Meanwhile, upstairs in the nursery there were children of all ages, and two nurses did their best to grapple with them. The nurses came and went, and always, after the first day or two, the new nurse would give in to the conditions, and would lead, at first with amus.e.m.e.nt and a rather excited sense of adventure, afterwards with a growing feeling of dirt and discomfort, a tangled and helter-skelter existence. Some of the children were now at school, but Lucy, a girl ten years of age, was a supercilious child who rebelled against the conditions of her life, but was too idle and superior to attempt any alteration of them. After her there were Roger, Dorothy, and Robert. Then came Bim, four years of age a fortnight ago, and, last of all, Timothy, an infant of nine months.
With the exception of Lucy and Bim they were exceedingly noisy children.
Lucy should have pa.s.sed her days in the schoolroom under the care of Miss Agg, a melancholy and hope-abandoned spinster, and, during lesson hours, there indeed she was. But in the schoolroom she had no one to impress with her amazing wisdom and dignity. "Poor mummy," as she always thought of her mother, was quite unaware of her habits or movements, and Miss Agg was unable to restrain either the one or the other, so Lucy spent most of her time in the nursery, where she sat, calm and collected, in the midst of confusion that could have "given old Babel points and won easy." She was reverenced by all the younger children for her sedate security, but by none of them so surely and so magnificently as Bim. Bim, because he was quieter than the other children, claimed for his opinions and movements the stronger interest.
His nurses called him "deep," "although for a deep child I must say he"s "appy."
Both his depth and his happiness were at Lucy"s complete disposal. The people who saw him in the Square called him "a jolly little boy," and, indeed, his appearance of gravity was undermined by the curl of his upper lip and a dimple in the middle of his left cheek, so that he seemed to be always at the crisis of a prolonged chuckle. One very rarely heard him laugh out loud, and his st.u.r.dy, rather fat body was carried rather gravely, and he walked contemplatively as though he were thinking something out. He would look at you, too, very earnestly when you spoke to him, and would wait a little before he answered you, and then would speak slowly as though he were choosing his words with care.
And yet he was, in spite of these things, really a "jolly little boy."
His "jolliness" was there in point of view, in the astounding interest he found in anything and everything, in his refusal to be upset by any sort of thing whatever.
But his really unusual quality was his mixture of stolid English matter-of-fact with an absolutely unbridled imagination. He would pursue, day by day, week after week, games, invented games of his own, that owed nothing, either for their inception or their execution, to any one else. They had their origin for the most part in stray sentences that he had overheard from his elders, but they also arose from his own private and personal experiences--experiences which were as real to him as going to the dentist or going to the pantomime were to his brothers and sisters. There was, for instance, a gentleman of whom he always spoke of as Mr. Jack. This friend no one had ever seen, but Bim quoted him frequently. He did not, apparently, see him very often now, but at one time when he had been quite a baby Mr. Jack had been always there.
Bim explained, to any one who cared to listen, that Mr. Jack belonged to all the Other Time which he was now in very serious danger of forgetting, and when, at that point, he was asked with condescending indulgence, "I suppose you mean fairies, dear!" he always shook his head scornfully and said he meant nothing of the kind, Mr. Jack was as real as mother, and, indeed, a great deal "realer," because Mrs. Rochester was, in the course of her energetic career, able to devote only "whirlwind" visits to her "dear, darling" children.
When the afternoon was spent in the gardens in the middle of the Square, Bim would detach himself from his family and would be found absorbed in some business of his own which he generally described as "waiting for Mr. Jack."
"Not the sort of child," said Miss Agg, who had strong views about children being educated according to practical and common-sense ideas, "not the sort of child that one would expect nonsense from." It may be quite safely a.s.serted that never, in her very earliest years, had Miss Agg been guilty of any nonsense of the sort.
But it was not Miss Agg"s contempt for his experiences that worried Bim.
He always regarded that lady with an amused indifference. "She _bothers_ so," he said once to Lucy. "Do you think she"s happy with us, Lucy?"
"P"r"aps. I"m sure it doesn"t matter."
"I suppose she"d go away if she wasn"t," he concluded, and thought no more about her.
No, the real grief in his heart was that Lucy, the adored, the wonderful Lucy, treated his a.s.sertions with contempt.
"But, Bim, don"t be such a silly baby. You know you can"t have seen him.
Nurse was there and a lot of us, and _we_ didn"t."
"I did though."
"But, Bim----"
"Can"t help it. He used to come lots and lots."
"You _are_ a silly! You"re getting too old now----"
"I"m _not_ a silly!"
"Yes, you are."
"I"m not!"
"Oh, well, of course, if you"re going to be a naughty baby."
Bim was nearer tears on these occasions than on any other in all his mortal life. His adoration of Lucy was the foundation-stone of his existence, and she accepted it with a lofty a.s.sumption of indifference; but very sharply would she have missed it had it been taken from her, and in long after years she was to look back upon that love of his and wonder that she could have accepted it so lightly; Bim found in her gravity and a.s.surance all that he demanded of his elders. Lucy was never at a loss for an answer to any question, and Bim believed all that she told him.
"Where"s China, Lucy?"
"Oh, don"t bother, Bim."
"No, but _where_ is it?"
"What a nuisance you are! It"s near Africa."
"Where Uncle Alfred is?"
"Yes, just there."
"But _is_ Uncle Alfred in--China?"
"No, silly, of course not."
"Well, then----"
"I didn"t say China was in Africa. I said it was near."
"Oh! I see. Uncle Alfred could just go in the train?"
"Yes, of course."
"Oh! I see. P"r"aps he will."
But, for the most part, Bim, realising that Lucy "didn"t want to be bothered," pursued his life alone. Through all the turmoil and disorder of that tempestuous nursery he gravely went his way, at one moment fighting lions and tigers, at another being nurse on her afternoon out (this was a truly astonishing adventure composed of sc.r.a.ps flung to him from nurse"s conversational table and including many incidents that were far indeed from any nurse"s experience), or again, he would be his mother giving a party, and, in the course of this, a great deal of food would be eaten, his favourite dishes, treacle pudding and cottage pie, being always included.
With the exception of his enthusiasm for Lucy he was no sentimentalist.
He hated being kissed, he did not care very greatly for Roger and Dorothy and Robert, and regarded them as nothing but nuisances when they interfered with his games or compelled him to join in theirs.
And now this is the story of his Odyssey.
II
It happened on a wet April afternoon. The morning had been fine, a golden morning with the scent in the air of the showers that had fallen during the night. Then, suddenly, after midday, the rain came down, splashing on to the shining pavements as it fell, beating on to the windows and then running, in little lines, on to the ledges and falling from there in slow, heavy drops. The sky was black, the statues in the garden dejected, the almond tree beaten, all the little paths running with water, and on the garden seats the rain danced like a live thing.
The children--Lucy, Roger, Dorothy, Robert, Bim, and Timothy--were, of course, in the nursery. The nurse was toasting her toes on the fender and enjoying immensely that story by Mrs. Henry Wood, ent.i.tled "The Shadow of Ashlydyat." It is entirely impossible to present any adequate idea of the confusion and bizarrerie of that nursery. One must think of the most confused aspect of human life that one has ever known--say, a Suffrage attack upon the Houses of Parliament, or a Channel steamer on a Thursday morning, and then of the next most confused aspect. Then one must place them together and confess defeat. Mrs. Rochester was not, as I have said, very frequently to be found in her children"s nursery, but she managed, nevertheless, to pervade the house, from cellar to garret, with her spirit. Toys were everywhere--dolls and trains and soldiers, bricks and puzzles and animals, cardboard boxes, articles of feminine attire, a zinc bath, two cats, a cage with white mice, a pile of books resting in a dazzling pyramid on the very edge of the table, two gla.s.s jars containing minute fish of the new variety, and a bowl with goldfish. There were many other things, forgotten by me.
Lucy, her pigtails neatly arranged, sat near the window and pretended to be reading that fascinating story, "The Pillars of the House." I say pretending, because Lucy did not care about reading at any time, and especially disliked the works of Charlotte Mary Yonge, but she thought that it looked well that she and nurse should be engaged upon literature whilst the rest of the world rioted and gambolled their time away. There was no one who at the moment could watch and admire her fine spirit, but you never knew who might come in.
The rioting and gambolling consisted in the attempts of Robert, Dorothy, and Roger, to give a realistic presentation to an audience of one, namely, the infant Timothy, of the life of the Red Indians and their Squaws. Underneath the nursery table, with a tablecloth, some chairs and a concertina, they were presenting an admirable and entirely engrossing performance.
Bim, under the window and quite close to Lucy, was giving a party. He had possessed himself of some of Dorothy"s dolls" tea things, he had begged a sponge cake from nurse, and could be heard breaking from time to time into such sentences as, "Do have a little more tweacle pudding, Mrs. Smith. It"s the best tweacle," and, "It"s a nice day, isn"t it!"
but he was sorely interrupted by the noisy festivities of the Indians who broke, frequently, into realistic cries of "Oh! Roger, you"re pulling my hair," or "I won"t play if you don"t look out!"
It may be that these interruptions disturbed the actuality of Bim"s festivities, or it may be that the rattling of the rain upon the window panes diverted his attention. Once he broke into a chuckle. "Isn"t they banging on the window, Lucy?" he said, but she was, it appeared, too deeply engaged to answer him. He found that, in a moment of abstraction, he had eaten the whole of the sponge cake, so that it was obvious that the party was over. "Good-bye, Mrs. Smith. It was really nice of you to come. Good-bye, dear, Mrs. ---- I think the wain almost isn"t coming now."
He said farewell to them all and climbed upon the window seat. Here, gazing down into the Square, he saw that the rain was stopping, and, on the farther side, above the roofs of the houses, a little splash of gold had crept into the grey. He watched the gold, heard the rain coming more slowly; at first, "spatter-spatter-spatter," then, "spatter--spatter."
Then one drop very slowly after another drop. Then he saw that the sun from somewhere far away had found out the wet paths in the garden, and was now stealing, very secretly, along them. Soon it would strike the seat, and then the statue of the funny fat man in all his clothes, and then, perhaps, the fountain. He was unhappy a little, and he did not know why: he was conscious, perhaps, of the untidy, noisy room behind him, of his sister Dorothy who, now a Squaw of a quite genuine and realistic kind, was crying at the top of her voice: "I don"t care. I will have it if I want to. You"re _not_ to, Roger," and of Timothy, his baby brother, who, moved by his sister"s cries, howled monotonously, persistently, hopelessly.
"Oh, give over, do, Miss Dorothy!" said the nurse, raising her eye for a moment from her book. "Why can"t you be quiet?"