Outside the world was beginning to shine and glitter, inside it was all horrid and noisy. He sighed a little, he wanted to express in some way his feelings. He looked at Lucy and drew closer to her. She had beside her a painted china mug which one of her uncles had brought her from Russia; she had stolen some daffodils from her mother"s room downstairs and now was arranging them. This painted mug was one of her most valued possessions, and Bim himself thought it, with its strange red and brown figures running round it, the finest thing in all the world.
"Lucy," he said. "Do you s"pose if you was going to jump all the way down to the street and wasn"t afraid that p"r"aps your legs wouldn"t get broken?"
He was not, in reality, greatly interested in the answer to his question, but the important thing always with Lucy was first to enchain her attention. He had learnt, long ago, that to tell her that he loved her, to invite tenderness from her in return, was to ask for certain rebuff--he always began his advances then in this roundabout manner.
"_What do_ you think, Lucy?"
"Oh, I don"t know. How can I tell? Don"t bother."
It was then that Bim felt what was, for him, a very rare sensation. He was irritated.
"I don"t bovver," he said, with a cross look in the direction of his brother and sister Rochesters. "No, but, Lucy, s"pose some one--nurse, s"pose--_did_ fall down into the street and broke all her legs and arms, she wouldn"t be dead, would she?"
"You silly little boy, of course not."
He looked at Lucy, saw the frown upon her forehead, and felt suddenly that all his devotion to her was wasted, that she didn"t want him, that n.o.body wanted him--now when the sun was making the garden glitter like a jewel and the fountain to shine like a sword.
He felt in his throat a hard, choking lump. He came closer to his sister.
"You might pay "tention, Lucy," he said plaintively.
Lucy broke a daffodil stalk viciously. "Go and talk to the others," she said. "I haven"t time for you."
The tears were hot in his eyes and anger was in his heart--anger bred of the rain, of the noise, of the confusion.
"You _are_ howwid," he said slowly.
"Well, go away, then, if I"m horrid," she pushed with her hand at his knee. "I didn"t ask you to come here."
Her touch infuriated him; he kicked and caught a very tender part of her calf.
"Oh! You little beast!" She came to him, leant for a moment across him, then slapped his cheek.
The pain, the indignity, and, above all, a strange confused love for his sister that was near to pa.s.sionate rage, let loose all the devils that owned Bim for their habitation.
He did three things: He screamed aloud, he bent forward and bit Lucy"s hand hard, he seized Lucy"s wonderful Russian mug and dashed it to the ground. He then stood staring at the shattered fragments.
III
There followed, of course, confusion. Nurse started up. "The Shadow of Ashlydyat" descended into the ashes, the children rushed eagerly from beneath the table to the centre of hostilities.
But there were no hostilities. Lucy and Bim were, both of them, utterly astonished, Lucy, as she looked at the scattered mug, was, indeed, sobbing, but absent-mindedly--her thoughts were elsewhere. Her thoughts, in fact, were with Bim. She realised suddenly that never before had he lost his temper with her; she was aware that his affection had been all this time of value to her, of much more value, indeed, than the stupid old mug. She bent down--still absent-mindedly sobbing--and began to pick up the pieces. She was really astonished--being a dry and rather hard little girl--at her affection for Bim.
The nurse seized on the unresisting villain of the piece and shook him.
"You _naughty_ little boy! To go and break your sister"s beautiful mug.
It"s your horrid temper that"ll be the ruin of you, mark my words, as I"m always telling you." (Bim had never been known to lose his temper before.) "Yes, it will. You see, you naughty boy. And all the other children as good as gold and quiet as lambs, and you"ve got to go and do this. You shall stand in the corner all tea-time, and not a bite shall you have." Here Bim began, in a breathless, frightened way, to sob.
"Yes, well you may. Never mind, Miss Lucy, I dare say your uncle will bring you another." Here she became conscious of an attentive and deeply interested audience. "Now, children, time to get ready for tea. Run along, Miss Dorothy, now. What a nuisance you all are, to be sure."
They were removed from the scene. Bim was placed in the corner with his face to the wall. He was aghast; no words can give, at all, any idea of how dumbly aghast he was. What possessed him? What, in an instant of time, had leapt down from the clouds, had sprung up from the Square and seized him? Between his amazed thoughts came little surprised sobs. But he had not abandoned himself to grief--he was too sternly set upon the problem of reparation. Something must be done, and that quickly.
The great thought in his mind was that he must replace the mug. He had not been very often in the streets beyond the Square, but upon certain occasions he had seen their glories, and he knew that there had been shops and shops and shops. Quite close to him, upon a shelf, was his money-box, a squat, ugly affair of red tin, into whose large mouth he had been compelled to force those gifts that kind relations had bestowed. There must be now quite a fortune there--enough to buy many mugs. He could not himself open it, but he did not doubt that the man in the shop would do that for him.
Not for many more moments would he be left alone. His hat was lying on the table; he seized that and his money-box, and was out on the landing.
The rest is _his_ story. I cannot, as I have already said, vouch for the truth of it. At first, fortune was on his side. There seemed to be no one about the house. He went down the wide staircase without making any sound; in the hall he stopped for a moment because he heard voices, but no one came. Then with both hands, and standing on tiptoe, he turned the lock of the door, and was outside.
The Square was bathed in golden sun, a sun, the stronger for his concealment, but tempered, too, with the fine gleam that the rain had left. Never before had Bim been outside that door alone; he was aware that this was a very tremendous adventure. The sky was a washed and delicate purple, and behold! on the high railings, a row of sparrows were chattering. Voices were cold and clear, echoing, as it seemed, against the straight, grey walls of the houses, and all the trees in the garden glistened with their wet leaves shining with gold; there seemed to be, too, a dim veil of smoke that was homely and comfortable.
It is not usual to see a small boy of four alone in a London square, but Bim met, at first, no one except a messenger boy, who stopped and looked after him. At the corner of the Square--just out of the Square so that it might not shame its grandeur--was a fruit and flower shop, and this shop was the entrance to a street that had much life and bustle about it. Here Bim paused with his money-box clasped very tightly to him. Then he made a step or two and was instantly engulfed, it seemed, in a perfect whirl of men and women, of carts and bicycles, of voices and cries and screams; there were lights of every colour, and especially one far above his head that came and disappeared and came again with terrifying wizardry.
He was, quite suddenly, and as it were, by the agency of some outside person, desperately frightened. It was a new terror, different from anything that he had known before. It was as though a huge giant had suddenly lifted him up by the seat of his breeches, or a witch had transplanted him on to her broomstick and carried him off. It was as unusual as that.
His under lip began to quiver, and he knew that presently he would be crying. Then, as he always did, when something unusual occurred to him, he thought of "Mr. Jack." At this point, when you ask him what happened, he always says: "Oh! He came, you know--came walking along--like he always did."
"Was he just like other people, Bim?"
"Yes, just. With a beard, you know--just like he always was."
"Yes, but what sort of things did he wear?" "Oh, just ord"nary things, like you." There was no sense of excitement or wonder to be got out of him. It was true that Mr. Jack hadn"t shown himself for quite a long time, but that, Bim felt, was natural enough. "He"ll come less and seldomer and seldomer as you get big, you know. It was just at first, when one was very little and didn"t know one"s way about--just to help babies not to be frightened. Timothy would tell you only he won"t. Then he comes only a little--just at special times like this was."
Bim told you this with a slightly bored air, as though it were silly of you not to know, and really his air of certainty made an incredulous challenge a difficult thing. On the present occasion Mr. Jack was just there, in the middle of the crowd, smiling and friendly. He took Bim"s hand, and, "Of course," Bim said, "there didn"t have to be any "splaining. _He_ knew what I wanted." True or not, I like to think of them, in the evening air, serenely safe and comfortable, and in any case, it was surely strange that if, as one"s common sense compels one to suppose, Bim were all alone in that crowd, no one wondered or stopped him nor asked him where his home was. At any rate, I have no opinions on the subject. Bim says that, at once, they found themselves out of the crowd in a quiet, little "d.i.n.ky" street, as he called it, a street that, in his description of it, answered to nothing that I can remember in this part of the world. His account of it seems to present a dark, rather narrow place, with overhanging roofs and swinging signs, and n.o.body, he says, at all about, but a church with a bell, and outside one shop a row of bright-coloured clothes hanging. At any rate, here Bim found the place that he wanted. There was a little shop with steps down into it and a tinkling bell which made a tremendous noise when you pushed the old oak door. Inside there was every sort of thing. Bim lost himself here in the ecstasy of his description, lacking also names for many of the things that he saw. But there was a whole suit of shining armour, and there were jewels, and old bra.s.s trays, and carpets, and a crocodile, which Bim called a "crodocile." There was also a friendly old man with a white beard, and over everything a lovely smell, which Bim said was like "roast potatoes" and "the stuff mother has in a bottle in her bedwoom."
Bim could, of course, have stayed there for ever, but Mr. Jack reminded him of a possibly anxious family. "There, is that what you"re after?"
he said, and, sure enough, there on a shelf, smiling and eager to be bought, was a mug exactly like the one that Bim had broken.
There was then the business of paying for it, the money-box was produced and opened by the old man with "a shining knife," and Bim was gravely informed that the money found in the box was exactly the right amount.
Bim had been, for a moment, in an agony of agitation lest he should have too little, but as he told us, "There was all Uncle Alfred"s Christmas money, and what mother gave me for the tooth, and that silly lady with the green dress who _would_ kiss me." So, you see, there must have been an awful amount.
Then they went, Bim clasping his money-box in one hand and the mug in the other. The mug was wrapped in beautiful blue paper that smelt, as we were all afterwards to testify, of dates and spices. The crocodile flapped against the wall, the bell tinkled, and the shop was left behind them. "Most at once," Bim said they were by the fruit shop again; he knew that Mr. Jack was going, and he had a sudden most urgent longing to go with him, to stay with him, to be with him always. He wanted to cry; he felt dreadfully unhappy, but all of his thanks, his strange desires, that he could bring out was, in a quavering voice, trying hard, you understand, not to cry, "Mr. Jack. Oh! Mr.----" and his friend was gone.
IV
He trotted home; with every step his pride increased. What would Lucy say? And dim, unrealised, but forming, nevertheless, the basis for the whole of his triumph, was his consciousness that she who had scoffed, derided, at his "Mr. Jack," should now so absolutely benefit by him.
This was bringing together, at last, the two of them.
His nurse, in a fine frenzy of agitation, met him. Her relief at his safety swallowed her anger. She could only gasp at him. "Well, Master Bim, and a nice state---- Oh, dear! to think; wherever----"
On the doorstep he forced his nurse to pause, and, turning, looked at the gardens now in shadow of spun gold, with the fountain blue as the sky. He nodded his head with satisfaction. It had been a splendid time.
It would be a very long while, he knew, before he was allowed out again like that. Yes. He clasped the mug tightly, and the door closed behind him.
I don"t know that there is anything more to say. There were the empty money-box and the mug. There was Bim"s unhesitating and unchangeable story. There _is_ a shop, just behind the Square, where they have some Russian crockery. But Bim alone!
_I_ don"t know.