fairyland! There was to be high revel in Fairyland. From far and wide, from uphill and down dale, from here, there and all about, the little people were to gather in the Violet Valley. Oberon and Titania were coming, as well as Mab, Puck, Gloriana, Tinkerbell, and innumerable unnamable others of the princes, thrones, dominations, powers of Elfdom. Pixies, gnomes, kelpies, sprites, brownies, sylphs, every shadow and shape owning allegiance to the Fairy King, would endeavour to be at that congress of the mimic immortals. It was a red-letter night in the history of the aristocratical democracy: the greatest occasion of the kind since the year One. To-morrow would be Mayday, and midnight was not just yet. Nightingales were tuning, preparing. The air was honeyed with the scent of flowers. A round white moon looked from a shining sky on the Violet Valley. It lingered; travelled tardily across mountains and spaces of leisurely-drifting clouds, waiting with its best dilatoriness, intending to see all that was possible of the approaching revels. It looked upon and lighted a scene of young-leaved trees, grass of the freshest green, new-come flowers, and sparkling waters. The world which is always beautiful wore its best loveliness then. That was Fairyland. Far away northwards there was a lurid, hazy glow in the sky. Red, vast and vague it loomed, obliterating the stars beyond, marking the place where Fairyland was not. That was the shadow which shone over London. In the country there was peace--absolute peace; then, mellowed by distance, the chimes of a church clock. Twelve! The fairy-time had come. At once a nightingale began its emotional song; and others, scattered on many trees, gradually joined in the throbbing chorus. Every moment their melody grew in joyousness, and, ever spreading, roused nightingales on still more distant trees to join in the anthem of rapture, until every glade in Fairyland was happier for their happiness. There was some reed-fringed water in the centre of the Violet Valley. It was a pond or lake, according to the charity and imagination of the mortal who looked at it. To the fairies it was a lake, large and estimable enough for their most ambitious purposes. A bright light appeared in the depths of that water, and slowly uprose till it reached the surface, when the nymph of the pool appeared. She sat, a shining figure, on a water-leaf and waved a glistening wand. In prompt obedience gnomes appeared. Pell-mell, up they came tumbling, a multi-coloured host, every one with shining face and as full of excitement, activities and the thousand mischiefs as is the moonlit night of shadows. So rapidly they swarmed, elbowing, scrambling, hustling, stumbling, clambering, from hidden holes and grass-shrouded crannies of earth that actually slender paths were worn bare by their hurrying feet. From the branches of trees they dropped, over hillocks of grass they hastened, to prepare for the revels. The gnomes are the democracy of the Elf countries, and, like some of us mortals, are the folk who do the necessary drudging work. They set to labour with willingness. Not often had fairy eyes seen such obvious earnestness to be well done with irksome business. Weeds, which are really weeds, nauseous and mischievous, and not flowers become unpopular, were carefully uprooted and packed away, fuel to feed the fires of brownies' anvils; a broad tract of green was made flawless that fairies might dance there unhindered; glow-worms were coaxed or forcibly carried to places where their blue-white lights would be at once ornamental and useful; dew was scattered broadcast to reflect from myriad points the diamond moonlight; the lamps of the flowers were trimmed and lit, and soon, from all sides, were shedding gentle radiance. Dreams came drifting down from the opal spaces. While the gnomes worked they whistled--not fairy songs, now; but snatches of lame melodies borrowed from holiday mortals. It was a hotch-potch of sounds, a sizzling blur, not so unpleasing. Gnomes are rather fond of that sort of thing. Their ear for music is, possibly, imperfect. Presently there was trouble. Bim was a centre of petty uproar. He was a gnome, very young as they go; and, from top to toe, red as a holly-berry. While his work-brothers rushed and bustled, Bim was languid. Even Monsieur Chocolat himself could hardly have been less useful. He did his best--little better than nothing; but then he was very tired. All that day and through the previous night he had been travelling. From the distant Land of Wild Roses he had toiled, following laboriously the course over which a company of fairies had easily flown or danced. They had been hastening to the valley of revels; and he must needs come too, because June was amongst them. It had been--such a journey! The mere remembrance of the toil caused him to ache through every one of his six inches. He had started on the previous evening, the instant the moon had peeped above the horizon. The fairy contingent had preceded him some hours earlier. He had only the vaguest notion of the way to take, never having been out of the Land of Wild Roses before. Three things kept him, more or less, to the right track. He saw now and then solitary fairies on the wing wending their ways towards the place of assembly; more frequently, he passed flowers of sweetness so refreshed that evidently they had been touched by beneficent wands but recently. Thrice owls, hooting, had spared a word of advice and direction to the persevering wanderer. The moon, which lighted his pathway, had followed her course till lost in the shine of morning. The stars had brightened and quivered and gone. The sun had lived his period of hours; the birds had worked and sung, the flowers and grasses had waved through a long bright April day, and still the determined gnome had laboriously journeyed on, following the flight of the fairy June. Bim had been several times led astray through his ignorance, but all his wanderings, stumblings and weariness could not dim or lessen his determination. He rested but once, sleeping for a sunny hour in a welcome bedroom of nightshade and nettles in white blossom. At last he came to the turning of his long, long lane. Now he was in the Violet Valley, and pressed with the others of his below-stairs brethren to the work of preparation: and he could not. He had the full weariness of a new arrival. Those of the gnomes, even those who had journeyed long distances, had been able to rest before labouring. There was no such fortune for Bim. Here he was, and at once he must do his share. A great many gnomes, noticing his languor, ceased work altogether to insist that he did not shirk. So there was uproar. Five minor tyrants--self-appointed foremen--began to kick him. Bim squealed like a tin whistle; then justice, in the person of the nymph of the pool, intervened. And thereby hangs this tale. One word from the water-fairy was enough to release Bim from his persecutors, and to send them hurriedly to work again--till all preparation was ended and the Violet Valley was ready for rejoicing. "Gnome," said the nymph, "you must be young as spring-time, or you would not have come so far and arrived so late. You are, I see, from the Land of the Wild Rose. So was I. So is June--our June. You shall be favoured. Lie under that dock-leaf; keep still and take rest. You shall see the best of the wonders. Lucky gnome!" Bim obeyed, creeping to the hiding-place and lying there, resting, his eyes alight, as quietly as a mouse with suspicions. The gnomes, their business well ended, ran to points of vantage. They clambered along boughs, clung to tree-creepers and shrubbery, like blobs of living fruit. Cross-legged they perched on mounds, whistling, singing, playing impish pranks, chaffing and chiding one another, in all the happiness of easy idleness. They were the jolliest mob in Fairyland that night. There was not a grumble in the whole assembly. Then the fairies began to arrive. From here and there, like musical snowflakes, they fell, flying down from the skies. They sparkled like gems, their wands were pointed with brilliance, their wings shone with iridescence, their garments were spangled gossamer. As each elf-knight alighted, he folded his wings and marched, with lance or slender sword upraised, to an appointed place, and stood there attentive, waiting, while in myriad gnome-voices the heroes were acclaimed. As every gentle fairy came to earth, she tripped or lightly flew over the dancing-ground and sat or reclined among the flowers. The Violet Valley was thronged with a thousand pictures of loveliness and enchantment. All the while the gathering proceeded they and the fairies were singing a world-old fairy-song. The bells of Elfland musically jangled. Bim and the stars were delighted. So was the moon. Fairy horns and trumpets pealed: a fanfare of welcome rang with echoes over the higher-land grasses. For here are the royalties! A procession worth seeing slowly approached and passed. The pride and panoply of mortal pageantry is tinsel and crudeness in comparison with what the fairies can do. Leading came a bodyguard of gnomes, looking quaint and important in their warlike furniture. Their round faces, wearing expressions of tremendous seriousness, their goggle-eyes, and legs, some spindle, others bandy as half-way hoops, gave a sort of pantomime poetry to the proceedings. "Shiar-shiar-shiar!" shouted their commander in his best militarese. They halted, turned inwards in two long lines, stepped backwards, leaving a generous space between, and shuffled into comparative exactness of places. They were ranged in companies, according to colour, the pride of position belonging to the sky-blue and grass-green companies. Following came the flower of fairy chivalry. Knights, whose duty it is to control and imprison the dragons which long ages ago terrified and destroyed humanity, passed along, proudly cheered. Down into fiery depths of earth these happy warriors go, and there, with infinite courage, flashing swords and magic spears, do battle with and awe the flame-breathing furies, preventing their escape to earth, where they would wreak mischief, work havoc, and destroy. Fortunate for us--if only we knew it--that we have the fairies to rid us of these monsters and keep them in restraint. Banish the elves from our imaginings and many hidden horrors would rise again. The old forgotten terrors and a million uglinesses which ever threaten us would resume their evil reigns. Banish the elves, indeed! There were knights tried by all manners of adventure, thousand-year-old young heroes whose efforts always help in the battle of right against wrong. They are the joyous chevaliers. The fairies are bright, as their services have been beneficent. The best of the warriors are as dazzling as sunlight at noontide; and as the knights marched in inverse order to their prowess and worth, the most meritorious and honourable last, the procession became brighter and brighter as it progressed, till only elf-eyes could have endured its absolute brilliancy. It was as a rippling river of light, travelling through fields of melody. Bim, to whom all this was a magnificent dream, trembled with excitement and awe. He had heard tales of majestic doings, told by gnomes who had made adventures and seen; but nothing before had sounded so fine as the mere shadow of this. He lay in his burrow, snug; and repeatedly pinched his leg to remind himself of his wonderful good luck. He saw the knights group themselves in a wide semicircle round a double-throne, gem-built and golden, made by moonbeams and magic out of a nest of wild-growth. Jack o' Lantern, Will o' the Wisp, and their shivering green company kept guard about it. Goblins gathered on a poplar-tree. Then after an interval came perfection at its best, sweetness in all its qualities, loveliness beyond adjectives--the fairies who watch the flowers in their building, and tend them that they may give generously of their treasures in scent, colour and brightness; who teach birds music and win from them their finest songs; who carry day-dreams to those who require them--they only bring some of the dreams of night; who help Santa Claus during his Christmas mission; who put hopes in the hearts of the weary. They flew slowly, on fluttering wings, just over the grass: the beads of dew beneath glistening sharply, a thousand thousand points, reflections. Last of that chapter of the marvellous procession came one whom the lookers-on acclaimed with ardour--the heroine of that silver night. "June! June! June!" In her honour all this rejoicing was made. The great event of that calendar night was to be the crowning of June. Then with new trumpetings came Oberon and Titania, the most puissant of kings and queens; whose realms and governance extend from the depths beneath, where the brownies in their fire-shops labour and create, to the high-built hidden palaces of the clouds. All castles in the air are in the kingdom of Oberon. Remember that! The royalties of Fairyland are royal indeed. They were accompanied by an escort of princes and princesses, of knights, elves, and gnomes; until the procession ended. Oberon and his queen sat on the double throne. He raised his sceptre in signal; the revels began. Many of the fairies who had been waiting, thereupon ran to the dancing-green, and on wings and feet as light and graceful as moonbeams on flowing water, danced. It was a vision of loveliness, the perfect poetry of music and motion. And so it went on and on, a kind of dream and of worship, till every one of the fairies had sung and danced her share. All the while there was the singing of elf-songs, to an accompaniment of nightingale voices, and joyous feasting on honeyed nectar and cates, the produce of fairy kitchens. The moon drifted along, jealous of the passing clouds which occasionally veiled her view, watching, and, from her loneliness, rejoicing with the fairies in their joy. Till Oberon arose. The birds ceased their songs. An owl hooted five times. Bim, forgetting caution, came boldly out of his hiding-place, the better to watch. The king raised an opal cup and gave the word: "June!" Every voice in Fairyland echoed him. The woods repeated the name: "June! June! June!" CHAPTER II THE MADNESS OF JUNE Throughout the revels June was sitting but three hand's-breadth distance from Bim, so that he--who is our chief authority for these pages of history--better than anyone else could see, hear, and know all that happened in Fairyland on that very, very young May morning. June had been sitting there smiling, enjoying herself supremely. It was hard for her to believe that this banquet of sheer delight was entirely to her honour. Even Oberon, Titania, and those others whose names are as immortal as the passing pages of the books of humankind can make them, were there in a new relation--her subjects for the time being. The crowning was the only event which remained undone: it was the culmination of the revels, and would not happen until the cock which crows in the last of the morning darkness had duly squawked and shrilled. Every year in Elfland the fairy credited with the greatest number of kind doings, as entered in the Golden Book of Bosh, wears the magic crown which the spirits of Merlin, Prospero, and Michael Scott met to make and charge with their mystic powers on a howling night of eclipse. Five-and-twenty sheeted spectres had watched its making and guarded the crown when made. It had been transported to the valley wherein Dante met Virgil, to Ariel's Island, to the Hill of Tara, to that Valley of Shadow in which Christian fought Apollyon--who was Abaddon, to the altar in the Chapel of Arthur's Palace at Camelot, to the Never-Never-Never Land; and in each of those places had rested for a year and a day, gathering the mystical, magical powers of the place. Now by unanimous acclaim, June was again the chosen favourite. For the second time in succession she had won the crown--a circumstance unique! Never before in the long annals of Fairyland--in comparison with which any mere national history is but the record of a few stained and noisy days--had such a circumstance been. That was why there was so great a gathering; why all the notables--and Bim--were there! The crown which, with its changing colours, sparkled with brightness better than sunshine had been placed on a cushion before the throne. During the revels, chosen knights--proud sentinels--stood guard over it; the brightest eyes of Elfdom watched it then. June watched it too. But there was something which, even in that hour of magic and of triumph, troubled and perplexed her, and drew away her attention from the revels. It was as a shadow of sorrow overhanging the happiness; the only blur on a condition of perfect contentment and peace. Where she sat, facing Oberon and Titania, she also faced that vague and lurid glow which showed where Fairyland was not. It was strange and weirdly troublesome to her. There was no such dismal shadow over any part of the Land of Wild Roses, and never before during her previous visits to the Violet Valley had she seen that brooding glare. But now its ugly glory oppressed her. Again and again it won her eyes from the happiness, and filled her heart with a growing burden of pain. The owl had hooted. "June! June! June!" had come the king's, and then the universal, cry. Chanticleer gave the note for the crowning. The king rose, took the crown from the chief of the knights attending, and raised it that all of Fairyland might see. The singing and the laughter died away, and were hushed to a tremendous silence. June flew towards Oberon, but suddenly stopped, and gave a cry of pain. There was wild excitement at this. It belied experience, was an unkind precedent, made the long night's harmony suddenly crooked and awry. What ailed June that she should act so? The fairies with all their wisdom were impotent to read the mystery. But soon June made it plain. She pointed her wand at the glow beyond, and cried: "Evil! Evil!" Every gnome, elf, fairy--all--turned to look at the vague red light over the far-away city. Oberon and Titania alone did not move, but gazed at June, solemnity in their eyes. They knew. "June," said the king to her, "that light is the shame of Fairyland. No one of our glad company can live beneath it. It is the land of unhappy ghosts, where the shadows called men make and endure infinite ugliness, shame and pain. Slowly the fairies who would have loved and helped them have been driven away." "I must go there," June said. "No, no!" cried Titania, hurriedly stepping down from her throne, and clasping the fairy's shoulder, holding her wings. "We can't spare you, June," said the king. The hearkening elves sang agreement with him. "It is all quite hopeless. Time was when the fairies ruled in London and the other great towns, and were believed in, welcomed, appreciated. In those days England was called 'Merrie,' and deserved the joyous name. Then things began to change. Men became less in sympathy with the beautiful and the unseen; their faith in us dwindled. They wanted more than they should have done the dross called riches; and in following and finding wealth lost much of their welfare. It was a sad experience for fairies, who one by one deserted the wilderness of streets and went to their work in the country. The condition of the towns grew worse and worse. Then came that age of material progress, the Mid-Victorian Period----" "You should have seen their wall-paper, my dear!" Titania interposed. "And in despair the last of the fairies went!" June sighed. "Is it hopeless?" she asked. "Hopeless, hopeless!" declared the king solemnly. "Only Death can do away with that wilderness--Death and his cousin Decay. More than that, the men there would not be helped by us if we would. They are vain. They have no love for the fairies. They like their grime and their grubbing. They hoard their dross and tinsel, and are greedy about it. That world of stone and shadow beneath the red haze is marked with doom. Let it alone, June, as we have done and are doing. Fairyland is large enough, and can spare to mortals those blotted areas." June hid her face in her hands and shed fairy tears. Tears on that night of triumph! A flower, close by, in sympathy quivered and put out its lamp. Titania felt her royal firmness oozing out of her wings. "Let her go, Oberon! Why should not fairies go even to the wilderness if they can help there?" "I cannot spare them," he answered. "We should spare them," the queen asserted. June raised her head to listen. "Titania?" said Oberon, in surprise. "The fairies ought not to have left London to ugliness," the queen exclaimed; "besides--is it so ugly as you in your eloquence make out?" "Titania?" "Even if the fairies have deserted London--and shame to us for it--many men and women, strengthened and inspired by us, have been doing fairy-work there. I am not so sure that London is so hopeless!" "Titania?" "May not June go?" the queen then asked. "I said 'No!'" Oberon declared with loud authority. "You are as obstinate as ever," Titania observed impatiently. "Since you played your trick on me with that oaf--that clown--that donkey's head; and foolishly I gave way to your tricks and pleading, you have been----" "Silence, Titania! You are my own dearest queen; but I am your king and the king of Fairyland. I forbid June to go." There was an end of the suggestion. Applause, loud and long, greeted the royal pronouncement. The elves did not wish their favourite to go. They feared for her. Titania, realizing that the last word was said, for the time being--what a model for some!--returned to her place by Oberon's side, and June roused her drooping happiness. "Now, fairies," cried the king, "the triumph song!" They sang. All sang, proudly, proudly! How it rose, swelled, rolled in a volume of musical delight, over the tree-tops, waking any birds that foolishly might have been sleeping, compelling them by its power, joy and confidence to share the grand chorus. Only June, of all the bright multitude on which the moon then looked, was silent; only she, though sharing in the pride and happiness--how could she have done otherwise?--stood, seemingly unemotional, there. She was thinking, thinking, thinking of the great dim wilderness, whose crowded wretchedness, referred to by the king, called for the gifts and presence of the fairies, and could not enjoy them! "Oh, sad city," whispered she to herself, while her comrades were singing the triumph song. "Oh, pitiful shadows, foolishly imprisoned there!" Dawn came creeping up. The moon grew pale with annoyance that daylight was coming to close the revels. The more timid of the stars closed eyes and went to sleep. Only the boldest lights in the greying sky fought against the progress in the east. Then the song ended--dying out with a note of long-drawn content, the sigh of satisfied victory. There was silence again except for the awakened birds, which, well aware of the rapidly approaching day, chattered and twittered with increasing energy, careless of the history happening beneath them. June was stirred from her inopportune reverie by the touch of the crown which Oberon, descending from his throne, placed upon her. A great shout went up. "June, June, June!" That was the moment of her triumph. It was the moment of her madness too. The touch of the mystic rim quickened her indefinite aspirations and sharpened her sadness. She would go! Not Oberon and all his fairies should prevent her. The crown--charged with mighty powers--gave her strange new determination and an influence more potent far than she had ever possessed before. That town-world might be hopeless, but she would not say so till she herself was convinced of it. She would go to London. Oberon, watching her face, was aware of this fleeting debate in her mind and the disobedient decision. He is the gentlest knight in Fairyland, and for June, who deserved so well of everyone, had an especial reverence and affection. That she should disobey his public command would be almost as hurtful to his pride as allowing a dragon, pent in its subterranean prison, to escape. "June," he said to her gently, "you will go back to your home in the Land of Wild Roses. A hundred of the fairest knights will guard you and the crown--your precious burden. You will go at once. The revels are ended." Daylight filled the sky. The moon was a pallid shadow of her former self; the stars had become invisible. The birds, self-centred, were flying hither and thither, bustling about for the wherewithal to live and to help live. One by one the flowers put out their ineffectual lamps. Ordinarily, the fairies would have decamped forthwith; the gnomes in weary, grumbling, clumsily-clambering pell-mell, every one of them with the fear at his elbow that he might be chosen for some fatigue duty--as our straight-backed friends of the scarlet tunic expressively call it. But on this occasion they stayed. Not an elf stirred. Everyone stared and wondered. "Was June in disgrace?" they asked of each other, "and if so, why?" The questions were answered by further questions. There was a jostling of inquiries without any progress made. Rumours rioted. It had been a night indeed! Again June made appeal. "Let me go just to see--for only one day and a night!" "Not for one hour can you go," the king obstinately replied. "Men through their meanness and worldliness have driven the fairies away. We went regretfully, unwillingly; but we went, at last, absolutely. There are innumerable homes of men-folk where the elves are believed in and are welcome. We carry our gifts to them. There the children have smiling eyes and happy faces: but in the narrow world of mean streets and mistaken people, over which that glare is a pall, the children fade, are shrunken, neglected, have some of them forgotten how to smile." "That is enough!" cried June, and she looked straight at Oberon. "Wherever the children are neglected the fairies ought to go. How can you blame the people for being mean and the places ugly if the elves are forbidden entrance there? Great king, I go!" In the most daring manner, she raised her wand, made profound obeisance, and was off, like light. Her wings shimmered in the shining of the rising sun. Fairies started forward to stop her; but she was away before they could do so. "I told you so!" said Titania, to nobody in particular. "Stay, all of you," loudly commanded the king. "June has gone wilfully, and must suffer. I would not use the smallest power in Fairyland to bring her back. She has gone disobediently. She can return when she will. I will not send for her. She has gone foolhardily, and must endure alone. We are all of us sorry. There will be no more elfin revels till June has come back again." "The crown! She has taken that!" said Titania. Oberon echoed the queen's words. "She has taken that. It cannot perish. June cannot keep it beyond the year. She will have to bring it back then, or earlier. Now, fairies, May-day has come. To your homes and the daytime labours. Away, away! The revels have ended indeed!" Then there was hurry on the part of the gnomes. Oberon and Titania and their sparkling company flew in a long procession on a winding aerial course, to the palace of the king, which is hidden from eyes of men on an Irish mountain. They were there in a twinkling. Wink thrice and a fairy's journey is ended, though it be over deserts and beyond seas. It is not so with the gnomes. They must labour and struggle along, like mice and men. But the winged lords and ladies of Elfdom are the happy fortunate. They can put Time in a thimble when they please, and play leap-frog with continents. In less than three and a half minutes, as measured by a well-behaved clock, the Violet Valley was deserted by all but the birds and Bim. Even the nymph of the lake was invisible. She had sunk to the depths of her pellucid palace the moment June made her bold decision. Bim waddled to the place where the throne had been. It was rank wild-growth again. No one not a fairy could have dreamed that such a sight had been there but a fragment of time before. He threw himself at full length--such a little full length--on the grass where June had been standing, and thought for a long while with his very best wits. He made a soliloquy. "King Oberon said we were not to go. He said that June was to come back alone. He said no one was to follow her. I shall be punished if I go. Pricks and pains and aches and beatings! Ugh! But would that be worse than Fairyland without June? No, it would not. Fairyland will not be Fairyland to me without June. I am going after her; Oberon can beat me till I'm blue." So declaring, he sprang to his feet. "Brave gnome!" said a voice behind him. Bim turned about in fright. The courage which had risen during his soliloquy went--pluff!--like an unset jelly. The nymph of the lake had spoken. She had returned, and stood again on her leaf in the middle of the pool. He was pleased to see she looked at him in the friendliest manner. "We are behaving very badly indeed in being so disobedient," she said; "but June is from the Land of Wild Roses. So are you and I. Go to her, gnome. She is alone, and even you from Falkland--I beg your pardon for putting it so--are better than nothing. I have no counsel to give you but keep a stout heart. You will need it. You don't know the way!" Here was the truth. Bim was an expert in ignorance. "You will find June in the wilderness of stone and evil. In the daytime it is covered by cloud and fog. In the night-time the red glare of lights reflected shines over it. That is what to follow and where to go. When you come back I will find a gift for you. Away with you. Go!" Bim went. CHAPTER III PARADISE COURT There are many Paradise Courts in London. The one which comes into this story is identifiable from the fact that a public-house is by its entrance. Probably this hostelry has given the court its name, for it was the nearest approach to anything of an Eden character which that blotted part of existence held. The public-house has been known at various times by different names--The Red Lion, The Green Man, The Blue Dragon, The Queen's Head. Possibly it is spoken of by another name now, for its management has always changed pretty frequently, and almost as frequently celebrated the occasion with a new title. It may perhaps be called "The Laughter of June"--who knows?--but digressions are sinful, when they anticipate. These facts are stated to help the reader to find the Paradise Court of the story--if he wants to. To describe Paradise Court is to tell the picture of one or other of more than a thousand of the mean ways of London. It was narrow and flagged, with cracked slabs of cold stone; was utterly dismal, dingy, dull. Its tenements were brown with years of smoked atmosphere; the windows stained, or stuffed with paper, or empty of glass; the doors, broken gates, giving entrance to inner realms of squalor and nakedness. There is no place on earth more thoroughly hopeless and ugly than was that dismal colony of condemned humanity. The makers of Hell would probably be ashamed to imitate this limbo, where the poorest of the poor crowded and managed to exist. Hunger and fear were unfading terrors in Paradise Court. Every room was haunted with the tragedy which never dies. No tears were shed there, for the heart which knows despair is dry as a river of sand. In Paradise Court only the babies could have any glimmer of hope, they being utterly ignorant and unable to know. The others were mere mute bodies, too hurt and heavily burdened to feel weary and sore. There were dangerous brawls sometimes amongst the Paradise Courtiers--they hit their hardest and cunningest to kill; but, fortunately, used fists or sticks--though sometimes the boot found play, and always fought with drink-muddled senses. The men, women and children there knew how to blaspheme: and though the range of language in use was limited, it was violent enough for any ordinary occasion. Sometimes the supply of available adjectives was insufficient for a very special purpose, and then Jim, Bill and 'Arry, Sal, 'Arriett and Liz, repeated themselves unconscionably. The ears of the neighbourhood were not sensitive, which, perhaps, was as well. Once upon a time a policeman, presuming on his proper faith in a new uniform and the truncheon in his trouser pocket, followed and tried unaided to capture a sneak-thief who had found refuge in its Alsatian sanctuary. When the policeman emerged from the court empty-handed, he was limp and battered; and report--on the lips of the curate, who heard it from someone, who was told by so-and-so, who learned it from somebody else--asserts that his lost truncheon was used thereafter promiscuously to settle private quarrels with. Since that ill-advised adventure, the police only entered the place when they had to, and then went in adequate numbers. Paradise Court had become an independent republic, where the King's authority had ceased to run, and, in effect, was a little farther out of civilization than the forests of Mumbo-Jumbo. There were fourteen houses in the Court, with five rooms in each, a passage and flight of stairs. On an average four persons slept in every room, and in the summer months the stairs had their occupants, so that the population of the place was as near three hundred as need be. Paradise Court was, in brief, a piece of Black Country, given back to Chaos and old Night, the haunt of such terrors as are bred of insanitation, rack-rents, thriftlessness, drunkenness, extreme poverty, utter and absolute neglect. It was one of many wens in the metropolitan wilderness. On every side of it London stretched; immediately about it were clattering thoroughfares, with hurrying streams of life, constant processions of rumbling and jingling vehicles, and buildings, buildings, buildings, streets after streets of them, nearly every one looking jaded, faded, an edifice--fine word!--in despair. Only the public-houses remained clothed in glaring, brave livery, and looked prosperous and vulgarly perky. June found herself in Paradise Court in the course of that May-day afternoon. How she got there, even she did not know. Out in the country her journey had been plain flying. She had skimmed over the fields and hills like light in a happy hurry. But gradually the air became heavier, and her wings, which in a joyous atmosphere could have moved unweariedly for almost an eternal time, lagged. She struggled along bravely, and, not for the shred of a moment, wavered in her purposes: but eventually, bewildered by the clamour beneath her, the closeness and thick smoke, which overhung everything--there was the pall which, lighted, was visible from Fairyland--felt her powers vanquished. She tried all her arts--the fairy arts--to make the way easier; but the spoilt air of London oppressed her--it was to her--who more sensitive?--as fiery breath from dragon's nostrils, nauseous. The crown pressed on her brow with a heavy rim of pain. She clung to remembrance of the children who needed her. She became as helpless in the hands of circumstance as a snowflake, the sport of winds; was borne hither and thither, buffeted up and down as though mighty mischiefs made her their shuttlecock. For hours she was hustled along in this condition of blind bewilderment: and then--slap!--felt herself brought sharply against a window-pane, for all the world as if she were a blind wasp or blue-bottle imprisoned in a summer room. She tumbled and clung desperately to the rough stone sill whereon she found herself; and there rested, breathless, draggled, exhausted. She was the tiredest fairy in and out of Christendom. So June found Paradise Court. She rapidly recovered, and looked about her. "This is very, very ugly," said she to herself. "The fairies can't have been here for ages." She touched the dingy window-pane with her wand. The glass divided and opened inwards, as if its two parts were separately hinged; but the atmosphere of the room was so old and very evil that June waved the wand and closed the pane in a hurry. Human eyes, examining the glass, ever so carefully, would have been positive it had never been parted. Brothers, how blind we are! "Can the fairies ever have been there!" murmured June to herself. She cleared the pane with wishes. It became so clear and burnished that the glass itself seemed invisible; and then, pressing forward eagerly, she looked inside the room, and examined mankind in one of its cages. "It is a good thing they are shadows, and cannot know or feel very much. If they were as real as we are, that would be bad--bad! Even now I should like to turn them into sparrows; they would be far more fortunate so. Poor people! And there is a child!" The sight of Sally Wilkins working constantly with ever-weary hands, made June so to tremble and shake with agitation, that she nearly dropped her wand and fell from the sill; but once more she clung with her infinitesimal hands to the narrow column of wooden framework, and, beginning now to feel indignant and angry, looked still more eagerly into the room. The picture she saw was, alas! not uncommon. Ten thousand interiors of London life down in the grey parts where grinding Poverty is king, were more or less repetitions of the sight June gazed upon. Two women squatted on the floor, sewing rapidly, with machine-like steadiness. A third suckled as well as her poor means allowed a feeble baby. The mother stared before her with eyes which were very tired. Unlighted--as grey stones in a hollow face--they gazed at a present and a future, too dreary for dreams. All her life was a stain and a grief. One of the women, her companion, was racked with a consumptive cough. There was by the inside wall of the room, a pile of half-completed clothing--raw material for sweated needles to work upon--and very little else. There were a frameless looking-glass; a few bottles; a battered beer-pot, stolen from the haunt of liquid happiness at the entrance to the Court; one chair, which served as table, cradle and cupboard, when there was something to hoard underneath it; a verminous straw mattress; and some broken wood, cardboard, and rags--the gleanings of rubbish boxes. That is a complete inventory of the furniture, the ornamental as well as the useful. On the window-ledge were broken crusts, as stale as the phrases of charity, and a black-handled fork, with pieces of string, cotton, needles, several empty reels, which would make firewood some day, and cards of buttons, the capital and essentials of those women's industry. June, fresh from the revels of Fairyland, was appalled at her picture, and as near to tears as an indignant fairy could be. She felt hot anger against Oberon. Then again she gazed at Sally Wilkins and studied the hapless child. The fairy's whole being was eager sympathy and love. June knew Sally's history at once through the influence of her powers and the crown. That was a child who had never seen a green field, or heard any wild birds singing; though very well she knew, as every town-child must do, the twittering of the pert sparrows in the streets. Sally was a lump of solid ignorance. She had heard of God because His name was some necessary part of several favourite swear-phrases; but of the fairies and other sweet realities she had heard just nothing. She lived--poor lass!--in so narrow and limited a world that she might as well have been born in a grave as to the child's destiny in Paradise Court. She sewed and she sewed, with hardly a pause--"seam and gusset and band"--though in her case it was buttons and buttons and buttons. So constantly was she threading her way through the dark material that life was to her nothing more than a dreary pilgrimage into and out of eternal button-holes. Her fingers were the all-important machines. Her brain was dulled: her soul unquickened. She was twelve years old; and composed of skin, bones, hunger and weariness, wrapped in a modicum of Nothing. June could not endure the sight any more. Her wings quivered with indignation. She touched the window, flew into the room, and alighted on Sally's shoulder. The child, without her fingers resting from work for the least part of an instant--time means life to the working poor--looked up wondering. Why did she seem suddenly lighter? Was there sunshine in the room? No, everything appeared precisely as before: though--yes, somebody had certainly, through an obvious misunderstanding, been cleaning the window. June took off the fairy crown and perched it on Sally's tangle of hair. The consequence was amazing. Sally began to dream for the first time in her life. A new world was opened to her. She was in a wonder country, and felt she had enjoyed as much food as she wanted--plenty of hot gravy. Her thoughts were always drifting on a river of gravy, towards the promise of pudding. Under her feet was a kind of green hair--grass--far stretches of it, as cool as the night-wind, but infinitely pleasanter. Flowers, looking for all the world as if they had been picked off stuck-up ladies' bonnets, were pushed into the ground, where they waved, looked and smelt as delicious as--more gravy, Sally's only simile. The sky was strangely blue, and much broader and higher than the London sky ever was. How did they keep it so clear? She could not see a house, but there were any number of trees shading the grass, trees of all sorts and sizes, some so high that their tops tickled the sky; others with branches so broad and full of leaves that a hundred children like herself could have slept without quarrelling in the shade of any one of them. What a very nice world this was! There was more still, for look at that very round "spadger" with the red breast that perched on a branch, and went twit, twit perkily, and that very large bird--could that be a spadger too?--with brown speckled breast, and that tiny blue upside-down, eager thing with its sweet chirrup, chirrup; and the other mite of a brown creature, with saucily upturned tail; and this scolding black gentleman with his yellow bill; and more birds too, many more. What a lot there were! Why don't we have fellows who look and pipe like them down our court?--and don't they sing cheerily? My! There is one going up and up, as if it were climbing a round stairway which couldn't be seen, singing all the while like--like--a tune gone balmy. Sally could hear the soft prevailing sound, and opened her eyes wide--to hear better! There was a brown cliff, and down, tumbling with much splashing and thudding, came water in a shining flood. At first she shivered--water is so cold, and cleansing; but the fright went suddenly when Sally, examining herself, found that though she had no recollection of the horrible process of washing, she was quite clean. So she need not wash, and could, without fear, admire the falling water. Hooray! This was a splendid country. She revelled in its light, warmth, freedom, happiness. There were loud unsteady footsteps on the stairs. June removed the crown, without removing the sweetness of the dream-world from Sally, and flew to the empty keyhole to reconnoitre. A man, one of the masters of Paradise Court, was stumbling upstairs, making hob-nail progress. He was mazed; because of the public-house at the corner--the nearest place where the community could discover the correct time. Long experience of similar circumstances safely guided his feet up that rickety rat-haunted staircase, and he lurched into the room, clumsily kicking the door to after he had entered. June hovered over him, flew round and round his head, and still more puzzled his foolish wits. "'Ave I got 'em?" he asked most seriously, and stared at the revolving wall. The three women looked at him listlessly. One spoke. "Shut yer jaw, Bill," she said, and paused to thread her needle. "'Ullo, brought some beer?" she continued, when she saw the tin can he dangled. "Give us a drop, mate!" June, steadying herself by grabbing his stubbly beard--for fairies are not entirely impervious to the law of gravitation--leaned forward and, just as he had said "Garn! I brought it for----" touched his lips with her wand. He substituted "Sally" for "myself." Bill put the beer-can on the chair, and rallied himself with an effort. "I am drunk!" he asserted most seriously, as though a mighty uncertainty had suddenly been put straight. Sally was still in the green joy-land, whereto June had enchanted her; but she took the can dreamily, and put it to her lips. That was too much for the man. He stooped forward and grabbed the can. "Not 'arf!" he said, as he took it from her, spilling some of the contents. Sally's thoughts were torn from the trance-world. She was snatched from the green dream-country, brought back summarily to the hungry, grey realities of the present. She looked at Bill, and then blasphemed fluently. June, horrified by the child's fierce anger, touched her lips with the wand. Sally was obediently silent, though still her mouth moved with muted imprecations. The two women had, meanwhile, gone on with their work, and the mother stared, her eyes two stones. Bill sprawled on the boards, and pillowed his head and shoulders on the pile of half-completed clothing. He supped at the beer with long luxurious satisfaction, and slowly tumbled into sleep. The emptied can slipped from his fingers and rolled half-way across the room. June, who in the presence of this experience had been bewildered and unprepared, flew to where it was lying, and contemplated it thoughtfully. "There has been magic there," she declared, "worse than the evil of witches." Sally went on with her sewing. |
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