Harding's Luck/Chapter 4
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 grey 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 high-road 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 awhile 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 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 nob of his cane to Dickie's nose, and Dickie was surprised to find that it smelt 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 fumiigatory. 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 vapour 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 for ever 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 dishonourable, 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 labourers, 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 colours 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 downstairs 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 
"''TIS THE PICTURE,' SAID HE PROUDLY, 'OF MY OLD SHIP, "THE GOLDEN VENTURE."'"
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"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?" Dicky 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 grey, 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, portholes 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 parlour 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-colour, 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.
"His Majesty and the Queen," the little cousins whispered as the State Barge went by.
Then all the galleys fell into place behind the King's barge, and the long, beautiful procession went slowly on down the river.
Dickie was very happy. The little cousins were so friendly and jolly, the grown-up people so kind—everything so beautiful and so clean. It was a perfect day.
The river was very beautiful; it ran between banks of willows and alders where loosestrife and meadowsweet and willow-herb and yarrow 
"THE GALLEY WAS DECKED WITH FRESH FLOWERS."
[Page 92.
At last the boats came to a pretty little town among trees.
"This is where we disembark," said the little girl cousin. "The King lies here to-night at Sir Thomas Bradbury's. And we lie at our grandfather's house. And to-morrow it is the Masque in Sir Thomas's Park. And we are to see it. I am glad thou'st well of thy fever, Richard. I shouldn't have liked it half so well if thou hadn't been here," she said, smiling. And of course that was a very nice thing to have said to one.
"And then we go home to Deptford with thee," said the boy cousin. "We are to stay a month. And we'll see thy galleon, and get old Sebastian to make me one too. . . ."
"Yes," said Dickie, as the boat came against the quay. "What is this place?"
"Gravesend, thou knowest that," said the little cousins, "or hadst thou forgotten that, too, in thy fever?"
"Gravesend?" Dickie repeated, in quite a changed voice.
"Come, children," said the aunt—oh, what a different aunt to the one who had slapped Dickie in Deptford, sold the rabbit-hutch, and shot the moon!—"you boys remember how I showed you to carry my train. And my girl will not forget how to fling the flowers from the gilt basket as the King and Queen come down the steps."
The grandfather's house and garden—the stately, white-haired grandfather, whom they called My Lord, and who was, it seemed, the aunt's father—the banquet, the picture-gallery, the gardens lit up by little coloured oil lamps hung in festoons from tree to tree, the blazing torches, the music, the Masque—a sort of play without words in which every one wore the most wonderful and beautiful dresses, and the Queen herself took a part dressed all in gauze and jewels and white swan's feathers—all these things were like a dream to Dickie, and through it all the words kept on saying themselves to him very gently, very quietly, and quite without stopping—
"Gravesend. That's where the lodging-house is where Beale is waiting for you—the man you called father. You promised to go there as soon as you could. Why haven't you gone? Gravesend. That's where the lodging-house is where Beale" And so on, over and over again.
And how can any one enjoy anything when this sort of thing keeps on saying itself under and over and through and between everything he sees and hears and feels and thinks? And the worst of it was that now, for the first time since he had found that he was not lame, he felt—more than felt, he knew—that the old New Cross life had not been a fever dream, and that Beale, who had been kind to him and taken him through the pleasant country and slept with him in the bed with the green curtains, was really waiting for him at Gravesend.
"And this is all a dream," said Dickie, "and I must wake up."
But he couldn't wake up.
And the trees and grass and lights and beautiful things, the kindly great people with their splendid dresses, the King and Queen, the aunts and uncles and the little cousins—all these things refused to fade away and jumble themselves up as things do in dreams. They remained solid and real. He knew that this must be a dream, and that Beale and Gravesend and New Cross and the old lame life were the real thing, and yet he could not wake up. All the same the light had gone out of everything, and it is small wonder that when he got home at last, very tired indeed, to his father's house at Deptford he burst into tears as nurse was undressing him.
"What ails my lamb?" she asked.
"I can't explain; you wouldn't understand," said Dickie."
"Try," said she, very earnestly.
He looked round the room at the tapestries and the heavy furniture.
"I can't," he said.
"Try," she said again.
"It's . . . don't laugh, Nurse. There's a dream that feels real—about a dreadful place—oh, so different from this. But there's a man waiting there for me that was good to me when I was—when I wasn't . . . that was good to me; he's waiting in the dream and I want to get back to him. And I can't."
"Thou'rt better here than in that dreadful place," said the nurse, stroking his hair.
"Yes—but Beale. I know he's waiting there. I wish I could bring him here."
"Not yet," said the nurse surprisingly; "'tis not easy to bring those we love from one dream to another."
"One dream to another?"
"Didst never hear that all life is a dream?" she asked him. "But thou shalt go. Heaven forbid that one of thy race should fail a friend. Look! there are fresh sheets on thy bed. Lie still and think of him that was good to thee."
He lay there, very still. He had decided to wake up—to wake up to the old, hard, cruel life—to poverty, dulness, lameness. There was no other thing to be done. He must wake up and keep his promise to Beale. But it was hard—hard—hard. The beautiful house, the beautiful garden, the games, the boat-building, the soft clothes, the kind people, the uplifting sense that he was Somebody . . . yet he must go. Yes, if he could he would.
The nurse had taken burning wood from the hearth and set it on a silver plate. Now she strewed something on the glowing embers.
"Lie straight and still," she said, "and wish thyself where thou wast when thou leftest that dream."
He did so. A thick, sweet smoke rose from the little fire in the silver plate, and the nurse was chanting something in a very low voice.
"Men die,
Man dies not.
Times fly,
Time flies not."
That was all he heard, though he heard confusedly that there was more.
He seemed to sink deep into a soft sea of sleep, to be rocked on its tide, and then to be flung by its waves, roughly, suddenly, on some hard shore of awakening. He opened his eyes. He was in the little bare front room in New Cross. Tinkler and the white seal lay on the floor among white moonflower seeds confusedly scattered, and the gas lamp from the street shone through the dirty panes on the newspapers and sacking.
"What a dream!" said Dickie, shivering, and very sleepy. "Oh, what a dream!" He put Tinkler and the seal in one pocket, gathered up the moon-seeds and put them in the other, drew the old newspapers over him and went to sleep.
*****
The morning sun woke him.
"How odd," said he, "to dream all that—weeks and weeks, in just a little bit of one little night! If it had only been true!"
He jumped up, eager to start for Gravesend. Since he had wakened out of that wonderful dream on purpose to go to Gravesend, he might as well start at once. But his jump ended in a sickening sideways fall, and his head knocked against the wainscot.
"I had forgotten," he said slowly. "I shouldn't have thought any dream could have made me forget about my foot."
For he had indeed forgotten it, had leaped up, eagerly, confidently, as a sound child leaps, and the lame foot had betrayed him, thrown him down.
He crawled across to where the crutch lay—the old broom, cut down, that Lady Talbot had covered with black velvet for him.
"And now," he said, "I must get to Gravesend." He looked out of the window at the dismal, sordid street. "I wonder," he said, "if Deptford was ever really like it was in my dream—the gardens and the clean river and the fields?"
He got out of the house when no one was looking, and went off down the street.
"Clickety-clack" went the crutch on the dusty pavement.
His back ached; his lame foot hurt; his "good" leg was tired and stiff, and his heart, too, was very tired. About this time, in the dream he had chosen to awaken from, for the sake of Beale, a bowl of porridge would be smoking at the end of a long oak table, and a great carved chair be set for a little boy who was not there.
Dickie strode on manfully, but the pain in his back made him feel sick.
"I don't know as I can do it," he said.
Then he saw the three gold balls above the door of the friendly pawnbroker.
He looked, hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, and went in.
"Hullo!" said the pawnbroker, "here we are again. Want to pawn the rattle, eh?"
"No," said Dickie, "but what'll you give me on the seal you gave me?"
The pawnbroker stared, frowned, and burst out laughing.
"If you don't beat all!" he said. "I give you a present, and you come to pledge it with me! You should have been one of our people! So you want to pledge the seal. Well, well!"
"I'd much rather not," said Dickie seriously, "because I love it very much. But I must have my fare to Gravesend. My father's there, waiting for me. And I don't want to leave Tinkler behind."
He showed the rattle.
"What's the fare to Gravesend?"
"Don't know. I thought you'd know. Will you give me the fare for the seal?"
The pawnbroker hesitated and looked hard at him. "No," he said, "no. The seal's not worth it. Not but what it's a very good seal," he added, "very good indeed."
"See here," said Dickie suddenly, "I know what honour is now, and the word of a gentleman. You will not let me pledge the seal with you. Then let me pledge my word—my word of honour. Lend me the money to take me to Gravesend, and by the honour of a gentleman I will repay you within a month."
The voice was firm; the accent, though strange, was not the accent of Deptford street boys. It was the accent of the boy who had had two tutors and a big garden, a place in the King's water-party, and a knowledge of what it means to belong to a noble house.
The pawnbroker looked at him. With the unerring instinct of his race, he knew that this was not play-acting, that there was something behind it—something real. The sense of romance, of great things all about them transcending the ordinary things of life—this in the Jews has survived centuries of torment, shame, cruelty, and oppression. This inherited sense of romance in the pawnbroker now leapt to answer Dickie's appeal. (And I do hope I am not confusing you; stick to it; read it again if you don't understand. What I mean is that the Jews always see the big beautiful things; they don't just see that grey is made of black and white; they see how incredibly black black can be, and that there may be a whiteness transcending all the whitest dreams in the world.)
"You're a rum little chap," was what the pawnbroker said, "but I like your pluck. Every man's got to make a fool of himself one time or the other," he added, apologising to the spirit of business.
"You mean you will?" said Dickie eagerly.
"More fool me," said the Jew, feeling in his pocket.
"You won't be sorry; not in the end you won't," said Dickie, as the pawnbroker laid certain monies before him on the mahogany counter. "You'll lend me this? You'll trust me?"
"Looks like it," said the Jew.
"Then some day I shall do something for you. I don't know what, but something. We never forget, we" He stopped. He remembered that he was poor little lame Dickie Harding, with no right to that other name which had been his in the dream.
He picked up the coins, put them in his pocket—felt the moon-seeds.
"I cannot repay your kindness," he said, "though some day I will repay your silver. But these seeds—the moon-seeds," he pulled out a handful. "You liked the flowers?" He handed a generous score across the red-brown polished wood.
"Thank you, my lad," said the pawnbroker. "I'll raise them in gentle heat."
"I think they grow best by moonlight," said Dickie.
*****
So he came to Gravesend and the common lodging-house, and a weary, sad, and very anxious man rose up from his place by the fire when the clickety-clack of the crutch sounded on the threshold.
"It's the nipper!" he said; and came very quickly to the door and got his arm round Dickie's shoulders. "The little nipper, so it ain't! I thought you'd got pinched. No, I didn't, I knew your clever ways—I knew you was bound to turn up."
"Yes," said Dickie, looking round the tramps' kitchen, and remembering the long, clean tapestry-hung dining-hall of his dream. "Yes, I was bound to turn up. You wanted me to, didn't you?" he added.
"Wanted you to?" Beale answered, holding him close, and looking at him as men look at some rare treasure gained with much cost and after long seeking. "Wanted you? Not 'arf! I don't think," and drew him in and shut the door.
"Then I'm glad I came," said Dickie. But in his heart he was not glad. In his heart he longed for that pleasant house where he was the young master, and was not lame any more. But in his soul he was glad, because the soul is greater than the heart, and knows greater things. And now Dickie loved Beale more than ever, because for him he had sacrificed his dream. So he had gained something. Because loving people is the best thing in the world—better even than being loved. Just think this out, will you, and see if I am not right.
There were herrings for tea. And in the hard bed, with his clothes and his boots under the pillows, Dickie slept soundly.
But he did not dream.
Yet when he woke in the morning, remembering many things, he said to himself—
"Is this the dream? Or was the other the dream?"
And it seemed a foolish question—with the feel of the coarse sheets and the smell of the close room, and Mr. Beale's voice saying, "Rouse up, nipper! there's sossingers for breakfast."