The Cruise of the Make-Believes

"May have something to say regarding romance on her own account. I state facts." Thus Mr. Jordan Tant, very virtuously, and with his head nodding in a sideways fashion at his friend.

"You pervert them, you mean," exclaimed Gilbert. "Besides, if you're so deeply interested in Miss Enid Ewart-Crane, this will be a splendid opportunity for you to set yourself right with her, to my everlasting damage."

"You know perfectly well that she'd never look at me," said Mr. Tant. "She's a glorious creature – a wonderful woman, and in your own sphere of life; I can't see why you neglect her as you do."

"I have been told ever since I was a mere boy that at some future date I should marry Enid – if I were good. It's just like a small boy being offered anything – if he is good; he begins to loathe the idea of it at once. Enid is all that you say – and I like her very much; but if I've got to marry her I'll choose my own time for it. At present I'm in Fairyland – and I mean to stop there."

"What do you mean by Fairyland?" asked Mr. Tant testily.

"You wouldn't understand if I told you," replied Gilbert. Then he added quickly, and with contrition – "There – there – my dear fellow, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings; you're not really a bad sort, if you'd come out of your shell sometimes, and let the real wind of the real earth ruffle your hair a bit. I must talk to someone – and I'm not sorry to find you here to-day; only you mustn't tell anyone outside."

"Of course not," almost snapped Mr. Tant.

"I came here in the first place, Tant," began Gilbert, seating himself again on the table, "with the expectation of finding that I had got among commonplace people – and not nice commonplace people at that. Then I saw this girl – this mere child, that even a hard world and a hard and sordid life had not changed, struggling on day by day to make a living – not for herself, or for any selfish reason – but to keep those who should by rights have kept her. And I saw her, above all things, doing something else, and doing it rather splendidly."

"I don't understand you. What else was she doing?" asked Jordan Tant.

It was growing dark in Arcadia Street, and the lamps were being lighted. With the dying of the day a sort of hush had fallen upon the place; the sounds outside were subdued, as though even Arcadia Street might be inclined for rest. Gilbert had walked across to the window, and stood there, looking out; his face was turned from his friend.

"This child to whom life was a mean and sordid struggle had taught herself a lesson – had shown herself how best to live another life. You'll think it mean and commonplace, perhaps; but this little drudge – child alike in years and in thoughts – had learnt how to make-believe to perfection; knew how to gild the commonplace bricks and mortar of Arcadia Street so that the mean houses became palaces – the mean back gardens places of beauty, wherein one might stroll beneath the light of the moon, and listen even unto nightingales. Think of it, Tant; this child who had never known anything but the mean streets of a great city had yet learnt how to dream, and almost how to make her dreams come true. I tell you, man, you've only got to look into her eyes to understand that there is in her that brave spirit that defies poverty and disaster – that brave spirit that aims straight for the skies."

Mr. Jordan Tant sat still for a moment or two without speaking. He was used by this time to this impulsive friend, who was for ever doing unconventional things; and now, with this new unconventional thing to face, he had no words either of reproof or admonition. Very slowly he lifted first one foot and then the other from the wooden rail of the chair, and stood up; picked up his hat, and brushed it carefully on his sleeve.

"I've nothing to say to you," he said at last. "I expect, if the truth were known, you'd find that the lady who dwells in Fairyland in her spare moments has a scheming mind, and a money-grubbing soul; you'd find she thought more of the price of chops than she does of all the romances that ever were invented for fools to read. What am I to tell Miss Enid?"

Gilbert Byfield laughed good-humouredly. "Tell her," he said, "that I shall come and see her very soon. But you need not, of course, say anything about – "

"About the Princess next door? I suppose not." Mr. Jordan Tant walked to the door of the room, and laid his hand upon the handle. "It'll be all right for you – and you'll give up this madness, just as you have given up many, many others. But what about the – the Princess?"

"You don't understand in the least," said Gilbert, a little hastily. "She thinks no more of me than she might think of anybody who was good to her – kind to her."

"But so very few people have been good or kind to her, you see," Mr. Tant reminded him, as he opened the door.

"I'll come with you, and find a cab for you; you might get lost," said Gilbert. "And pray get all those silly notions out of your head; if you knew this child as well as I do, you'd look at the matter in a different light. At the same time, as people are so apt to misunderstand even our best motives, perhaps you'd better not say anything to Enid – or to her mother. If there's any explaining to be done, I can do it when I come to see them."

He found the cab for his friend, and saw him drive away. Walking back slowly into Arcadia Street, he determined that he would if possible see that little Princess next door that very evening – if only to assure himself that she was the child he knew her to be, and he her big friend – years and years older and wiser.

CHAPTER II

THE KING OF A LEAN KINGDOM

ARCADIA STREET is noted – locally, at least – for its "gardens." By this term I would not have you understand that hidden away in that corner of Islington are bowers of beauty, or that you may stroll at eventide under the drooping branches of trees, what time the soft scents of flowers are wafted to your nostrils. Rather let it be said that attached to each dingy house is a dingy plot of ground that is only a "garden" by courtesy – a place where the primeval instincts of man have from time to time urged him to dig in the earth, for the sole reason that it is earth, and in the mad hope to raise from it something that no other London garden has yet accomplished. The moon that looks down on each slip of ground at night knows differently; she has seen the thing being done for generation after generation, and finally given up in despair. Also the cats look on tolerantly, because they too know how it will end, and that the victory will be with them easily in the long run.

You may look into many such gardens, and may see for yourselves how bravely they began – with what high hopes. Here, for example, is what was once intended to be a summer-house; and it has long since fallen into decay, and become a place where the shabby things that are not wanted even in a shabby house have been tossed from time to time, and left to ruin. You will see creepers that started well, and intended great things, and clung quite bravely to walls; until the London atmosphere and neglect and one thing and another put an end to them. And you may see rows and rows of pots, wherein nothing grows nor ever will grow, and wherein the very earth that fills them is of a consistency known nowhere else. Here and there, too, a bit of trellis-work had been put up and painted; in Arcadia gardens it is generally found to be an easy hanging place for cloths and doubtful-looking garments.

In the gardens of Arcadia Street was one exception. That exception was the house, behind the front window of which, the wistful face of a girl had looked out at Mr. Jordan Tant – that girl about whom he had heard so much from his friend Gilbert Byfield. The house itself, poor and shabby though it was, was neat and scrupulously clean; but the real triumph of it lay in the garden. Not, perhaps, in the artistic sense, but rather that it was a garden of surprises – a place where it was impossible to say what you might meet next, if you wandered carefully through its circumscribed length, and took it seriously.

Yet to anyone to whom the mere name of garden means so much, what a pitiful place! For there was nothing really garden-like about it; it was a place of rags and patches and pretences. The few pitiful plants that struggled out of the black-looking earth here and there seemed to do so not because they liked it, but because they had a desperate desire to show what they could do, even against adverse fate, when they were put to it. Half a dozen things that could not have been named even by the most careful student in botany stood in pots under the kitchen window; and in front of these, spread out on the earth itself, was an old and very ragged carpet – a trap to the unwary, because of the many holes it contained and the uneven surface it presented on the uneven ground.

With the idea of hiding the carpet as much as possible, and at the same time of giving an air of luxury to the place, an ancient staggering table on three legs had been placed in the centre of it; and on either side of this table a chair, long since set aside as being too deplorable even for use in that house. It was a very mockery of a table, and the chairs were in a dreadful conspiracy with it to let down any unwary mortal who should attempt to sit upon them in their old age, unless he treated them with due caution and respect.

Nor was this all; the garden held other treasures. Another ancient strip of carpet, as ragged as its fellow, had been hung against a wall to form a species of background to a crazy box that stood against that wall. Not that you would ever have called it a box; it had a dingy rug upon it, and that dingy rug made it, of course, a species of settle or ottoman – an easy lounging place on summer nights. You had to sit down carefully upon it, because it had a defective board, which gave way unexpectedly and might let you through; but with care that was a fault that might not be noticed. For the rest, the place contained a bulky old plaster flower-pot, with some seedy-looking moss growing in it, and with great cracks at the further side from the house.

The kindly darkness was hiding the tawdriness of the place when a little door at the end of the garden opened, and a little man came in. A man shabby like all the place; with an old frock-coat much too large for him hanging in scarecrow fashion from his thin shoulders, with trousers much too long for him lapping over carpet slippers frayed and worn, and with an old velvet smoking-cap, with three strands of frayed silk to represent a tassel, stuck on one side of his head. A melancholy-looking little man, with a certain fierce sullenness upon him, as though he quarrelled perpetually with the world at large. He slammed the gate, and advanced into that sorry garden; made as if to kick the unwieldy cracked flower-pot, but thought better of it; and went shambling towards the table set upon the ragged carpet.

The fact that he caught his foot in a hole in the carpet, and almost precipitated himself over the table, did not improve his temper. He glared savagely about him, and gave his head a fierce rub with his cap before seating himself gingerly on one of the chairs. Having done so, he pulled his frock-coat closer about him, and shivered in the warm and stifling air.

"It's a conspiracy – that's what it is!" exclaimed the little man. "It's an infernal conspiracy against me from first to last!"

The shadows were lengthening in the garden, and the little man was rather a pathetic figure as he sat there, solemnly shaking his head and muttering to himself. Someone who had come to the back door of the house, and looked out upon him, hesitated for a moment, and then stepped quickly out towards him. A young girl with a bright, eager, thin face; the girl who had looked through the window at Mr. Jordan Tant. She came quickly towards the man, and dropped her arm round his shoulders, and whispered to him.

"Father – you're home quite early," she said. "Will you have your coffee out here?"

He shook himself peevishly away from her embrace. "Coffee?" he exclaimed. "Who the devil wants coffee, Bessie? A man wants something stronger than coffee. Besides – what's the good of making a fuss about my being home as early as this? You don't suppose I should have come home but for a very good reason – do you?"

The girl winced a little, and drew away from him. "I thought perhaps for once you were glad to come home, father," she said timidly. "And you know I always like to think of us sitting out in the garden – under the stars – and drinking our coffee. The best people do that every night of their lives – after dinner."

"After dinner!" he reminded her, raising a finger, and shaking it at her. "That makes all the difference in the world; I dare say anyone might drink the stuff after a good dinner – just to oblige a friend. But what is anyone to do – in what condition of mind do you imagine a man to be – when his dinner has been a thing not of the stalled ox order – but of herbs? Besides – I'm upset – annoyed."

"I'm sorry, father," said the girl softly. She tiptoed into the house, and softly called to someone within; came out again, and sat down at the further side of the table, folding her hands upon it, and looking at the shabby figure of the man on the other side of it.

"What has gone wrong, dear?" she whispered; and at the question he suddenly turned upon her, and opened the very floodgates of his wrath and misery.

"Turned out – ejected – thrust to the door with gibes and laughter!" he exclaimed. "For how many years have I not, in a sense, been the very prop and stay of that place – its chief ornament – the one being who in an impoverished and sordid neighbourhood has shed upon it the light of what I may term real intellect. I ask you, Bessie – for how many years?"

"For more years than I can remember, father," whispered the girl, turning away her head.

"Exactly," he responded triumphantly. "It has been to me not a mere house of refreshment – but a club – a place in which, by virtue of long usage, I had a species of proprietary right. They'll find their mistake out, of course; they're bound to do that in time. The Arcadia Arms without me degenerates into a mere low public-house – a pot-house; I had succeeded in raising the place. I was a feature – almost an institution. And now a vulgar creature – without a coat, mark you, Bessie! – points to the door, and says that I'm not to be served again. Some talk of a score – of a paltry sum that should have been paid long since."

There was silence between them for a minute; it seemed as if, in the gathering darkness, the petty record of the years was being told over between them – so much to this account, and so much to that. The man in the shabby frock-coat seemed to shrink and dwindle – to fall away from what he would have appeared in her eyes, and to be the mean thing he really was. When presently he went on with his tale, it was as though he sought for excuses for himself, and blamed her in so doing.

"That place was in a sense my last refuge; I held a position there I hold nowhere else now. When the cares of the world pressed upon me more than usual, I was able to turn there; I had my seat in a special corner – and I was respected. It was known always and everywhere as 'Mr. Meggison's place'; and only once in all the years has it been usurped – and then the man was drunk. He was very properly turned out at once, of course, and made to understand the enormity of his offence. And now – now, Bessie" – he turned to the girl, and feebly smote the crazy table with his fist – "now they tell me I am not to go there again – they turn me out; I heard them laugh when the door banged behind me. Oh – a bitter world – a very bitter world, Bessie!"

In all that he said she knew that there was an implied reproach for herself. For if Bessie Meggison had but passed into his hands certain shillings, this might never have happened; he might still have held up his head at the Arcadia Arms – still have filled his old seat in a corner – still have called like a man for his glass to be filled. In that Bessie had failed; and she knew it now.

"We have had a hard time, father," she said, dropping a light hand on the fist with which he was beating the table. "People don't come and take the lodgings as they used to do; the things are getting so poor and shabby that perhaps the more fashionable young men don't like it. I try hard, father – but every shilling seems to be so important."

"My dear Bessie, I am not aware that I have blamed you," he said a little coldly, as he withdrew his hand and turned away his head. "Time was when Fortune smiled upon me, and I was able to do work that brought in money; that time is long since past. In a fashion, I may be said to have retired; I am no longer actively engaged in commercial pursuits."

"No, father – of course not," responded the girl cheerfully.

"And you have often assured me that you are glad – and proud – glad and proud to be able to assist my declining years. It is not much that I want: I saunter out in the sun in the morning, and go down to my – my club – "

"The Arcadia Arms, father," she said gently.

"I prefer to call it my club," he said, a little testily. "There I nod to an acquaintance or two – and I have my modest glass, and perhaps smoke a pipe, or even a mild cigar. In the afternoon, a stroll and perhaps another modest glass; in the evening a few more people gather there, and we are almost convivial. That's my programme; that's my day. For the rest, as you're aware, I occupy the cheapest bed in the house – and I don't eat much. Therefore I do urge," he concluded fretfully, "that it is a shame that a man should be deprived of the little thing that gives him so much pleasure. I have been wounded to-night – sorely hurt and wounded, Bessie."

"The coffee will be here directly, father," said the girl.