And weeks went by, and still his father and mother had not come, and he had learned a little Greek and more Latin, could carve a box with the arms of his house on the lid, and make that lid fit; could bow like a courtier and speak like a gentleman, and play a simple air on the viol that hung in the parlor for guests to amuse themselves with while they waited to see the master or mistress.
And then came the day when old nurse dressed him in his best--a suit of cut velvet, purple slashed with gold-color, and a belt with a little sword to it, and a flat cap--and Master Henry, the games-master, took him in a little boat to a gilded galley full of gentlemen and ladies all finely dressed, who kissed him and made much of him and said how he was grown since the fever. And one gentleman, very fine indeed, appeared to be his uncle, and a most charming lady in blue and silver seemed to be his aunt, and a very jolly little boy and girl who sat by him and talked merrily all the while were his little cousins. Cups of wine and silver dishes of fruit and cakes were handed round: the galley was decked with fresh flowers, and from another boat quite near came the sound of music.
The sun shone overhead and the clear river sparkled and more and more boats, all gilded and flower-wreathed, appeared on the water. Then there was a sound of shouting, the river suddenly grew alive with the glitter of drawn swords, the b.u.t.terfly glitter of ladies waved scarves and handkerchiefs, and a great gilded barge came slowly down-stream, followed by a procession of smaller craft. Every one in the galley stood up: the gentlemen saluted with their drawn swords, the ladies fluttered their scarves.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE GALLEY WAS DECKED WITH FRESH FLOWERS"
[_Page 102_]
"His Majesty and the Queen," the little cousins whispered as the State Barge went by.
Then all the galleys fell into place behind the King"s barge, and the long, beautiful procession went slowly on down the river.
d.i.c.kie was very happy. The little cousins were so friendly and jolly, the grown-up people so kind--everything so beautiful and so clean. It was a perfect day.
The river was very beautiful; it ran between banks of willows and alders where loosestrife and meadowsweet and willow-herb and yarrow grew tall and thick. There were water-lilies in shady back-waters, and beautiful gardens sloping down to the water.
At last the boats came to a pretty little town among trees.
"This is where we disembark," said the little girl cousin. "The King lies here to-night at Sir Thomas Bradbury"s. And we lie at our grandfather"s house. And to-morrow it is the Masque in Sir Thomas"s Park. And we are to see it. I am glad thou"st well of thy fever, Richard. I shouldn"t have liked it half so well if thou hadn"t been here," she said, smiling. And of course that was a very nice thing to have said to one.
"And then we go home to Deptford with thee," said the boy cousin. "We are to stay a month. And we"ll see thy galleon, and get old Sebastian to make me one too...."
"Yes," said d.i.c.kie, as the boat came against the quay. "What _is_ this place?"
"Gravesend, thou knowest that," said the little cousins, "or hadst thou forgotten that, too, in thy fever?"
"Gravesend?" d.i.c.kie repeated, in quite a changed voice.
"Come, children," said the aunt--oh, what a different aunt to the one who had slapped d.i.c.kie in Deptford, sold the rabbit-hutch, and shot the moon!--"you boys remember how I showed you to carry my train. And my girl will not forget how to fling the flowers from the gilt basket as the King and Queen come down the steps."
The grandfather"s house and garden--the stately, white-haired grandfather, whom they called My Lord, and who was, it seemed, the aunt"s father--the banquet, the picture-gallery, the gardens lit up by little colored oil lamps hung in festoons from tree to tree, the blazing torches, the music, the Masque--a sort of play without words in which every one wore the most wonderful and beautiful dresses, and the Queen herself took a part dressed all in gauze and jewels and white swan"s feathers--all these things were like a dream to d.i.c.kie, and through it all the words kept on saying themselves to him very gently, very quietly, and quite without stopping--
"Gravesend. That"s where the lodging-house is where Beale is waiting for you--the man you called father. You promised to go there as soon as you could. Why haven"t you gone? Gravesend. That"s where the lodging-house is where Beale----" And so on, over and over again.
And how can any one enjoy anything when this sort of thing keeps on saying itself under and over and through and between everything he sees and hears and feels and thinks? And the worst of it was that now, for the first time since he had found that he was not lame, he felt--more than felt, he knew--that the old New Cross life had not been a fever dream, and that Beale, who had been kind to him and taken him through the pleasant country and slept with him in the bed with the green curtains, was really waiting for him at Gravesend.
"And this is all a dream," said d.i.c.kie, "and I _must_ wake up."
But he couldn"t wake up.
And the trees and gra.s.s and lights and beautiful things, the kindly great people with their splendid dresses, the King and Queen, the aunts and uncles and the little cousins--all these things refused to fade away and jumble themselves up as things do in dreams. They remained solid and real. He knew that this must be a dream, and that Beale and Gravesend and New Cross and the old lame life were the real thing, and yet he could not wake up. All the same the light had gone out of everything, and it is small wonder that when he got home at last, very tired indeed, to his father"s house at Deptford he burst into tears as nurse was undressing him.
"What ails my lamb?" she asked.
"I can"t explain; you wouldn"t understand," said d.i.c.kie.
"Try," said she, very earnestly.
He looked round the room at the tapestries and the heavy furniture.
"I can"t," he said.
"Try," she said again.
"It"s ... don"t laugh, Nurse. There"s a dream that feels real--about a dreadful place--oh, so different from this. But there"s a man waiting there for me that was good to me when I was--when I wasn"t ... that was good to me; he"s waiting in the dream and I want to get back to him. And I can"t."
"Thou"rt better here than in that dreadful place," said the nurse, stroking his hair.
"Yes--but Beale. I know he"s waiting there. I wish I could bring him here."
"Not yet," said the nurse surprisingly; ""tis not easy to bring those we love from one dream to another."
"One dream to another?"
"Didst never hear that all life is a dream?" she asked him. "But thou shalt go. Heaven forbid that one of thy race should fail a friend. Look!
there are fresh sheets on thy bed. Lie still and think of him that was good to thee."
He lay there, very still. He had decided to wake up--to wake up to the old, hard, cruel life--to poverty, dulness, lameness. There was no other thing to be done. He _must_ wake up and keep his promise to Beale. But it was hard--hard--hard. The beautiful house, the beautiful garden, the games, the boat-building, the soft clothes, the kind people, the uplifting sense that he was Somebody ... yet he must go. Yes, if he could he would.
The nurse had taken burning wood from the hearth and set it on a silver plate. Now she strewed something on the glowing embers.
"Lie straight and still," she said, "and wish thyself where thou wast when thou leftest that dream."
He did so. A thick, sweet smoke rose from the little fire in the silver plate, and the nurse was chanting something in a very low voice.
"Men die, Man dies not.
Times fly, Time flies not."
That was all he heard, though he heard confusedly that there was more.
He seemed to sink deep into a soft sea of sleep, to be rocked on its tide, and then to be flung by its waves, roughly, suddenly, on some hard sh.o.r.e of awakening. He opened his eyes. He was in the little bare front room in New Cross. Tinkler and the white seal lay on the floor among white moonflower seeds confusedly scattered, and the gas lamp from the street shone through the dirty panes on the newspapers and sacking.
"What a dream!" said d.i.c.kie, shivering, and very sleepy. "Oh, what a dream!" He put Tinkler and the seal in one pocket, gathered up the moon-seeds and put them in the other, drew the old newspapers over him and went to sleep.
The morning sun woke him.
"How odd," said he, "to dream all that--weeks and weeks, in just a little bit of one little night! If it had only been true!"
He jumped up, eager to start for Gravesend. Since he had wakened out of that wonderful dream on purpose to go to Gravesend, he might as well start at once. But his jump ended in a sickening sideways fall, and his head knocked against the wainscot.
"I had forgotten," he said slowly. "I shouldn"t have thought any dream could have made me forget about my foot."
For he had indeed forgotten it, had leaped up, eagerly, confidently, as a sound child leaps, and the lame foot had betrayed him, thrown him down.
He crawled across to where the crutch lay--the old broom, cut down, that Lady Talbot had covered with black velvet for him.
"And now," he said, "I must get to Gravesend." He looked out of the window at the dismal, sordid street. "I wonder," he said, "if Deptford was ever really like it was in my dream--the gardens and the clean river and the fields?"