Half-Past Bedtime

by Sir H. H. Bashford

"Now close your eyes," he told her, "and listen."

For a moment she could hear nothing but a ploughman shouting to his horses and the tap-tapping of a woodpecker; but slowly as she listened sounds began to come to her, as of a hidden band far in the distance. Presently they drew nearer, and at first they were confused, like hundreds of people gently humming through closed lips; but at last she began to recognize different notes, like tiny drums and flutes and fifes. All the time, too, close at hand, there was a faint persistent ringing of bells; and these were the anemones swaying on their stems; and the little trumpet-sounds came from the primroses. Then there was a rough sort of scraping sound; and that was a mole, he said, burrowing in the earth two or three yards away. And there was a sound like a chant on one full note from a big field of grass just in front of the wood. Those were the distincter notes; but there was a continuous sharp undertone, like millions of finger-tips tapping on stretched parchment; and those were the buds opening all along the hedges and upon the leaf-twigs up above them. But deeper than all, deeper and softer than the softest organ, there was a great sound; and that was the sap, he told her, rising like a flood in all things living for miles around them.

Then she opened her eyes and dropped his hand, and it was as if she had suddenly become almost deaf. She lifted her fingers and put them in her ears.

"It's as if they were stopped up," she said. "Hold my hand again."

But he turned and smiled at her.

"Are you still unhappy?" he asked.

Marian shook her head.

"No, not now," she answered.

"That's right," he said. "The world's much too good a place for a little girl like you to be unhappy in."

Then he held her hand again, and as the sounds of the world came back to her there happened the oddest thing of all. For now there came other sounds, clearer and nearer, lighter than breath and closer than her heart. They said "Marian" to her, "Marian, Marian"; and the strange thing was that she seemed to remember them—just as if their names were on the tip of her tongue, like the names of old friends, stupidly forgotten.