Sir Harry: A Love Story

by Archibald Marshall

It was no escapade to him, but a serious quest, about which played all the warm palpitations and eager emotions of high romance. To-night, if ever, with the earth moving towards the soft riot of spring, with the air still and brooding as if summer were already here, though sharp and clean, scoured by the wind and washed to gentleness again by the showers of April, with the moonlight so strong that in the shadows of the trees there was no darkness, but diffused and quivering light hardly less bright than the light of day, and to the eyes of the spirit infinitely more discerning—surely to-night he might hope to see the fairies dancing in their rings, and the little men stealing in and out among the tree-branches!

He longed passionately to see the fairies. The beauty of the earth meant so much to him. All through his childhood his love for it had grown and grown till it had become almost a pain to him. For though it meant so much he did not know what it meant. It had always seemed to be leading him up to something, some great discovery, or some great joy—at least some great emotion—which would give it just that meaning that would tune his soul to it and entrench him safely behind some knowledge, hidden from mortal eyes, where he could survey life as it was, perfect and blissful, and withal secret. The fairies, if he could only look upon them once, would give him the secret. Surely they would not withhold themselves from him on such a night as this.

He pictured himself lying on the warm beech-mast in the shadows of some great tree that stood sentinel over a stretch of moonlit lawn, watching the delicate gossamer figures at their revels, their iridescent wings softly gleaming, their petalled skirts flying, their tiny limbs twinkling; and perhaps he would hear the high tenuous chime of their laughter as they gave themselves up to their delicious merriment. He would lie very still, hardly breathing. The mortal grossness which he felt to be in him should not cast its shadow over their bright evanescent spirit. He would keep, oh, so still, and just watch, and grow happier and happier, and at last—know. The grossness would be purged from him. When the moon drooped and the fairy dancers melted away, he would have seen behind the veil. After that he would never suffer again from the perplexing thought that there was some great thing hidden from him, that just when beauty gripped his soul and seemed to have something to tell him, and he stood ready to receive the message, there was only silence and a sense of loss, which made him sad. Nature would speak to him, as she had always seemed to be speaking to him, but now he would understand, and answer, and life would be more beautiful than it had ever been before.

He had always hugged secrets to himself ever since he could remember, secrets that it would have seemed to him the deepest shame that any one should surprise. Once on a summer's evening, when he had been lying in his little cot by his mother's bed, whiling away the long daylight hour by telling himself a most absorbing story, which at that time he was going through from night to night, he had become so worked up by it that he carried on the dialogue in a clear audible voice. A warning knock came upon the bedroom door, and that particular story was cut short never to be resumed. It was the time when his mother and grandmother were dining, and his nurse and all the other servants were down below. He had not thought that it was possible that he could have been overheard. He had been acting a garden story. The characters were the Garden, the flowers and himself. The Garden was a very kind and gracious lady who led him, a little boy called Arnold, with black straight hair—he preferred that sort to his own fair curls—to one flower after another, and told him whether they had been good or naughty. The flowers were mostly children, but a few, such as geraniums and fuchsias, were grown up. The geraniums never took any notice of him, and he did not like them on that account, but looked the other way when they were rebuked. This fortunately happened but seldom, as they usually behaved with propriety, though stiff and obstinate in character. The roses he often pleaded for, because they were so beautiful. Vanity was their besetting sin, and the Garden often had to tell them—in language much the same as that used by the Vicar in church—that they were no more in her sight than the humblest and poorest flowers. But he could not bear to see their beautiful petals scattered, which happened as a punishment if they had flaunted themselves beyond hope of forgiveness. It was coming to be his idea, as the story progressed, that some day he would make a strong appeal to the Garden to abolish this punishment altogether. Then no flowers would ever die, but only go to sleep in the winter, and he would be the great hero of the flowers, with hair blacker and straighter than ever, and whenever he went among them they would bow and curtsey to him, but nobody would see them doing it except himself.

On this June evening it was a tall Madonna lily for whom he was pleading in such an impassioned manner. Lilies were very lovely girls, not quite children and not quite grown-up. He had a sentimental affection for them. He would see them incline towards one another as he came near, and hear, or rather make them whisper to one another: "Here is that dear little boy. How good he is! And isn't his hair dark and smooth! I should like to kiss him." (Had he said that aloud, just before the knock came? He would never be able to look the world in the face again if that speech had been heard.) The Garden had accused the lily of leaving her sisters and the place where she belonged to go and talk to a groom in the stables. She might have been kicked by a horse. An example must be made. No little treats, no sugar on her bread and butter, no favourite stories told her, for a week. The lily had cried, and said she had meant no harm, and wouldn't do it again. He had adjured her not to cry, in very moving terms, which it made him hot all over to imagine overheard, and the lily had said, in no apparent connection with the question under discussion, but in a loud and clear voice: "Arnold is brave and strong; he can run faster than all other boys in the world."

It was just then that the knock came. He was unhappy about it for days, and looked in the faces of all the servants to see if there was any sign of the derision he must have brought upon himself, but could find none, and presently comforted himself with the idea that it was Santa Claus who had knocked at the door; but he dropped the drama of the flowers, and afterwards only whispered the speaking parts of other dramas.

It was not from any lack of love for those about him that he kept his soul's adventures to himself. Of sympathy with them he might instinctively have felt a lack, but he loved everybody with whom he had to do, and everybody loved him. His mother was nearest to him, though his grandmother was felt to be the head of all things and of all people. His mother showed jealousy towards her, but not in her presence. The child divined this, and responded to her craving for his caresses when he was alone with her by little endearments which were very sweet to her. "You and me together, Mummy," he would whisper, snuggling up to her, and stroke her face and kiss her, in a way that he never did when his grandmother was there. He must have divined too that he was the centre of existence for his grandmother, but she never petted him or invited his caresses, though her face showed pleasure when he leant against her knee and prattled to her, which he did without any fear, and as if it was natural that they two should have much to say to one another.

During his earliest days his mother often wept stormily, and there was great antagonism between her and the old nurse, who had also nursed his father. But when he was five years old the nurse suddenly went away, and his mother's weepings, which had saddened and sometimes frightened him, as she clutched him to her and rocked to and fro over him, ceased, so that he presently forgot them. She did much for him herself that the nurse had done before, with the help of a girl from the village, who became a close friend of his, though not in a way to cause his mother jealousy.

Eliza was slow and rather stupid, but she could tell half a dozen stories. She told them in stilted fashion, and never varied the manner, and hardly the words, of her telling. If she did so, he would correct her. By and by she became rather like a dull priest intoning a liturgy, known so well that there was no call to attend to the meeting. He could see after all that himself, and wanted no variations or emotion of hers to get between him and the pictures that her monotonous drone projected on the curtain of his brain. He was the hero of all the stories himself, and carried them far beyond the bounds of the liturgy. As Jack the Giant-killer, he engaged with foes unknown to fairy lore. As the Beast he drew such interest from his mastery over other beasts that his transformation into a Prince with straight black hair was always being postponed, and was finally dropped out of his own story altogether, together with Beauty, who had become somewhat of a meddler with things that she couldn't be expected to understand. He was Cinderella in the story of that time, because of riding in the coach made out of a pumpkin, and the mice turned into horses, but never felt at home in the character until he turned the story round and gave the leading part to the Prince, with Cinderella's adventures adapted to male habits and dignity.

With Eliza in attendance he sometimes played for hours together in the garden, and he could get away from her if he was careful never to be right out of her sight or hearing. It was then that the drama of the garden and the flowers began, but when it came to an end he returned to the fairy stories.