Harding’s Luck · Chapter 4 (2/3)

“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 trapdoors 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 shipbuilder. “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 a man who had been there, who had felt the danger, known the escape. Dickie held his breath.

“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?” Dickie 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 gray, be hundreds of years old?

“How long?⁠—a matter of twenty years or thereabouts,” said the shipbuilder. “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 figurehead. 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 parlor 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-color, 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 downstream, followed by a procession of smaller craft. Everyone 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 grew tall and thick. There were water-lilies in shady backwaters, and beautiful gardens sloping down to the water.

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 tonight at Sir Thomas Bradbury’s. And we lie at our grandfather’s house. And tomorrow 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 colored oil lamps hung in festoons from tree to tree, the blazing torches, the music, the Masque⁠—a sort of play without words in which everyone 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 anyone 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, dullness, 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.