Me and Nobbles Part 5

'I should like you to come and see me very often,' she said. 'I used to know your grandmother long ago, before I went out to India. Do you think,' she added, turning to Nurse, 'that he would be allowed to come to me?'

'I'm sure,' said Nurse, hesitating, 'that if you were to invite him----'

'Then I invite you, Bobby, at once to come to tea with me the day after to-morrow. I will write a note to your grandmother.'

Bobby's eyes shone with delight

'Me and n.o.bbles never go to tea with anybody,' he said. 'Do you think grandmother will say "yes"?'

'I hope she will.'

She nodded at him brightly, then drove off; and Nurse looked after her with a curious interest upon her face.

'That's the rich young widow, Lady Isobel, I've heard talk about. She shuts herself up, and won't go out nowheres.'

'Oh, no!' corrected Bobby. 'She wasn't shut up; I sawed her in the garden.'

'She's had a deal of trouble,' Nurse went on, more to herself than to Bobby. 'Her husband and only child and favrit sister were all drowned sudden in a boat out in them foreign rivers, and she come home, and found her old father dyin'; and she haven't got a relation left, and it have turned her head, and no wonder!'

'When peoples die,' said Bobby thoughtfully, 'they go away and never come back; don't they, Nurse? Jane says they're put under ground in the churchyard, but you told me the angels take them up to G.o.d.'

'Don't bother your little head about such things,' said Nurse hastily.

'And don't you be a naughty boy and run away from me again. I feel as if I shall never get cool. I'm regular done up, and 'twas only a chance I took the right road; but one of the farm hands saw you runnin'

along.'

The next day was Sunday. Bobby never went to church in the morning, but very often his nurse took him in the afternoon. And Sunday morning was his opportunity to slip through the green baize door and wander over the house, for his grandmother and uncle and aunt always went to church, and the house was empty. Nurse did not mind his doing it, as long as he did not get into mischief. This morning he wandered into the dining-room; the family portraits on the walls always attracted him. Jenkins, the butler, was arranging the table for lunch, and eyed him morosely as he appeared.

'Now then, this ain't your nursery, you know,' was his greeting.

Bobby was so accustomed to this speech that he paid no attention to it.

He sauntered round the room with n.o.bbles in his hand, and his eyes were riveted on the stern and gloomy faces looking out of their frames.

'Mr. Jenkins,' he said very politely, 'will your picture be put up there when you're dead?'

'Law, no!' said Jenkins testily. 'What a silly child you be! Tis only grandees can have their picters taken.'

'Has my father had his picture taken?'

'More'n I can say. He don't belong to this house. Your mother's picter were taken, and the mistress keeps it locked up. She were wonderful fond of Miss Vera.'

Bobby was not half so interested in his dead mother as in his living father.

'I don't belong to the House,' he murmured to himself. 'Father has got a big house somewheres where he'll take me when he comes home, and everything in that house will belong to me and father--all mine own!'

He reflected for a minute with s.h.i.+ning complacency upon this idea.

Then he looked up at the pictures again.

'I'm so glad they're all dead. I shouldn't like to see them going up and down stairs. I'm sure they'd scold me!'

'Don't you be abusin' your elders, Master Bobby; and liking them dead be not a right state o' mind at all.'

'But dead people are very happy in heaven. Nurse says so. Wouldn't you like to be dead, Mr. Jenkins?'

Jenkins put down the gla.s.s he was polis.h.i.+ng, and pointed sternly to the door.

'Now you go off, Master Bobby, and don't you be asking imperent questions.'

Bobby trotted off. There was no love lost between him and Jenkins. He peeped into the drawing-room, then found his way to the library, and here he wandered about for some considerable time. The plaster busts were always a puzzle to him. Why had they no eyes? Were they born blind? Why had they no bodies? Had their heads been cut off? These and many other questions he would ask n.o.bbles, who could only grin at him by way of reply.

Then he began to pull out some books in the bookcase. He could not read very well himself, though he spent half an hour with Nurse every morning over a reading-book. But he loved pictures, and he knew there were books with pictures in them. Once he had found a wonderful book here. It was bound in brown leather, and had filigree bra.s.s corners and clasps studded with blue turquoises. He had opened it and found pictures on every page, and the front page was illuminated in the most brilliant colours. His Aunt Anna had come into the room and taken it from him.

'That is a most valuable old Italian Bible,' she said. 'You are too little to be trusted with it. You must wait till you grow bigger.'

Now as he caught sight of it he said to n.o.bbles very gravely:

'I'm grown bigger now, n.o.bbles. We'll look at it. That was years ago when Aunt Anna said that.'

It was a heavy book to lift. He dragged a footstool close to the bookcase, then placed the Bible very carefully upon it, and sat down on the carpet in front of it prepared to enjoy himself. First he fingered the little blue stones in true childish fas.h.i.+on, then he laid his cheek on the soft leather binding, and told n.o.bbles it smelt just sweet. And then with the greatest reverence he opened the clasps and began to look at the pictures. They were wonderful! But some of them rather frightened him. The angels with their big wings he loved, but there was an awful picture of the ark floating over stormy waves through torrents of rain, and drowning people holding up their arms to be taken in; and there was one of a boy being tied to a heap of stones and his old father, with knife uplifted, just going to kill him.

Bobby did not like the look of that at all; and then noticing that, scattered through the book, were a few very beautifully painted pictures, he turned over the pages to find them first. At last he came to one at the very end of the volume that arrested his attention and held him spellbound.

It was s.h.i.+ning with gold and glory, and was the picture of two golden gates guarded by white angels with glittering golden wings. Inside the gates was a broad golden road lined with avenues of fruit-laden trees, and crowds of white-robed people and children were walking along it, some dancing and singing, some playing harps and blowing trumpets, some resting under the trees, but nearly all making their way to a big tree laden with golden fruit that stood on the edge of a flowing river. In the distance was a beautiful golden city, which seemed to be sending its rays of light right up to this tree and surrounding it. Every face was smiling, every person seemed entrancingly happy, and all of them were dressed in white, and nearly all wore golden crowns on their heads.

Bobby drew a long breath.

'It's Fairyland!' he whispered to n.o.bbles. 'Oh, I wish me and you could walk straight in and be there! I would love to pick those golden apples, and to blow those trumpets, and to play about with the children by the water.'

He gazed with wistful longing in his eyes; then from the inside of the gates his glance tell upon a dark corner outside in the picture. And this was the angel shutting out a little group of people who were begging to be let in. They were dressed in filthy rags, their faces were wretched, and several were weeping bitterly. No light from the golden city seemed to fall upon them, and Bobby noticed, through the darkness that seemed all round them, that their feet were close to the edge of a precipice.

As he looked at them the tears came into his eyes; and when he heard Nurse's voice call to him he started violently. He could hardly believe he was in the library, and was going up to his sunny nursery.

He had been in the picture for such a long time, and so very far away.

Very carefully he put the Bible back in its place and ran out of the room.

'Nurse,' he said a little later, as he was eating his dinner in the nursery, 'do you know a story in the Bible about some big lovely gates, and angels, and a street all gold, and trees with gold apples, and lovely flowers, and everybody smiling, and then, outside the gates, some poor, unhappy crying people being shut out in the dark and rain?

It's rather near the end of the book.'

'Oh, I expect it's a picture of heaven,' said Nurse, 'and the wicked people being shut out.'

'But,' said Bobby, with anxious eyes, 'are many bodies shut outside of heaven? Can't they never get in?'

'Now, eat your dinner and don't talk so much! There are no wicked people in heaven. It is only good little boys who go there.'

An awful fear clutched at Bobby's heart, but he could not put it into words. He had taken it for granted that everybody who died went straight to heaven. The picture of those weeping men and women outside the gates, and the sad stern face of the angel who was shutting them out, haunted him. He was very quiet indeed; and when Nurse took him off to church a little later, he never spoke a word. They walked along the high-road for a short distance, then turned up a lane with high banks and hedges, and at last came to the little country church, with some shady elms and beeches casting cool shadows across the sunny churchyard. It was a children's service, and the Sunday-school children were filing in before them. Bobby followed his nurse up to his grandmother's pew. It was very near the pulpit, and when sitting down Bobby could not see over the top of it. He was not very fond of church. It was a long time to sit still, and Nurse would not let him talk to n.o.bbles. In fact she had threatened more than once to leave n.o.bbles behind when they went to church if he persisted in playing with him.

To-day Bobby was pleased by hearing one of his hymns sung that he knew by heart, and when the clergyman began to talk in the pulpit of this very hymn he could not help listening.

There's a Friend for little children Above the bright blue sky,'