CHAPTER VII
ABOUT FAIRYLAND
By the time Boodles was sixteen she was shaped and polished. Weevil had done what he could; not much, for the poor old thing was neither learned nor rich; and she had gone to Tavistock, where various arts had been crammed into her brain, all mixed up together like the ingredients of a patent pill. Boodles knew a good deal for seventeen; but Nature and Dartmoor had taught her more than the school-mistress. She was a fresh and fragrant child, with no unhealthy fancies; loving everything that was clean and pretty; loathing spiders, and creeping things, and filth in general; and longing ardently already to win for herself a name and a soul a little higher than the beetles. They were presumptuous longings for a child of passion, who did not know her parents, or anything about her origin beyond the fact that she had been thrown out in a bundle of fern, and taken in and cared for by Abel Cain Weevil.
At the tender age of fourteen Boodles received her love-wound. It was down by the Tavy, where the water swirls round pebbles and rattles them against its rocks below Sandypark. Her love-affair was idyllic, and therefore dangerous, because the idyllic state bears the same resemblance to rough and brutal life as the fairy-tale bears to the true story of that life. The tales begin with "once upon a time," and end with "they lived happily ever after." The idyllic state begins in the same way, but ends, either with "they parted with tears and kisses and never saw each other again," or "they married and were miserable ever afterwards." Only children can blow idyll-bubbles which will float for a time. Elderly people try, but they only make themselves ridiculous, and the bubbles will not form. People of thirty or over cannot play at fairy-tales. When they try they become as fantastic a sight as an old gentleman wearing a paper hat and blowing a penny trumpet. Shakespeare, who knew everything about human nature that men can know, made his Romeo and Juliet children, and ended their idyll as such things must end. Customs have changed since; even children are beginning to understand that life cannot be made a fairy-tale; and Romeo prefers the football field to sighing beneath a school-girl's balcony; and Juliet twists up her hair precociously and runs amok with a hockey-stick.
Still fairy-tales lift their mystic blooms to the moon beside the Tavy, and Boodles had seen those flowers, and wandered among them very delicately. The boy was Aubrey Bellamie, destined for the Navy, and his home was in Tavistock. He had come into the world, amid an odour of respectability, two years before Boodles had crept shamefully up the terrestrial back stairs. All he knew about Boodles was the fact that she was a girl; that one all-sufficient fact that makes youths mad. He knew, also, that her head was glorious, and that her lips were better than wine. He was a clean, pretty boy; like most of the youths in the Navy, who are the good fresh salt of Devon and England everywhere. Boodles came into Tavistock twice a week to be educated, and he would wait at the door of the school until she came out, because he wanted to educate her too; and then they would wander beside the Tavy, and kiss new knowledge into each other's young souls. The fairy-tale was real enough, because real life had not begun. They were still in "once upon a time" stage, and they believed in the happy ending. It was the age of delusion; glorious folklore days. There was enough fire in them both to make the story sufficiently life-like to be mistaken for the real thing. Aubrey's parents did not know of the love-affair then; neither did Weevil. In fairy-tales relations are usually wicked creatures who have to be avoided. So for months they wandered beside the river of fairyland, and plucked the flowers of that pleasant country which were gleaming with idyllic dew.
"I can't think why you love my head so," Boodles had protested, when a thunderstorm of affection had partially subsided. "It's like a big tangle of red seaweed. The girls at the school call me Carrots."
"I should like to hear them," said Aubrey fiercely; "Darling, it's the loveliest head in the world."
And then he went on to talk a lot of shocking nonsense about flowers and sunsets, and all other wondrous flaming things, which had derived their colour and splendour from the light of his sweetheart's head, and from none other source or inspiration whatsoever.
"If I was a boy I shouldn't love a girl with red hair. There are such a lot of girls you might love. Girls with silky flaxen hair, and girls with lovely brown hair—"