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XIV

It would have been a loud sound which would have awakened them during those deep sleeping hours of the night. They did not even stir on their poor pillows when, long after midnight, there was the noise of heavy drunken footsteps and heavy drunken stumbling in the passage below, and then the raising of a man’s rough voice, and the upsetting of chairs and the slamming of doors, mingled with the expostulations of the woman, whose husband had come home in something worse than his frequent ill-fashion. They slept sweetly through it all, but when the morning came, and hours of unbroken rest had made their slumbers lighter, and the sunshine streamed in through the broken windows, they were called back to the world by loud and angry sounds.

“What is it?” said Meg, sitting bolt upright and rubbing her eyes; “somebody’s shouting.”

“And somebody’s crying,” said Robin, sitting up too, but more slowly.

It was quite clear to them, as soon as they were fully awake, that both these things were happening. A man seemed to be quarrelling below. They could hear him stamping about and swearing savagely. And they could hear the woman’s voice, which sounded as if she were trying to persuade him to do or leave undone something. They could not hear her words, but she was crying, and somebody else was crying, too, and they knew it was the boy with the little old face and the hump-back.

“I suppose it’s the woman’s husband,” said Meg. “I’m glad he wasn’t here last night.”

“I wonder if he knows we are here,” said Robin, listening anxiously.

It was plain that he did know. They heard him stumbling up the staircase, grumbling and swearing as he came, and he was coming up to their room, it was evident.

“What shall we do?” exclaimed Meg, in a whisper.

“Wait,” Robin answered, breathlessly. “We can’t do anything.”

The heavy feet blundered up the short second flight and blundered to their door. It seemed that the man had not slept off his drunken fit. He struck the door with his fist.

“Hand out that dollar,” he shouted. “When my wife takes roomers I’m going to be paid. Hand it out.”

They heard the woman hurrying up the stairs after him. She was out of breath with crying, and there was a choking sound in her voice when she spoke to them through the door.

“You’d better let him have it,” she said.

“I guess they’d better,” said the man, roughly. “Who’d’ they suppose owns the house?”

Robin got up and took a dollar from their very small store, which was hidden in the lining of his trousers. He went to the door and opened it a little, and held the money out.

“Here it is,” he said.

The man snatched it out of his hand and turned away, and went stumbling down stairs, still growling. The woman stood a minute on the landing, and they heard her make a pitiful sort of sound, half sob, half sniff.

Meg sat up in bed, with her chin on her hands, and glared like a little lioness.

“What do you think of that?” she said.

“He’s a devil!” said Robin, with terseness. And he was conscious of no impropriety. “I wanted that boy to have it, and go.” It was not necessary to say where.

“So did I,” answered Meg. “And I believe his mother would have given it to him, too.”

They heard the man leave the house a few minutes later, and then it did not take them long to dress and go down the narrow, broken-balustraded stairs again. As they descended the first flight they saw the woman cooking something over the stove in her kitchen, and as she moved about they saw her brush her apron across her eyes.

The squalid street was golden with the early morning sunshine, which is such a joyful thing, and, in the full, happy flood of it, a miserable little figure sat crouched on the steps. It was the boy Ben, and they saw that he looked paler than he had looked the night before, and his little face looked older. His elbow was on his knee and his cheek on his hand, and there were wet marks on his cheeks.

A large lump rose up in Meg’s throat.

“I know what’s the matter,” she whispered to Robin.

“So – so do I,” Robin answered, rather unsteadily. “And he’s poorer than anybody else. It ought not to go by him.”

“No, no,” said Meg. “It oughtn’t.”

She walked straight to the threshold and sat down on the step beside him. She was a straightforward child, and she was too much moved to stand on ceremony. She sat down quite close by the poor little fellow, and put her hand on his arm.

“Never you mind,” she said. “Never you mind.” And her throat felt so full that for a few seconds she could say nothing more.

Robin stood against the door post. The effect of this was to make his small jaw square itself.

“Don’t mind us at all,” he said. “We – we know.”

The little fellow looked at Meg and then up at him. In that look he saw that they did know.

“Mother was going to give that dollar to me,” he said, brokenly. “I was going to the Fair on it. Everybody is going, everybody is talking about it, and thinking about it! Nobody’s been talking of nothing else for months and months! The streets are full of people on their way! And they all pass me by.”

He rubbed his sleeve across his forlorn face and swallowed hard.

“There’s pictures in the shops,” he went on, “and flags flying. And everything’s going that way, and me staying behind!”

Two of the large, splendid drops, which had sometimes gathered on Meg’s eyelashes and fallen on the straw, when she had been telling stories in the barn, fell now upon her lap.

“Robin!” she said.

Robin stood and stared very straight before him for a minute, and then his eyes turned and met hers.

“We’re very poor,” he said to her, “but everybody has – has something.”

“We couldn’t leave him behind,” Meg said, “we couldn’t! Let’s think.” And she put her head down, resting her elbows on her knee and clutching her forehead with her supple, strong little hands.

“What can we do without?” said Robin. “Let’s do without something.”

Meg lifted her head.

“We will eat nothing but the eggs for breakfast,” she said, “and go without lunch – if we can. Perhaps we can’t – but we’ll try. And we will not go into some of the places we have to pay to go into. I will make up stories about them for you. And, Robin, it is true – everybody has something to give. That’s what I have – the stories I make up. It’s something– just a little.”

“It isn’t so little,” Robin answered; “it fills in the empty place, Meg?” with a question in his voice.

She answered with a little nod, and then put her hand on Ben’s arm again. During their rapid interchange of words he had been gazing at them in a dazed, uncomprehending way. To his poor little starved nature they seemed so strong and different from himself that there was something wonderful about them. Meg’s glowing, dark little face quite made his weak heart beat as she turned it upon him.

“We are not much better off than you are,” she said, “but we think we’ve got enough to take you into the grounds. You let us have your bed. Come along with us.”

“To – to – the Fair?” he said, tremulously.

“Yes,” she answered, “and when we get in I’ll try and think up things to tell you and Robin, about the places we can’t afford to go into. We can go into the Palaces for nothing.”

“Palaces!” he gasped, his wide eyes on her face.

She laughed.

“That’s what we call them,” she said; “that’s what they are. It’s part of a story. I’ll tell it to you as we go.”

“Oh!” he breathed out, with a sort of gasp, again.

He evidently did not know how to express himself. His hands trembled, and he looked half frightened.

“If you’ll do it,” he said, “I’ll remember you all my life! I’ll – I’ll – if it wasn’t for father I know mother would let you sleep here every night for nothing. And I’d give you my bed and be glad to do it, I would. I’ll be so thankful to you. I hain’t got nothin’ – nothin’ – but I’ll be that thankful – I” – there was a kind of hysterical break in his voice – “let me go and tell mother,” he said, and he got up stumblingly and rushed into the house.

Meg and Robin followed him to the kitchen, as excited as he was. The woman had just put a cracked bowl of something hot on the table, and as he came in she spoke to him.

“Your mush is ready,” she said. “Come and eat while it’s hot.”

“Mother,” he cried out, “they are going to take me in. I’m going! They’re going to take me!”

The woman stopped short and looked at the twins, who stood in the doorway. It seemed as if her chin rather trembled.

“You’re going – ” she began, and broke off. “You’re as poor as he is,” she ended. “You must be, or you wouldn’t have come here to room.”

“We’re as poor in one way,” said Meg, “but we worked, and saved money to come. It isn’t much, but we can do without something that would cost fifty cents, and that will pay for his ticket.”

The woman’s chin trembled more still.

“Well,” she said, ”I – I – O Lord!” And she threw her apron over her head and sat down suddenly.

Meg went over to her, not exactly knowing why.

“We could not bear to go ourselves,” she said. “And he is like us.”

She was thinking, as she spoke, that this woman and her boy were very fond of each other. The hands holding the apron were trembling as his had done. They dropped as suddenly as they had been thrown up. The woman lifted her face eagerly.

“What were you thinking of going without?” she asked. “Was it things to eat?”

“We – we’ve got some hard-boiled eggs,” faltered Meg, a little guiltily.

“There’s hot mush in the pan,” said the woman. “There’s nothing to eat with it, but it’s healthier than cold eggs. Sit down and eat some.”

And they did, and in half an hour they left the poor house, feeling full-fed and fresh. With them went Ben – his mother standing on the steps looking after him – his pale old face almost flushed and young, as it set itself toward the City Beautiful.

XV

Before they entered the Court of Honor Meg stopped them both. She was palpitating with excitement.

“Robin,” she said, “let us make him shut his eyes. Then you can take one of his hands and I can take the other, and we will lead him. And when we have taken him to the most heavenly place, he shall look – suddenly!”

“I should like that,” said Ben, tremulous with anticipation.

“All right,” said Robin.

By this time it was as if they had been friends all their lives. They knew each other. They had not ceased talking a moment since they set out, but it had not been about the Fair. Meg had decided that nothing should be described beforehand; that all the entrancement of beauty should burst upon Ben’s hungry soul, as Paradise bursts upon translated spirits.

“I don’t want it to be gradual,” she said, anxiously. “I want it to be sudden! It can be gradual after.”

She was an artist and an epicure in embryo, this child. She tasted her joys with a delicate palate, and lost no flavor of them. The rapture of yesterday was intensified ten-fold to-day, because she felt it throbbing anew in this frail body beside her, in which Nature had imprisoned a soul as full of longings as her own, but not so full of power.

They took Ben by either hand, and led him with the greatest care. He shut his eyes tight, and walked between them. People who glanced at them smiled, recognizing the time-honored and familiar child trick. They did not know that this time it was something more than that.

“The trouble is,” Meg said in a low voice to Robin, “I don’t know which is the most heavenly place to stand. Sometimes I think it is at one end, and sometimes at the other, and sometimes at the side.”

They led their charge for some minutes indefinitely. Sometimes they paused and looked about them, speaking in undertones. Ben was rigidly faithful, and kept his eyes shut. As they hesitated for a moment near one of the buildings, a man who was descending the steps looked in their direction, and his look was one of recognition. It was the man who had watched them the day before, and he paused upon the steps, interested again, and conscious of being curious.

“What are they going to do?” he said to himself. “They are going to do something. Where did they pick up the other one – poor little chap!”

Meg had been looking very thoughtful during that moment of hesitancy. She spoke, and he was near enough to hear her.

“He shall open them where he can hear the water splashing in the fountain,” she said. “I think that’s the best.”

It seemed that Robin thought so, too. They turned and took their way to the end of the Court, where the dome lifted itself, wonderful, against the sky, and a splendor of rushing water, from which magnificent sea-monsters rose, stood grand before.

Their man followed them. He had had a bad night, and had come out into a dark world. The streams of pleasure-seekers, the gayly fluttering flags, the exhilaration in the very air seemed to make his world blacker and more empty. A year before he had planned to see this wonder, with the one soul on earth who would have been most thrilled, and who would have made him most thrill, to its deepest and highest meaning. Green grass and summer roses were waving over the earth that had shut in all dreams like these, for him. As he wandered about, he had told himself that he had been mad to come and see it all, so alone. Sometimes he turned away from the crowd, and sat in some quiet corner of palace or fairy garden; and it was because he was forced to do it, for it was at times when he was in no condition to be looked at by careless passers-by.

He had never been particularly fond of children; but somehow these two waifs, with their alert faces and odd independence, had wakened his interest. He was conscious of rather wanting to know where they had come from and what they would do next. The bit of the story of the Genius of the Palace of the Sea had attracted him. He had learned to love stories from the one who should have seen with him the Enchanted City. She had been a story lover, and full of fancies.

He followed the trio to the end of the great Court. When they reached there, three pairs of cheeks were flushed, and the eyes that were open were glowing. Meg and Robin chose a spot of ground, and stopped.

“Now,” said Meg, “open them – suddenly!”

The boy opened them. The man saw the look that flashed into his face. It was a strange, quivering look. Palaces, which seemed of pure marble, surrounded him. He had never even dreamed of palaces. White stairways rose from the lagoon, leading to fair, open portals the wondering world passed through to splendors held within. A great statue of gold towered noble and marvellous, with uplifted arms holding high the emblems of its spirit and power, and at the end of this vista, through the archway, and between the line of columns, bearing statues poised against the background of sky, he caught glimpses of the lake’s scintillating blue.

He uttered a weird little sound. It was part exclamation, and a bit of a laugh, cut short by something like a nervous sob, which did not know what to do with itself.

“Oh!” he said. And then, “Oh!” again. And then “I – I don’t know – what it’s – like!” And he cleared his throat and stared, and Meg saw his narrow chest heave up and down.

“It isn’t like anything, but – but something we’ve dreamed of, perhaps,” said Meg, gazing in ecstasy with him.

“No – no!” answered Ben. “But I’ve never dreamed like it.”

Meg put her hand on his shoulder.

“But you will now,” she said. “You will now.”

And their man had been near enough to hear, and he came to them.

“Good morning,” he said. “You’re having another day of it, I see.”

Meg and Robin looked up at him, radiant. They were both in good enough mood to make friends. They felt friends with everybody.

“Good morning,” they answered; and Robin added, “We’re going to come every day as long as we can make our money last.”

“That’s a good enough idea,” said their man. “Where are your father and mother?”

Meg lifted her solemn, black-lashed eyes to his. She was noticing again about the dreary look in his face.

“They died nearly four years ago,” she answered, for Robin.

“Who is with you?” asked the man, meeting her questioning gaze with a feeling that her great eyes were oddly thoughtful for a child’s, and that there was a look in them he had seen before in a pair of eyes closed a year ago. It gave him an almost startled feeling.

“Nobody is with us,” Meg said, “except Ben.”

“You came alone?” said the man.

“Yes.”

He looked at her for a moment in silence, and then turned away and looked across the Court to where the lake gleamed through the colonnade.

“So did I,” he said, reflectively. “So did I. Quite alone.”

Meg and Robin glanced at each other.

“Yesterday Rob and I came by ourselves,” said Meg next, and she said it gently. “But we were not lonely; and to-day we have Ben.”

The man turned his eyes on the boy.

“You’re Ben, are you?” he said.

“Yes,” Ben answered. “And but for them I couldn’t never have seen it – never!”

“Why?” the man asked. “Almost everybody can see it.”

“But not me,” said Ben. “And I wanted to more than any one – seemed like to me. And when they roomed at our house last night, mother was going to give me the fifty cents, but – but father – father, he took it away from us. And they brought me.”

Then the man turned on Robin.

“Have you plenty of money?” he asked, unceremoniously.

“No,” said Rob.

“They’re as poor as I am,” put in Ben. “They couldn’t afford to room anywhere but with poor people.”

“But everybody – ” Meg began impulsively, and then stopped, remembering that it was not Robin she was talking to.

“But everybody – what?” said the man.

It was Robin who answered for her this time.

“She said that last night,” he explained, with a half shy laugh, “that everybody had something they could give to somebody else.”

“Oh, well, it isn’t always money, of course, or anything big,” said Meg, hurriedly. “It might be something that is ever so little.”

The man laughed, but his eyes seemed to be remembering something as he looked over the lagoon again.

“That’s a pretty good thing to think,” he said. “Now,” turning on Meg rather suddenly, “I wonder what you have to give to me.”

“I don’t know,” she answered, perhaps a trifle wistfully. “The thing I give to Rob and Ben is a very little one.”

“She makes up things to tell us about the places we can’t pay to go into, or don’t understand,” said Robin. “It’s not as little as she thinks it is.”

“Well,” said the man, “look here! Perhaps that’s what you have to give to me. You came to this place alone and so did I. I believe you’re enjoying yourselves more than I am. You’re going to take Ben about and tell him stories. Suppose you take me!”

“You!” Meg exclaimed. “But you’re a man, and you know all about it, I dare say; and I only tell things I make up – fairy stories, and other things. A man wouldn’t care for them. He – he knows.”

“He knows too much, perhaps – that’s the trouble,” said the man. “A fairy or so might do me good. I’m not acquainted enough with them. And if I know things you don’t – perhaps that’s what I have to give to you.”

“Why,” said Meg, her eyes growing as she looked up at his odd, clever face, “do you want to go about with us?”

“Yes,” said the man, with a quick, decided nod, “I believe that’s just what I want to do. I’m lonelier than you two. At least, you are together. Come on, children,” but it was to Meg he held out his hand. “Take me with you.”

And, bewildered as she was, Meg found herself giving her hand to him and being led away, Robin and Ben close beside them.

XVI

It was such a strange thing – so unlike the things of every day, and so totally an unexpected thing, that for a little while they all three had a sense of scarcely knowing what to do with themselves. If Robin and Meg had not somehow rather liked the man, and vaguely felt him friendly, and if there had not been in their impressionable minds that fancy about his being far from as happy as the other people of the crowds looked, it is more than probable that they would not have liked their position, and would have felt that it might spoil their pleasure.

But they were sympathetic children, and they had been lonely and sad enough themselves to be moved by a sadness in others, even if it was an uncomprehended one.

As she walked by the man’s side, still letting her hand remain in his, Meg kept giving him scrutinizing looks aside, and trying in her way to read him. He was a man just past middle life, he was powerful and well-built, and had keen, and at the same time rather unhappy-looking, blue eyes, with brows and lashes as black as Rob’s and her own. There was something strong in his fine-looking, clean-shaven face, and the hand which held hers had a good, firm grasp, and felt like a hand which had worked in its time.

As for the man himself, he was trying an experiment. He had been suddenly seized with a desire to try it, and see how it would result. He was not sure that it would be a success, but if it proved one it might help to rid him of gloom he would be glad to be relieved of. He felt it rather promising when Meg went at once to the point and asked him a practical question.

“You don’t know our names?” she said.

“You don’t know mine,” he answered. “It’s John Holt. You can call me that.”

“John Holt,” said Meg. “Mr. John Holt.”

The man laughed. Her grave, practical little air pleased him.

“Say John Holt, without the handle to it,” he said. “It sounds well.”

Meg looked at him inquiringly. Though he had laughed, he seemed to mean what he said.

“It’s queer, of course,” she said, “because we don’t know each other well; but I can do it, if you like.”

“I do like,” he said, and he laughed again.

“Very well,” said Meg. “My name’s Margaret Macleod, I’m called Meg for short. My brother’s name is Robin, and Ben’s is Ben Nowell. Where shall we go first?”

“You are the leader of the party,” he answered, his face beginning to brighten a little. “Where shall it be?”

“The Palace of the Genius of the Flowers,” she said.

“Is that what it is called?” he asked.

“That’s what we call it,” she explained. “That’s part of the fairy story. We are part of a fairy story, and all these are palaces that the Genii built for the Great Magician.”

“That’s first-rate,” he said. “Just tell us about it. Ben and I have not heard.”

At first she had wondered if she could tell her stories to a grown-up person, but there was something in his voice and face that gave her the feeling that she could. She laughed a little when she began; but he listened with enjoyment that was so plain, and Ben, walking by her side, looked up with such eager, enraptured, and wondering eyes, that she went on bravely. It grew, as stories will, in being told, and it was better than it had been the day before. Robin himself saw that, and leaned towards her as eagerly as Ben.

By the time they entered the Palace of the Flowers and stood among the flame of colors, and beneath the great palm fronds swaying under the crystal globe that was its dome, she had warmed until she was all aglow, and as full of fancies as the pavilions were of blossoms.

As she dived into the story of the Genius who strode through tropical forests and deep jungles, over purple moors and up mountain sides, where strange-hued pale or vivid things grew in tangles, or stood in the sun alone, John Holt became of the opinion that his experiment would be a success. It was here that he began to find he had gifts to give. She asked him questions; Robin and Ben asked him questions; the three drew close to him, and hung on his every word.

“You know the things and the places where they grow,” Meg said. “We have never seen anything. We can only try to imagine. You can tell us.” And he did tell them; and as they went from court to pavilion, surrounded by sumptuous bloom and sumptuous leafage and sumptuous fragrance, the three beginning to cling to him, to turn to him with every new discovery, and to forget he was a stranger, he knew that he was less gloomy than he had been before, and that somehow this thing seemed worth doing.

And in this way they went from place to place. As they had seen beauties and wonders the day before, they saw wonders and beauties to-day, but to-day their pleasure had a flavor new to them. For the first time in years, since they had left their little seat at their own fireside, they were not alone, and some one seemed to mean to look after them. John Holt was an eminently practical person, and when they left the Palace of the Flowers they began vaguely to realize that, stranger or not, he had taken charge of them. It was evident that he was in the habit of taking charge of people and things. He took charge of the satchel. It appeared that he knew where it was safe to leave it.

“Can we get it at lunch time?” Robin asked, with some anxiety.

“You can get it when you want it,” said John Holt.

A little later he looked at Ben’s pale, small face scrutinizingly.

“Look here,” he said, “you’re tired.” And without any further question he called up a rolling-chair.

“Get into that,” he said.

“Me?” said Ben, a little alarmed.

“Yes.”

And, almost a shade paler at the thought of such grandeur, Ben got in, and fell back with a luxurious sigh.

And at midday, when they were beginning to feel ravenous, though no one mentioned the subject, he asked Meg a blunt question.

“Where did you eat your lunch yesterday?” he asked.

Meg flushed a little, feeling that hospitality demanded that they should share the remaining eggs with such a companion, and she was afraid there would be very few to offer, when Ben was taken into consideration.

“We went to a quiet place on the Wooded Island,” she said, “and ate it with the roses. We pretended they invited us. We had only hard-boiled eggs and a sandwich each; but a kind woman gave us something of her own.”

“We brought the eggs from home,” explained Rob. “We have some chickens of our own, who laid them. We thought that would be cheaper than buying things.”

“Oh!” said John Holt. “So you’ve been living on hard-boiled eggs. Got any left?”

“A few,” Meg answered. “They’re in the satchel. We shall have to go and get it.”

“Come along, then,” said John Holt. “Pretty hungry by this time, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Meg, with heartfelt frankness, “we are!”

It was astonishing how much John Holt had found out about them during this one morning. They did not know themselves how much their answers to his occasional questions had told him. He had not known himself, when he asked the questions, how much their straightforward, practical replies would reveal. They had not sentimentalized over their friendless loneliness, but he had found himself realizing what desolate, unnoticed, and uncared-for things their lives were. They had not told him how they had tired their young bodies with work too heavy for them, but he had realized it. In his mind there had risen a picture of the Straw Parlor, under the tent-like roof of the barn, with these two huddled together in the cold, buried in the straw, while they talked over their desperate plans. They had never thought of calling themselves strong and determined, and clear of wit, but he knew how strong and firm of purpose and endurance two creatures so young and unfriended, and so poor, must have been to form a plan so bold, and carry it out in the face of the obstacles of youth and inexperience, and empty pockets and hands. He had laughed at the story of the Treasure saved in pennies, and hidden deep in the straw; but as he had laughed he had thought, with a quick, soft throb of his heart, that the woman he had loved and lost would have laughed with him, with tears in the eyes which Meg’s reminded him of. He somehow felt as if she might be wandering about with them in their City Beautiful this morning, they were so entirely creatures she would have been drawn to, and longed to make happier.

He liked their fancy of making their poor little feast within scent of the roses. It was just such a fancy as She might have had herself. And he wanted to see what they had to depend on. He knew it must be little, and it touched him to know that, little as they had, they meant to share it with their poorer friend.

They went for the satchel, and when they did so they began to calculate as to what they could add to its contents. They were few things, and poor ones.

He did not sit down, but stood by and watched them for a moment, when, having reached their sequestered nook, they began to spread out their banquet. It was composed of the remnant eggs, some bread, and a slice of cheese. It looked painfully scant, and Meg had an anxious eye.

“Is that all?” asked John Holt, abruptly.

“Yes,” said Meg. “We shall have to make it do.”

“My Lord!” ejaculated John Holt, suddenly, in his blunt fashion. And he turned round and walked away.

“Where’s he gone?” exclaimed Ben, timidly.

But they none of them could guess. Nice as he had been, he had a brusque way, and, perhaps, he meant to leave them.

But by the time they had divided the eggs, and the bread and cheese, and had fairly begun, he came marching back. He had a basket on his arm, and two bottles stuck out of one coat pocket, while a parcel protruded from the other. He came and threw himself down on the grass beside them, and opened the basket. It was full of good things.

“I’m going to have lunch with you,” he said, “and I have a pretty big appetite, so I’ve brought you something to eat. You can’t tramp about on that sort of thing.”

The basket they had seen the day before had been a poor thing compared to this. The contents of this would have been a feast for much more fastidious creatures than three ravenous children. There were chickens and sandwiches and fruit; the bottles held lemonade, and the package in the coat pocket was a box of candy.

“We – never had such good things in our lives,” Meg gasped, amazed.

“Hadn’t you?” said John Holt, with a kind, and even a happy, grin. “Well, pitch in.”