A Man in the Open Part 26

Tears drop on the paper, and shame poor fool Jesse. The Book says that He shall wipe away all tears. If my bear had only lived, I should not have been so lonely. I wonder if--G.o.d help me, I can't write more. The book is finished.

PART III

CHAPTER I

SPITE HOUSE

_Kate Reviews the Book_

The book is not finished. This book of Jesse's life and mine is not finished while she who set us asunder is allowed to live. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, "I will repay." We wait.

What impulse moved my man after four years to enter that tragic house?

He read our book, so piteously stained, this heap of paper scrawled with rusty ink. He added parts of a chapter, which I have finished. It is all blotted with tears, this record of his life--childhood, boyhood, youth, manhood, humor, pa.s.sion--veritable growth of an immortal spirit--annals of that love which lifteth us above the earth--and then!

What did the woman gain who stole our happiness? A fairy gold, changing to ashes at the glint of day, for which she lost her soul.

Caught in the leaves there is a long pine needle. So it was among the bull pines of Cathedral Grove that Jesse sought to bury this record.

Then knowing that his life was not all his to bury, he sent me this dear treasure, so breaking the long, long silence.

How precious are even the littlest memories of love! Here is the muddy footprint of our kitten, and Jesse's "witness my hand." Here is a sc.r.a.p of paper, inked and rinsed to reveal some secret writing of those poor outlaws. Pages of wrath from our visitors' book--and the long pine needle.

"Belay thar!" as Jesse said. "We're hunting happiness while sorrow's chasing us. Takes a keen muzzle and runaway legs to catch up happiness, while sorrow's teeth is reachin' for yo' tail."

So I must try to catch up happiness. I have notes here of dear Father Jared, made at the time when he was bringing me with Baby David home. I remember we sat in our deck chairs on the sunny side of the s.h.i.+p, watching a cloud race out in mid-Atlantic. We talked of home.

"You see, my dear"--I copy from my notes--"we have in our blessed isles an atmosphere lending glamour to all things, whether a woman's skin or a slum town. Why, British portraiture and landscape are respected, even by our own art critics, and they are far from lenient." I replied that I wanted air, air for King David.

"Now when we come to air, that's very serious. North of the Tweed the air produces Scotchness, across St. George's Channel it makes Irishness.

Then in the princ.i.p.ality of Wales it makes most people Welsh, to say nothing of the Yarks.h.i.+re vintage, or Zummerzet, or the 'umble 'omes of the East Anglians."

"But that's not what I mean. Some places are so relaxing."

"Or bracing, or just damp, eh? Do you know, my dear, that at Frognall End mushrooms are fourpence a pound."

"That has nothing to do with it."

"Are you sure?" The delicious fairy-look came to his eyes. "Of course they prefer the Russian kind of mushrooms with red tops--warmer to sit on. That's why they love Russia, and Russian hearts stay young. And besides, they like to live where people are really and truly superst.i.tious.

"That's what's so wrong with England. Ah, these board schools! I want to dig up all the board schools and plant red mushrooms. Then, of course, the fairies will each have an endowed mushroom, the children will be properly taught how to stay young, and we shall live happily ever afterward.

"Do you know I called on the prime minister, and, politics apart, he's not at all a bad fellow. We quite agreed, especially about drowning the Board of Education, but then the nonconformist conscience would get shocked, while as to the treasury--bigots, my dear, are getting more bigotty every day."

I was getting mixed.

"So you see, Kate, with mushrooms at fourpence a pound, it stands to reason that they're very plentiful at Frognall End, with fairies in strict proportion: one mushroom--one fairy, that is in English weather.

In a dry season, of course, they _can_ sit on the ground, although it wouldn't be quite the thing; whereas in wet weather they really require their mushrooms--and you know they're much too careless to clear up afterward. Yes, at Frognall End young David would get what modern children need so very badly--some wholesome uneducation."

This the father explained in all its branches.

1. Consider the lilies.

2. Take no thought for the morrow.

3. Blessed are the poor in spirit, the pure, the merciful, the peacemakers.

4. Suffer the little children to come unto me.

"You see," he added wistfully, "the churches have to preach a heap of doctrines piled twenty centuries high--with truth squashed flat beneath.

The poor are very worrisome, too, and there's such a lot of heathen to convert. Why, all of our educated people belong to societies for reforming their neighbors, and yet--and yet--well, fairies have a nicer time than curates."

Frognall End, where my saint is curate-in-charge, is on the river near Windsor, and there I went to live with Baby David. It was there I learned that heartache is a cultivated plant not known along the hedge-rows, that peace may be found as long as the gorse blooms, that love grows l.u.s.tiest where it has least soil. For the rest, please see the Reverend Jared Nisted's _Fairyland_ which is full of most important information for all who are weary and heavy-laden. Its text is from the Logia of Christ: "Raise the stone, and thou shalt find Me; cleave the wood and I am there."

From the first my Heaven-born was interested in milk, later in a growing number of worldly things, but it was not until last winter by the fireside that we really had serious tales all about Wonderland. It's a difficult place to reach, but when you get down the cliff, and feel your neck to make quite sure it's not broken, you come to the witch who has a wooden leg. She lives in the Dust House, where the Dust Fairies want to sleep, only she will worry them with her broom. When they are worried, they dance with the Sunbeam Fairy who comes in through the window, and never breaks the gla.s.s.

There's a fairy mare called Jones, who lost her Christian name in a fit of temper, and always searches for it with her hind legs. There's a fairy bear who is not a truly grizzly, though he does live in a grizzly bear skin even when it's ever-so-hot weather. He's a great hunter, too, and likes sportsmen so much that they keep getting fewer, and _fewer_, and FEWER. The last sportsman was a fairy Doctor called McGee, who perched all day long in a tree, like the fowls-of-the-air, practising bird-calls, while the fairy bear sat underneath taking care of his rifle.

Wonderland is full of stories, especially about Mr. Man. When Mr. Man was stolen away by robbers, and tied up with fiddle-strings in a ferry-house, well--David flatly refused to go to bed until we'd come to the ferry across Dream River.

David's dog came of an alliance between two n.o.ble families, so his name is Whiskers Retriever-Dachshund, Esq., P.T.O. David's cat, who died expensively in a pail of cream, was Mrs. Bull Durham. Ginger was a squirrel in the garden, and the dago was a badger who lived a long way off beyond the grumpy cow. Dog, cat, squirrel and badger were all of them robbers, but David would have been quite wretched if he had caught them doing anything dishonest.

Did I mention Mr. Man? He was a hero who lived in fairyland, and didn't believe in fairies, who spoke with a slow, sweet, Texan drawl, who loved and protected all living creatures except politicians, who believed in G.o.d, in Mother England, and in Uncle Sam, and who always wrote long letters to his mother. David said his funny prayers for mother, and Whiskers, and all kind friends "and make me good like Mr. Man in Wonderland. Amen. Now, tell me some wobbers, mummie."

Although David has decided to be a tram conductor, he still takes some little interest in other walks of life. Once on the tow-path he asked an old gentleman who was fis.h.i.+ng, what he was fis.h.i.+ng for, and got the nice reply: "I often wonder." And it was on this path beside the Thames, that one day last November he made a big friends.h.i.+p. His nurse was pa.s.sing a few remarks with a young man who asked the way to my house, and baby went ahead pursuing his lawful occasions. Curious to know what it felt like to be a real fish, he was stepping into the river to see about it, when the young man interfered.

"Leggo my tail," said David wrathfully, then with sudden defiance, "I got my feet wet anyway, so there!"

"That's so," the young man agreed.

"I say," David grew confident. "Mummie says it's in the paper, so it's all right."

"What's that, sonny?"

"A little boy what went in to see about some fishes, and that man what swum and swum, and I saw'd his picture in the paper. So now 'tend you look de udder way."

"Why, I can't see nothen."

"You _can_ see. The game is for me to jump in, and you swim."

"But I can't swim. I'm a sailor."

"Oh, weally? Then what's your name?"