"Know? No. Know what?"
"She shot the moon – old Hurle moved her; says he don't remember where to. She give him a pint to forget's what I say."
"Who's livin' there now?" Dickie asked, interest in his aunt's address swallowed up in a sudden desperate anxiety.
"No one don't live there. It's shut up to let apply Roberts 796 Broadway," said the boy. "I say, what'll you do?"
"I don't know," said Dickie, turning away from the van, which had abruptly become unimportant. "Which way you goin'?"
"Down home – go past your old shop. Coming?"
"No," said Dickie. "So long – see you again some day. I got to go this way." And he went it.
All the same the twilight saw him creeping down the old road to the house whose back-yard had held the rabbit-hutch, the garden where he had sowed the parrot food, and where the moonflowers had come up so white and beautiful. What a long time ago! It was only a month really, but all the same, what a long time!
The news of his aunt's departure had changed everything. The steadfast desire to get to Gravesend, to find his father, had given way, at any rate for the moment, to a burning anxiety about Tinkler and the white stone. Had his aunt found them and taken them away? If she hadn't and they were still there, would it not be wise to get them at once? Because of course some one else might take the house and find the treasures. Yes, it would certainly be wise to go to-night, to get in by the front window – the catch had always been broken – to find his treasures, or at any rate to make quite sure whether he had lost them or not.
No one noticed him as he came down the street, very close to the railings. There are so many boys in the streets in that part of the world. And the front window went up easily. He climbed in, dragging his crutch after him.
He got up-stairs very quickly, on hands and knees, went straight to the loose board, dislodged it, felt in the hollow below. Oh, joy! His hands found the soft bundle of rags that he knew held Tinkler and the seal. He put them inside the front of his shirt and shuffled down. It was not too late to do a mile or two of the Gravesend road. But the moonflower – he would like to have one more look at that.
He got out into the garden – there stood the stalk of the flower very tall in the deepening dusk. He touched the stalk. It was dry and hard – three or four little dry things fell from above and rattled on his head.
"Seeds, o' course," said Dickie, who knew more about seeds now than he had done when he saved the parrot seeds. One does not tramp the country for a month, at Dickie's age, without learning something about seeds.
He got out the knife that should have cut the string of the basket in the train, opened it and cut the stalk of the moonflower, very carefully so that none of the seeds should be, and only a few were, lost. He crept into the house holding the stalk upright and steady as an acolyte carries a processional cross.
The house was quite dark now, but a street lamp threw its light into the front room, bare, empty, and dusty. There was a torn newspaper on the floor. He spread a sheet of it out, kneeled by it and shook the moonflower head over it. The seeds came rattling out – dozens and dozens of them. They were bigger than sunflower seeds and flatter and rounder, and they shone like silver, or like the pods of the plant we call honesty.
"Oh, beautiful, beautiful!" said Dickie, letting the smooth shapes slide through his fingers. Have you ever played with mother-of-pearl card counters? The seeds of the moonflower were like those.
He pulled out Tinkler and the seal and laid them on the heap of seeds. And then knew quite suddenly that he was too tired to travel any further that night.
"I'll doss here," he said; "there's plenty papers" – he knew by experience that, as bed-clothes, newspapers are warm, if noisy – "and get on in the morning afore people's up."
He collected all the paper and straw – there was a good deal littered about in the house – and made a heap in the corner, out of the way of the window. He did not feel afraid of sleeping in an empty house, only very lordly and magnificent because he had a whole house to himself. The food still left in his pockets served for supper, and you could drink quite well at the wash-house tap by putting your head under and turning it on very slowly.
And for a final enjoyment he laid out his treasures on the newspaper – Tinkler and the seal in the middle and the pearly counters arranged in patterns round them, circles and squares and oblongs. The seeds lay very flat and fitted close together. They were excellent for making patterns with. And presently he made, with triple lines of silvery seeds, a six-pointed star, something like this – with the rattle and the seal in the middle, and the light from the street lamp shone brightly on it all.
"That's the prettiest of the lot," said Dickie Harding, alone in the empty house.
And then the magic began.
CHAPTER IV
WHICH WAS THE DREAM?
The two crossed triangles of white seeds, in the midst Tinkler and the white seal, lay on the floor of the little empty house, grew dim and faint before Dickie's eyes, and his eyes suddenly smarted and felt tired so that he was very glad to shut them. He had an absurd fancy that he could see, through his closed eyelids, something moving in the middle of the star that the two triangles made. But he knew that this must be nonsense, because, of course, you cannot see through your eyelids. His eyelids felt so heavy that he could not take the trouble to lift them even when a voice spoke quite near him. He had no doubt but that it was the policeman come to "take him up" for being in a house that was not his.
"Let him," said Dickie to himself. He was too sleepy to be afraid.
But for a policeman, who is usually of quite a large pattern, the voice was unusually soft and small. It said briskly —
"Now, then, where do you want to go to?"
"I ain't particular," said Dickie, who supposed himself to be listening to an offer of a choice of police-stations.
There were whispers – two small and soft voices. They made a sleepy music.
"He's more yours than mine," said one.
"You're more his than I am," said the other.
"You're older than I am," said the first.
"You're stronger than I am," said the second.
"Let's spin for it," said the first voice, and there was a humming sound ending in a little tinkling fall.
"That settles it," said the second voice – "here?"
"And when?"
"Three's a good number."
Then everything was very quiet, and sleep wrapped Dickie like a soft cloak. When he awoke his eyelids no longer felt heavy, so he opened them. "That was a rum dream," he told himself, as he blinked in broad daylight.
He lay in bed – a big, strange bed – in a room that he had never seen before. The windows were low and long, with small panes, and the light was broken by upright stone divisions. The floor was of dark wood, strewn strangely with flowers and green herbs, and the bed was a four-post bed like the one he had slept in at Talbot House; and in the green curtains was woven a white pattern, very like the thing that was engraved on Tinkler and on the white seal. On the coverlet lavender and other herbs were laid. And the wall was hung with pictures done in needlework – tapestry, in fact, though Dickie did not know that this was its name. All the furniture was heavily built of wood heavily carved. An enormous dark cupboard or wardrobe loomed against one wall. High-backed chairs with tapestry seats were ranged in a row against another. The third wall was almost all window, and in the fourth wall the fireplace was set with a high-hooded chimney and wide, open hearth.
Near the bed stood a stool, or table, with cups and bottles on it, and on the necks of the bottles parchment labels were tied that stuck out stiffly. A stout woman in very full skirts sat in a large armchair at the foot of the bed. She wore a queer white cap, the like of which Dickie had never seen, and round her neck was a ruff which reminded him of the cut-paper frills in the ham and beef shops in the New Cross Road.
"What a curious dream!" said Dickie.
The woman looked at him.
"So thou'st found thy tongue," she said; "folk must look to have curious dreams who fall sick of the fever. But thou'st found thy tongue at last – thine own tongue, not the wandering tongue that has wagged so fast these last days."
"But I thought I was in the front room at – " Dickie began.
"Thou'rt here," said she; "the other is the dream. Forget it. And do not talk of it. To talk of such dreams brings misfortune. And 'tis time for thy posset."
She took a pipkin from the hearth, where a small fire burned, though it was summer weather, as Dickie could see by the green tree-tops that swayed and moved outside in the sun, poured some gruel out of it into a silver basin. It had wrought roses on it and "Drink me and drink again" in queer letters round the rim; but this Dickie only noticed later. She poured white wine into the gruel, and, having stirred it with a silver spoon, fed Dickie as one feeds a baby, blowing on each spoonful to cool it. The gruel was very sweet and pleasant. Dickie stretched in the downy bed, felt extremely comfortable, and fell asleep again.
Next time he awoke it was with many questions. "How'd I come 'ere? 'Ave I bin run over agen? Is it a hospital? Who are you?"
"Now don't you begin to wander again," said the woman in the cap. "You're here at home in the best bed in your father's house at Deptford. And you've had the plague-fever. And you're better. Or ought to be. But if you don't know your own old nurse – "
"I never 'ad no nurse," said Dickie, "old nor new. So there. You're a-takin' me for some other chap, that's what it is. Where did you get hold of me? I never bin here before."
"Don't wander, I tell you," repeated the nurse briskly. "You lie still and think, and you'll see you'll remember me very well. Forget your old nurse – why, you will tell me next that you've forgotten your own name."
"No, I haven't," said Dickie.
"What is it, then?" the nurse asked, laughing a fat, comfortable laugh.
Dickie's reply was naturally "Dickie Harding."
"Why," said the nurse, opening wide eyes at him under gray brows, "you have forgotten it. They do say that the fever hurts the memory, but this beats all. Dost mean to tell me the fever has mazed thy poor brains till thou don't know that thy name's Richard – ?" And Dickie heard her name a name that did not sound to him at all like Harding.
"Is that my name?" he asked.
"It is indeed," she answered.
Dickie felt an odd sensation of fixedness. He had expected when he went to sleep that the dream would, in sleep, end, and that he would wake to find himself alone in the empty house at New Cross. But he had wakened to the same dream once more, and now he began to wonder whether he really belonged here, and whether this were the real life, and the other – the old, sordid, dirty New Cross life – merely a horrid dream, the consequence of his fever. He lay and thought, and looked at the rich, pleasant room, the kind, clear face of the nurse, the green, green branches of the trees, the tapestry and the rushes. At last he spoke.
"Nurse," said he.
"Ah! I thought you'd come to yourself," she said. "What is it, my dearie?"
"If I am really the name you said, I've forgotten it. Tell me all about myself, will you, Nurse?"
"I thought as much," she muttered, and then began to tell him wonderful things.
She told him how his father was Sir Richard – the King had made him a knight only last year – and how this place where they now were was his father's country house. "It lies," said the nurse, "among the pleasant fields and orchards of Deptford." And how he, Dickie, had been very sick of the pestilential fever, but was now, thanks to the blessing and to the ministrations of good Dr. Carey, on the highroad to health.
"And when you are strong enough," said she, "and the house purged of the contagion, your cousins from Sussex shall come and stay a while here with you, and afterwards you shall go with them to their town house, and see the sights of London. And now," she added, looking out of the window, "I spy the good doctor a-coming. Make the best of thyself, dear heart, lest he bleed thee and drench thee yet again, which I know in my heart thou'rt too weak for it. But what do these doctors know of babes? Their medicines are for strong men."
The idea of bleeding was not pleasant to Dickie, though he did not at all know what it meant. He sat up in bed, and was surprised to find that he was not nearly so tired as he thought. The excitement of all these happenings had brought a pink flush to his face, and when the doctor, in a full black robe and black stockings and a pointed hat, stood by his bedside and felt his pulse, the doctor had to own that Dickie was almost well.
"We have wrought a cure, Goody," he said; "thou and I, we have wrought a cure. Now kitchen physic it is that he needs – good broth and gruel and panada, and wine, the Rhenish and the French, and the juice of the orange and the lemon, or, failing those, fresh apple-juice squeezed from the fruit when you shall have brayed it in a mortar. Ha, my cure pleases thee? Well, smell to it, then. 'Tis many a day since thou hadst the heart to."
He reached the gold knob of his cane to Dickie's nose, and Dickie was surprised to find that it smelled sweet and strong, something like grocers' shops and something like a chemist's. There were little holes in the gold knob, such as you see in the tops of pepper castors, and the scent seemed to come through them.
"What is it?" Dickie asked.
"He has forgotten everything," said the nurse quickly; "'tis the good doctor's pomander, with spices and perfumes in it to avert contagion."
"As it warms in the hand the perfumes give forth," said the doctor. "Now the fever is past there must be a fumigatory. Make a good brew, Goody, make a good brew – amber and nitre and wormwood – vinegar and quinces and myrrh – with wormwood, camphor, and the fresh flowers of the camomile. And musk – forget not musk – a strong thing against contagion. Let the vapor of it pass to and fro through the chamber, burn the herbs from the floor and all sweepings on this hearth; strew fresh herbs and flowers, and set all clean and in order, and give thanks that you are not setting all in order for a burying."
With which agreeable words the black-gowned doctor nodded and smiled at the little patient, and went out.
And now Dickie literally did not know where he was. It was all so difficult. Was he Dickie Harding who had lived at New Cross, and sown the Artistic Parrot Seed, and taken the open road with Mr. Beale? Or was he that boy with the other name whose father was a knight, and who lived in a house in Deptford with green trees outside the windows? He could not remember any house in Deptford that had green trees in its garden. And the nurse had said something about the pleasant fields and orchards. Those, at any rate, were not in the Deptford he knew. Perhaps there were two Deptfords. He knew there were two Bromptons and two Richmonds (one in Yorkshire). There was something about the way things happened at this place that reminded him of that nice Lady Talbot who had wanted him to stay and be her little boy. Perhaps this new boy whose place he seemed to have taken had a real mother of his own, as nice as that nice lady.
The nurse had dropped all sorts of things into an iron pot with three legs, and had set it to boil in the hot ashes. Now it had boiled, and two maids were carrying it to and fro in the room, as the doctor had said. Puffs of sweet, strong, spicy steam rose out of it as they jerked it this way and that.
"Nurse," Dickie called; and she came quickly. "Nurse, have I got a mother?"
She hugged him. "Indeed thou hast," she said, "but she lies sick at your father's other house. And you have a baby brother, Richard."
"Then," said Dickie, "I think I will stay here, and try to remember who I am – I mean who you say I am – and not try to dream any more about New Cross and Mr. Beale. If this is a dream, it's a better dream than the other. I want to stay here, Nurse. Let me stay here and see my mother and my little brother."
"And shalt, my lamb – and shalt," the nurse said.
And after that there was more food, and more sleep, and nights, and days, and talks, and silences, and very gradually, yet very quickly, Dickie learned about this new boy who was, and wasn't, himself. He told the nurse quite plainly that he remembered nothing about himself, and after he had told her she would sit by his side by the hour and tell him of things that had happened in the short life of the boy whose place he filled, the boy whose name was not Dickie Harding. And as soon as she had told him a thing he found he remembered it – not as one remembers a tale that is told, but as one remembers a real thing that has happened.
And days went on, and he became surer and surer that he was really this other Richard, and that he had only dreamed all that old life in New Cross with his aunt and in the pleasant country roads with Mr. Beale. And he wondered how he could ever have dreamed such things.
Quite soon came the day when the nurse dressed him in clothes strange, but strangely comfortable and fine, and carried him to the window, from which, as he sat in a big oak chair, he could see the green fields that sloped down to the river, and the rigging and the masts of the ships that went up and down. The rigging looked familiar, but the shape of the ships was quite different. They were shorter and broader than the ships that Dickie Harding had been used to see, and they, most of them, rose up much higher out of the water.
"I should like to go and look at them closer," he told the nurse.
"Once thou'rt healed," she said, "thou'lt be forever running down to the dockyard. Thy old way – I know thee, hearing the master mariners' tales, and setting thy purpose for a galleon of thine own and the golden South Americas."
"What's a galleon?" said Dickie. And was told. The nurse was very patient with his forgettings.
He was very happy. There seemed somehow to be more room in this new life than in the old one, and more time. No one was in a hurry, and there was not another house within a quarter of a mile. All green fields. Also he was a person of consequence. The servants called him "Master Richard," and he felt, as he heard them, that being called Master Richard meant not only that the servants respected him as their master's son, but that he was somebody from whom great things were expected. That he had duties of kindness and protection to the servants; that he was expected to grow up brave and noble and generous and unselfish, to care for those who called him master. He felt now very fully, what he had felt vaguely and dimly at Talbot Court, that he was not the sort of person who ought to do anything mean and dishonorable, such as being a burglar, and climbing in at pantry windows; that when he grew up he would be expected to look after his servants and laborers, and all the men and women whom he would have under him – that their happiness and well-being would be his charge. And the thought swelled his heart, and it seemed that he was born to a great destiny. He – little lame Dickie Harding of Deptford – he would hold these people's lives in his hand. Well, he knew what poor people wanted; he had been poor – or he had dreamed that he was poor – it was all the same. Dreams and real life were so very much alike.
So Dickie changed, every hour of every day and every moment of every hour, from the little boy who lived at New Cross among the yellow houses and the ugliness, who tramped the white roads, and slept at the Inn of the Silver Moon, to Richard of the other name who lived well and slept softly, and knew himself called to a destiny of power and helpful kindness. For his nurse had told him that his father was a rich man; and that father's riches would be his one day, to deal with for the good of the men under him, for their happiness and the glory of God. It was a great and beautiful thought, and Dickie loved it.
He loved, indeed, everything in this new life – the shapes and colors of furniture and hangings, the kind old nurse, the friendly, laughing maids, the old doctor with his long speeches and short smiles, his bed, his room, the ships, the river, the trees, the gardens – the very sky seemed cleaner and brighter than the sky that had been over the Deptford that Dickie Harding had known.
And then came the day when the nurse, having dressed him, bade him walk to the window, instead of being carried, as, so far, he had been.
"Where." he asked, hesitatingly, "where's my..? Where have you put the crutch?"
Then the old nurse laughed.
"Crutch?" she said. "Come out of thy dreams. Thou silly boy! Thou wants no crutch with two fine, straight, strong legs like thou's got. Come, use them and walk."
Dickie looked down at his feet. In the old New Cross days he had not liked to look at his feet. He had not looked at them in these new days. Now he looked. Hesitated.
"Come," said the nurse encouragingly.
He slid from the high bed. One might as well try. Nurse seemed to think… He touched the ground with both feet, felt the floor firm and even under them – as firm and even under the one foot as under the other. He stood up straight, moved the foot that he had been used to move – then the other, the one that he had never moved. He took two steps, three, four – and then he turned suddenly and flung himself against the side of the bed and hid his face in his arms.
"What, weeping, my lamb?" the nurse said, and came to him.
"Oh, Nurse," he cried, clinging to her with all his might. "I dreamed that I was lame! And I thought it was true. And it isn't! – it isn't! – it isn't!"
Quite soon Dickie was able to walk down-stairs and out into the garden along the grassy walks and long alleys where fruit trees trained over trellises made such pleasant green shade, and even to try to learn to play at bowls on the long bowling-green behind the house. The house was by far the finest house Dickie had ever been in, and the garden was more beautiful even than the garden at Talbot Court. But it was not only the beauty of the house and garden that made Dickie's life a new and full delight. To limp along the leafy ways, to crawl up and down the carved staircase would have been a pleasure greater than any Dickie had ever known; but he could leap up and down the stairs three at a time, he could run in the arched alleys – run and jump as he had seen other children do, and as he had never thought to do himself. Imagine what you would feel if you had lived wingless all your life among people who could fly. That is how lame people feel among us who can walk and run. And now Dickie was lame no more.
His feet seemed not only to be strong and active, but clever on their own account. They carried him quite without mistake to the blacksmith's at the village on the hill – to the centre of the maze of clipped hedges that was the centre of the garden, and best of all they carried him to the dockyard.
Girls like dolls and tea-parties and picture-books, but boys like to see things made and done; else how is it that any boy worth his salt will leave the newest and brightest toys to follow a carpenter or a plumber round the house, fiddle with his tools, ask him a thousand questions, and watch him ply his trade? Dickie at New Cross had spent many an hour watching those interesting men who open square trap-doors in the pavement and drag out from them yards and yards of wire. I do not know why the men do this, but every London boy who reads this will know.
And when he got to the dockyard his obliging feet carried him to a man in a great leather apron, busy with great beams of wood and tools that Dickie had never seen. And the man greeted him as an old friend, kissed him on both cheeks – which he didn't expect, and felt much too old for – and spread a sack for him that he might sit in the sun on a big baulk of timber.
"Thou'rt a sight for sore eyes, Master Richard," he said; "it's many a long day since thou was here to pester me with thy questions. And all's strong again – no bones broken? And now I'll teach thee to make a galleon, like as I promised."
"Will you, indeed?" said Dickie, trembling with joy and pride.
"That will I," said the man, and threw up his pointed beard in a jolly laugh. "And see what I've made thee while thou'st been lazying in bed – a real English ship of war."
He laid down the auger he held and went into a low, rough shed, and next moment came out with a little ship in his hand – a perfect model of the strange high-built ships Dickie could see on the river.
"'Tis the picture," said he, proudly, "of my old ship, The Golden Venture, that I sailed in with Master Raleigh, and help to sink the accursed Armada, and clip the King of Spain his wings, and singe his beard."
"The Armada!" said Dickie, with a new and quite strange feeling, rather like going down unexpectedly in a lift. "The Spanish Armada?"
"What other?" asked the ship-builder. "Thou'st heard the story a thousand times."
"I want to hear it again," Dickie said. And heard the story of England's great danger and her great escapes. It was just the same story as the one you read in your history book – and yet how different, when it was told by a man who had been there, who had felt the danger, known the escape. Dickie held his breath.
"And so," the story ended, "the breath of the Lord went forth and the storm blew, and fell on the fleet of Spain, and scattered them; and they went down in our very waters, they and their arms and their treasure, their guns and their gunners, their mariners and their men-of-war. And the remnant was scattered and driven northward, and some were wrecked on the rocks, and some our ships met and dealt with, and some poor few made shift to get back across the sea, trailing home like wounded mallards, to tell the King their master what the Lord had done for England."
"How long ago was it, all this?" Dickie asked. If his memory served it was hundreds of years ago – three, five – he could not remember how many, but hundreds. Could this man, whose hair was only just touched with gray, be hundreds of years old?
"How long? – a matter of twenty years or thereabouts," said the ship-builder. "See, the pretty little ship; and thy very own, for I made it for thee."
It was indeed a pretty little ship, being a perfect model of an Elizabethan ship, built up high at bow and stern, "for," as Sebastian explained, "majesty and terror of the enemy", and with deck and orlop, waist and poop, hold and masts – all complete with forecastle and cabin, masts and spars, port-holes and guns, sails, anchor, and carved figure-head. The woodwork was painted in white and green and red, and at bow and stern was richly carved and gilded.
"For me," Dickie said – "really for me? And you made it yourself!"
"Truth to tell, I began it long since in the long winter evenings," said his friend, "and now 'tis done and 'tis thine. See, I shall put an apron on thee and thou shalt be my 'prentice and learn to build another quaint ship like her – to be her consort; and we will sail them together in the pond in thy father's garden."
Dickie, still devouring the little Golden Venture with his eyes, submitted to the leather apron, and felt in his hand the smooth handle of the tool Sebastian put there.
"But," he said, "I don't understand. You remember the Armada – twenty years ago. I thought it was hundreds and hundreds."
"Twenty years ago – or nearer eighteen," said Sebastian; "thou'lt have to learn to reckon better than that if thou'st to be my 'prentice. 'Twas in the year of grace 1588, and we are now in the year 1606. This makes it eighteen years, to my reckoning."
"It was 1906 in my dream," said Dickie – "I mean in my fever."
"In fever," Sebastian said, "folk travel far. Now, hold the wood so, and the knife thus."
Then every day Dickie went down to the dockyard when lessons were done. For there were lessons now, with a sour-faced tutor in a black gown, whom Dickie disliked extremely. The tutor did not seem to like Dickie either. "The child hath forgot in his fever all that ever he learned of me," he complained to the old nurse, who nodded wisely and said he would soon learn all afresh. And he did, very quickly, learn a great deal, and always it was more like remembering than learning. And a second tutor, very smart in red velvet and gold, with breeches like balloons and a short cloak and a ruff, who was an extremely jolly fellow, came in the mornings to teach him to fence, to dance, and to run and to leap and to play bowls, and promised in due time to teach him wrestling, catching, archery, pall-mall, rackets, riding, tennis, and all sports and games proper for a youth of gentle blood.
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 butterfly 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.