Seven Tales and Alexander Page 8

  As he listened he kept looking upwards. It seemed to him that whatever the other children had seen he could not leave the peach-tree.

  ‘You must come!—to-morrow we will take you,’ the children cried to him.

  But he put his chin in his hands and shook his head.

  To-morrow came—and other to-morrows. And every day, as before, when their grandfather had covered his face with his bandana handkerchief, the children went to play at the bottom of the garden. But now only the smallest of them remained under the peach-tree. The eyes and voices of the others no longer grew bright and soft beneath it, and they loved its plain, slender arms no more.

  Every day the boy watched them vanish where the nettles and thistles twined about the feet of the hollyhocks. And day after day he heard them return excitedly through the grass and listened as they flung themselves on the ground under the peach-tree and whispered of the things they had seen again. ‘Trees with blossoms, bright stones, birds with crimson wings, strange fruit and scents, and the pool with the shadows of the things you cannot see!’

  Again and again, as he heard all this, the boy thought: ‘Not so lovely as the peach-tree when it blossomed.’

  It was this thought always which each day kept him silent when the other children cried ‘We will take you—to-morrow, to-morrow!’

  He saw the tree straining and growing, heard its sighs, and seemed to feel its spirit imploring to have patience only a little longer. The whisper of its leaves was no longer as if they kissed each other, but as if they whispered to him: ‘Soon! Soon!’

  III

  One day the boy found in the grass beneath the peach-tree little green fruits which shone delicately in his hand. He looked up into the branches: against the sky shone others like them, hanging shyly among the leaves, like birds’ eggs of a soft, gleaming green.

  The boy pondered. Here was another change. He did not understand. It had come so quietly, so mysteriously, with not half the beauty of the tree in blossom. With grave stares he looked up at the boughs: an instinct came and possessed him. He bit his teeth hard into one of the delicate green fruits that had fallen.

  He jumped to his feet with a cry of dismay. His lips felt drawn and rough, his tongue curled itself up in his mouth, his teeth were like stones against each other. There were tears in his round, bewildered eyes.

  ‘Sour! Sour!’

  He flung the little green fruit away and buried his face in the grass.

  On that day, as on all others, the children went to fetch him as they came running from the secret garden. Their faces were beaming, they were full of laughter, they had the stain of strange fruits on their lips. They flung themselves on the grass and cried to him.

  ‘Such wonderful things! Why do you stay here?’—why don’t you come? Things you never saw before—you never dreamed. Pomegranates that taste like plums—quinces and custard-fruit, melons and cocoanuts, figs like gourds, and peaches that have all the flavours of all the strangest fruits in the East in them growing on trees higher than churches.’

  The boy turned his eyes from the grass. He did not understand. He pondered on the greatness of the new trees.

  ‘Do you climb them?’ he asked.

  ‘Climb? They have scarlet teeth on their trunks. Only the apes with ivory feet and ebony fingers climb them.’

  ‘Apes!’ There were stars of fear in his eyes. ‘Don’t they bleed?’

  ‘Sometimes the teeth cut their breasts—then they bleed two drops of bright blue. And where they fall on the ground a peacock springs up.’

  ‘And they?—the peacocks.’

  ‘They have voices like nightingales.’

  The boy remained in an awed wonder, asking himself if these things were true.

  ‘What other things?’ he asked presently.

  ‘Everything.’

  All that day and all the next and the next the boy thought on this. But he would not be dragged away from the peach-tree. He lay there with visions which very slowly he began to see that the tree had never given him. Voices spoke to him, he saw strange-footed apes in trees, he heard echoes of sounds he never made, he lived in a state of silver wonder.

  Sometimes the taste of the sour fruit of the peach-tree came into his mouth again. Then he would say: ‘It has cheated me!’

  Gradually he began to hate this sourness more and more. The peach-tree had cheated him, the peach-tree had cheated him!

  IV

  There came a day when the boy crept from beneath the shadow of the peach-tree and walked timidly along by the high stone wall. The other children had already disappeared. He had waited for them to go with fear in his heart: he was half ashamed that they should see him.

  He made his way very carefully, seeking protection from the tall hollyhocks, making no sound. But his heart throbbed fast and he trembled.

  The wall seemed as if it would never end. Ahead of him the boy could see no change, no sign of the secret garden. He listened, but he could not hear the shrieks of the apes, nor the peacocks which sang like nightingales. There were no new scents, the air smelled as it had always done—heavy with pinks and clover, with stocks and jasmine, with grass and roses.

  But the boy never once looked back at the peach-tree. At last he wandered so far off that he could not have seen it had he turned. And it still seemed to him that the wall would never end.

  Then suddenly, as if the wind had blown him there, he was in the garden—the secret garden, among the magic of new airs, new sounds, swaying under the breath of new perfumes! His coming there was a mystery—there was no wall, not one familiar stone, not a single scent he knew.

  He went forward warily in the grass: from beneath his feet shot up a bird with a precious stone in its mouth. It flew to the top of a tree with purple leaves and dropped the jewel. The boy watched it: it fell into his arms. They became heavy with pink birds with scarlet feet. The boy let them fall, and they flew away.

  When he walked on the echo of his feet was like music.

  He looked at his feet: they gleamed in the grass like silver. They bore him suddenly into a forest of crimson trees, where the birds were as the other children had led him to believe, only to his eyes even more wonderful, where the trees bore blossoms that were not their own, so that the quince had a flower like lilac, the mulberry like a tiger-lily, and the peach like a peony.

  Some trees were in flower, some had fruit on them. The boy’s feet gleamed.

  He ate the fruit of the trees, eating pomegranates with the taste of mangoes. From the highest branches the apes with ivory feet and ebony fingers shrieked at him and brought him the things he dreamed of. The things he asked for they never brought—only sometimes they shed their bright blue blood, as if to reproach him, and peacocks sprang up where the drops fell.

  For a long time he wandered in the forest. He was not frightened. His head was full of dreams. The apes brought him whatever he dreamed of, the peacocks sang, there was always something more wonderful.

  He came to a pool. He whispered across it: the echo was like the chatter of parrots. When he shouted it murmured, as if heavy with dreams, as if sleepily asking for something. He felt a desire to pick up a stone and disturb its dark surface. When the stone touched the pool a crimson swan sprang up; its eyes were black; it talked to him.

  ‘Your mouth is stained,’ it said first.

  ‘That’s through eating pomegranates,’ said the boy.

  ‘How far have you been?’ it asked.

  ‘Not far. Where is the peach-tree with flowers like peonies? I have lost it.’

  ‘You think it is over there, behind the black grasses,’ answered the swan.

  It disappeared. And the boy found that the swan’s words were true, and that the peach-tree was where he thought it must be.

  He went there. Its scent came to him strongly. And then, after a moment, behind the wall of black grasses, the peach-tree with peony flowers made a red stain in the forest. And it seemed to the boy to give out the heaviest, most wondrous perfume
he had ever known.

  Petals fell warmly on his face as he stretched himself under its branches. He felt the touch of a new spirit. Underneath its arms he thought only of the colour of its flowers, their scent, the blessing they seemed to give him. Of the other peach-tree, the quiet, green, straining one, he thought nothing. He could not even imagine what it looked like: the great mass of burning crimson above him dazzled his eyes.

  V

  The boy returned at last, as he had seen the other children return, suddenly, mysteriously, from the new garden to the old. Of the apes and peacocks, the jewels and fruit, of the pool and the peach-tree with peony blooms, he never ceased thinking. But he said nothing of them, nothing of the garden. It was as if he were half ashamed, half afraid of what had come.

  When the children urged him to go with them he only smiled. But when they had disappeared, he sprang up from beneath the peach-tree, green and silent and watchful as ever, and followed the wall until the secret garden was all about him again. And every day he saw things there which filled him with wonder. Every day he ate the wondrous fruit, dreamed in the forest, and watched the apes run up and down the scarlet trees. Every day he lay under the peach-tree with peony blossoms that dazzled his eyes.

  The days went on and on.

  One day, under the peach-tree in the old garden, he sat waiting for the other children to go. The air was warm and drowsy. He thought of the other garden, even more lovely. But the children beside him never moved themselves. ‘Are they never going?’ thought the boy. A long time went past, but the children did not stir.

  ‘Aren’t you going to the garden to-day?’ he asked aloud.

  They shook their heads. ‘No more!’ they said. ‘It’s winter in the garden now; there’s snow, the pool is frozen, the apes and swans have gone and hidden themselves, the trees are bare, the peacocks never sing—it’s dreary and silent.’

  The boy’s heart grew cold. He could not believe these things. Only yesterday it had been so warm, so wonderful in the garden. Some of the peonies, he knew, were only just opening themselves.

  Feverishly he escaped from the old peach-tree and ran along by the wall, trembling, afraid. He could not bear to think of winter in the garden. He saw the pool frozen and dark, the flowers dead, the trees bare, the peacocks shivering—and, last of all, the peach-tree stripped of its peony-blooms.

  Then suddenly he was in the garden. There was a rush of warm air, warm scents, of the most beautiful of sounds—the peacocks singing. The boy glanced about him—there was no winter! no snow! no darkness! He was able to smell even the farthest blossoms. He saw jewels and birds. The apes brought him the things of his dreams, he stained his lips with fruits, he talked to the swan. And all that afternoon he lay under the peach-tree in a great gladness that there was no winter—but only summer, summer, summer, summer!

  As he returned it seemed to him that never before had the peach-tree shed such a dazzling light on him. It made him tremble. In the old garden he could not see clearly what things were. But he heard the voices of the other children, calling from the old peach-tree:

  ‘Come quickly! Where have you been? Such wonderful things—you’d never believe!’

  Very dimly he could see them rolling in the grass, their eyes shining.

  ‘The peaches are ripe! The peaches are ripe!’ they shouted.

  The boy glanced at them, at the grass, and at the peach-tree itself. He could see nothing.

  ‘The peaches are ripe! They’re red and gold—oh! look!—do look!’

  The boy did not pause, did not speak. As if in a dream he went slowly up the path until their voices were like no more than echoes:

  ‘The peaches are ripe! The peaches are ripe!’ he heard them say.

  But he thought only of the day when the peach-tree had cheated him and he had cried ‘Sour! Sour!’ and then of the new peach-tree with the blossoms that were like peonies, with its everlasting wonder in a summer that would never end. He passed out of the reach of the children’s voices. His eyes were alight, his lips were stained with purple, his head sang with the sound of peacocks singing like nightingales, and in the air he caught the echoes of those things that never were, never are, and never will be.

  A Tinker’s Donkey

  Jonas Prickett, the tinker, came into possession of a donkey. Jonas himself was a squat, dirty, and rather indolent man, not much higher than a gooseberry bush, and with an odd, warted face. He generally wore a bright-blue neckerchief, a red cardigan waistcoat, and mouse-coloured trousers. His legs were so thick and bowed that he could not, as they say, have stopped a pig in an entry.

  The donkey was undersized also, its legs feeble, its hair worn and mangy. Jonas had accepted it in exchange for money that was owing him, being too lazy to press for the money and very much relishing the thought of riding in the little black cart he had trundled for years.

  But his wife, a very religious woman, with a drop of Irish blood in her veins, had stared at it on seeing it for the first time. Finally she had remarked with a forcible disgust he did not understand:

  ‘Merciful God, it’s a she-ass.’

  And she called him all those names which cunning wives confer on simple husbands, asking him where he would keep it, what he would do with it, how he would make it pay. He bore all this with the peculiar patience of his kind, and at last they kept the donkey.

  That summer was hot and dry. In Jonas’s little paddock the grass withered and died. The donkey, after eating every thistle, dock, and dandelion, browsed on briar and hawthorn. Finally, one sultry night, she broke a gap in the hedge, entered a neighbouring field, and wandered and ate and rolled in a crop of vetch, cool, sweet, and blooming, till morning.

  ‘God Almighty,’ said Jonas, on waking and looking out, ‘she’s trespassing in the field of vetches!’

  Hastily he scrambled into his trousers and hurried down. He forgot to lace his boots, and the dew ran into his stockings like water. Every time he came within reach of the ass she turned her head a little, brayed, and trotted away. It was eight o’clock before he caught her.

  He swore hotly. But it was too late. He had been observed, and though he tried to be cunning and said nothing, two days later he received a paper which looked very arresting in its bright blue.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked his wife. ‘What shall I do?’

  Her knowingness was maddening. ‘Oh! it’s nothing more than I expected,’ she said. ‘You’ve to go to the court on Friday morning. It’s all to answer a charge about that mad donkey, and I shouldn’t wonder if they put you in gaol for it.’

  ‘But I never ate the vetches!’

  ‘Still, I shouldn’t wonder if they fined you five pound.’

  He did not answer. He told himself over and over again how much he hated the idea of courts, policemen, and legal formalities. In all his life he had never been in a police court, and he felt he never quite understood what would take place there. He shrank from thinking of it, and when he harnessed the donkey and drove off on Friday morning he felt weak in his legs and stomach.

  It was a fine, sunny morning. Yellow buntings were singing and there was yellow in the corn.

  He drove at his usual leisurely pace, and for once was glad that the donkey would go no faster. Then, at Chelston, where a brook runs over the road, one of his wheels bumped over a stone as big as a beer-jar. There was a brief, sharp crack. Jonah looked over the side and saw the wheel askew.

  He had to walk for the next two miles. He cursed a good deal. The wheel performed strange antics, as if part of a circus. At Shetsoe Jonas borrowed a hammer from Sam Houghton, whom he had once beaten at skittles for a quart.

  ‘Knock the top o’ the wheel,’ said Sam.

  Jonas obeyed. But between Shetsoe and Taploe the wheel grew worse, and at Taploe Jonas called on the woman who had given him the donkey and asked her advice.

  She gave him a stone weighing half a hundred-weight and said:

  ‘Knock the bottom o’ the wheel.’

  He
glared at her. This seemed like a joke of some kind. However, he picked up the stone and smote. The donkey moved quietly on.

  ‘There!’ said the woman in triumph. ‘She knows me.’

  But the wheel lurched worse than ever. Jonas frequently knocked it with a stone or his boot, but he no longer asked the advice of anyone. Suddenly, a mile and a half away from the court, the wheel broke loose, rolled like a mad thing into the ditch, and brought the donkey to her knees.

  In despair Jonas swore and scratched his hair. At last he unharnessed the donkey and extricated her. Contemplating the ruined cart, he felt like a man awaiting the next gesture of misfortune. At last he saw nothing for it but to leave the cart on the grass and take the donkey on.

  For half a mile he progressed well. The red and blue roofs of the town appeared, and from the town the strokes of eleven boomed out over the fields.

  Jonas caught his breath and, suddenly fearful of the penalties of arriving late at the court, jumped on the donkey’s back and trotted her. She trotted beautifully, while he, with his red waistcoat and flapping blue handkerchief, bobbed precariously up and down, looking a little like some burlesque John Gilpin gone astray.

  He rode through the streets to the court. Boys jeered at him. Near the court was a waste patch of land without a blade or bush, on which he tethered the blowing and quaking ass.

  Sweating profusely himself, he went into the court. Ushers began calling his name almost as soon as he arrived there, and not accustomed to the strict decorum, he began to shout when he entered the dock:

  ‘My old cart wheel did a bust, and if it hadn’t been for that blessed donkey—’

  ‘Silence! Silence!’ he was commanded. ‘Attend to the charge.’ The charge, which he did not understand, was read out to him. ‘Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’ he was asked.