CHAPTER I



PAUL, ARRIVED IN A STRANGE LAND, LEARNS MANY THINGS, AND GOES TO MEET

THE MAN IN GREY.



Fate intended me for a singularly fortunate man. Properly, I ought to

have been born in June, which being, as is well known, the luckiest

month in all the year for such events, should, by thoughtful parents,

be more generally selected. How it was I came to be born in May,

which is, on the other hand, of all the twelve the most unlucky, as I

have proved, I leave to those more conversant with the subject to

explain. An early nurse, the first human being of whom I have any

distinct recollection, unhesitatingly attributed the unfortunate fact

to my natural impatience; which quality she at the same time predicted

would lead me into even greater trouble, a prophecy impressed by

future events with the stamp of prescience. It was from this same

bony lady that I likewise learned the manner of my coming. It seems

that I arrived, quite unexpectedly, two hours after news had reached

the house of the ruin of my father's mines through inundation;

misfortunes, as it was expounded to me, never coming singly in this

world to any one. That all things might be of a piece, my poor

mother, attempting to reach the bell, fell against and broke the

cheval-glass, thus further saddening herself with the conviction--for

no amount of reasoning ever succeeded in purging her Welsh blood of

its natural superstition--that whatever might be the result of future

battles with my evil star, the first seven years of tiny existence had

been, by her act, doomed to disaster.



"And I must confess," added the knobbly Mrs. Fursey, with a sigh, "it

does look as though there must be some truth in the saying, after

all."



"Then ain't I a lucky little boy?" I asked. For hitherto it had been

Mrs. Fursey's method to impress upon me my exceptional good fortune.

That I could and did, involuntarily, retire to bed at six, while less

happily placed children were deprived of their natural rest until

eight or nine o'clock, had always been held up to me as an astounding

piece of luck. Some little boys had not a bed at all; for the which,

in my more riotous moments, I envied them. Again, that at the first

sign of a cold it became my unavoidable privilege to lunch off linseed

gruel and sup off brimstone and treacle--a compound named with

deliberate intent to deceive the innocent, the treacle, so far as

taste is concerned, being wickedly subordinated to the brimstone--was

another example of Fortune's favouritism: other little boys were so

astoundingly unlucky as to be left alone when they felt ill. If

further proof were needed to convince that I had been signalled out by

Providence as its especial protege, there remained always the

circumstance that I possessed Mrs. Fursey for my nurse. The

suggestion that I was not altogether the luckiest of children was a

new departure.



The good dame evidently perceived her error, and made haste to correct

it.



"Oh, you! You are lucky enough," she replied; "I was thinking of your

poor mother."



"Isn't mamma lucky?"



"Well, she hasn't been too lucky since you came."



"Wasn't it lucky, her having me?"



"I can't say it was, at that particular time."



"Didn't she want me?"



Mrs. Fursey was one of those well-meaning persons who are of opinion

that the only reasonable attitude of childhood should be that of

perpetual apology for its existence.



"Well, I daresay she could have done without you," was the answer.



I can see the picture plainly still. I am sitting on a low chair

before the nursery fire, one knee supported in my locked hands,

meanwhile Mrs. Fursey's needle grated with monotonous regularity

against her thimble. At that moment knocked at my small soul for the

first time the problem of life.



Suddenly, without moving, I said:



"Then why did she take me in?"



The rasping click of the needle on the thimble ceased abruptly.



"Took you in! What's the child talking about? Who's took you in?"



"Why, mamma. If she didn't want me, why did she take me in?"



But even while, with heart full of dignified resentment, I propounded

this, as I proudly felt, logically unanswerable question, I was glad

that she had. The vision of my being refused at the bedroom window

presented itself to my imagination. I saw the stork, perplexed and

annoyed, looking as I had sometimes seen Tom Pinfold look when the

fish he had been holding out by the tail had been sniffed at by Anna,

and the kitchen door shut in his face. Would the stork also have gone

away thoughtfully scratching his head with one of those long,

compass-like legs of his, and muttering to himself. And here,

incidentally, I fell a-wondering how the stork had carried me. In the

garden I had often watched a blackbird carrying a worm, and the worm,

though no doubt really safe enough, had always appeared to me nervous

and uncomfortable. Had I wriggled and squirmed in like fashion? And

where would the stork have taken me to then? Possibly to Mrs.

Fursey's: their cottage was the nearest. But I felt sure Mrs. Fursey

would not have taken me in; and next to them, at the first house in

the village, lived Mr. Chumdley, the cobbler, who was lame, and who

sat all day hammering boots with very dirty hands, in a little cave

half under the ground, his whole appearance suggesting a poor-spirited

ogre. I should have hated being his little boy. Possibly nobody

would have taken me in. I grew pensive, thinking of myself as the

rejected of all the village. What would the stork have done with me,

left on his hands, so to speak. The reflection prompted a fresh

question.



"Nurse, where did I come from?"



"Why, I've told you often. The stork brought you."



"Yes, I know. But where did the stork get me from?" Mrs. Fursey

paused for quite a long while before replying. Possibly she was

reflecting whether such answer might not make me unduly conceited.

Eventually she must have decided to run that risk; other opportunities

could be relied upon for neutralising the effect.



"Oh, from Heaven."



"But I thought Heaven was a place where you went to," I answered; "not

where you comed from." I know I said "comed," for I remember that at

this period my irregular verbs were a bewildering anxiety to my poor

mother. "Comed" and "goned," which I had worked out for myself, were

particular favourites of mine.



Mrs. Fursey passed over my grammar in dignified silence. She had been

pointedly requested not to trouble herself with that part of my

education, my mother holding that diverging opinions upon the same

subject only confused a child.



"You came from Heaven," repeated Mrs. Fursey, "and you'll go to

Heaven--if you're good."



"Do all little boys and girls come from Heaven?"



"So they say." Mrs. Fursey's tone implied that she was stating what

might possibly be but a popular fallacy, for which she individually

took no responsibility.



"And did you come from Heaven, Mrs. Fursey?" Mrs. Fursey's reply to

this was decidedly more emphatic.



"Of course I did. Where do you think I came from?"



At once, I am ashamed to say, Heaven lost its exalted position in my

eyes. Even before this, it had puzzled me that everybody I knew

should be going there--for so I was always assured; now, connected as

it appeared to be with the origin of Mrs. Fursey, much of its charm

disappeared.



But this was not all. Mrs. Fursey's information had suggested to me a

fresh grief. I stopped not to console myself with the reflection that

my fate had been but the fate of all little boys and girls. With a

child's egoism I seized only upon my own particular case.



"Didn't they want me in Heaven then, either?" I asked. "Weren't they

fond of me up there?"



The misery in my voice must have penetrated even Mrs. Fursey's bosom,

for she answered more sympathetically than usual.



"Oh, they liked you well enough, I daresay. I like you, but I like to

get rid of you sometimes." There could be no doubt as to this last.

Even at the time, I often doubted whether that six o'clock bedtime was

not occasionally half-past five.



The answer comforted me not. It remained clear that I was not wanted

either in Heaven nor upon the earth. God did not want me. He was

glad to get rid of me. My mother did not want me. She could have

done without me. Nobody wanted me. Why was I here?



And then, as the sudden opening and shutting of the door of a dark

room, came into my childish brain the feeling that Something,

somewhere, must have need of me, or I could not be, Something I felt I

belonged to and that belonged to me, Something that was as much a part

of me as I of It. The feeling came back to me more than once during

my childhood, though I could never put it into words. Years later the

son of the Portuguese Jew explained to me my thought. But all that I

myself could have told was that in that moment I knew for the first

time that I lived, that I was I.



The next instant all was dark again, and I once more a puzzled little

boy, sitting by a nursery fire, asking of a village dame questions

concerning life.



Suddenly a new thought came to me, or rather the recollection of an

old.



"Nurse, why haven't we got a husband?"



Mrs. Fursey left off her sewing, and stared at me.



"What maggot has the child got into its head now?" was her

observation; "who hasn't got a husband?"



"Why, mamma."



"Don't talk nonsense, Master Paul; you know your mamma has got a

husband."



"No, she ain't."



"And don't contradict. Your mamma's husband is your papa, who lives

in London."



"What's the good of _him_!"



Mrs. Fursey's reply appeared to me to be unnecessarily vehement.



"You wicked child, you; where's your commandments? Your father is in

London working hard to earn money to keep you in idleness, and you sit

there and say 'What's the good of him!' I'd be ashamed to be such an

ungrateful little brat."



I had not meant to be ungrateful. My words were but the repetition of

a conversation I had overheard the day before between my mother and my

aunt.



Had said my aunt: "There she goes, moping again. Drat me if ever I

saw such a thing to mope as a woman."



My aunt was entitled to preach on the subject. She herself grumbled

all day about all things, but she did it cheerfully.



My mother was standing with her hands clasped behind her--a favourite

attitude of hers--gazing through the high French window into the

garden beyond. It must have been spring time, for I remember the

white and yellow crocuses decking the grass.



"I want a husband," had answered my mother, in a tone so ludicrously

childish that at sound of it I had looked up from the fairy story I

was reading, half expectant to find her changed into a little girl; "I

hate not having a husband."



"Help us and save us," my aunt had retorted; "how many more does a

girl want? She's got one."



"What's the good of him all that way off," had pouted my mother; "I

want him here where I can get at him."



I had often heard of this father of mine, who lived far away in

London, and to whom we owed all the blessings of life; but my childish

endeavours to square information with reflection had resulted in my

assigning to him an entirely spiritual existence. I agreed with my

mother that such an one, however to be revered, was no substitute for

the flesh and blood father possessed by luckier folk--the big, strong,

masculine thing that would carry a fellow pig-a-back round the garden,

or take a chap to sail in boats.



"You don't understand me, nurse," I explained; "what I mean is a

husband you can get at."



"Well, and you'll 'get at him,' poor gentleman, one of these days,"

answered Mrs. Fursey. "When he's ready for you he'll send for you,

and then you'll go to him in London."



I felt that still Mrs. Fursey didn't understand. But I foresaw that

further explanation would only shock her, so contented myself with a

simple, matter-of-fact question.



"How do you get to London; do you have to die first?"



"I do think," said Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of resigned despair

rather than of surprise, "that, without exception, you are the

silliest little boy I ever came across. I've no patience with you."



"I am very sorry, nurse," I answered; "I thought--"



"Then," interrupted Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of many generations,

"you shouldn't think. London," continued the good dame, her

experience no doubt suggesting that the shortest road to peace would

be through my understanding of this matter, "is a big town, and you go

there in a train. Some time--soon now--your father will write to your

mother that everything is ready. Then you and your mother and your

aunt will leave this place and go to London, and I shall be rid of

you."



"And shan't we come back here ever any more?"



"Never again."



"And I'll never play in the garden again, never go down to the

pebble-ridge to tea, or to Jacob's tower?"



"Never again." I think Mrs. Fursey took a pleasure in the phrase. It

sounded, as she said it, like something out of the prayer-book.



"And I'll never see Anna, or Tom Pinfold, or old Yeo, or Pincher, or

you, ever any more?" In this moment of the crumbling from under me of

all my footholds I would have clung even to that dry tuft, Mrs. Fursey

herself.



"Never any more. You'll go away and begin an entirely new life. And

I do hope, Master Paul," added Mrs. Fursey, piously, "it may be a

better one. That you will make up your mind to--"



But Mrs. Fursey's well-meant exhortations, whatever they may have

been, fell upon deaf ears. Here was I face to face with yet another

problem. This life into which I had fallen: it was understandable!

One went away, leaving the pleasant places that one knew, never to

return to them. One left one's labour and one's play to enter upon a

new existence in a strange land. One parted from the friends one had

always known, one saw them never again. Life was indeed a strange

thing; and, would a body comprehend it, then must a body sit staring

into the fire, thinking very hard, unheedful of all idle chatter.



That night, when my mother came to kiss me good-night, I turned my

face to the wall and pretended to be asleep, for children as well as

grown-ups have their foolish moods; but when I felt the soft curls

brush my cheek, my pride gave way, and clasping my arms about her

neck, and drawing her face still closer down to mine; I voiced the

question that all the evening had been knocking at my heart:



"I suppose you couldn't send me back now, could you? You see, you've

had me so long."



"Send you back?"



"Yes. I'd be too big for the stork to carry now, wouldn't I?"



My mother knelt down beside the bed so that her face and mine were on

a level, and looking into her eyes, the fear that had been haunting me

fell from me.



"Who has been talking foolishly to a foolish little boy?" asked my

mother, keeping my arms still clasped about her neck.



"Oh, nurse and I were discussing things, you know," I answered, "and

she said you could have done without me. Somehow, I did not mind

repeating the words now; clearly it could have been but Mrs. Fursey's

fun.



My mother drew me closer to her.



"And what made her think that?"



"Well, you see," I replied, "I came at a very awkward time, didn't I;

when you had a lot of other troubles."



My mother laughed, but the next moment looked grave again.



"I did not know you thought about such things," she said; "we must be

more together, you and I, Paul, and you shall tell me all you think,

because nurse does not quite understand you. It is true what she said

about the trouble; it came just at that time. But I could not have

done without you. I was very unhappy, and you were sent to comfort me

and help me to bear it." I liked this explanation better.



"Then it was lucky, your having me?" I said. Again my mother laughed,

and again there followed that graver look upon her childish face.



"Will you remember what I am going to say?" She spoke so earnestly

that I, wriggling into a sitting posture, became earnest also.



"I'll try," I answered; "but I ain't got a very good memory, have I?"



"Not very," smiled my mother; "but if you think about it a good deal

it will not leave you. When you are a good boy, and later on, when

you are a good man, then I am the luckiest little mother in all the

world. And every time you fail, that means bad luck for me. You will

remember that after I'm gone, when you are a big man, won't you,

Paul?"



So, both of us quite serious, I promised; and though I smile now when

I remember, seeing before me those two earnest, childish faces, yet I

think, however little success it may be I have to boast of, it would

perhaps have been still less had I entirely forgotten.



From that day my mother waxes in my memory; Mrs. Fursey, of the many

promontories, waning. There were sunny mornings in the neglected

garden, where the leaves played round us while we worked and read;

twilight evenings in the window seat where, half hidden by the dark

red curtains, we would talk in whispers, why I know not, of good men

and noble women, ogres, fairies, saints and demons; they were pleasant

days.



Possibly our curriculum lacked method; maybe it was too varied and

extensive for my age, in consequence of which chronology became

confused within my brain, and fact and fiction more confounded than

has usually been considered permissible, even in history. I saw

Aphrodite, ready armed and risen from the sea, move with stately grace

to meet King Canute, who, throned upon the sand, bade her come no

further lest she should wet his feet. In forest glade I saw King

Rufus fall from a poisoned arrow shot by Robin Hood; but thanks to

sweet Queen Eleanor, who sucked the poison from his wound, I knew he

lived. Oliver Cromwell, having killed King Charles, married his

widow, and was in turn stabbed by Hamlet. Ulysses, in the Argo, it

was fixed upon my mind, had discovered America. Romulus and Remus had

slain the wolf and rescued Little Red Riding Hood. Good King Arthur,

for letting the cakes burn, had been murdered by his uncle in the

Tower of London. Prometheus, bound to the Rock, had been saved by

good St. George. Paris had given the apple to William Tell. What

matter! the information was there. It needed rearranging, that was

all.



Sometimes, of an afternoon, we would climb the steep winding pathway

through the woods, past awful precipices, spirit-haunted, by grassy

swards where fairies danced o' nights, by briar and bracken sheltered

Caves where fearsome creatures lurked, till high above the creeping

sea we would reach the open plateau where rose old Jacob's ruined

tower. "Jacob's Folly" it was more often called about the country

side, and by some "The Devil's Tower;" for legend had it that there

old Jacob and his master, the Devil, had often met in windy weather to

wave false wrecking lights to troubled ships. Who "old Jacob" was, I

never, that I can remember, learned, nor how nor why he built the

Tower. Certain only it is his memory was unpopular, and the fisher

folk would swear that still on stormy nights strange lights would

gleam and flash from the ivy-curtained windows of his Folly.



But in day time no spot was more inviting, the short moss-grass before

its shattered door, the lichen on its crumbling stones. From its

topmost platform one saw the distant mountains, faint like spectres,

and the silent ships that came and vanished; and about one's feet the

pleasant farm lands and the grave, sweet river.



Smaller and poorer the world has grown since then. Now, behind those

hills lie naught but smoky towns and dingy villages; but then they

screened a land of wonder where princesses dwelt in castles, where the

cities were of gold. Now the ocean is but six days' journey wide,

ending at the New York Custom House. Then, had one set one's sail

upon it, one would have travelled far and far, beyond the golden

moonlight, beyond the gate of clouds; to the magic land of the blood

red shore, t'other side o' the sun. I never dreamt in those days a

world could be so small.



Upon the topmost platform a wooden seat ran round within the parapet,

and sitting there hand in hand, sheltered from the wind which ever

blew about the tower, my mother would people for me all the earth and

air with the forms of myth and legend--perhaps unwisely, yet I do not

know. I took no harm from it, good rather, I think. They were

beautiful fancies, most of them; or so my mother turned them, making

for love and pity, as do all the tales that live, whether poems or old

wives fables. But at that time of course they had no meaning for me

other than the literal; so that my mother, looking into my eyes, would

often hasten to add: "But that, you know, is only an old

superstition, and of course there are no such things nowadays." Yet,

forgetful sometimes of the time, and overtaken homeward by the

shadows, we would hasten swiftly through the darkening path, holding

each other tightly by the hand.



Spring had waxed to summer, summer waned to autumn. Then my aunt and

I one morning, waiting at the breakfast table, saw through the open

window my mother skipping, dancing, pirouetting up the garden path.

She held a letter open in her hand, which as she drew near she waved

about her head, singing:



"Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, then comes Wednesday morning."



She caught me to her and began dancing with me round the room.



Observed my aunt, who continued steadily to eat bread and butter:



"Just like 'em all. Goes mad with joy. What for? Because she's

going to leave a decent house, to live in a poky hole in the East End

of London, and keep one servant."



To my aunt the second person ever remained a grammatical superfluity.

Invariably she spoke not to but of a person, throwing out her

conversation in the form of commentary. This had the advantage of

permitting the party intended to ignore it as mere impersonal

philosophy. Seeing it was generally uncomplimentary, most people

preferred so to regard it; but my mother had never succeeded in

schooling herself to indifference.



"It's not a poky hole," she replied; "it's an old-fashioned house,

near the river."



"Plaistow marshes!" ejaculated my aunt, "calls it the river!"



"So it is the river," returned my mother; "the river is the other side

of the marshes."



"Let's hope it will always stop there," said my aunt.



"And it's got a garden," continued my mother, ignoring my aunt's last

remark; "which is quite an unusual feature in a London house. And it

isn't the East End of London; it is a rising suburb. And you won't

make me miserable because I am too happy."



"Drat the woman!" said my aunt, "why can't she sit down and give us

our tea before it's all cold?"



"You are a disagreeable thing!" said my mother.



"Not half milk," said my aunt. My aunt was never in the least

disturbed by other people's opinion of her, which was perhaps well for

her.



For three days my mother packed and sang; and a dozen times a day

unpacked and laughed, looking for things wanted that were always found

at the very bottom of the very last box looked into, so that Anna,

waiting for a certain undergarment of my aunt's which shall be

nameless, suggested a saving of time:



"If I were you, ma'am," said Anna, "I'd look into the last box you're

going to look into first."



But it was found eventually in the first box-the box, that is, my

mother had intended to search first, but which, acting on Anna's

suggestion, she had reserved till the last. This caused my mother to

be quite short with Anna, who she said had wasted her time. But by

Tuesday afternoon all stood ready: we were to start early Wednesday

morning.



That evening, missing my mother in the house, I sought her in the

garden and found her, as I had expected, on her favourite seat under

the great lime tree; but to my surprise there were tears in her eyes.



"But I thought you were glad we were going," I said.



"So I am," answered my mother, drying her eyes only to make room for

fresh tears.



"Then why are you crying?"



"Because I'm sorry to leave here."



Grown-up folks with their contradictory ways were a continual puzzle

to me in those days; I am not sure I quite understand them even now,

myself included.



We were up and off next day before the dawn. The sun rose as the

wagon reached the top of the hill; and there we paused and took our

farewell look at Old Jacob's Tower. My mother cried a little behind

her veil; but my aunt only said, "I never did care for earwigs in my

tea;" and as for myself I was too excited and expectant to feel much

sentiment about anything.



On the journey I sat next to an exceptionally large and heavy man, who

in his sleep--and he slept often--imagined me to be a piece of

stuffing out of place. Then, grunting and wriggling, he would

endeavour to rub me out, until the continued irritation of my head

between the window and his back would cause him to awake, when he

would look down upon me reprovingly but not unkindly, observing to the

carriage generally: "It's a funny thing, ain't it, nobody's ever made

a boy yet that could keep still for ten seconds." After which he

would pat me heartily on the head, to show he was not vexed with me,

and fall to sleep again upon me. He was a good-tempered man.



My mother sat occupied chiefly with her own thoughts, and my aunt had

found a congenial companion in a lady who had had her cap basket sat

upon; so I was left mainly to my own resources. When I could get my

head free of the big man's back, I gazed out of the window, and

watched the flying fragments as we shed the world. Now a village

would fall from us, now the yellow corn-land would cling to us for

awhile, or a wood catch at our rushing feet, and sometimes a strong

town would stop us, and hold us, panting for a space. Or, my eyes

weary, I would sit and listen to the hoarse singing of the wheels

beneath my feet. It was a monotonous chaunt, ever the same two lines:



"Here we suffer grief and pain,

Here we meet to part again,"



followed by a low, rumbling laugh. Sometimes fortissimo, sometimes

pianissimo; now vivace, now largo; but ever those same two lines, and

ever followed by the same low, rumbling laugh; still to this day the

iron wheels sing to me that same song.



Later on I also must have slept, for I dreamt that as the result of my

having engaged in single combat with a dragon, the dragon, ignoring

all the rules of Fairyland, had swallowed me. It was hot and stuffy

in the dragon's stomach. He had, so it appeared to me, disgracefully

overeaten himself; there were hundreds of us there, entirely

undigested, including Mother Hubbard and a gentleman named Johnson,

against whom, at that period, I entertained a strong prejudice by

reason of our divergent views upon the subject of spelling. Even in

this hour of our mutual discomfort Johnson would not leave me alone,

but persisted in asking me how I spelt Jonah. Nobody was looking, so

I kicked him. He sprang up and came after me. I tried to run away,

but became wedged between Hop-o'-my-Thumb and Julius Caesar. I

suppose our tearing about must have hurt the dragon, for at that

moment he gave vent to a most fearful scream, and I awoke to find the

fat man rubbing his left shin, while we struggled slowly, with steps

growing ever feebler, against a sea of brick that every moment closed

in closer round us.



We scrambled out of the carriage into a great echoing cave that might

have been the dragon's home, where, to my alarm, my mother was

immediately swooped down upon by a strange man in grey.



"Why's he do that?" I asked of my aunt.



"Because he's a fool," answered my aunt; "they all are."



He put my mother down and came towards us. He was a tall, thin man,

with eyes one felt one would never be afraid of; and instinctively

even then I associated him in my mind with windmills and a lank white

horse.



"Why, how he's grown," said the grey man, raising me in his arms until

my mother beside me appeared to me in a new light as quite a little

person; "and solid too."



My mother whispered something. I think from her face, for I knew the

signs, it was praise of me.



"And he's going to be our new fortune," she added aloud, as the grey

man lowered me.



"Then," said my aunt, who had this while been sitting rigid upon a

flat black box, "don't drop him down a coal-mine. That's all I say."



I wondered at the time why the grey man's pale face should flush so

crimson, and why my mother should whisper angrily:



"Flow can you be so wicked, Fanny? How dare you say such a thing?"



"I only said 'don't drop him down a coal-mine,'" returned my aunt,

apparently much surprised; "you don't want to drop him down a

coal-mine, do you?"



We passed through glittering, joyous streets, piled high each side

with all the good things of the earth; toys and baubles, jewels and

gold, things good to eat and good to drink, things good to wear and

good to see; through pleasant ways where fountains splashed and

flowers bloomed. The people wore bright clothes, had happy faces.

They rode in beautiful carriages, they strolled about, greeting one

another with smiles. The children ran and laughed. London, thought I

to myself, is the city of the fairies.



It passed, and we sank into a grim city of hoarse, roaring streets,

wherein the endless throngs swirled and surged as I had seen the

yellow waters curve and fret, contending, where the river pauses,

rock-bound. Here were no bright costumes, no bright faces, none

stayed to greet another; all was stern, and swift, and voiceless.

London, then, said I to myself, is the city of the giants. They must

live in these towering castles side by side, and these hurrying

thousands are their driven slaves.



But this passed also, and we sank lower yet until we reached a third

city, where a pale mist filled each sombre street. None of the

beautiful things of the world were to be seen here, but only the

things coarse and ugly. And wearily to and fro its sunless passages

trudged with heavy steps a weary people, coarse-clad, and with dull,

listless faces. And London, I knew, was the city of the gnomes who

labour sadly all their lives, imprisoned underground; and a terror

seized me lest I, too, should remain chained here, deep down below the

fairy city that was already but a dream.



We stopped at last in a long, unfinished street. I remember our

pushing our way through a group of dirty urchins, all of whom, my aunt

remarked in passing, ought to be skinned. It was my aunt's one

prescription for all to whom she took objection; but really in the

present instance I think it would have been of service; nothing else

whatever could have restored them to cleanliness. Then the door

closed behind us with an echoing clang, and the small, cold rooms came

forward stiffly to greet us.



The man in grey went to the one window and drew back the curtain; it

was growing dusk now. My aunt sat on a straight, hard chair and

stared fixedly at the three-armed gaselier. My mother stood in the

centre of the room with one small ungloved hand upon the table, and I

noticed--for I was very near--that the poor little one-legged thing

was trembling.



"Of course it's not what you've been accustomed to, Maggie," said the

man in grey; "but it's only for a little while."



He spoke in a new, angry voice; but I could not see his face, his back

being to the light.



My mother drew his arms around us both.



"It is the best home in all the world," she said; and thus we stayed

for awhile.



"Nonsense," said my aunt, suddenly; and this aroused us; "it's a poky

hole, as I told her it would be. Let her thank the Lord she's got a

man clever enough to get her out of it. I know him; he never could

rest where he was put. Now he's at the bottom; he'll go up."



It sounded to me a very disagreeable speech; but the grey man

laughed--I had not heard him laugh till then--and my mother ran to my

aunt and kissed her; and somehow the room seemed to become lighter.



For some reason I slept downstairs that night, on the floor, behind a

screen improvised out of a clothes horse and a blanket; and later in

the evening the clatter of knives and forks and the sound of subdued

voices awoke me. My aunt had apparently gone to bed; my mother and

the man in grey were talking together over their supper.



"We must buy land," said the voice of the grey man; "London is coming

this way. The Somebodies" (I forget the name my father mentioned)

"made all their money by buying up land round New York for a mere

song. Then, as the city spread, they became worth millions."



"But where will you get the money from, Luke?" asked the voice of my

mother.



The voice of the grey man answered airily:



"Oh, that's merely a matter of business. You grant a mortgage. The

property goes up in value. You borrow more. Then you buy more--and

so on."



"I see," said my mother.



"Being on the spot gives one such an advantage," said the grey man.

"I shall know just when to buy. It's a great thing, being on the

spot."



"Of course, it must be," said my mother.



I suppose I must have dozed, for the next words I heard the grey man

say were:



"Of course you have the park opposite, but then the house is small."



"But shall we need a very large one?" asked my mother.



"One never knows," said the grey man. "If I should go into

Parliament--"



At this point a hissing sound arose from the neighbourhood of the

fire.



"It _looks_," said my mother, "as if it were done."



"If you will hold the dish," said the grey man, "I think I can pour it

in without spilling."



Again I must have dozed.



"It depends," said the grey man, "upon what he is going to be. For

the classics, of course, Oxford."



"He's going to be very clever," said my mother. She spoke as one who

knows.



"We'll hope so," said the grey man.



"I shouldn't be surprised," said my mother, "if he turned out a poet."



The grey man said something in a low tone that I did not hear.



"I'm not so sure," answered my mother, "it's in the blood. I've often

thought that you, Luke, ought to have been a poet."



"I never had the time," said the grey man. "There were one or two

little things--"



"They were very beautiful," interrupted my mother. The clatter of the

knives and forks continued undisturbed for a few moments. Then

continued the grey man:



"There would be no harm, provided I made enough. It's the law of

nature. One generation earns, the next spends. We must see. In any

case, I think I should prefer Oxford for him."



"It will be so hard parting from him," said my mother.



"There will be the vacations," said the grey man, "when we shall

travel."