Harding’s Luck E. Nesbit (epub read online books .txt) 📖

of fruit and cakes were handed round: the galley was decked with fresh flowers, and from another boat quite near came the sound of music. The sun shone overhead and the clear river sparkled and more and more boats, all gilded and flower-wreathed, appeared on the water. Then there was a sound of shouting, the river suddenly grew alive with the glitter of drawn swords, the butterfly glitter of ladies waved scarves and handkerchiefs, and a great gilded barge came slowly downstream, followed by a procession of smaller craft. Everyone in the galley stood up: the gentlemen saluted with their drawn swords, the ladies fluttered their scarves.

“His Majesty and the Queen,” the little cousins whispered as the State Barge went by.

Then all the galleys fell into place behind the King’s barge, and the long, beautiful procession went slowly on down the river.

Dickie was very happy. The little cousins were so friendly and jolly, the grown-up people so kind⁠—everything so beautiful and so clean. It was a perfect day.

The river was very beautiful; it ran between banks of willows and alders where loosestrife and meadowsweet and willow-herb and yarrow grew tall and thick. There were water-lilies in shady backwaters, and beautiful gardens sloping down to the water.

At last the boats came to a pretty little town among trees.

“This is where we disembark,” said the little girl cousin. “The King lies here tonight at Sir Thomas Bradbury’s. And we lie at our grandfather’s house. And tomorrow it is the Masque in Sir Thomas’s Park. And we are to see it. I am glad thou’st well of thy fever, Richard. I shouldn’t have liked it half so well if thou hadn’t been here,” she said, smiling. And of course that was a very nice thing to have said to one.

“And then we go home to Deptford with thee,” said the boy cousin. “We are to stay a month. And we’ll see thy galleon, and get old Sebastian to make me one too.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes,” said Dickie, as the boat came against the quay. “What is this place?”

“Gravesend, thou knowest that,” said the little cousins, “or hadst thou forgotten that, too, in thy fever?”

“Gravesend?” Dickie repeated, in quite a changed voice.

“Come, children,” said the aunt⁠—oh, what a different aunt to the one who had slapped Dickie in Deptford, sold the rabbit-hutch, and shot the moon!⁠—“you boys remember how I showed you to carry my train. And my girl will not forget how to fling the flowers from the gilt basket as the King and Queen come down the steps.”

The grandfather’s house and garden⁠—the stately, white-haired grandfather, whom they called My Lord, and who was, it seemed, the aunt’s father⁠—the banquet, the picture-gallery, the gardens lit up by little colored oil lamps hung in festoons from tree to tree, the blazing torches, the music, the Masque⁠—a sort of play without words in which everyone wore the most wonderful and beautiful dresses, and the Queen herself took a part dressed all in gauze and jewels and white swan’s feathers⁠—all these things were like a dream to Dickie, and through it all the words kept on saying themselves to him very gently, very quietly, and quite without stopping⁠—

“Gravesend. That’s where the lodging-house is where Beale is waiting for you⁠—the man you called father. You promised to go there as soon as you could. Why haven’t you gone? Gravesend. That’s where the lodging-house is where Beale⁠—” And so on, over and over again.

And how can anyone enjoy anything when this sort of thing keeps on saying itself under and over and through and between everything he sees and hears and feels and thinks? And the worst of it was that now, for the first time since he had found that he was not lame, he felt⁠—more than felt, he knew⁠—that the old New Cross life had not been a fever dream, and that Beale, who had been kind to him and taken him through the pleasant country and slept with him in the bed with the green curtains, was really waiting for him at Gravesend.

“And this is all a dream,” said Dickie, “and I must wake up.”

But he couldn’t wake up.

And the trees and grass and lights and beautiful things, the kindly great people with their splendid dresses, the King and Queen, the aunts and uncles and the little cousins⁠—all these things refused to fade away and jumble themselves up as things do in dreams. They remained solid and real. He knew that this must be a dream, and that Beale and Gravesend and New Cross and the old lame life were the real thing, and yet he could not wake up. All the same the light had gone out of everything, and it is small wonder that when he got home at last, very tired indeed, to his father’s house at Deptford he burst into tears as nurse was undressing him.

“What ails my lamb?” she asked.

“I can’t explain; you wouldn’t understand,” said Dickie.

“Try,” said she, very earnestly.

He looked round the room at the tapestries and the heavy furniture.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Try,” she said again.

“It’s⁠ ⁠… don’t laugh, Nurse. There’s a dream that feels real⁠—about a dreadful place⁠—oh, so different from this. But there’s a man waiting there for me that was good to me when I was⁠—when I wasn’t⁠ ⁠… that was good to me; he’s waiting in the dream and I want to get back to him. And I can’t.”

“Thou’rt better here than in that dreadful place,” said the nurse, stroking his hair.

“Yes⁠—but Beale. I know he’s waiting there. I wish I could bring him here.”

“Not yet,” said the nurse surprisingly; “ ’tis not easy to bring those we love from one dream to another.”

“One dream to another?”

“Didst never hear that all life is a dream?” she asked him. “But thou shalt go. Heaven forbid that one of thy race should fail a friend. Look! there are fresh sheets on thy bed. Lie still and think of him that was good to thee.”

He lay there, very still. He had decided to