# The Adventure of the Imaginative Child

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Then, seated as he was on the floor, he looked up at Mrs. Bumpus, and that glance was the first revelation I had of what might be disturbing the tranquillity of the Bumpus family. It was the oldest glance I have ever seen a child bestow upon another human being—a strange glance to see in that young and innocent face. It seemed to say: "Well, and what are you going to do about it? I know you better than you know yourself, and I want to see, just for my own amusement, to what lengths of folly you are likely to go."
THE ADVENTURE OF THE IMAGINATIVE CHILD
By HUGH WALPOLE
YOUNG Chippet and I had many funny times together. Out of many adventures that we had I have chosen this affair that I have called "The Adventure of the Imaginative Child" because of the strange figure who is its centre. I cannot hope to give any satisfactory explanation of John Borstal Clay. I am only stating the case as I saw it. There is, perhaps, no explanation of anybody in this strange and casual world. I sometimes think that the Potter simply throws odd pieces of material together and then lets come out of it what will. It takes more than Dr. Freud to explain John Borstal Clay.
One day in the middle of spring, when the trees were budding and the very streets humming their pleasure under the April sun, a Mr. Fortescue Bumpus paid me a call. I had had so many strange visitors within the last few weeks that it was rather comforting to see anybody so completely normal as Mr. Bumpus. He was one of those little men who wear their clothes like armour, who are so cleanly shaven, save for a little neat moustache, that their cheeks gleam like billiard balls, who are right and tight in their person, upon whose bodies there is no speck of dust, and upon whose souls there is no sign of any abnormal curiosities.
Mr. Bumpus, it was plain to see, was a man entirely without imagination, fifty-odd years or so, kind in the English fashion, making, one must suppose, a satisfactory income, having ten minutes' Muller exercise in his bedroom of a morning before the open window, abusing gently each day at breakfast the socialistic tendencies of the Labour Party, calling, in all probability, his wife "Mother," and arranging what he was going to do with himself and his family on Bank Holiday months and months before the event. Mr. Bumpus, in fact, is what is known as the backbone of England. It was all the more deplorable, therefore, to see that he was in a state of very considerable distress. When something distresses a man of Mr. Bumpus's type, he is like a lost dog with a tin can tied to his tail. He has no idea where to go, to whom to speak—above all, he has no one in the world with whom he can be intimate. With his wife he has lived so long and so complacently that possible intimacy between them lies buried deep 'neath layers of domestic dust. The friends of his own sex are only on billiard, golf, or drinking terms, and his children he probably approaches in alternate gusts of anger and sentimentality, boxing their ears one day and giving them too many chocolates the other. He knows, deep, deep down, that the world is a rum place, but it is his natural tradition to set up around him a kind of Crystal Palace hung with dark green blinds, and to sit inside it, and although he may feel the warmth of the sun beating upon the glass and sometimes hear torrents of rain like thunder on the roof, he cheats himself into believing that there is no world outside, or that, if there is, like Noah in his Ark, he has been forbidden to encounter it.
All this long explanation is necessary for my story.
Chippet was just then away, engaged upon some affair of his own. My friend Borden and I consoled Mr. Bumpus to the best of our abilities. He sat down, pulling his trousers a little above his knees, laying his plump hands upon them, and looking forward at us with a pathetic eagerness, rather as an infant bird in the nest opens its beak for an expected worm.
"You're very young, gentlemen," was the first thing he said.
"We are not so young as we look," I replied, smiling at him encouragingly. "At any rate, tell us what we can do for you, Mr. Bumpus, and if it's beyond our youth, you can be sure of our discretion, and we will not, of course, charge you a penny."
"Oh, that's all right, that's all right," he answered nervously, "that's really quite all right. Lovely weather to-day, isn't it?"
"Spring," said Borden very solemnly, "is upon us. It is the period of the year when youth is at its best. We take your coming to us on such a spring-like day as the best of omens."
"Yes, yes, quite so," said Mr. Bumpus, gazing desperately around the room, suffering all the agonising terror of one who must speak of intimate matters to a couple of strangers to whom he has really never been properly introduced.
"It was a Mrs. Fleming," he began at last, "who recommended me to ask your advice. She told me that a few months ago you helped her in a serious domestic difficulty. It is a domestic difficulty of my own about which I have come to speak to you, but really you are so young——" He broke off and ended with a rather foolish smile. "I might be your father, you see."
I saw that this was the moment to exert our authority. "Excuse me for speaking plainly, Mr. Bumpus," I replied, "physical age has nothing to do with this matter at all. We may be able to help you or we may not. Tell us your trouble, and we will see what we can do."
"Well, it seems so foolish," said Mr. Bumpus, "to come to anybody about such a matter as this, but Mother is nearly distracted. She loves her children, gentlemen, with a devotion I have never seen equalled elsewhere. Mrs. Bumpus is one in a million."
"Is it about your children that you wish us to help you?" I asked.
"In a way, yes," he answered nervously, and then, taking courage apparently from Borden's muscular and thoroughly British appearance, he plunged straight in.
"Some three years ago a brother of mine, who lived in South Africa, was killed with his wife in a railway accident. He was my favourite brother, and left an only child. This was a boy, then nine years of age and now twelve. My brother, in his will, as though he had a premonition that something might happen to him, left the boy to us in case of any disaster, with a very handsome sum of money for his upbringing. Mrs. Bumpus and I were proud and delighted to assume solemn charge. The boy arrived just three years ago this very month, and became, of course, as one of our own. It is about this boy that I wish to consult you."
He coughed, looked at us piteously as though he were begging us to tell him that no further information was needed. That, of course, we were unable to do, and we could only look at him with an intelligent and kindly interest.
"The boy's name," he continued, "is John Borstal Clay." He repeated these words over again as a sort of solemn incantation. "He was a bright little fellow, nice-looking, intelligent, and amusing. We sent him to Dulwich School." He paused, then, leaning forward towards us, repeated with the greatest solemnity: "That boy, gentleman, is wrecking our beautiful home life."
"Dear me," Borden remarked, "so young a boy and so wicked?"
"Not wicked," said Mr. Bumpus hurriedly. "I don't want to say a word against the child."
"You must tell us the truth, Mr. Bumpus," I said. "We cannot possibly help you unless you tell us everything,"
"But it is just that," said Mr. Bumpus, "that it is so difficult to tell. The boy's not a wicked boy—at least, not in the accepted term of wickedness—he doesn't steal nor tell lies." Then again, with the utmost solemnity: "He is not a real boy, gentlemen, at all. Not like any other boy in the whole world. We are afraid of him—all of us—and when you've seen him you will know why."
This was very interesting, and I saw Borden, who likes boys and thoroughly understands them, lean forward and watch Mr. Bumpus with renewed interest. "Would you mind telling us," he asked, "about the rest of the family? How many children have you?"
"Three," said Mr. Bumpus, "Emmeline, Gertrude, and little Percival."
"What ages are they?" asked Borden.
"Emmeline is thirteen and a half, Gertrude is twelve, and Percival eight."
"And are they also in terror of your nephew?"
"They are indeed," said Mr. Bumpus. "And yet it is hard to say why they are. If it were simply a case of John's being unkind to them or ill-treating them, it would be comparatively simple. You see, gentlemen, I loved my brother dearly, and what Mrs. Bumpus and I wish, above all things, is to be just."
"If the boy is upsetting your family," said Borden, "why don't you send him to a boarding school?"
"We did, sir," said Mr. Bumpus. "He went to Rugby for a term, but we were almost more uncomfortable when he was away from us than we were when he was with us. What we want," he cried, "is for John's attention to be directed towards somebody else. We shall have no peace until he loses interest in us. That is where I want your help."
"Loses interest in you?" asked Borden. "That's a strange phrase to use about a small boy of twelve."
"I know it is," repeated Mr. Bumpus, almost in agony, "but when you see the boy, you will understand what I mean. He is extraordinarily old for his age, and he knows much more about all of us than any boy has a right to know. He is not a wholesome boy."
"Do you mean that he is a nasty-minded boy?" asked Borden. "Does he tell your children nasty stories and put wrong ideas into their heads?"
"No, not in the accepted way," said Mr. Bumpus, "and yet he does tell them stories, too. But no, I can't explain what I mean. You must come and see him for yourself."
"Then what you want us to do," I summed up, "is to turn this boy's attention from yourselves into some other channel?"
"That's it," said Mr. Bumpus. "Oh, if you only would, how happy and grateful we'd all be!"
The conversation ended in our making an agreement with Mr. Bumpus on our usual terms, namely, that if we were successful he should pay us a certain sum, and if we failed, only half that sum.
The very next day I took tea with the Bumpus family. They lived in West Kensington, and their house was as right and tight as little Mr. Bumpus himself. Mrs. Bumpus was a charming, stout, friendly woman, considerably older, I should imagine, than her husband, with hair turning grey, rosy cheeks, and a voice like a kettle on the hob.
John was not present when I arrived, but the three Bumpus children were all there. They were the quietest, demurest children you ever saw. Emmeline and Gertrude would be stout and rosy-faced like their mother. Little Percival was in a velvet Fauntleroy suit, and was doing something with a set of bricks in a corner of the drawing-room. They presented a very happy, domestic picture, all of them talking in low tones, Emmeline stitching away at a small piece of cambric, Gertrude, who wore spectacles, reading a book, the clock ticking, the windows open to let in the beautiful evening sun, Mrs. Bumpus being kind and smiling at Borden and myself as though she had known us for years.
We had been there, I suppose, some half hour when John came in. He came in very quietly, closing the door behind him, shook hands with us, took his place near the tea-table in the properest manner possible. He was a short, thick-set boy with a strangely foreign appearance. This arose, I think, partly from his jet-black hair, his deep black eyes, fringed with heavy dark eyelashes, and a rather sallow complexion, in which there was, nevertheless, the colour of excellent health. I noticed at once his hands, which were remarkably clean for a boy of his age, with well-kept nails and thin, beautiful fingers. He moved with admirable grace, not at all with the clumsy awkwardness of a boy of his age, and yet he was a quite natural boy, not effeminate, nor mannered, nor artificial. He said very little. Borden, after a time, began to talk to him, asked him questions about his school, whether he liked football, and so on, and to all this he replied politely, completely at his ease. I soon noticed however, that the family were all strangely disturbed at his appearance. Percival seemed to be no longer happy with his bricks, and Emmeline and Gertrude glanced nervously towards the tea-table, and an air of constraint crept into the comfort and homeliness of the scene. After a while John got up and walked very quietly over to Percival, knelt down on the carpet, and began to help him to arrange his bricks. Once or twice Mr. Bumpus glanced at us to see whether we noticed anything peculiar. Conversation halted. We ourselves felt awkward and uncomfortable. We were about to get up and go, but suddenly a wail from Percival drew all our attention.
"I don't want them that way!" he cried. "That's a nasty way. I was building a cathedral."
"All right," said John quietly. "Let's build a cathedral, then."
"But I want to build my own cathedral," Percival wailed. "I don't like your cathedrals."
"Now, now, Percy darling," said Mrs. Bumpus, getting up and going towards him, "it's very kind of John to help you."
"I don't want John to help me," said Percival, getting up and suddenly bursting into a flood of tears.
"Well, then, I won't help you," said John, smiling.
Then, seated as he was on the floor, he looked up at Mrs. Bumpus, and that glance was the first revelation I had of what might be disturbing the tranquillity of the Bumpus family. It was the oldest glance I have ever seen a child bestow upon another human being—a strange glance to see in that young and innocent face. It seemed to say: "Well, and what are you going to do about it? I know you better than you know yourself, and I want to see, just for my own amusement, to what lengths of folly you are likely to go."
There may have been, of course, some imagination on my part; after events, however, were to prove to me that I was not far wrong. Percival was led from the room. John got up and came across to us. Mr. Bumpus tried to cover the uneasy effect of this little incident by saying in an unnatural, jocular tone: "Well, my boy, and how's the work been to-day?"
"All right, Uncle Henry, thank you," said John quietly. He looked at him as though he were going to say something more, then gave Borden and myself the strangest glance of amused curiosity, and then left the room. No further allusion to him was made during the rest of our visit.
II.
We have in these days the habit of discussing in learned terms and all the latest German technique the psychology of children. By this parents are influenced, and become morbidly anxious about the ethical state of their little ones; friends are perpetually bored by discoveries made by anxious mothers of the new tendencies in their darlings' little souls; the only beings entirely uninfluenced by this modern movement are the children themselves. Children form the only portion of the earth's population entirely untouched by the development of so-called civilisation. Children, like their elders, are cruel, malicious, mean, treacherous, tyrannous, greedy, remorseless, selfish, but, unlike their elders, they make no sort of pretence of pretending that these unpleasant emotions are anything but what they are. Ask a cherub of twelve and a half what during last term he did to another cherub aged nine and a half, and if he discovers that you are to be trusted, he will show you, that the head-hunters of Tsavo are not in it with him for the frank indulgence of cheerful cruelty. But, more than that, small boys live so entirely in a world of their own that we cannot begin to realise what they are really doing and thinking unless we become small boys ourselves, and we do not become small boys by sitting neatly dressed in amiable drawing-rooms and talking in dulcet tones to charming old aunts, but rather by going out boldly into the boy world, stealing all we can see, eating everything we can lay hands upon, being as cruel as possible to everybody weaker than ourselves, and allowing ourselves to be torn into very small pieces rather than betray a fragment of the truth about some friend whose possession we would instantly lay hold upon had we a moment's opportunity. There are some men and a few women who are often praised for "never growing up"; these remain among the nastiest and most dangerous of their kind. On the other hand, there are some boys who grow up at once and are a great deal older than their elders. It was at first this that I supposed had happened to John Borstal Clay. "He's simply," I told myself, "been living with grown-up people and is old before his time. The Bumpuses, on the other hand, are younger than they've any right to be, simply because they have allowed their imagination to die a natural death, and have developed such a strain of English prudery that they are quite incapable of seeing what's in front of their noses."
For a week or two this explanation sufficed me. Borden and I, in the arrogance of our young hearts, agreed that it would be very easy to detach the youthful John's mind from the Bumpus family and to fix it upon something or someone else, even, if need be, upon ourselves. I suppose that there's no one in the world who dislikes boys of John's age more thoroughly than I do myself, but John was an exception. He had none of the noisy, greedy, unattractive habits of his kind. He did not interrupt his elders when they had just reached what they considered the earth-compelling portion of their narrative. He did not beg for food that would, he knew, be denied him unless he made a terrible noise. He was not uncleanly in ways that I need not more minutely define, and he watched life with a curiosity that was quite astonishing. It was this last quality in him that gradually absorbed my attention. Nothing seemed to escape him. I soon saw that there was no foolishness nor weakness in the Bumpus family that he had not observed, and from that I began to see why it was they were so anxious to be rid of him. We can support with comparative ease those friends of ours who realise only the weaknesses that we have not got, but so soon as anyone puts their finger upon even the tiniest of our real faults, we begin to dislike them and think that we had better have somebody kinder in their place.
John knew perfectly well that Emmeline was cultivating, so fast as she could, all the domestic virtues because she was lazy, and found that those same virtues brought in the quickest and most tangible rewards. She lived, so to speak, for aunts, uncles, cousins, and elderly friends. She ran messages, spoke in sweet tones, and loved to group herself at the feet of some short-sighted relation and lay her head against that relation's knee and look ecstatically comfortable. John knew that she was not comfortable, and if that particular relation did not speedily produce something in the way of a gift or an invitation, Emmeline grouped herself elsewhere.
Gertrude, on the other hand, was all for æstheticism. What she wanted to be was strange and peculiar, so that people coming to tea said to Mrs. Bumpus: "That's an original child you've got there; she should do something when she grows up." So Gertrude was learning the piano in a quite excruciating fashion, was ready to recite "We Are Seven" and "The Wreck of the Hesperus" on the slightest invitation, and very often on no invitation at all, and loved to sit on a small stool in the very middle of the drawing-room floor, staring in front of her, gazing into nothing. Little Percival was the only one of the family who pursued his gentle way without artificiality, but in his case you could not but wish for a little affectation, his natural habits, manners, and customs being of the noisiest, most provocative kind. Mrs. Bumpus was a sweet woman, with the intelligence of a very kind sheep. She just managed to get through the duties of the day without any actual disaster. These duties left her but little time for the development of her brain; she liked novels and read, on an average, one new one a day. She had never the slightest idea of the names of the authors of these novels, and had been known to read the same book three days after an earlier perusal without the slightest notion that she had ever met it before. She was, however, a very good woman, being far too stupid to be anything else. Mr. Bumpus adored her, not so much because she was good or sweet or kind, but because she was so stupid that he had no fear of anyone thinking her cleverer than himself.
Now, all these things John perfectly knew, and I soon perceived that he played with these qualities and defects, not apparently with any malicious intent, but only because he was so anxious to see what, in the circumstances, they would do. He would, for instance, ask Mrs. Bumpus very quietly where she thought Uruguay was. She would probably say hurriedly: "Why, in Africa, dear." He would say, "Thank you," very quietly, and then, days later, when relations and friends were gathered together, he would remark, still more quietly: "Uruguay isn't in Africa, auntie—I looked it up in my atlas." Mrs. Bumpus was always terribly upset at any exposure of non-intelligence, it being her theory, studiously developed through many years, that she knew just as much about anything as a good woman had any right to know. Mr. Bumpus also was distressed, and would look at her with surprise, saying: "Why, surely, mother, you didn't say that Uruguay was in Africa, did you?" She would then be all in a flutter, and her eyes would fill with those large, warm tears that seemed to contain some composition of grease in them, so heavy and thick and slow were they.
With Emmeline John had a glorious time, taking pleasure, but not a malicious pleasure, in betraying her to aunts and uncles and any others likely to be too easily captivated. When Emmeline was nicely seated upon a cushion on the floor, her flaxen head resting against a bony knee, uttering in a soft dreamy voice, "And now, auntie, please tell me what you were like as a little girl," John would look at her with such a curious, inquisitive smile that the aunt, too, would wonder whether all were well, and instead of the natural impulse to burst into sentimental reminiscence there would come forth a rather snappy: "Not now, child. After all, there can be very little about my youth that anyone would want to know." Also, when John was alone with Emmeline, he would say softly: "Emmy, Uncle Henry's coming to-morrow; he is good for a box of chocolates, but not more than that. I shouldn't bother about him." And Emmeline, who cheated herself, as we all do, into believing that she invariably acted from the purest and most beautiful motives, would get one of those nasty little glimpses into reality which kind friends in a temper sometimes give us, which are, indeed, almost the only link with reality that we have.
I need not emphasise this further. It will now be seen by anybody who is interested in the Bumpuses why they wanted to get rid of John.
At the end of the first fortnight I decided that I must get to know John better, and I asked Mr. Bumpus if he would have any objection to John's coming to spend a night with me in my little house in Westminster. Mr. Bumpus was delighted. "I do hope," he explained, "that you don't think that we wish to be unkind to the child; it's simply that—that—well, to put it frankly, that he upsets the tempers of my wife and the children."
"Yes, I understand that," I answered, "but what is still a puzzle to me is that you tell me that he upsets you as much when he's away from you as when he's with you. That, I confess, is a mystery to me."
"It's a mystery to me, too," said Mr. Bumpus. "I think it's a little this way—that we feel as though he always had us in his mind and was thinking the worst of us. Not exactly that he dislikes us, you know, but if I may put it personally, suppose I'm dressing in the morning, and lose my collar-stud and go down on my knees after it, and am, just for the moment, in the condition that—well, you know what a man's like when he loses a collar-stud."
"I do," I assured him.
"Well, I feel as though John had watched me, even though he's so far away as Rugby, and ten to one I get a letter from him the next day with something in it that seems to me to hint ever so slightly at that very incident. Now, you'll say that's absurd. I dare say I'm over-sensitive about John—I think we all are—but it would have astonished you to have seen the numbers of letters that John liked to write while he was at Rugby. Boys of his age don't like writing letters, you know, but he seemed to enjoy it, and every letter made one a little uncomfortable some way. Now, all we want is for him to fix his attention upon somebody else. It really is most uncomfortable, feeling that a boy of his age is watching you all the time, and regards you rather like animals in the Zoo. Mrs. Bumpus doesn't like it, and although she wouldn't say an unkind word about the boy, and, indeed, never says an unkind word about anybody, still, she isn't comfortable when he's in the house, nor, indeed, when he's out of it, and it's for her sake, more than my own, that I have asked your assistance."
That was a strange night when John came to stay. I shall never forget it. I lived in an old house in Westminster, just off Barton Street, under the very shadow of the Abbey—one of those old houses with crooked staircases, low-ceilinged rooms, and boards that creak at every step.
John arrived in time for an early dinner, and we went off to the pantomime at the Hippodrome, which that year had lasted from Christmas right over Easter. I need have had no fear as to the reality of John's youth. It did one's heart good to see that little figure rocking about in his seat, laughing and shouting and crowing with that peculiar cockerel noise made by small boys when they're very happy. Nellie Wallace had only to appear for him to go into ecstasies, and when Lupino Lane vanished in and out of his numerous trapdoors, John was doubled and twisted with delight. Walking home afterwards, as he said he preferred to do, he remained pure boy. "Do you think," he asked me, in that funny, hoarse voice of his, "that Miss Wallace is really like that at home? Is she as ugly, do you think?"
"No," I said, "she's probably very beautiful. She is one of the few women in the world whom it pays to pretend to be as ugly as possible."
"If she was more ugly still," asked John, "would she get more money?"
"Probably," I answered.
"And if she was more ugly than that?" asked John.
I saw that there was no end to the heights and involutions of this inquiry, so I changed it to another one.
"Did you like the princess?" I asked him.
"Oh, yes," he answered. "She's the one I've seen the advertisements about, with all her teeth in a row. Don't you think it's a pity," he continued, "that when anybody is going to be a princess in the evening, she should be an advertisement in the daytime?"
"I really haven't thought about it," I answered. "It's very difficult for anybody to be a princess all the time."
"Why?" asked John.
"Oh, I don't know," I said; "it's very exhausting."
"Why?" asked John.
"Because you have to sit still, and be very proper, and dressed in your best."
"Why?" asked John.
I am glad to say that at that moment we arrived at my Westminster home.
Now, as soon as we entered my old house and found our way up the dark staircase, John became another person. I cannot describe it better than by saying he was like a dog who sniffs a good smell somewhere close at hand. He did literally go round my sitting-room sniffing at the walls. He poked his small nose into every possible corner, and suddenly, to my amazement, flopped down on the floor and laid his ear to one of the boards.
"Good Heavens!" I said. "What are you doing?"
"It's funny," he answered, getting up slowly, not in the least disturbed, "it's old. It's been here hundreds of years. Lots of things have happened in this room."
"Yes," I said, "they have."
"Nothing's ever happened in Uncle Henry's house," he said. "Not to Aunt Mary, nor Emmy, nor Gertrude, nor Percival. I hate Percival," he added reminiscently.
He stood in a funny little way against the hearth, as though he were trying to balance himself on a rocking floor. "I like you," he said, smiling. "Do you think it's wrong not to like Uncle Henry and the others? Because I don't like any of them."
"No, I don't know that it's wrong," I answered. "If you don't like them, you had better go away and live with somebody else. With me, for instance."
"Oh, now," he answered, "it's fun living with them. I can make them ratty in no time."
"Well, it isn't right," I said, "to like making people uncomfortable who've been good to you."
"They've only been good to me," he said, "because they'd be uncomfortable if they weren't."
"Good Heavens," I answered, "how old are you?"
"I'm twelve and a half," he said, "by years, but do you ever have that funny feeling, Mr. Johnson, as though you'd been a lot older really, and seen everything before, and knew just what was coming next?"
"I have known that," I answered, speaking to him, in spite of myself, exactly as though he were my age, "once or twice at moments, but only for a moment."
"Well, I know it often," he said. "At school there's a master who's got a bad leg and he goes limping around. Well, I know I've seen him limping somewhere else a long while ago, and he was all in red and green."
"Red and green?" I said.
"Yes," said John, laughing just as he had laughed at Nellie Wallace, "and it was so funny. He was a man everybody laughed at, and that's what he was there for, and he hit people on the head with a balloon."
I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. "Well, we won't talk about that now," I said. "Only look here, you mustn't do things that make your aunt and uncle unhappy. They've been kind to you, after all."
"I don't want to make them unhappy," he said, "but they're so silly, and if you know that if you do something somebody else'll do something, and then you'll do something again, it's awfully jolly to make them do something." After which explanation I took him down to the little dining-room and gave him something to eat. In the middle of supper I said—
"You know, John, I oughtn't to be giving you supper. Little boys oughtn't to have supper just before they go to bed."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because it makes them dream and talk in their sleep."
"Oh, I always dream," he said, "every night. Last night I dreamt that Aunt Mary was a cow, a large, white cow with flowers on her head. It was a funny thing, but I was sorry for her last night. I'm never sorry for her in the daytime. But the one I really hate," he added, becoming confidential, "is Emmeline. Isn't it a silly name—Emmeline?"
"Yes," I said, "it is rather."
"I sometimes feel," he said, "that I'd like to get Emmy into a corner and twist her hair round and round and round. She's a sucker up."
"Most girls are," I answered.
"Why?" said John.
"Well, because they're not so strong and they can't hit back."
"No, but they can pinch and bite," said John. "Emmy does when you're not looking."
"And why," I asked, "do you write them so many letters when you're away? Most boys don't like writing letters."
"It's such fun sometimes," he answered, "to write something that you know they won't expect. It's just as though I were at home with them and saw everything that they were doing."
"If you didn't think of them any more," I said, "and thought of someone else, wouldn't it be a bit of a change for you?"
"You see," he answered very seriously, as though he were sixty years old, "I like to have somebody to think about and to do things with—like playing draughts, you know."
I took him up to bed and put him into a small dressing-room next to mine. He asked questions through the open door all the time he was undressing. "I say, isn't this fun?" he called out. "Is Miss Wallace married? And then a flood of questions like "Are you married? Have you got any children? Do you go to the theatre every night? I saw 'Charlie's Aunt' once. I like Nellie Wallace better. Don't you think it's a shame when you don't like cricket that you have to play? Have you got a boiler in your bath? We have at Uncle Henry's. Do you wear a night-shirt or pyjamas? Is this the first time you've ever had a boy in your house? Do you know all Aunt Mary's hair isn't real, and she can take some of it out when she likes?" To all of which questions I attempted suitable answers. I had just put on my pyjamas, and was going to see him safely into bed, when he appeared in the doorway quite naked, and, with the most enchanting smile on his face, cried, "Mr. Johnson, can you do this?" and was suddenly down on his hands, and started walking, feet in air, across my room. Mid-way he paused and, with a most amazing little chuckle, began to turn somersaults round and round and round.
I've always done my best to curb my too tempting imagination, and I intend, in this case, strictly to tell the truth, but something extraordinary occurred in that room as that little naked figure went tumbling from side to side. It was as though a light flashed through the air, the kind of reflection that a piece of glass, turned in the hand, gleams upon the wall. He was not distinguishable as a human body. He was rather a piece of colour transmuting the whole place, as though, had I turned off the electric light, the beam would have passed glittering, now here, now there, objects in the room starting from the shadows as he touched them—strangest and most incommunicable of sensations, bringing me back, it seemed, to something that I had once known, promising me some future confirmation of something for which I had always hoped. I sat staring, scarcely venturing to breathe, lest the enchantment should break.
He stopped; with a kind of jerk he was on his feet in the middle of the floor, an ordinary naked smiling little boy. "You can't do that, I bet, Mr. Johnson," he said.
"No," I replied, "I'm much too old."
"I'll never be too old," he answered. He came across to me, held out his small and now very grubby hand, and with an air of infinite age and generations-past courtesy, said: "Now I think I'll go to bed. I've enjoyed my evening very much." And to his room he went.
III.
One of the most tiresome of Chippet's many tiresome relations was the old Dowager Countess of Pruxe. She was tiresome in all sorts of ways, one of them being that she had lived beyond her time, having had an elder sister who had been danced on Byron's knee (the only drawback to this story was the doubt, natural to any literary mind, as to whether Byron had ever dandled anyone under twenty on his knee). She was more inquisitive by nature than anyone else of her own sex in the British Isles. She was uglier than any human being had any right to be, and she was a bully. No one knew what her age was. She was a very distant cousin indeed of Chippet, but whether it was that she had nothing else to do, or that she really had taken a kind of liking to him, whatever her mysterious reasons might have been, she continued to come of a morning into our little office, sit upright on one of our smallest chairs, looking like an angry, over-painted cockatoo with an enormous Roman nose, and ask us all sorts of questions about our business and private affairs that she had, of course, no right to ask at all. The trouble with her, Chippet said, was that she had too much imagination. We would have rid ourselves of her cantankerous company in no time at all had it not been that we dared not challenge her ever. Old though she was, she could be still a terrible enemy, and having no affection for the truth, and all the romantic anecdotage of very old age, she could ruin somebody's reputation in less time than it takes to poach an egg. She was marvellously vigorous, and always brought with her a miserable-looking, impoverished, pale-faced companion, who snored through her nose so disconcertingly that my only explanation of Lady Pruxe's engaging her was that she added to the general terror of the atmosphere and the old lady's dignity.
She came to the office the morning following John's visit to me, and, while she sat there, in her ugly, husky voice asked questions that Chippet did his best to avoid answering. She vaguely reminded me of someone. I looked at her again and again, but the connection would not come. Where had I seen somebody like her, or, at least, where had I heard that voice before, and who was it who took that curious, almost malicious interest in their fellow-beings' weaknesses? There was something, somebody. …
However, the increasing difficulty of the Bumpus case soon absorbed my attention again. I could see that the Bumpuses were beginning to regard it with suspicion, even as Mrs. Fleming had once done. Further than that, I could see that Bumpus himself disapproved of my liking for Johnny. I could not disguise that John was a million times more interesting to me than all the Bumpus children put together, and in the eyes of the Bumpus parents it became increasingly apparent that I was encouraging John in all his natural wickedness. Then with dramatic swiftness the crisis arrived. One night I was going to bed, and was standing for a moment at my bedroom window listening to the wind and the rain that came beating and howling up the little Westminster street and whirling away round the great walls of the Abbey, when my telephone bell rang. A moment later the trembling, agitated tones of Mr. Bumpus came through to me. "Is that you, Mr. Johnson?"
"Yes," I answered. "What is it?"
"Is John with you?"
"John?" I answered. "No. Why?"
"Oh, dear! I thought he might be, and Emmeline, too."
"Emmeline?" I cried. "What's she doing out at this time of night?"
"Oh, we don't know! We don't know!" wailed the voice at the other end. "Would you mind coming round at once and helping us? We are in the greatest trouble."
I detected in his voice the implication that I was considered largely responsible for the catastrophe. Of course I hurried through the rain and arrived to find the Bumpus parents walking up and down their drawing-room, literally wringing their hands and making little exclamations like wounded pigeons at Monte Carlo.
"Well, now, what is it?" I asked.
It was difficult at first to discover what it really was, but from the agitation that fell during the next quarter of an hour like a shower about my head, I discovered that John and Emmeline had slipped out of the house about half-past seven that evening, their father and mother being out at a dinner-party and the governess asleep over a novel. No one had discovered their absence until their father and mother went up to see whether they were quietly sleeping. They were not there. A maid in the house next door had seen them come out of the gate. After that there was no news.
During the whole of this, the look in the eyes of the poor little Bumpuses and the plaintive whine in their voices showed me that I was held entirely responsible for this horrible occurrence. What a night followed! All the policemen of London were out in the wind and rain. All the telephones were ringing in agitated convulsions, and by three in the morning I was held to be very little less than a murderer. By that time I was myself so agitated, so wet in body and so exhausted in soul, that I had determined to give up the whole of our business, although now it was making such hopeful progress, and was wishing that I had never thought so confidently to plunge into that most confused of all foreign countries, the psychology of one's fellow-beings. Then as the clock struck four, and the tenth policeman was being offered a drink by the now tearful Mr. Bumpus, John quietly walked in, dragging with him a bedraggled, hysterical, dripping, but triumphant Emmeline.
Mrs. Bumpus, with a shriek of joy, threw her arms round the neck of her dripping daughter. An odd thing then occurred. Emmeline pushed her mother away, saying peevishly: "Don't fuss me, mother. Can't you see I'm tired?"
John was not, of course, in the least perturbed. He seemed to be scarcely wet, his little overcoat, with its upturned collar, giving him a strangely grown-up appearance, his eyes watching us all with the same critical, amused, slightly scornful glance that by now I knew so well.
"Where have you been? Where have you been? Where have you been?" cried Mr. Bumpus, exactly like an excited clock striking the hour.
"We've been on Primrose Hill," said John quietly.
"Glad to see it's all right, sir," said the constable, finishing his whisky and preparing to depart.
"All right, all right!" cried little Bumpus, obviously now in a state of hysterics quite beyond his control. "It's not all right—it's terrible!"
The constable looked a little confused. "Well, if you want me in the morning, sir——" he said, and departed.
"Don't be so silly, father," said Emmeline. "John and I have had a wonderful time. We would have been back before, only we lost the way. There was a lovely old woman——"
But her father could do nothing but turn upon John. "You're responsible for this!" he cried. "Leading my daughter …"
"Not now, not now, dear," interrupted Mrs. Bumpus. "We're all so tired. I'm sure that we shall discuss it better in the morning."
Next morning, at ten o'clock, I was summoned to a family conference. When I arrived I found that I was, in the eyes of both Mr. and Mrs. Bumpus, the villain of the piece. It was still very uncertain as to what exactly Emmeline and John had done the night before. It appeared that John had tempted her with some story of meeting an old man on Primrose Hill who had bags of gold that he distributed for the asking. It seemed to me that it was very unlikely that Emmeline, a matter-of-fact child if ever there was one, would believe such a story as this, but more than anyone I've ever known, she was one who loved, beyond all else, the consciousness that she was getting something for nothing. John had had for a long time past a certain power over her, and I imagine that she was flattered by his so definitely pleading for her company. However, she went. The interesting fact now about her was the fashion in which she returned. Already, so few hours after her adventure, it was plain she was entirely changed, or, rather, not changed, because no human being ever changes—simply this accident had brought to the surface qualities that no one had seen before. She was independent, scornful, and imaginative. She talked about a little man in a green cap, about three stars that had hit a tree, about the rain dancing in circles around a heap of stones, and about an old woman with a basket of apples who had offered her a silver bodkin.
"Bodkin?" cried her father, now terribly aflraid his favourite daughter was completely out of her mind. "There isn't such a thing."
"That's what John said it was, father," said Emmeline. "He said he'd had one once just like it."
"Well, where is it?" asked her father.
"The rain blew the old woman away," said Emmeline. "If I go out there another night, John says she's sure to give me one."
After this, can it be doubted that the little Bumpus was in a frenzy of despair? He took me into his stuffy little study and there told me quite plainly what he thought of me.
"You come into this house," he cried, "with some cock-and-bull story about helping us in our trouble. You deliberately encourage the boy in all his worst vices, you help him to abduct my daughter and to turn her head crazy with mad fancies, and now I suppose you expect us to pay you fifty pounds and say 'Good-bye, and thank you very much.'"
"Not at all, Mr. Bumpus," I answered. I will admit that I was feeling frightfully tired and dishevelled after my stormy night's experiences. "If you want me to tell you what I think, it is that John has woken your daughter up to some semblance of real life, and if he is given time, he will wake the rest of your children. Give me another twenty-four hours, and I may yet succeed in my task."
Poor little Bumpus could do nothing else. He was in despair. John might be removed, but how would that help matters? His influence over the family would be as strong as ever. Poor little Percival would be the next to be corrupted. Wake up all their imaginations, and Heaven knew what might happen. Why, even Mrs. Bumpus … And at this thought he burst suddenly into tears and sobbed like a child.
"I don't know what's happening!" he cried. "The world used to be such a straightforward place." You knew where you were, and things were either right or they weren't. The people, too. Now everything was upside down, and nobody was shocked any longer. If he lost his children, he didn't know what he'd do, and if they weren't going to respect him, then he had lost them, and so on and so on. He ended by turning upon me.
"I dare say to you, Mr. Johnson," he said, "this all seems very funny. You're one of this new generation who don't believe in God, and think the only thing to do is just what you want to do; but you're corrupting the young, and I tell you that the next generation will have to pay for the sins of this one."
"Excuse me, Mr. Bumpus," I answered, with all the dignity I could, "you didn't engage me to come here and talk morals and modern sociology. I dare say you're perfectly right in what you say. My business is to remove John's attention from your family, and if I don't succeed within the next twenty-four hours, I will admit myself beaten, and make no further demands upon either your time or your purse."
I left him with all the dignity I could command, but it was all very well—I had not at that moment the slightest idea of how I was going to win my case. I felt a beaten man, and I tell you that I was pretty miserable and conscience-stricken over the whole affair. When I had gone a little way down the street, I heard someone running after me, and was caught up by John. He informed me that they were all so foolish that morning, and that it was too late to go to school, and that therefore he would accompany me to my office for an hour or two. I tried to get from him the explanation of last night's adventure.
"Well, you see," he said, "I've been wondering for a long time whether I couldn't do something with Emmeline, and suddenly it occurred to me that if I took her out in all the rain and lost her, it would be funny to see what she'd be like afterwards."
"That was very wrong, John," I said.
"Why? "he asked.
"It's always very wrong," I went on, "to make people unhappy just for your own pleasure."
"Why?" he asked.
"Well, of course it is," I continued. "What we're here for is to make people happy, not unhappy."
"Who said so?" he asked.
"You want people to make you happy, don't you?" I asked.
"I don't care what they do," he answered. "I can be happy or unhappy all by myself."
"But don't you mind what other people do or say?" I asked him.
"Why should I?" he asked.
"Other people can make you feel all sorts of things."
"Why?" he asked.
"Well, because they're so close to you, and we're all mixed up together."
"I'm not mixed up with anybody," he answered. "I just wanted to see what Emmeline would do, and what Uncle Henry would do, and what the policeman would do, and what you'd do. I haven't finished," he ended, with a chuckle, "seeing what Uncle Henry will do. I'm sure he'll do something silly. Emmeline's not so bad," he added reflectively. "If you tell her stories, she believes them."
I will frankly admit that I was in despair when we entered the office. I was beginning, ever so slightly, to understand, in my own experience, why the Bumpuses were so anxious to be rid of John. I was beginning to wonder how long it would be before I myself would long to escape from that curious, inquisitive, sarcastic glance.
We entered the office and therein found Chippet, very bored indeed, and his distant cousin, Lady Pruxe.
"Good morning, Mr. Johnson," she said, and as soon as she spoke I realised where it was that I had already heard that odd, husky voice. Other realisations were achieved at that same moment.
John gave a little gasp, and stood in the middle of the floor, staring. The old woman looked down from her chair and stared in return.
"Who's that strange boy?" she asked.
"A little friend of mine," I answered, "come in to pay us a visit."
From that moment, you may believe it or no, as you please, the two never removed their eyes from one another's faces.
"Come here, boy," the old woman commanded.
John came over to her.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"John Borstal Clay," he answered.
"Where have I seen you before?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"What do you wear all that jewellery for in the daytime?" he asked.
"Because I like to," she answered.
"Why?" asked John.
"Because they're pretty," she answered,
He looked at her with that funny, sarcastic glance of his, but this time there was something in his smile that I had never seen before, something of recognition, of acclaiming that at last he had found someone worthy of his companionship.
"Feel as though I'd seen you somewhere before," she said slowly. But he was looking at the rings on her fingers.
"I know that green one," he said, pointing, "only I don't know where …" He shook his head. "Somewhere, a long time ago."
She looked at him queerly. "That was given me by my husband," she said slowly, "sixty-three years ago, and it was in his family——" She broke off. "You're a queer little boy," she said. "Will you come back to my house and have lunch with me?"
"Yes," he answered. "Have you got peacocks in your house?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"We have peacocks in the country, not in London."
"Why?"
"Oh, because they like to move about, and they make such a noise."
"I like you," he said, nodding his head confidently. "You're more clever than the others." Then he turned and saw the pale companion. I watched creep into his eyes just the expression, the malicious, inquisitive, humorous, sporting expression that I had once seen as he watched Emmeline, Gertrude, and little Percival, and I knew that he had found a new occupation. …
John Borstal Clay has taken up his permanent residence in the enormous, gloomy house in Portland Place owned by the Dowager Countess of Pruxe. The old lady has already had four different companions during the three months of his stay there. She herself declares that she has a new joy in life. Many weeks ago Mr. Bumpus paid the firm of Boniface and Co. a cheque for one hundred pounds, and wrote a little note expressing in the warmest terms his appreciation of our efforts on his behalf.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1941, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 83 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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