Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (68 page)

The woman had dropped upon her knees by the cradle, while he was speaking.
She neither looked at him nor seemed to hear him.
With hands clasped above her head, she rocked herself wildly to and fro.
‘Oh my God!
Oh my God!’
was all she said, over and over again.

Sylvie and Bruno gently unclasped her hands and drew them down—till she had an arm round each of them, though she took no notice of them, but knelt on with eyes gazing upwards, and lips that moved as if in silent thanks-giving.
The man kept his face hidden, and uttered no sound: but one could see the sobs that shook him from head to foot.

After a while he raised his head—his face all wet with tears.
‘Polly!’
he said softly; and then, louder, ‘Old Poll!’

Then she rose from her knees and came to him, with a dazed look, as if she were walking in her sleep.
‘Who was it called me old Poll?’
she asked: her voice took on it a tender playfulness: her eyes sparkled; and the rosy light of Youth flushed her pale cheeks, till she looked more like a happy girl of seventeen than a worn woman of forty.
‘Was that my own lad, my Willie, a-waiting for me at the stile?’

His face too was transformed, in the same magic light, to the likeness of a bashful boy: and boy and girl they seemed, as he wound an arm about her, and drew her to his side, while with the other hand he thrust from him the heap of money, as though it were something hateful to the touch.
‘Tak it, lass,’ he said, ‘tak it all!
An’ fetch us summat to eat: but get a sup o’ milk, first, for t’ bairn.’

‘My little bairn!’
she murmured as she gathered up the coins.
‘My own little lassie!’
Then she moved to the door, and was passing out, but a sudden thought seemed to arrest her: she hastily returned—first to kneel down and kiss the sleeping child, and then to throw herself into her husband’s arms and be strained to his heart.
The next moment she was on her way, taking with her a jug that hung on a peg near the door: we followed close behind.

We had not gone far before we came in sight of a swinging sign-board bearing the word ‘DAIRY’ on it, and here she went in, welcomed by a little curly white dog, who, not being under the ‘eerie’ influence, saw the children, and received them with the most effusive affection.
When I got inside, the dairyman was in the act of taking the money.
‘Is’t for thysen, Missus, or for t’

bairn?’
he asked, when he had filled the jug, pausing with it in his hand.

‘For t’ bairn!’
she said, almost reproachfully.
‘Think’st tha I’d touch a drop mysen, while as she hadna got her fill?’

‘All right, Missus,’ the man replied, turning away with the jug in his hand.
‘Let’s just mak sure it’s good measure.’
He went back among his shelves of milk-bowls, carefully keeping his back towards her while he emptied a little measure of cream into the jug, muttering to himself ‘mebbe it’ll hearten her up a bit, the little lassie!’

The woman never noticed the kind deed, but took back the jug with a simple ‘Good evening, Master’, and went her way: but the children had been more observant, and, as we followed her out, Bruno remarked ‘That were welly kind: and I loves that man: and if I was welly rich I’d give him a hundred pounds—and a bun.
That little grummeling dog doosn’t know its business!’

He referred to the dairyman’s little dog, who had apparently quite forgotten the affectionate welcome he had given us on our arrival, and was now following at a respectful distance, doing his best to ‘speed the parting guest’ with a shower of little shrill barks, that seemed to tread on one an other’s heels.

‘What is a dog’s business?’
laughed Sylvie.
‘Dogs ca’n’t keep shops and give change!’

‘Sisters’ business isn’t to laugh at their brothers,’ Bruno replied with perfect gravity.
‘And dogs’ businesses is to bark—not like that: it should finish one bark before it begins another: and it should—Oh Sylvie, there’s some dindledums!’

And in another moment the happy children were flying across the common, racing for the patch of dandelions.

While I stood watching them, a strange dreamy feeling came upon me: a railway-platform seemed to take the place of the green sward, and, instead of the light figure of Sylvie bounding along, I seemed to see the flying form of Lady Muriel; but whether Bruno had also undergone a transformation, and had become the old man whom she was running to overtake, I was unable to judge, so instantaneously did the feeling come and go.

When I re-entered the little sitting-room which I shared with Arthur, he was standing with his back to me, looking out of the open window, and evidently had not heard me enter.
A cup of tea, apparently just tasted and pushed aside, stood on the table, on the opposite side of which was a letter, just begun, with the pen lying across it: an open book lay on the sofa: the London paper occupied the easy chair; and on the little table which stood by it, I noticed an unlighted cigar and an open box of cigar-lights: all things betokened that the Doctor, usually so methodical and so self-contained, had been trying every form of occupation, and could settle to none!

‘This is very unlike you, Doctor!’
I was beginning, but checked myself, as he turned at the sound of my voice, in sheer amazement at the wonderful change that had taken place in his appearance.
Never had I seen a face so radiant with happiness, or eyes that sparkled with such unearthly light!
‘Even thus,’ I thought, ‘must the herald-angel have looked, who brought to the shepherds, watching over their flocks by night, that sweet message of "peace on earth, good-will to men"!’

‘Yes, dear friend!’
he said, as if in answer to the question that I suppose he read in my face.
‘It is true!
It is true!’

No need to ask what was true.
‘God bless you both!’
I said, as I felt the happy tears brimming to my eyes.
‘You were made for each other!’

‘Yes,’ he said, simply, ‘I believe we were.
And what a change it makes in one’s Life!
This isn’t the same world!
That isn’t the sky I saw yesterday!
Those clouds—I never saw such clouds in all my life before!
They look like troops of hovering angels!’

To me they looked very ordinary clouds indeed: but then I had not fed ‘on honeydew, And drunk the milk of Paradise’!

‘She wants to see you—at once,’ he continued, descending suddenly to the things of earth.
‘She says that is the one drop yet wanting in her cup of happiness!’

‘I’ll go at once,’ I said, as I turned to leave the room.
‘Wo’n’t you come with me?’

‘No, Sir!’
said the Doctor, with a sudden effort—which proved an utter failure—to resume his professional manner.
‘Do I look like coming with you?
Have you never heard that two is company, and—’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have heard it: and I’m painfully aware that I am Number Three!
But, when shall we three meet again?’

‘When the hurly-burly’s done!’
he answered with a happy laugh, such as I had not heard from him for many a year.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MEIN HERR

SO I went on my lonely way, and, on reaching the Hall, I found Lady Muriel standing at the garden-gate waiting for me.

‘No need to give you joy, or to wish you joy?’
I began.

‘None whatever!’
she replied, with the joyous laugh of a child.
‘We give people what they haven’t got: we wish for something that is yet to come.
For me, it’s all here!
It’s all mine!
Dear friend,’ she suddenly broke off, ‘do you think Heaven ever begins on Earth, for any of us?’

‘For some,’ I said.
‘For some, perhaps, who are simple and childlike.
You know he said "of such is the Kingdom of Heaven".’

Lady Muriel clasped her hands, and gazed up into the cloudless sky, with a look I had often seen in Sylvie’s eyes.
‘I feel as if it had begun for me,’ she almost whispered.
‘I feel as if I were one of the happy children, whom He bid them bring near to Him, though the people would have kept them back.
Yes, He has seen me in the throng.
He has read the wistful longing in my eyes.

He has beckoned me to Him.
They have had to make way for me.
He has taken me up in His arms.
He has put His hands upon me and blessed me!’
She paused, breathless in her perfect happiness.

‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I think He has!’

‘You must come and speak to my father,’ she went on, as we stood side by side at the gate, looking down the shady lane.
But, even as she said the words, the ‘eerie’ sensation came over me like a flood: I saw the dear old Professor approaching us, and also saw, what was stranger still, that he was visible to Lady Muriel!

What was to be done?
Had the fairy-life been merged in the real life?
Or was Lady Muriel ‘eerie’ also, and thus able to enter into the fairy-world along with me?
The words were on my lips (‘I see an old friend of mine in the lane: if you don’t know him, may I introduce him to you?’) when the strangest thing of all happened: Lady Muriel spoke.

‘I see an old friend of mine in the lane,’ she said: ‘if you don’t know him, may I introduce him to you?’

I seemed to wake out of a dream: for the ‘eerie’ feeling was still strong upon me, and the figure outside seemed to be changing at every moment, like one of the shapes in a kaleidoscope: now he was the Professor, and now he was somebody else!
By the time he had reached the gate, he certainly was somebody else: and I felt that the proper course was for Lady Muriel, not for me, to introduce him.
She greeted him kindly, and, opening the gate, admitted the venerable old man—a German, obviously—who looked about him with dazed eyes, as if he, too, had but just awaked from a dream!

No, it was certainly not the Professor!
My old friend could not have grown that magnificent beard since last we met: moreover, he would have recognised me, for I was certain that I had not changed much in the time.

As it was, he simply looked at me vaguely, and took off his hat in response to Lady Muriel’s words ‘Let me introduce Mein Herr to you’; while in the words, spoken in a strong German accent, ‘proud to make your acquaintance, Sir!’
I could detect no trace of an idea that we had ever met before.

Lady Muriel led us to the well-known shady nook, where preparations for afternoon-tea had already been made, and, while she went in to look for the Earl, we seated ourselves in two easy-chairs, and ‘Mein Herr’ took up Lady Muriel’s work, and examined it through his large spectacles (one of the adjuncts that made him so provokingly like the Professor).
‘Hemming pocket-handkerchiefs?’
he said, musingly.
‘So that is what the English miladies occupy themselves with, is it?’

‘It is the one accomplishment,’ I said, ‘in which Man has never yet rivalled Woman!’

Here Lady Muriel returned with her father; and, after he had exchanged some friendly words with ‘Mein Herr’, and we had all been supplied with the needful ‘creature-comforts’, the newcomer returned to the suggestive subject of Pocket-handkerchiefs.

‘You have heard of Fortunatus’s Purse, Miladi?
Ah, so!
Would you be surprised to hear that, with three of these leetle handkerchiefs, you shall make the Purse of Fortunatus, quite soon, quite easily?’

‘Shall I indeed?’
Lady Muriel eagerly replied, as she took a heap of them into her lap, and threaded her needle.
‘Please tell me how, Mein Herr!
I’ll make one before I touch another drop of tea!’

‘You shall first,’ said Mein Herr, possessing himself of two of the handkerchiefs, spreading one upon the other, and holding them up by two corners, ‘you shall first join together these upper corners, the right to the right, the left to the left; and the opening between them shall be the mouth of the Purse.’

A very few stitches sufficed to carry out this direction.
‘Now, if I sew the other three edges together,’ she suggested, ‘the bag is complete?’

‘Not so, Miladi: the lower edges shall first be joined—ah, not so!’
(as she was beginning to sew them together).
‘Turn one of them over, and join the right lower corner of the one to the left lower corner of the other, and sew the lower edges together in what you would call the wrong way.’

‘I see!’
said Lady Muriel, as she deftly executed the order.
‘And a very twisted, uncomfortable, uncanny-looking bag it makes!

But the moral is a lovely one.
Unlimited wealth can only be attained by doing things in the wrong way!
And how are we to join up these mysterious—no, I mean this mysterious opening?’
(twisting the thing round and round with a puzzled air).
‘Yes, it is one opening.
I thought it was two, at first.’

‘You have seen the puzzle of the Paper Ring?’
Mein Herr said, addressing the Earl.
‘Where you take a slip of paper, and join its ends together, first twisting one, so as to join the upper corner of one end to the lower corner of the other?’

‘I saw one made, only yesterday,’ the Earl replied.
‘Muriel, my child, were you not making one, to amuse those children you had to tea?’

‘Yes, I know that Puzzle,’ said Lady Muriel.
‘The Ring has only one surface, and only one edge.
It’s very mysterious!’

‘The bag is just like that, isn’t it?’
I suggested.
‘Is not the outer surface of one side of it continuous with the inner surface of the other side?’

‘So it is!’
she exclaimed.
‘Only it isn’t a bag, just yet.
How shall we fill up this opening, Mein Herr?’

‘Thus!’
said the old man impressively, taking the bag from her, and rising to his feet in the excitement of the explanation.
‘The edge of the opening consists of four handkerchief edges, and you can trace it continuously, round and round the opening: down the right edge of one, handkerchief, up the left edge of the other, and then down the left edge of the one, and up the right edge of the other!’

‘So you can!’
Lady Muriel murmured thoughtfully, leaning her head on her hand, and earnestly watching the old man.
‘And that proves it to be only one opening!’

She looked so strangely like a child, puzzling over a difficult lesson, and Mein Herr had become, for the moment, so strangely like the old Professor, that I felt utterly bewildered: the ‘eerie’ feeling was on me in its full force, and I felt almost impelled to say ‘Do you understand it, Sylvie?’
However I checked myself by a great effort, and let the dream (if indeed it was a dream) go on to its end.

‘Now, this third handkerchief,’ Mein Herr proceeded, ‘has also four edges, which you can trace continuously round and round: all you need do is to join its four edges to the four edges of the opening.
The Purse is then complete, and its outer surface—’

‘I see!’
Lady Muriel eagerly interrupted.
‘Its outer surface will be continuous with its inner surface!
But it will take time.
I’ll sew it up after tea.’
She laid aside the bag, and resumed her-cup of tea.
‘But why do you call it Fortunatus’s Purse, Mein Herr?’

The dear old man beamed upon her, with a jolly smile, looking more exactly like the Professor than ever.
‘Don’t you see, my child—I should say Miladi?
Whatever is inside that Purse, is outside it; and whatever is outside it, is inside it.
So you have all the wealth of the world in that leetle Purse!’

His pupil clapped her hands, in unrestrained delight.
‘I’ll certainly sew the third handkerchief in—some time,’ she said: ‘but I wo’n’t take up your time by trying it now: Tell us some more wonderful things, please!’
And her face and her voice so exactly recalled Sylvie, that I could not help glancing round, half-expecting to see Bruno also!

Mein Herr began thoughtfully balancing his spoon on the edge of his teacup, while he pondered over this request.
‘Something wonderful—like Fortunatus’s Purse?
That will give you—when it is made—wealth beyond your wildest dreams: but it will not give you Time!’

A pause of silence ensued—utilized by Lady Muriel for the very practical purpose of refilling the teacups.

‘In your country’, Mein Herr began with a startling abruptness, ‘what becomes of all the wasted Time?’

Lady Muriel looked grave.
‘Who can tell?’
she half-whispered to herself.
‘All one knows is that it is gone—past recall!’

‘Well, in my—I mean in a country I have visited,’ said the old man, ‘they store it up: and it comes in very useful, years afterwards!
For example, suppose you have a long tedious evening before you: nobody to talk to: nothing you care to do: and yet hours too soon to go to bed.
How do you behave then?’

‘I get very cross,’ she frankly admitted: ‘and I want to throw things about the room!’

‘When that happens to—to the people I have visited, they never act so.
By a short and simple process—which I cannot explain to you—they store up the useless hours: and, on some other occasion, when they happen to need extra time, they get them out again.’

The Earl was listening with a slightly incredulous smile.
‘Why cannot you explain the process?’
he enquired.

Mein Herr was ready with a quite unanswerable reason.
‘Because you have no words, in your language, to convey the ideas which are needed.
I could explain it in—in—but you would not understand it!’

‘No indeed!’
said Lady Muriel, graciously dispensing with the name of the unknown language.
‘I never learnt it—at least, not to speak it fluently, you know.
Please tell us some more wonderful things!’

‘They run their railway-trains without any engines—nothing is needed but machinery to stop them with.
Is that wonderful enough, Miladi?’

‘But where does the force come from?’
I ventured to ask.

Mein Herr turned quickly round, to look at the new speaker.
Then he took off his spectacles, and polished them, and looked at me again, in evident bewilderment.
I could see he was thinking—as indeed I was also—that we must have met before.

‘They use the force of gravity,’ he said.
‘It is a force known also in your country, I believe?’

‘But that would need a railway going down-hill,’ the Earl remarked.
‘You can’t have all your railways going down-hill?’

‘They all do,’ said Mein Herr.

‘Not from both ends?’

‘From both ends.’

‘Then I give it up!’
said the Earl.

‘Can you explain the process?’
said Lady Muriel.
‘Without using that language, that I ca’n’t speak fluently?’