15. Willy And I
When we were little--Willy and I--oh, such a weary long year ago!--we lived in a big house, in a wide, quiet street in the old town of Norwich. Now, although the house was so big, there was allotted to it only a small square of garden; a garden exquisitely kept and fostered; a garden to smell the roses in, blushing on their neat rows of standards; to walk in, holding father's or mother's hand; even, wondrous treat! to take our tea in, sometimes, sitting demurely, we two, with a couple of dolls and a few lead soldiers from Willy's last new box for company, at the little round table whose root was buried deep in the ground beneath the red may-tree. A garden for such mild pleasures, but not for play. A garden that was the delight of our city-bred father, who protected the sprouting mignonette seeds from depredations of snail and slug, who trained with tenderest care the slenderest shoots of sweet-pea and canariense, who tied and pruned and watered with his own hands when office hours were over. A broken toy would have been as great an offence in that treasured spot as a stray cat; a little footmark on the verbena bed, a kicked-up stone on the gravel walk, were punishable offences. No room for us two children there.
And so, besides the nursery where our toys and books were kept and where our soberer hours were passed, there was given up to our use at the top of the house a large attic, which was called our play-room.
It is quite desirable for children to run wild at times, it is good for them to shout, to scream, to jump, to ramp--good for girls as well as boys. And if you girls who read this have not a big garden where you may do these things unmolested, I counsel you to demand respectfully of your parents a play-room such as was this of ours. I don't for a minute advise you to copy Willy and me in aught--for we were often and often a naughty pair--I only suggest that your parents should copy ours in making over to you an empty room.
We had not many toys there. On looking back I think we spent our time mostly in struggles on the floor, rolling over and over each other with screams and shouts; with roarings as of wild animals emphasising the fact that we were not Willy and his little sister Polly, but a great large lion and a huge black bear in mortal combat. We played at French and English too. It takes a lot of yelling from lusty lungs, a lot of stamping and jumping on hollow boards, for one little girl to represent at all adequately a mighty and victorious army. Of Willy, as not only his countless followers but as Napoleon at their head, a good deal was also required. With all our vigour, we were only ordinary flesh and blood and we always grew tired at last, and then we sat down quietly upon the floor and looked through our closed window at the window opposite.
There was only a narrow passage between our house and the next; walking through it with outstretched arms you could touch the house walls on either side. Unless you leaned quite out of the window, so high up were we, you could not see the little dark-paved court beneath; and a close wire screen covering the window was believed to prevent the possibility of our looking out at all. But Willy, to whose bold, adventurous spirit I felt my own but a feeble companion, had contrived with his pocket-knife to undo the four screws which attached the wooden framework of the screen to the window-frame. So that the obstacle being at will removed, and I holding desperately to his knickerbockered legs, the boy could look out upon the black pavement beneath, or drop a marble from his pocket upon the head of a passer-by.
It was not the dark passage, however, which as a rule claimed our attention, but the window exactly opposite our own. We could see quite plainly into the room, and its occupant could see into ours.
This was a small young man with a pale face. So much I remember of him; and the fact that the sight of prominent dark eyes and a runaway chin always recalls to me this episode in my childhood's career, inclines me to believe that that conformation of features was his.
The room had been empty like our own till one day a bed had been set up in it, and a chair and a washstand; and after that the young man had appeared.
"It isn't his play-room, it's his bedroom; he's another lodger at Miller's," Willy informed me.
When we were not at play we used to sit at the window and watch him. He did not go to an office, like our father. He seemed to have nothing to do. Sometimes he stood before the window and looked across at us, but oftenest he lay on his back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
"I should jolly well like to have my bedroom up here, and never take off my clothes when I go to bed," Willy said, enviously.
It is curious to remember what a new interest that silent watcher of us gave to our gambols. It was with one eye on the pale young man at the window that I marched to the tune of Old Bob Ridley on the field of Waterloo; and Willy became so painfully realistic in giving me my quietus, when I lay dying and at his mercy after the battle, that I had to turn on my face and cry secretly, he hurt me so.
One day--a very sunshiny day, I remember, the sky above our neighbour's roof was a bright blue--we were holding a lively representation of a circus we had visited the day before. Willy, with the carriage whip brought up from the hall, took the place of the gentleman in the ring, while I as the piebald palfrey galloped on all fours spiritedly round the place, or pranced proudly on my hind legs, to command. We were spurred on to more vivacious action by the knowledge that our neighbour had opened his window wide, and was standing before it. When we tired of our equestrian performances, and took up our position opposite him, he, for the first time, nodded and smiled at us, and presently motioned to us to throw up our window likewise.
Proud and pleased at this mark of attention, we speedily tore down the screen, and, both of us going to work together in our eagerness, flung the window wide.
"Nothing like being friendly with your neighbours," the young man said. "You seem pretty lively across there--how do you do?"
We said, both at once, that we were quite well, thank you; that this was our play-room; and we asked him how he liked being a lodger. We asked him many things, besides. Was he ill, or only very tired, that he lay on his bed so much? Did he have his dinner up there, or did he go down to get it as we did? Did he eat what he liked, or what Miss Miller liked to give him? Was he fond of Miss Miller? We hated her because once she had seen Willy leaning out of the window and had told father, who had had the horrid screen put up.
I don't remember what answers he made to all these questions, piped forth in eager little voices, whose words tripped each other up in their hurry, but I know he said he thought the screen a babyish contrivance and advised us, now we had taken it down, not to put it back again. I reminded Willy that father would be very cross if we did not, and Willy reminded me that father being out for two nights,
that didn't matter. We cautioned our neighbour not to let Miss Miller know the window was open or she would be at her tale-telling again, and he, on his part, advised our keeping the fact of his being now such friends with us secret from the servants. He hated servants, he told us, as much as Miss Miller; and Willy admitted that ours were certainly sneaks and not to be trusted. I told him that Willy and I often had secrets, and volunteered the information that I had once kept one from mother for two whole nights!
He should think we were very lonely with father and mother away, and only cats of servants left to us, he said; and asked what we should like best in the world to play with.
We both with one breath cried "a kitten;" because that was the one coveted treasure which had been persistently denied us hitherto.
Then he said that he most fortunately happened to possess the sweetest kitten in all the world, of which he would be happy to make us a present; and Willy said, in deep-toned satisfaction, "would he really, though?" and I got on my feet to jump for joy.
It was just then that nurse's voice came calling us to say good-bye to our father and mother. So we slammed down the window in our new friend's face, and pushed the screen back into position, and, bursting with our secret, Willy and I went galloping down the stairs.
Oh, those uncarpeted, twisting stairs! Now that Willy and I have "grown up and gone away," do they creak gaily beneath the happy feet of children still, I wonder, or only groan with the heavy tread of sober grown-ups? Often and often now, while
"In the elders' seat Resting with quiet feet,"
I fall asleep and dream I come to the foot of those enchanted stairs, where for my little companion and me stupid law and irksome restraint ceased, and the liberty we craved began. Then, once more, Willy and I, whose hands will never meet again on earth, mount hand in hand to the region we loved.
We drove with our father and mother to the station, and, coming back, found we had the tiresome formality of our nursery tea to get through before we were free to make tracks for our happy hunting-ground above.
The young man was waiting there, before his open window, his hands in his trousers-pockets. We tore down the screen, flung up our own window. "Have you got it?" we called to him, breathlessly. "Is it there? The kitten?"
It was in his coat-pocket; a little sandy kitten which trembled exceedingly through all its fluffy fur, and piteously mewed. He held it forth to us, finger and thumb about its tiny neck, across the narrow way; but stretch as far as we could we could not reach it. Willy undertook to catch it if it were thrown, but the young man said that for worlds he would not endanger the life of the kitten, and I implored him to run no risks.
"What is that standing up by the side of your bed?" Willy asked him, pointing. "It was not there before--that long board?"
It was a plank, the young man informed us. He was going to make it into a box. He was a carpenter by trade. Didn't we know it?
We told him no, and artlessly informed him we had thought he was a gentleman, assuring him politely at the same time we were glad he was not.
Then Willy suggested that the plank should bridge the space from his room to ours, and that the kitten should be induced to walk on it.
The young man welcomed the idea as an excellent one, but feared when Kitty saw the great depth below she might turn giddy and fall. Done in the dark, now, she would not see, nor have any fear.
But nurse made us go to bed before dark we told him, and we so longed for the precious kitten.
We should know it would be there, he said. Leave the screen down, and the window open all night, and we should know it would be there, and could bring it its breakfast, the first thing in the morning.
With this prospect we were obliged to be content; but although at present, separated from our new treasure, we stayed in its neighbourhood as long as we could, learning from the obliging young man many wrinkles for the education and upbringing of the kitten, which would have to live in the play-room, its bread and milk obtained by cunning and subterfuge from under nurse's nose.
Inexpressibly I longed to have the little thing in my possession; for with its present owner, despite his love for it, it seemed less happy than I could wish--stowed away, heedless of its feelings, in his coat-pocket, or exposed on the narrow window-ledge, where it shivered, and mewed, and squeezed up to shelter, in an agony of terror lest it might fall.
We stayed with it until we were called to bed, but it was not of the kitten alone we talked. It gave us much pleasure to find what interest our new friend took in us. He even troubled to inquire where, exactly, in our house, which was built like Miss Miller's, did we sleep--how near to mother's room, how far from the servants? As you went up from the back passage to the great square front landing, our mother's door was the one that faced you--he knew that--
We laughed, and told him
no, and cried out in our new delightful friendliness how stupid he was! That was our nursery door, and then came our night nursery, and then mother's, and--so on.
It was with much reluctance we tore ourselves away when nurse called; the wind from the open window blew chill upon us as we nodded good-bye to our friend. He waved the mewing kitten to us in farewell. It protested loudly, its little fluffy hind legs clawing despairingly at the empty air.
In the afternoon of the next day our parents were home again, brought back by a telegram which told them that their house had been robbed, the strong box in our mother's room broken open, and all the easily portable articles of plate taken from the housemaid's pantry.
We had policemen in the house, all the morning, policemen were closeted with our father when he came home. Willy, in a suddenly disorganised household, free from nursery rule, trotted about, proud of his courage in thus daring, at a policeman's heels. Now and again, I would hear him coming at a rush upstairs to report progress to me, who would not leave the play-room.
All the bars of the doors and shutters were untouched. The thief must have been let into the house, the policeman said; and our father, who trusted all his servants, was furious with the policeman.
A policeman wasn't a man to be afraid of when you knew him; why wouldn't I come and see this one? He--Willy, quite a hero that morning--would take care of me.
Then away, with excited face and flying feet, downstairs again. And presently, a quieter step upon the stairs--a step I knew well then, hear often in the lonely silence now, shall surely know amid the sound of all the myriad feet that tread the golden floor when I hear it again--and my mother was in the room.
"Where is my little girl, and what is she hiding away for? And what have you got in your lap, and why are you crying, Polly?" she asked.
Then she turned back my little skirt which hid it, and there was the kitten; sobbing wildly, I flew up and pushed it into her arms.
"The man--the man at the window--promised it," I cried, incoherently. "And I wanted it because it was so unhappy--and we left the window open--and I loved it so. And it had to walk the plank--and Willy and me thought it was asleep, and I picked it up--and it was dead." Soon, lying with the dead kitten in her arms, I had sobbed out something of the story. "It is a secret--a secret," I told her, wildly; "don't let Willy and the man at the window know I told!"
She carried me away, before the policeman and my father had mounted to the attic. It was Willy, shaken and frightened now, who had to tell the story of the unscrewed screen, the open window, the plank laid across.
They said it was the young man at the window who came over on the plank, sitting on it and pulling himself along; they said he brought the kitten, as he had promised, having first choked the life out of it lest it should mew, and wake the house. They said that when they caught the robber, Willy and I would have to go and look at him and say, "That is the man." We used to lie shaking in our beds at night, dreading the hour when we should be called on to do this duty.
But they never got the jewellery back, they never caught the robber.
As time went on, Willy, who was always brave for his age, grew braver, and would often declare he, if policemen were present, and the robber in hand-cuffs, would not be afraid to look upon him; but be sure that I, who thought of the murdered kitten, had never a wish to see the young man with the prominent black eyes and the runaway chin again.
I made a pilgrimage to that wide street the other day, and stopped before that big old house where we two had lived as children, where I had played so contentedly second fiddle to Willy. Willy, who was so eager to act the leading part, so determined to enjoy, to do, to conquer; Willy
"Whose part in all the pomp that fills The circuit of the summer hills Is that his grave is green!"
I stepped into the narrow passage between the two houses, and looking up, saw that the present neighbours, friendlily inclined, had slung a rope across from window to window, upon which towels hung to dry. I could see only the projecting ledge of the window through which our little faces used to peep and the projecting ledge of that upon which the kitten had shivered and mewed. But I looked long at these, and at the tiny slip of blue sky above, and then came home and wrote this story.