The Golden Scarecrow Part 15

It did not come to him that Mrs. Carter was in pursuit of these treasures, but he _did_ realise that her presence there amongst them brought peril to his mother. Moved then by some desperate urgency which had at its heart his sense that to be left alone in the black pa.s.sage was worse than the actual lighted vision of his Terror, he crept with trembling knees across the pa.s.sage and through the door.

Inside the room he saw that she had laid the candle upon the piano, and was bending over a drawer, trying again to fit a key. He stood in the doorway, a tiny figure, very, very cold, all his soul in his silent appeal for some help. His Friend _must_ come. He was somewhere there in the house. "Come! Help me!" The candle suddenly flared into a finger of light that flung the room into vision. Mrs. Carter, startled, raised herself, and at that same moment Henry gave a cry, a weak little trembling sound.

She turned and saw the boy; as their eyes met he felt the Terror rus.h.i.+ng upon him. He flung a last desperate appeal for help, staring at her as though his eyes would never let her go, and she, finding him so unexpectedly, could only gape. In their silent gaze at one another, in the gla.s.sy stare of Mrs. Carter and the trembling, flickering one of Henry there was more than any ordinary challenge could have conveyed.

Mrs. Carter must have felt at the first immediate confrontation of the strange little figure that her feet were on the very edge of some most desperate precipice. The long room and the pa.s.sages beyond must have quivered. At that very first moment, with some stir, some hinted approach, Henry called, with the desperate summoning of all his ghostly world, upon his G.o.ds. They came....

In her eyes he saw suddenly something else than vague terror. He saw recognition. He felt himself a rus.h.i.+ng, heartening comfort; he knew that his Friend had somehow come, that he was no longer alone.

But Mrs. Carter's eyes were staring beyond him, over him, into the black pa.s.sage. Her eyes seemed to grow as though the terror in them was pus.h.i.+ng them out beyond their lids; her breath, came in sharp, tearing gasps. The keys with a clang dropped from her hand.

"Oh, G.o.d! Oh, G.o.d!" she whispered. He did not turn his head to grasp what it was that she saw in the pa.s.sage. The terror had been transferred from himself to her.

The colour in her cheeks went out, leaving her as though her face were suddenly shadowed by some overhanging shape.

Her eyes never moved nor faltered from the dark into whose heart she gazed. Then, there was a strangled, gasping cry, and she sank down, first onto her knees, then in a white faint, her eyes still staring, lay huddled on the floor.

Henry felt his Friend's hand on his shoulder.

Meanwhile, down in the kitchen, the fire had sunk into grey ashes, and Mrs. Slater was lying back in her chair, her head back, snoring thickly; an empty gla.s.s had tumbled across the table, and a few drops from it had dribbled over on to the tablecloth.

CHAPTER VII

BARBARA FLINT

I

Barbara Flint was a little girl, aged seven, who lived with her parents at No. 36 March Square. Her brother and sister, Master Anthony and Miss Misabel Flint, were years and years older, so you must understand that she led rather a solitary life. She was a child with very pale flaxen hair, very pale blue eyes, very pale cheeks--she looked like a china doll who had been left by a careless mistress out in the rain. She was a very sensitive child, cried at the least provocation, very affectionate, too, and ready to imagine that people didn't like her.

Mr. Flint was a stout, elderly gentleman, whose favourite pursuit was to read the newspapers in his club, and to inveigh against the Liberals. He was pale and pasty, and suffered from indigestion. Mrs. Flint was tall, thin and severe, and a great helper at St. Matthew's, the church round the corner. She gave up all her time to church work and the care of the poor, and it wasn't her fault that the poor hated her. Between the Scylla of politics and the Charybdis of religion there was very little left for poor Barbara; she faded away under the care of an elderly governess who suffered from a perfect cascade of ill-fated love affairs; it seemed that gentlemen were always "playing with her feelings." But in all probability a too vivid imagination led her astray in this matter; at any rate, she cried so often during Barbara's lessons that the t.i.tle of the lesson-book, "Reading without Tears," was sadly belied. It might be expected that, under these unfavourable circ.u.mstances, Barbara was growing into a depressed and melancholy childhood.

Barbara, happily, was saved by her imagination. Surely nothing quite like Barbara's imagination had ever been seen before, because it came to her, outside inheritance, outside environment, outside observation. She had it altogether, in spite of Flints past and present. But, perhaps, not altogether in spite of March Square. It would be difficult to say how deeply the fountain, the almond tree, the green, flat s.h.i.+ning gra.s.s had stung her intuition; but stung it only, not created it--the thing was there from the beginning of all time. She talked, at first to nurses, servants, her mother, about the things that she knew; about her Friend who often came to see her, who was there so many times--there in the room with her when they couldn't catch a glimpse of him; about the days and nights when she was away anywhere, up in the sky, out on the air, deep in the sea, about all the other experiences that she remembered but was now rapidly losing consciousness of. She talked, at first easily, naturally, and inviting, as it were, return confidences.

Then, quite suddenly, she realised that she simply wasn't believed, that she was considered a wicked little girl "for making things up so," that there was no hope at all for her unless she abandoned her "lying ways."

The shock of this discovery flung her straight back upon herself; if they refused to believe these things, then there was nothing to be done.

But for herself their incredulity should not stop her. She became a very quiet little girl--what her nurse called "brooding." This incredulity of theirs drove them all instantly into a hostile camp, and the affection that she had been longing to lavish upon them must now be reserved for other, and, she could not help feeling, wiser persons. This division of herself from the immediate world hurt her very much. From a very early age, indeed, we need rea.s.surance as to the necessity for our existence. Barbara simply did not seem to be wanted.

But still worse: now that her belief in certain things had been challenged, she herself began to question them. Was it true, possibly, when a flaming sunset struck a sword across the Square and caught the fountain, slas.h.i.+ng it into a million glittering fragments, that that was all that occurred? Such a thing had been for Barbara simply a door into her earlier world. See the fountain--well, you have been tested; you are still simple enough to go back into the real world. But was Barbara simple enough? She was seven; it is just about then that we begin, under the guard of nurses carefully chosen for us by our parents, to drop our simplicity. It must, of course, be so, or the world would be all dreamers, and then there would be no commerce.

Barbara knew nothing of commerce, but she did know that she was unhappy, that her dolls gave her no happiness, and that her Friend did not come now so often to see her. She was, I am afraid, in character a "Hopper." She must be affectionate, she must demand affection of others, and will they not give it her, then must they simulate it. The tragedy of it all was perhaps, that Barbara had not herself that coloured vitality in her that would prepare other people to be fond of her. The world is divided between those who place affection about, now here, now there, and those whose souls lie, like drawers, unawares, but ready for the affection to be laid there.

Barbara could not "place" it about; she had neither optimism nor a sense of humour sufficient. But she wanted it--wanted it terribly. If she were not to be allowed to indulge her imagination, then must she, all the more, love some one with fervour: the two things were interdependent.

She surveyed her world with an eye to this possible loving. There was her governess, who had been with her for a year now, tearful, bony, using Barbara as a means and never as an end. Barbara did not love her--how could she? Moreover, there were other physical things: the lean, s.h.i.+ning marble of Miss Letts's long fingers, the dry thinness of her hair, the way that the tip of her nose would be suddenly red, and then, like a blown-out candle, dull white again. Fingers and noses are not the only agents in the human affections, but they have most certainly something to do with them. Moreover, Miss Letts was too busily engaged with the survey of her relations, with now this gentleman, now that, to pay much attention to Barbara. She dismissed her as "a queer little thing." There were in Miss Letts's world "queer things" and "things not queer." The division was patent to anybody.

Barbara's father and mother were also surveyed. Here Barbara was baffled by the determination on the part of both of them that she should talk, should think, should dream about all the things concerning which she could not talk, think nor dream. "How to grow up into a nice little girl," "How to pray to G.o.d," "How never to tell lies," "How to keep one's clothes clean,"--these things did not interest Barbara in the least; but had she been given love with them she might have paid some attention. But a too rigidly defined politics, a too rigidly defined religion find love a poor, loose, sentimental thing--very rightly so, perhaps. Mrs. Flint was afraid that Barbara was a "silly little girl."

"I hope, Miss Letts, that she no longer talks about her silly fancies."

"She has said nothing to me in that respect for a considerable period, Mrs. Flint."

"All very young children have fancies, but such things are dangerous when they grow older."

"I agree with you."

Nevertheless the fountain continued to flash in the sun, and births, deaths, weddings, love and hate continued to play their part in March Square.

II

Barbara, groping about in the desolation of having no one to grope with her, discovered that her Friend came now less frequently to see her. She was even beginning to wonder whether he had ever really come at all. She had perhaps imagined him just as on occasion she would imagine her doll, Jane, the Queen of England, or her afternoon tea the most wonderful meal, with sausages, blackberry jam and chocolates. Young though, she was, she was able to realise that this imagination of hers was _capable de tout_, and that every one older than herself said that it was wicked; therefore was her Friend, perhaps, wicked also.

And yet, if the dark curtains that veiled the nursery windows at night, if the glimmering shape of the picture-frames, if the square black sides of the dolls' house were real, real also was the figure of her Friend, real his arousal in her of all the memories of the old days before she was Barbara Flint at all--real, too, his love, his care, his protection; as real, yes, as Miss Letts's bony figure. It was all very puzzling. But he did not come now as in the old days.

Barbara played very often in the gardens in the middle of the Square, but because she was a timid little girl she did not make many friends.

She knew many of the other children who played there, and sometimes she shared in their games; but her sensitive feelings were so easily hurt, she frequently retired in tears. Every day on going into the garden she looked about her, hoping that she would find before she left it again some one whom it would be possible to wors.h.i.+p. She tried on several occasions to erect altars, but our English temperament is against public display, and she was misunderstood.

Then, quite suddenly, as though she had sprung out of the fountain, Mary Adams was there. Mary Adams was aged nine, and her difference from Barbara Flint was that, whereas Barbara craved for affection, she craved for attention: the two demands can be easily confused. Mary Adams was the only child of an aged philosopher, Mr. Adams, who, contrary to all that philosophy teaches, had married a young wife. The young wife, pleased that Mary was so unlike her father, made much of her, and Mary was delighted to be made much of. She was a little girl with flaxen hair, blue eyes, and a fine pink-and-white colouring. In a few years'

time she will be so sure of the attention that her appearance is winning for her that she will make no effort to secure adherents, but just now she is not sufficiently confident--she must take trouble. She took trouble with Barbara.

Sitting neatly upon a seat, Mary watched rude little boys throw sidelong glances in her direction. Her long black legs were quivering with the perception of their interest, even though her eyes were haughtily indifferent. It was then that Barbara, with Miss Letts, an absent-minded companion, came and sat by her side. Barbara and Mary had met at a party--not quite on equal terms, because nine to seven is as sixty to thirty--but they had played hide-and-seek together, and had, by chance, hidden in the same cupboard.

The little boys had moved away, and Mary Adams's legs dropped, suddenly, their tension.

"I'm going to a party to-night," Mary said, with a studied indifference.

Miss Letts knew of Mary's parents, and that, socially, they were "all right"--a little more "all right," were we to be honest, than Mr. and Mrs. Flint. She said, therefore:

"Are you, dear? That will be nice for you."

Instantly Barbara was trembling with excitement. She knew that the remark had been made to her and not at all to Miss Letts. Barbara entered once again, and instantly, upon the field of the pa.s.sions. Here she was fated by her temperament to be in all cases a miserable victim, because panic, whether she were accepted or rejected by the object of her devotion, reduced her to incoherent foolishness; she could only be foolish now, and, although her heart beat like a leaping animal inside her, allowed Miss Letts to carry on the conversation.

But Miss Letts's wandering eye hurt Mary's pride. She was not really interested in her, and once Mary had come to that conclusion about any one, complete, utter oblivion enveloped them. She perceived, however, Barbara's agitation, and at that, flattered and appeased, she was amiable again. There followed between the two a strangled and disconnected conversation.

Mary began:

"I've got four dolls at home."

"Have you?" breathlessly from Barbara. By such slow accuracies as these are we conveyed, all our poor mortal days, from realism to romance, and with a shocking precipitance are we afterwards flung back, out of romance into realism, our natural home, again.

"Yes--four dolls I have. My mother will give me another if I ask her.

Would your mother?"

"Yes," said Barbara, untruthfully.

"That's my governess, Miss Marsh, there, with the green hat, that is.

I've had her two months."