GYPSY AND GINGER’S FRIENDS
“It was you,” said Gypsy, “who contradicted the rumour that the Kilburn Tennis-club was to re-roof itself in Horsham Slate?”
“The most beautiful of all roofings, sir. Yes, it was I.”
“It was you,” said Gypsy, “who refuted the suggestion that the Noncomformist Chapels should return to Ancient Greece——”
“In the matter of architecture, sir. That also was I.”
“It was you,” continued Gypsy, “who denied the unfounded report that the tops of the Whitechapel Shelters were to be converted into Hanging-Gardens.”
“Myself, sir, and no other.”
“Who said there were to be Hanging-Gardens in Whitechapel?” asked Gypsy.
“Nobody, sir.”
“Then why do you say there are not to be?”
“Well, it’s true, sir, isn’t it?”
“It’s so true,” said Gypsy, “that why waste paint on it?”
“Because,” said the ex-Professor, “no truth can resist persistent denial for ever. That is—yes, I fear I am getting mixed. But have you not observed how the newspapers will frequently force a statement on you, or at least lodge a suspicion in you, by contradicting some rumour of which you’ve never heard until they say it isn’t true? The affirmation was negative, the denial is positive. When they’ve denied it long enough, day after day, in every column from the Leaders to the Book Reviews, it becomes an unshakeable fact. I am at present devoting my life to establishing rumours by denying them. Once public opinion swallows them, the rest is automatic. I have energetically denied the rumour, for instance, of a Red Noah’s Ark in Bermondsey. It would cheer Bermondsey greatly. And before long I really hope to see in Whitechapel those Hanging Gardens, which, as I have repeatedly stated, are not for one instant under consideration by anybody.”
“What a tophole idea!” said Gypsy.
“The credit is not all mine, sir,” said the ex-Professor. “Let us give the newspapers their due. Contradicting the Rumour is one of the more modern accomplishments, and smacks of modern manners; in other days we should have preferred Dallying with the Notion, but we cannot look for the old-world polish in the newspaper of to-day. If it has not the culture of the Eighteenth Century, it does not lack dexterity; and in the art of Forcing the Statement it is as deft as a conjuror with a pack of cards. Yet—a vulgar art!” The ex-Professor sighed. “I never taught it myself.”
“What did you teach?” asked Ginger curiously.
“A hundred activities and accomplishments which are now treated in the most perfunctory fashion, madam. Have you ever, may I ask, Risen to the Occasion?”
“Never,” said Ginger.
“I’ve tried to,” said Gypsy. “It seldom came off.”
“And why? You had never studied it, sir. It is an acquired art which in theory should be taught in the schoolroom, in practice in the gymnasium. How,” he continued with fire, “without our Text-books and Classes can we perfect ourselves in the arts which make life replete with finesse? How many of us are conversant with the most graceful way of Receiving an Impression? For the most part we Receive our Impressions anyhow, at haphazard. We should Receive them as we would our guests. Again which of us can really felicitously Rejoice in the Name of—Alfred, or Ernest, or Harriet, as the case may be? The human being does not live who cannot be said to Rejoice in some such Name. But does he? Does he, in fact, know how? Of course he does not; he was never taught how. It took me years of toil before I could Rejoice in the Name of Valentine. My first attempts were gauche. But I succeeded at last.”
“We Rejoice in our Names,” said Ginger, and told him them.
His eye brightened. “Who would not Rejoice in such Names? There is a tongue in the cheek of either of them. But I take it they are not Baptismal?”
“Does that affect the question?” asked Gypsy.
“To a certain extent (and let us not be callous—some Questions are so easily Affected, although others, of sterner calibre, have to be Begged),” said the ex-Professor. “No, it is chiefly in the Names bestowed on us by M or N, that we are said to Rejoice. It can often only be done with an effort.
“What we need,” said the ex-Professor ardently, “is expert guidance on all those subtleties which we are asked to do by intuition: as though one could Jazz, or Throw the Discobolus, by intuition! Repeatedly the Social Code requires you to Contain Yourself, a thing possibly to be achieved by a stern suppressive course of Somebody’s System, but whose? What branch of physical training will develop in us the muscular fitness needed in Exercising the Prerogative and Adhering to the Principle? What Polytechnic offers us a course of instruction in Drawing the Comparison, Creating the Precedent, Improving the Hour, Making Good? Who will educate us in the fine shades of those more negative accomplishments, Ignoring the Facts, Withdrawing the Confidence, and Leaving Well Alone? And It! there’s so much to be done with It! A three years’ course might be devoted alone to Turning It Over, Letting It Slide, Cutting It Fine, Making the Best of It, Overdoing It, Chancing It, Chucking It....
“I look forward to the day when these things shall be the staple subjects of our Board Schools, Intellectually and Athletically; when, after a concentrated hour spent in class Accounting for Tastes or Changing the Opinion, the children shall troop jollily across the asphalte playground Leaping at Conclusions, Dodging the Question, and Casting the Doubt. Here a group of merry girls are Going to Extremes, yonder a band of breathless boys are Stopping at Nothing. Further off the School Glutton is greedily Eating his Words or Chewing the Cud of Thought, while the School Miser is bent on Doing It for Two Pins and Profiting by the Example. In a secluded corner, alas! the School Bully will frequently be found Twisting a Meaning, Stifling an Oath, or Strangling a Conviction, for boys will be boys, and Human Nature does not change. And perhaps it never will until an accomplishment common to half mankind has been eliminated, and we cease to be born past-masters and mistresses in Believing the Worst.”
“Don’t be downhearted,” said Ginger optimistically; “there’s always the other half of mankind, you know.”
“I am indebted to you, dear madam,” said the ex-Professor, “for reminding me of it.”
“Used you really to teach all these things?” asked Gypsy.
“For a short while only. I endeavoured to interest the Board of Education, but forty years later the War came along too soon. Instantly all the Boards in England became exclusively composed of Recruiting-Sergeants, to whom but one of my arts appealed—that of Calling up the Old Reminiscence. It was my ruin.”
He sighed; then hastily bowed right and left once more, and rose up smiling.
“We waste time,” he said. “We might have been Contradicting Rumours this hour gone by. Believe me, the roofs of corrugated London shall yet be beautified.”
“And why should it stop there?” cried Ginger with enthusiasm. “Once we begin to Contradict Rumours, there’s simply no limit to what we can deny. When the Freedom of the Flowers is fully established I shall take this up with you. Why, in time we might reform all London!”
Ginger was as good as her word. And as her word was always good enough for Gypsy, he added his efforts to hers in Contradicting Rumours with all his might. One by one they enlisted their friends in the scheme, at first directing their efforts, but soon leaving them to their own devices. Except Rags, who followed Ginger about like a little dog. The wires from the released roses had all been given to Rags, who swore he had a use for them; and he evidently had, for he got a brand-new pair of second-hand boots on the strength of them. So he had no compunction in letting him tramp the streets with her at night.
Her first idea was to do something for the Orphans. As she said shuddering to the little man, “Those hats, Rags!”
So one morning London awoke to find placards to this effect on every Orphan Asylum in and round the town:
WE CANNOT IMAGINE WHENCE THE FABRICATION AROSE THAT ORPHANS ARE TO WEAR LIBERTY HATS THIS SUMMER
This idea was presented daily to London just at the moment when she had begun to digest the possibility of a substitute for Corrugated Iron. Indeed, some rather beautiful timbered roofs were already under way in Hackney, and Turnham Green was discussing the relative merits of thatch versus tiles. Whitechapel too had cottoned to the notion of Hanging Gardens. The Cabmen’s Shelters were becoming positive bowers, as the ex-Professor reported with great satisfaction at the Weatherhouse, where everybody assembled regularly at daybreak to discuss the next night’s plan of action.
Ginger was overjoyed. “What a delightful sight it must be,” she said, “to see the Cabmen hanging in the Gardens, as they drink their gingerbeer.”
“And dream of Babylon,” added Gypsy.
“Quite so,” said the Taxi-Man.
The scheme succeeded from the first. Ginger and Rags had not much trouble with the Orphans. They had not even to wait for Public Opinion; the Orphan Asylums themselves soon saw no reason why the above Fabrication should remain one.
On the day the Orphans began to troop through London in graceful hats with coloured scarves and happy faces, the Public was confronted everywhere with this announcement (Gypsy’s):
NO! IT IS NOT TRUE THAT THE MEMBERS OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE ARE GIVING A BEANFEAST TO ALL THE POOR CHILDREN IN BETHNAL GREEN
This took more doing. But nine days of incessant repudiation got on the Members’ nerves. They began to find it difficult to look strangers in the eye. They began to observe how studiously their friends refrained from references to Bethnal Green in their presence. They began to feel that they were shabby fellows. And hang it all! why wasn’t it true that they were giving a Beanfeast to the Children of Bethnal Green? why shouldn’t they give a Beanfeast if they wanted to?
In the end Bethnal Green got such a Beanfeast as it had never dreamed of in all its young life.
After this the surprises came fast and thick. Under the obstinate influence of contradiction, the owners of almond and pink may trees in red-brick houses transferred these voluntarily to the front gardens of dwellers in white or grey stone houses. The aesthetic advantage would not be visible till next spring, but London was beginning to be endowed with a sense of vision.
There were also immediate reforms in the front gardens, whose beds defied at last the rigid and time-dishonoured conscription of marguerite, geranium, and lobelia. It was the dawn of a floral era wilder, more exquisite, and much more experimental.
And Society ceased to wear Humming-birds in its Hats—this was perhaps Ginger’s greatest triumph. It was a stiff battle. After heavy nights of repudiation she would come back to the Weatherhouse such a rag, that even her devoted little follower couldn’t have sold her at a penny a pound. But she won at last. She had two strong posters on the subject; one denying strenuously that feathers were old-fashioned, the other ridiculing the suggestion that a strip of gaily-embroidered house flannel, frayed and fringed, was Millinery’s Dernier Cri. It attracted the attention of LOUISE, who immediately exhibited a model on these lines in her windows. The Duchesses fell to it, and the Humming-Birds were saved.
As I said, Gypsy and Ginger allowed their friends to follow their own fancies.
WHAT MISINFORMED PERSON HAS BEEN
SPREADING THE REPORT THAT SHRIMPS AND
LOBSTERS ARE TO CHANGE PRICES
EVERY OTHER DAY
ran Rags’ best effort (Ginger helped him with the spelling).
A FALSE WHISPER HAS GOT ABROAD THAT THE
BENCHES AS WELL AS THE WICKET-KEEPERS IN
LORD’S CRICKET GROUND ARE TO BE
PADDED THIS SEASON
(This was the Taxi-Man’s.)
WE HAVE IT ON THE VERY BEST AUTHORITY
THAT OLIVE AND MYRTLE TREES WILL
NOT BE PLANTED FROM END TO END
OF THE CITY ROAD
(Tonio.)
THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT SKY-ROCKETS ARE TO BE
LET OFF EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT ON STREATHAM
COMMON CAN OBVIOUSLY ONLY BE REGARDED
AS A PRACTICAL JOKE
(The Balloon Woman.)
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
(asked the Pavement Artist—)
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FABULOUS ASSERTION
THAT THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA WILL
PERFORM DURING THE LUNCHEON HOUR AT
SAM ISAAC’S FISH-SHOPS?
One after another these seeds bore fruit—and as many other seeds, all bearing on the comfort or the gaiety of the Metropolis.
It was the Punch-and-Judy Man who, affected by the weariness of the City Clerks waiting an hour in queue to book their tickets in the Tubes, induced Madame Clara Butt, Sir Harry Lauder, and Mdlle. Adeline Genée, to attend the principal stations at going-home time, and relieve the tedium with song and dance. It only wanted suggesting to these kind-hearted artists that nobody expected such a thing of them. They responded at once.
It was a still greater surprise when Sir Joseph Lyons, after Jeremy’s emphatic assertion to the contrary, opened a Free-Penny-Bun-Shop on the Embankment for children under twelve with an income of less than Twopence a Week.
London was becoming a really beautiful place to live in.
But while the General Public grew daily more responsive to the nocturnal suggestions of Gypsy, Ginger, and their friends, the Authorities began to take alarm. Reforms were occurring at a pace which made them giddy. And London was acquiring a taste for Initiative which bothered them. Initiative was their feudal prerogative. They had given it a good run for its money in 1066, and now, like an old blind petted house-dog, kept it tenderly on the Westminster hearthrug, and gave it soft sops for its aged gums. Yet somehow this summer it had escaped and run amok: they heard it barking like a young pup, and saw it wag its tail in every street. And wherever it went London voluntarily arrayed herself in Couleur de Rose. The Authorities had always preferred her in the stronger tone of Red Tape. They had been saying to her for so many years, “Red is your Colour, dear,” that she nearly believed it, and they did quite.
So they sent to Scotland Yard for a Policeman, and gave him a Roving Commission. Policemen are generally born to their Beat; it is extremely difficult to disattach any of these men from his walk in life, and, in the older Constabulary families, where the Beat is entailed, it is impossible. But now and again a Younger Son is born for whom it is awkward to provide. One of these was hanging around the Yard that summer, and it was he who was told off to perambulate London at his own free will, and discover the conspiracy that was turning sacred institutions topsy-turvy. At head-quarters the conspirators were registered as The Moonshiners.
Lionel was enchanted with his job.
It was Gypsy who was the first to scent a public danger at large in lamplit London. The Regular Policeman is not the public danger you might suppose. He goes like a metronome, and you have only to time his beat. Between his two appearances practically anything can be done. But the Roving Constable is another question altogether. At any moment he may take you by surprise, like a rainbow in April.
He took Gypsy by surprise outside a baker’s shop in Kentish Town, opposite a Bus-stop. That night Gypsy was making a round of the Bus-stops, denying a rumour that Moving Staircases were being contemplated by the Omnibus Companies to Save the Conductresses’ Feet. Gypsy had just let the Regular Policeman go by, and was about to paint his sign in peacock blues and greens on the baker’s window, when Lionel tapped him on the shoulder.
“Wot are you doing here?” said Lionel. It is the first question given under the heading “Burglars” in the Policeman’s Guide to Conversation.
Gypsy was used to taking situations in at glances. He instantly saw that the whole fabric of the Moonshiners was threatened, and he answered with great presence of mind,
“I am trying to steal a plum cake.”
“Wot for?” said Lionel.
“Because I could do with it,” said Gypsy engagingly. And it was true. Gypsy never paused to consider his interior without discovering that he could do with plum cake.
“’Ow were you thinking of stealing it?” asked Lionel.
“I was going to try to smash the window,” said Gypsy.
“I’m serprised at you,” said Lionel sternly. “Think of the row you’d ’ave made, and everybody tired out wanting their night’s rest.”
“I should have tried to smash it quietly,” said Gypsy.
“I’m serprised at you,” said Lionel still more sternly. “You might ’ave cut your pore ’and.”
He put his own hand in his pocket and gave Gypsy sixpence. “Now don’t you go making no more disturbances,” he said. “There’s a coffee stall up the street, second on the left. Move on.”
“Robert,” said Gypsy warmly, “where do you live?”
“Winchester Mews, N.W. 3,” said Lionel, “and my name’s Lionel. Move on.”
“It’s no name for the Beaten Track,” said Gypsy thoughtfully.
“I don’t follow no Beaten Track,” said Lionel. “All London’s my Beat, and the Moonshiners is my mark. And as sure as my name’s wot it is, one of these fine nights I’ll run ’em to earth.”
“Wouldn’t it be better,” said Gypsy, looking at the moon, “to run them to heaven?”
“Wot do you take me for?” asked Lionel with dignity. “A member of the Air-Force? Move on.”
Gypsy moved on, drank his coffee and ate his slab of cake in Lionel’s name, and hurried back to do his sign. But instead of saying “The Conductresses’ Feet” it now said,
THE CONDUCTRESSES’ POOR FEET
This human note (due entirely to Lionel) touched the General Omnibus Co.’s heart, and it convened a Board-Meeting on the spot. But long before that Gypsy had hastened home and conveyed the tidings to his fellow-conspirators. He was always a little excitable in telling a tale, and he swore that as Lionel left him he threw behind him on the pavement the shadow, not of a man, but of Scotland Yard, which by some trick of the moon with a cloud changed to the shadow of a Handley-Page, and finally spread itself to the semblance of a flying angel.
Mrs. Green said, “You and your fancies, nonsense!”
But the Night Watchman said, “Of course. A human being can throw any shadow he pleases, or doesn’t please. If you want to know a man, look at his shadow by moonlight.”
Everybody began at once to look at everybody else’s shadow, and to hide his own; and for a little while the shadows flickered over Trafalgar Square like flowers in the wind, and birds on the wing, and swimming fish. Just as you thought you had a man he would slip his shadow into that of Nelson, or a Lion, or a Church, or a Hotel, or the National Gallery, and you lost him. Shadow Hide-and-Seek became rather a favourite pastime round the Weatherhouse after this.
But to-night the Taxi-Man soon called them to order.
“Enough of shadows,” he commanded. “We’re up against a danger, and it’s got to be tackled. If our work’s to go on, Lionel must be diddled.”
“But who’s to diddle him?” asked Ginger.
“The Picadilly Flower-Girls,” said the Taxi-Man.
GYPSY AND GINGER’S FRIENDS
11. The Piccadilly Flower Girls
The Piccadilly Flower-Girls were fascinating people with fragrant names like Lily, Rose and Violet. It was these damsels, or their grand-mothers, whom the Taxi-Man declared he had delivered from dragons during the Discovery of London. They would, he said, do anything for him.
“Out of sheer gratitude?” asked Ginger.
“Not a bit of it,” said the Taxi-Man. “Out of sheer joy. And if Lionel can resist ’em, he’s not the Roving Policeman I take him to be.”
“Lionel mustn’t be hurt,” said Gypsy. “I love Lionel, and if the pillar-box runs to it I’m going to leave a Buszard Cake on his Winchester Mews doorstep to-morrow. It will be a plum cake with almond icing, and I shall have it frosted an inch thick, with pink sugar doves, and LIONEL done on it in silver balls, like bits of quicksilver on the carpet when you break the puzzle by accident.”
“I used to break it on purpose,” said Ginger. “Mother always said I mustn’t eat them.”
“Good gracious, I should think not!” said Gypsy.
“I mean the silver balls,” said Ginger. “I don’t know why, but I was never allowed to eat the silver balls till I was ten years old.”
“She was afraid of you choking,” said Mrs. Green.
“I knows a perfickly wunnerful cure for hiccups,” mentioned Rags.
“Don’t tell me,” said Gypsy quickly. “I and my brothers never discouraged hiccups. I held the Hiccup Gold-Belt with a record of 127. An interval of three minutes brought the break to a close. The last thirty seconds used to be a fearful struggle. It is my brother Albert who holds the Silver Sneezing Cup. If you held it through three successive Epidemics, you kept it. He was passionately devoted to sneezing. When he was nine he made out a list of twenty things he liked best in the world. The First was Sneezing and the Second was Mother. He had no equal, too, in blowing out candles with his nose.”
“You never told me about your brother Albert before,” said Ginger.
“Would it have made any difference?” asked Gypsy, so anxiously that she hastened to reassure him. And whenever Ginger began to reassure Gypsy about anything, or Gypsy Ginger, it was time for their friends to go.
The next night the Piccadilly Flower-Girls came into action. The plan was very simple. Four Girls were told off to every Moonshiner, and two watched at each end of the street in which their protégé was at work. As soon as Lionel appeared in the distance, one would fly to warn—Ginger, or Jeremy, as the case might be, while the other stayed behind to diddle Lionel for exactly one minute. Any policeman can be diddled for that length of time. Then he reverts to type. But Rose in her radiant shawls, shedding damask petals like confetti round Lionel’s bewildered feet: or Lily floating her silver scarf before Lionel’s dazzled eyes, leaving one ivory bloom upon his helmet as she vanished: or Violet in her dusky veil, rising from the purple shadows to murmur music in Lionel’s intoxicated ear: was enough to dissolve the force of habit in any official—for sixty seconds.
Then Rose danced by, or Lily melted into thin air, or Violet sank shyly back into her shades; and Lionel turned the corner and discovered—Ginger, or Jeremy, as the case might be. And either would be seated in the middle of the road on a campstool inside a square of rope.
This was the Night Watchman’s idea. Any man, he said, sitting publicly inside a square of rope, will be taken for granted. Not even a policeman will question his position; the man inside the rope is as Cæsar’s Wife. For one thing, he must have been put there, and when one has already been handled by a higher power, one need not be re-handled by a lesser. It is only when one is obviously handling oneself that Authority smells danger. And nobody, said the Night Watchman ever really thinks that a man could be such a fool as deliberately to put himself inside a rope.
So every Moonshiner now went forth with rope and campstool, and each in turn discovered the wisdom of the Night Watchman. One by one they made Lionel’s acquaintance, and one by one they loved him.
He had to be loved, he was so trustful. For instance, he trusted Ginger. A woman inside the ropes would have aroused any other policeman’s sense of the unusual. Even he, struck by her sex, said when they encountered, “Wot are you doing here?” She answered, “Oh, Women on the Land, you know,” and he believed her at once.
Then there was the case of Jeremy.
The first time he found Jeremy sitting inside his rope, he said, “Wot are you doing here, you’re no night watchman. You’re a street hawker, I seen you last Friday selling paper windmills in Farringdon Street.”
“That wasn’t I,” said Jeremy, “that was my unfortunate brother Albert.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Lionel. “Wot was his misfortune?”
“Besides his name, he got mislaid last Saturday, and hasn’t been seen since,” said Jeremy, and hid his face in his hands.
Lionel went away, delicately leaving his own pocket-handkerchief on Jeremy’s knee, and put an advertisement about Albert in the “Missing” Column of The People. A good many Alberts turned up, and every night he brought them along to Jeremy for inspection, but they were all the wrong ones. At last Jeremy got tired of them, and told Lionel that he had had a dream about Albert dying in foreign waters. When he heard this Lionel borrowed his own handkerchief from Jeremy to blow his nose, and next day he laid a Cross of Immortelles on the Albert Memorial. It was all he could do now. There was a pleased paragraph about it in the Morning Post.
But Gypsy was a little put out. He told Jeremy that he did think he might have drowned somebody else’s brother; and then he crossed the road and had his brown boots blacked.
Soon Lionel began to make little Rendezvous with the different Moonshiners, noting the times in his engagement book, so that before long they knew exactly where to expect him at each half-hour through the night.
Rose and Lily, Lupin and Nemophila, were able to slack off a bit, and resume their dancing round the Piccadilly Cupid, which is the way the Flower-Girls like to spend their nights. All except Violet, who still haunted the purple shadows, and murmured fragments of song which Lionel vainly tried to recapture over breakfast. He would turn up at the Rendezvous with little gifts—a bottle of Asthma Cure for Mrs. Green, or a picture postcard of Mr. Matheson Lang as Shylock for Tonio. How could they help being fond of him?
Every day brought tokens of their affection to the Winchester Mews, N.W. 3; but Lionel never knew who it was that left plumcakes and violets and balloons at his door; or why one morning a floral arch was erected at the narrow entrance to the Mews with GOD BLESS OUR LIONEL done in red and white roses set in smilax.
He only knew that even a London Policeman’s life can become a lovely thing.
The last days of July had been so hot that the pavements steamed all night with the memory of them. In the early mornings Ginger would wake in a thin haze that was itself like the last thin veil between sleep and consciousness. One Monday morning as she stretched her arms, she half-opened her eyes upon London breathing forth its mists, and half-opened her ears to the lost sounds of bleating sheep. Ginger at once became six years old again.
Every Monday morning when she was six, sheep had shuffled under her window along the misty street. And as soon as the unseen sheep had passed with an unseen dog and an unseen shepherd, an unseen piper had followed with a little tune upon a penny whistle. This was all a part of being six years old, and she never wondered about it then; but whenever she thought of it afterwards she wondered why any piper should play his tune so early in the morning, when even the housemaids were not yet on the doorsteps to throw him pennies. Listening to the sheep go by, she now wondered all this over again. While she was wondering, the last sheep bleated itself into the distance, and at the same instant a penny whistle began piping in the mist. It was the tune she had always, and only heard when she was six.
She lifted herself on one elbow, and saw Gypsy lifting himself on his. They looked at each other, and she saw that he was exactly eight years old.
“Did you ever see him?” asked Ginger in a whisper.
Gypsy shook his head. “Did you?”
Ginger shook hers. “I always longed to.”
“I wonder if there’s any way of catching him?” whispered Gypsy; and reaching stealthily for the pillar-box, he shook out a dozen coppers. Then he picked out the gold ones which were the fine-weather pennies (he himself was always given brown pennies), and span one through the haze in the direction of the tune. They heard it ring on the road, and the tune stopped, and a moment later mended its broken bar. Gypsy sent a second penny not quite so far, and in the pause they heard three soft steps come their way. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth pennies fell shorter still, and the seventh penny was so close that a form stood up like a shadow on the mist. Even then they couldn’t see the Piper very distinctly; but he was tall and thin, and Gypsy said he had the silver hair of a very old man, and Ginger said he had the blue eyes of the youngest babies.
But his gentle voice was neither young nor old as he said kindly, “What am I to do with seven pennies, children?”
“Spend them?” suggested Gypsy.
“That’s so difficult,” said the Piper.
“Spin them?” suggested Ginger.
“Ah, that’s easy,” said the Piper. And he sat down cross-legged a little way off on the pavement, and span one of the seven gold pennies. While it span he sang a song that began and ended with the penny.
“The fountain is dry,
The fountain is dry!
Let down your rain,
Blue sky, blue sky,
Or a child’s blue eye
Must let its rain
To fill his fountain
Up again.”
“What a nice song,” said Ginger. “Do spin another.”
So the Piper span the second penny and sang.
“The night will never stay,
The night will still go by,
Though with a million stars
You pin it to the sky,
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon,
The night will slip away
Like sorrow or a tune.”
The last note met the plop of the penny on the pavement.
“How do you manage it?” asked Gypsy.
“It manages itself,” said the Piper. “None of my songs lasts longer than the spin of a coin.” He span the third penny so badly that it only made a very little song, like this:
“The tide in the river,
The tide in the river,
The tide in the river runs deep.
I saw a shiver
Pass over the river
As the tide turned in its sleep.”
“Have you just come up the river?” asked Ginger.
“No,” said the Piper. “I have just come from a chickory field under Graffham. The Sussex chicory is as blue now as it will be, and the raspberries are ripening on the Downs.”
“Don’t!” implored Ginger, sitting up, “How could you bear to come to town?”
“I follow the sheep,” said the Piper, and span the fourth penny. While it turned he sang:
“As I was going through No Man’s Land
I saw an old man counting sand,
I saw a woman sauntering by
With wings on her head that could not fly,
After that I saw a child
Who from birth had never smiled.
These riddles are hard to understand,
They could only happen in No Man’s Land.”
“Have all those riddles got answers?” asked Ginger.
“I think so,” said the Piper, “but they’re harder to find in the city than in the country. They grow best in the grass, like men and flowers. The grass is mown now, and Sussex smells hay and hears corn.”
He twisted his fifth penny, and sang while it hummed:
“If I had a lady
I’d give her pretty things,
Cowslip balls and daisy chains
And green grass rings.
I’d cut a fork of hazel
To find hidden wells,
And turn about we’d crack the nuts
And sail the nut-shells.
We’d love at first sight,
And marry on the spot,
I and the lady
That I haven’t got.”
“Gypsy!” cried Ginger. “I can’t bear it any longer. Let’s go and live in a hut in a wood.”
“If you want a nice hut,” said the Piper, “I know where there is one on the banks of a Southdown river, with martins under the thatch.”
“But the Blacksmith’s Son lives in it,” wailed Ginger, “with Lizzie Hooker.”
“It was empty,” said the Piper, “when I saw it last.”
“How long ago was that?” asked Gypsy hopefully.
“A hundred and sixty years, I think,” said the Piper, “so I ought to be moving on, children.”
Before he rose he span his sixth penny, and while it twirled he moved away and sang as he went:
“I can pipe a song for that,
And a song for this;
You may pay me with an old straw hat,
A crust or a kiss.
I haven’t any use for pounds
And little use for pence,
While I whistle bits of rounds
Sitting on a fence.
You’ll learn them in a minute,
And forget them in a day,
And remember them in fifty years
When I come your way.”
His voice died with the penny. And very far away they heard him once more pipe his Monday tune.
“Oh dear,” said Ginger restlessly, “I wish he’d told us what that tune was about. But I’m determined to remember every one of his other songs to-morrow morning.” (As a matter of fact she forgot them all, like the dreams we determine to remember in the middle of the night.)
“There’s one of the songs he forgot himself,” and Gypsy, picking up the seventh penny and spinning it. And while it span the distant piping seemed to turn to singing, but it was now such a long way off that I am not sure if Gypsy and Ginger got the words right.
“Oh, did you hear the sheep go by
Upon a Monday morning?
Did you hear the sheep go by
Without a sign of warning?
Did you hear the sheep go by?
They bleated through the London mist
With plaintive sounds and muffled,
They bleated through the London mist,
They shuffled and they scuffled
Bleating through the London mist.
They came from meadows fresh and green
Which they had cropped together,
They came from meadows fresh and green
And they were going whither?
They came from meadows fresh and green.”
When Ginger said she couldn’t bear it any more, she meant it. She had lived in London well over two months now, and that was longer than she had ever lived anywhere else in her life. She had a terror of falling into grooves and never being able to climb out again. Besides, August was upon them, and London in August is no place for anybody. So Ginger said to Gypsy,
“We must be off.”
“How?” asked Gypsy.
“By the first train from the nearest station,” said Ginger positively.
Gypsy looked at the Trafalgar Tube and said, “Shall we go to the Elephant and Castle, or to Edgeware Road?”
Ginger shed three tears and said, “If I don’t smell hay and hear corn to-day, I shall die.”
Gypsy shook the pillar-box gravely. He shook it to the extent of fivepence halfpenny.
“How did the halfpenny get in?” he said sternly. “Has somebody been cheating?”
“No,” said Ginger, “that was given me last Sunday by a poor child under twelve. What’s the matter with you? Children under twelve are half-price for everything, aren’t they?”
“Did you say a poor child?” asked Gypsy.
“Yes,” said Ginger. “I gave it sixpence change. It was so extremely under twelve, you see. It said it would come again to ask the weather next Sunday and bring its cousins.”
“Well, it’s going to be disappointed,” said Gypsy. “Though how we’re to take tickets to hay and corn on fivepence halfpenny, I don’t quite know. We shall have to walk; unless we stay over to-morrow and put in a really hard day’s work and earn our fares. What do you say to that?”
“Oh yes,” said Ginger, “and then we can give a party to-night and say good-bye to everybody.”
So they settled down to put in a really hard day’s work. The day helped them a lot. It was a sultry, many-minded day; it did a variety of things with heavy heatwaves to begin with, and then it muttered in the distance, and shed a few big drops, and slacked off for a bit; then it rolled up a lot of dark blue clouds, and then a lot of black ones. Mr. Morley came over from his hotel to say that it was so dark in the Reading Room that the visitors couldn’t read, and he wanted Gypsy’s advice about turning on the electric light. Gypsy, half in and half out of his door, looked at the sky and said:
“I think you’d better turn it on.”
Mr. Morley thanked him, and tipped him half-a-crown (they do it handsomely at Morley’s).
“Can I have it in pennies?” asked Gypsy.
“Certainly,” said Mr. Morley. He counted thirty pennies into Gypsy’s hand, and crossed the road.
Then quite suddenly a blue cloud hit a black one, and Gypsy leapt out of his door as far as he could go, and the hail came down like peas and rattled in a box by the theatre-men. So Gypsy called “Hi! hi!” very loudly, and Mr. Morley, who had just got under the portico, came out and crossed the road again.
“Yes?” said Mr. Morley.
“I know you’d better turn it on,” said Gypsy.
“Thank you very much,” said Mr. Morley, and gave Gypsy five shillings.
“Can I have it in pennies?” shouted Gypsy. (He had to shout because of the thunder.)
“Certainly,” shouted Mr. Morley, turning up his coat-collar a little too late, because ribbons of rain were already running down his neck from the guttering round his top hat. It took him a long time to count sixty pennies into Gypsy’s hands, which got very full; then Mr. Morley wasn’t certain he’d given him enough, and thought they’d better count them again to make sure. So they did, holding the pennies in their mouths or under their armpits, or between their knees, as they got them counted; and then Gypsy lifted his arm by mistake, to wipe the rain out of his eyes, and dropped a shillingsworth. They rolled and splashed about Trafalgar Square, which could now be paddled in. Gypsy wasn’t allowed to leave his post, so Mr. Morley knelt down on his beautifully-pressed trousers, and crawled about the Square, finding the shilling one by one. It took him some time, because he could hardly see for the water tumbling off his beautifully-ironed silk hat, and for the lightning making him start and say “Oh!” just as he was about to pick a penny up. But at last he brought them all back to Gypsy.
“So sorry to have troubled you,” said Gypsy.
“Not at all,” said Mr. Morley, because the Morley Hotel manners are faultless. Then he went back to the Hotel, and changed his boots, and turned on the light in the Reading-Room. And then the sun came out.
So he had to cross the Square again, and he found Ginger outside the Weatherhouse looking as nice as mixed ice-cream in a lovely summer smock.
“What delightful weather,” said Ginger. “Why have you got the Hotel lights on?”
“Would you turn them out if you were I?” asked Mr. Morley, for his grammar was as faultless as his manners.
“I would indeed,” said Ginger sunnily; “seldom have I seen so blue a sky.”
Mr. Morley tipped her handsomely (the information apart, her smile was worth it), lifted his hat to her, and fled.
“How fast he’s going,” said Gypsy, from the very back of the Weatherhouse. “What did he give you, darling?”
“A half-sovereign!” gasped Ginger. “A real old-fashioned half-sovereign!”
“No wonder he’s running,” said Gypsy. “But we must get it changed somehow.”
“Oh, must we?” pleaded Ginger.
“Think of the Pillar-Box,” said Ginger firmly. So they bought an evening newspaper which they didn’t want, and told the Evening Newsboy to let the children know there’d be a party in the Square during the small hours. Then they put the pennies in the Pillar-Box. They had had several other customers that day, and the Pound was nearly reached.
At ten minutes to seven an old lady in a black bonnet and corkscrew curls stepped up to ask the weather.
“Set fair, madam,” said Ginger.
“How much will that be?” said the old lady.
“One penny, madam,” said Ginger.
The old lady paid her penny. She was the Weatherhouse’s last customer. When they posted her penny the Pillar-Box burst.
| “Hurrah!” | —cried— | Gypsy. |
| “Hurrah!” | Ginger. |
The theatre crowd that evening found the Weatherhouse shutters up, and a placard outside saying:
THESE PREMISES ARE CLOSED.
GYPSY AND GINGER ARE RETIRING
FROM BUSINESS.
People who have only seen London on Coronation Day, or Lord Mayor’s Show Day, or on the day when the Ambassador of Calamiane is given the Freedom of the City, do not really know of what she is capable in the way of festival. All these occasions are foreseen and dress-rehearsed. The costume is provided in advance, and it is trusted that the spirit, as well as the body, may inhabit it on the day. But when the time comes it is usually about some business of its own; for in spite of the newspapers the spirit is not the body’s house-dog. It doesn’t come when it’s whistled for. Its breed is tameless.
But when it springs out of its wilds it does in an hour what Committees cannot do in six months. Only those who saw Trafalgar Square on the night of Gypsy and Ginger’s party know what the spirit of London can do in an hour.
The Evening Newsboy spread the rumour of the party with the swiftness and ubiquity of evening news. He had the newsboy’s art of subdividing a single rumour into a flight of swallows. Before midnight every slum in the city knew there was to be a party amongst the fountains of Trafalgar Square.
Gypsy and Ginger sat on the floor of the Weatherhouse making staircases of their two-hundred-and-forty pennies, and consulted how to spend them to the best advantage. They had quite forgotten their intention of spending them on railway tickets to Sussex.
“Which do you think the children would like best?” asked Gypsy. “Presents or supper?”
“Presents and supper,” said Ginger.
“It won’t run to both, darling. The guests will come in their thousands.”
“But think of a whole pound.”
“I know, but all the same,” said Gypsy. He was really the practical one of the two. “If we decided on presents, a lot could be done with beads and marbles.”
“If they had supper, we could give them farthing buns,” said Ginger. “For a pound you can get a thousand farthing buns, more or less, I’m never sure which. But if there are thousands of children—.”
“What about a Conjuror?” suggested Gypsy. “You ought to be able to buy quite a good Conjuror for a pound?”
“No,” said Ginger, “we can be our own conjurors. And I want the children to have something that will really go round without giving out, and I’ve thought of what it is.”
“Well?” said Gypsy.
“Sherbert,” said Ginger. “Packets and packets of it. In the fountains.”
“In one fountain,” said Gypsy, catching on with enthusiasm, “and lemonade crystals in the other.”
They went out to spend their pound. While they were absent, the Piccadilly Flower-Girls came and got to work. In a few minutes the Square was a garden of roses. Roses red and white, yellow and pink, garlanded the stone balustrades opposite the National Gallery and wreathed the basins of the fountains; arches of roses bloomed up the steps; the Weatherhouse was smothered in Crimson Ramblers; Dorothy Perkins climbed from the foot of the Nelson Column to the top of Nelson’s head, the base was mounded deep in moss, and every lion crouched in a temple of standards. Their work was barely accomplished when Mrs. Green arrived buried in balloons. They were gas balloons of every colour, and each was anchored with a fairy lamp, so that when she let them go they hung in chains and patterns of light fifteen feet in air. The other Moonlighters were now appearing in full force. The Punch-and-Judy Man set up his theatre between the fountains, Tonio’s striped and painted Hokey-Pokey booth was established in one corner, the Strawberry Girl had her great fruit-baskets in another. Jeremy, with an assortment of his brightest wares, turned the Weatherhouse into a Penny Toyshop. The Organ-Man and his barrel-organ took the middle of the Square, where there was plenty of room for dancing. The Muffin-and-Crumpet Man walked round and round and round ringing his bell. They told him that for once he was out of season, but the Night Watchman said that the moon was blue to-night, so that anything could happen for once.
By the time Gypsy and Ginger returned, laden with packets of Sherbert and Lemonade Powder, the party was ready.
“Oh!” cried Ginger.
She dropped her parcels and dashed from attraction to attraction; flew one of Jeremy’s windmills round the Square, tasted a strawberry, ate half a hokey-pokey, rang the muffin-bell in Toby’s ear, stuck a rose in her smock, and seizing Gypsy’s hands danced him three times round the barrel-organ.
Then they all turned their attention to the fountains, and just as the sherbert got really fizzing the Evening Newsboy appeared with the children.
Not many parties begin in full swing, but Gypsy’s and Ginger’s did. The moment the children of London saw Trafalgar Square, a dream of balloons and roses under the blue moon, they began to laugh; and for two hours, whether they were dancing to the organ music as only London Children can dance: or watching Punch thwack Judy as only Punch can thwack: or eating crumpets, and strawberries, and free ice-creams: or besieging the Weatherhouse for Jeremy’s free toys, or lying on their stomachs over the fountains with their faces in the sherbert: or playing Touch-Stone with Lily, Rose and Jessamine around the Column: they never stopped laughing. When the Taxi-Man appeared astride of Snow-Flame, and put him through his loveliest circus-tricks below the fairy lights, their laughter was louder than ever. And when Gypsy, inspired by the sound of it, painted this sign in luminuous paint on the National Gallery:
THERE IS NO TRUTH IN THE RUMOUR
THAT CHILDREN’S PARTIES WILL BE HELD IN
TRAFALGAR SQUARE ONCE A WEEK
their laughter was so loud that it was heard from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. It was so loud that it was heard by the Policeman in the Strand.
He blew his whistle.