THE
SECRET DRAWER
It must surely have served as a boudoir for the
ladies of old time, this little used, rarely entered chamber where the
neglected old bureau stood. There was something very feminine in the faint hues
of its faded brocades, in the rose and blue of such bits of china as yet
remained, and in the delicate old-world fragrance of pot-pourri from the great
bowl—blue and white, with funny holes in its cover—that stood on the bureau’s
flat top. Modern aunts disdained this out-of-the-way, back-water, upstairs
room, preferring to do their accounts and grapple with their correspondence in
some central position more in the whirl of things, whence one eye could be kept
on the carriage drive, while the other was alert for malingering servants and
marauding children. Those aunts of a former generation—I sometimes felt—would
have suited our habits better. But even by us children, to whom few places were
private or reserved, the room was visited but rarely. To be sure, there was
nothing particular in it that we coveted or required,—only a few spindle-legged
gilt-backed chairs; an old harp, on which, so the legend ran, Aunt Eliza
herself used once to play, in years remote, unchronicled; a corner-cupboard
with a few pieces of china; and the old bureau. But one other thing the room possessed,
peculiar to itself; a certain sense of privacy,—a power of making the intruder
feel that he WAS intruding,—perhaps even a faculty of hinting that some one
might have been sitting on those chairs, writing at the bureau, or fingering
the china, just a second before one entered.
No such violent
word as “haunted” could possibly apply to this pleasant old-fashioned chamber,
which indeed we all rather liked; but there was no doubt it was reserved and
stand-offish, keeping itself to itself.
Uncle Thomas was
the first to draw my attention to the possibilities of the old bureau. He was
pottering about the house one afternoon, having ordered me to keep at his heels
for company,—he was a man who hated to be left one minute alone,—when his eye
fell on it. “H’m! Sheraton!” he remarked. (He had a smattering of most things,
this uncle, especially the vocabularies.) Then he let down the flap, and
examined the empty pigeon-holes and dusty panelling. “Fine bit of inlay,” he
went on: “good work, all of it. I know the sort. There’s a secret drawer in
there somewhere.” Then, as I breathlessly drew near, he suddenly exclaimed: “By
Jove, I do want to smoke!” and wheeling round he abruptly fled for the garden,
leaving me with the cup dashed from my lips. What a strange thing, I mused, was
this smoking, that takes a man suddenly, be he in the court, the camp, or the
grove, grips him like an Afreet, and whirls him off to do its imperious
behests! Would it be even so with myself, I wondered, in those unknown grown-up
years to come?
But I had no time
to waste in vain speculations. My whole being was still vibrating to those
magic syllables, “secret drawer;” and that particular chord had been touched
that never fails to thrill responsive to such words as CAVE, TRAP-DOOR, SLIDING-PANEL,
BULLION, INGOTS, or SPANISH DOLLARS. For, besides its own special bliss, who
ever heard of a secret drawer with nothing in it? And oh, I did want money so
badly! I mentally ran over the list of demands which were pressing me the most
imperiously.
First, there was
the pipe I wanted to give George Jannaway. George, who was Martha’s young man,
was a shepherd, and a great ally of mine; and the last fair he was at, when he
bought his sweetheart fairings, as a right-minded shepherd should, he had purchased
a lovely snake expressly for me; one of the wooden sort, with joints, waggling
deliciously in the hand; with yellow spots on a green ground, sticky and
strong-smelling, as a fresh-painted snake ought to be; and with a red-flannel
tongue, pasted cunningly into its jaws. I loved it much, and took it to bed
with me every night, till what time its spinal cord was loosed and it fell
apart, and went the way of all mortal joys. I thought it so nice of George to
think of me at the fair, and that’s why I wanted to give him a pipe. When the
young year was chill and lambing-time was on, George inhabited a little wooden
house on wheels, far out on the wintry downs, and saw no faces but such as were
sheepish and woolly and mute; ant when he and Martha were married, she was
going to carry his dinner out to him every day, two miles; and after it,
perhaps he would smoke my pipe. It seemed an idyllic sort of existence, for
both the parties concerned; but a pipe of quality, a pipe fitted to be part of
a life such as this, could not be procured (so Martha informed me) for a less
sum than eighteen pence. And meantime—!
Then there was
the fourpence I owed Edward; not that he was bothering me for it, but I knew he
was in need of it himself, to pay back Selina, who wanted it to make up a sum
of two shillings, to buy Harold an ironclad for his approaching birthday,—H. M.
S. Majestic, now lying uselessly careened in the toyshop window, just when her
country had such sore need of her.
And then there
was that boy in the village who had caught a young squirrel, and I had never
yet possessed one, and he wanted a shilling for it, but I knew that for
ninepence in cash—but what was the good of these sorry, threadbare reflections?
I had wants enough to exhaust any possible find of bullion, even if it amounted
to half a sovereign. My only hope now lay in the magic drawer, and here I was
standing and letting the precious minutes slip by. Whether “findings” of this
sort could, morally speaking, be considered “keepings,” was a point that did not
occur to me.
The room was very
still as I approached the bureau,—possessed, it seemed to be, by a sort of hush
of expectation. The faint odour of orris-root that floated forth as I let down
the flap, seemed to identify itself with the yellows and browns of the old
wood, till hue and scent were of one quality and interchangeable.
Even so, ere
this, the pot-pourri had mixed itself with the tints of the old brocade, and
brocade and pot-pourri had long been one.
With expectant
fingers I explored the empty pigeon-holes and sounded the depths of the
softly-sliding drawers. No books that I knew of gave any general recipe for a
quest like this; but the glory, should I succeed unaided, would be all the
greater.
To him who is
destined to arrive, the fates never fail to afford, on the way, their small
encouragements; in less than two minutes, I had come across a rusty
button-hook. This was truly magnificent. In the nursery there existed, indeed,
a general button-hook, common to either sex; but none of us possessed a private
and special button-hook, to lend or refuse as suited the high humour of the
moment. I pocketed the treasure carefully and proceeded. At the back of another
drawer, three old foreign stamps told me I was surely on the highroad to
fortune.
Following on
these bracing incentives, came a dull blank period of unrewarded search. In
vain I removed all the drawers and felt over every inch of the smooth surfaces,
from front to back. Never a knob, spring or projection met the thrilling
finger-tips; unyielding the old bureau stood, stoutly guarding its secret, if
secret it really had. I began to grow weary and disheartened. This was not the
first time that Uncle Thomas had proved shallow, uninformed, a guide into blind
alleys where the echoes mocked you. Was it any good persisting longer? Was
anything any good whatever? In my mind I began to review past disappointments,
and life seemed one long record of failure and of non-arrival. Disillusioned
and depressed, I left my work and went to the window. The light was ebbing from
the room, and outside seemed to be collecting itself on the horizon for its
concentrated effort of sunset. Far down the garden, Uncle Thomas was holding
Edward in the air reversed, and smacking him. Edward, gurgling hysterically,
was striking blind fists in the direction where he judged his uncle’s stomach
should rightly be; the contents of his pockets—a motley show—were strewing the
lawn. Somehow, though I had been put through a similar performance an hour or
two ago, myself, it all seemed very far away and cut off from me.
Westwards the
clouds were massing themselves in a low violet bank; below them, to north and
south, as far round as eye could reach, a narrow streak of gold ran out and
stretched away, straight along the horizon. Somewhere very far off, a horn was
being blown, clear and thin; it sounded like the golden streak grown audible,
while the gold seemed the visible sound. It pricked my ebbing courage, this
blended strain of music and colour, and I turned for a last effort; and Fortune
thereupon, as if half-ashamed of the unworthy game she had been playing with
me, relented, opening her clenched fist. Hardly had I put my hand once more to
the obdurate wood, when with a sort of small sigh, almost a sob—as it were—of
relief, the secret drawer sprang open.
I drew it out and
carried it to the window, to examine it in the failing light. Too hopeless had
I gradually grown, in my dispiriting search, to expect very much; and yet at a
glance I saw that my basket of glass lay in fragments at my feet. No ingots or
dollars were here, to crown me the little Monte Cristo of a week. Outside, the
distant horn had ceased its gnat-song, the gold was paling to primrose, and
everything was lonely and still. Within, my confident little castles were tumbling
down like card-houses, leaving me stripped of estate, both real and personal,
and dominated by the depressing reaction.
And yet,—as I
looked again at the small collection that lay within that drawer of
disillusions, some warmth crept back to my heart as I recognised that a kindred
spirit to my own had been at the making of it. Two tarnished gilt
buttons,—naval, apparently,—a portrait of a monarch unknown to me, cut from
some antique print and deftly coloured by hand in just my own bold style of
brush-work,—some foreign copper coins, thicker and clumsier of make than those
I hoarded myself,—and a list of birds’ eggs, with names of the places where
they had been found. Also, a ferret’s muzzle, and a twist of tarry string,
still faintly aromatic. It was a real boy’s hoard, then, that I had happened
upon. He too had found out the secret drawer, this happy starred young person;
and here he had stowed away his treasures, one by one, and had cherished them
secretly awhile; and then—what? Well, one would never know now the reason why
these priceless possessions still lay here unreclaimed; but across the void
stretch of years I seemed to touch hands a moment with my little comrade of
seasons long since dead.
I restored the
drawer, with its contents, to the trusty bureau, and heard the spring click
with a certain satisfaction. Some other boy, perhaps, would some day release
that spring again. I trusted he would be equally appreciative. As I opened the
door to go, I could hear from the nursery at the end of the passage shouts and
yells, telling that the hunt was up. Bears, apparently, or bandits, were on the
evening bill of fare, judging by the character of the noises. In another minute
I would be in the thick of it, in all the warmth and light and laughter. And yet—what
a long way off it all seemed, both in space and time, to me yet lingering on
the threshold of that old-world chamber!
“EXIT
TYRANNUS”
The eventful day had arrived at last, the day
which, when first named, had seemed—like all golden dates that promise anything
definite—so immeasurably remote. When it was first announced, a fortnight
before, that Miss Smedley was really going, the resultant ecstasies had
occupied a full week, during which we blindly revelled in the contemplation and
discussion of her past tyrannies, crimes, malignities; in recalling to each
other this or that insult, dishonour, or physical assault, sullenly endured at
a time when deliverance was not even a small star on the horizon; and in
mapping out the golden days to come, with special new troubles of their own, no
doubt, since this is but a work-a-day world, but at least free from one
familiar scourge. The time that remained had been taken up by the planning of
practical expressions of the popular sentiment. Under Edward’s masterly
direction, arrangements had been made for a flag to be run up over the
hen-house at the very moment when the fly, with Miss Smedley’s boxes on top and
the grim oppressor herself inside, began to move off down the drive. Three
brass cannons, set on the brow of the sunk-fence, were to proclaim our
deathless sentiments in the ears of the retreating foe: the dogs were to wear
ribbons, and later—but this depended on our powers of evasiveness and
dissimulation—there might be a small bonfire, with a cracker or two, if the
public funds could bear the unwonted strain.
I was awakened by
Harold digging me in the ribs, and “She’s going to-day!” was the morning hymn
that scattered the clouds of sleep.
Strange to say,
it was with no corresponding jubilation of spirits that I slowly realised the
momentous fact. Indeed, as I dressed, a dull disagreeable feeling that I could
not define grew within me—something like a physical bruise. Harold was
evidently feeling it too, for after repeating “She’s going to-day!” in a tone more
befitting the Litany, he looked hard in my face for direction as to how the
situation was to be taken. But I crossly bade him look sharp and say his
prayers and not bother me. What could this gloom portend, that on a day of days
like the present seemed to hang my heavens with black?
Down at last and
out in the sun, we found Edward before us, swinging on a gate, and chanting a
farm-yard ditty in which all the beasts appear in due order, jargoning in their
several tongues, and every verse begins with the couplet—
“Now, my lads, come with me,
Out in the morning early!”
The fateful
exodus of the day had evidently slipped his memory entirely. I touched him on
the shoulder. “She’s going to-day!” I said. Edward’s carol subsided like a
water-tap turned off. “So she is!” he replied, and got down at once off the
gate: and we returned to the house without another word.
At breakfast Miss
Smedley behaved in a most mean and uncalled-for manner. The right divine of
governesses to govern wrong includes no right to cry. In thus usurping the
prerogative of their victims, they ignore the rules of the ring, and hit below
the belt. Charlotte was crying, of course; but that counted for nothing.
Charlotte even cried when the pigs’ noses were ringed in due season; thereby
evoking the cheery contempt of the operators, who asserted they liked it, and
doubtless knew. But when the cloud-compeller, her bolts laid aside, resorted to
tears, mutinous humanity had a right to feel aggrieved, and placed in a false
and difficult position. What would the Romans have done, supposing Hannibal had
cried? History has not even considered the possibility. Rules and precedents
should be strictly observed on both sides; when they are violated, the other
party is justified in feeling injured.
There were no
lessons that morning, naturally—another grievance!
The fitness of
things required that we should have struggled to the last in a confused medley
of moods and tenses, and parted for ever, flushed with hatred, over the dismembered
corpse of the multiplication table. But this thing was not to be; and I was
free to stroll by myself through the garden, and combat, as best I might, this
growing feeling of depression. It was a wrong system altogether, I thought,
this going of people one had got used to. Things ought always to continue as
they had been. Change there must be, of course; pigs, for instance, came and
went with disturbing frequency—
“Fired their ringing shot and passed,
Hotly charged and sank at last,”—
but Nature had ordered it so, and in requital had provided for rapid
successors. Did you come to love a pig, and he was taken from you, grief was
quickly assuaged in the delight of selection from the new litter. But now, when
it was no question of a peerless pig, but only of a governess, Nature seemed
helpless, and the future held no litter of oblivion. Things might be better, or
they might be worse, but they would never be the same; and the innate
conservatism of youth asks neither poverty nor riches, but only immunity from
change.
Edward slouched
up alongside of me presently, with a hang-dog look on him, as if he had been
caught stealing jam. “What a lark it’ll be when she’s really gone!” he
observed, with a swagger obviously assumed.
“Grand fun!” I
replied, dolorously; and conversation flagged.
We reached the
hen-house, and contemplated the banner of freedom lying ready to flaunt the
breezes at the supreme moment.
“Shall you run it
up,” I asked, “when the fly starts, or—or wait a little till it’s out of
sight?”
Edward gazed
around him dubiously. “We’re going to have some rain, I think,” he said;
“and—and it’s a new flag. It would be a pity to spoil it. P’raps I won’t run it
up at all.”
Harold came round
the corner like a bison pursued by Indians. “I’ve polished up the cannons,” he
cried, “and they look grand! Mayn’t I load ‘em now?”
“You leave ‘em
alone,” said Edward, severely, “or you’ll be blowing yourself up”
(consideration for others was not usually Edward’s strong point). “Don’t touch
the gunpowder till you’re told, or you’ll get your head smacked.”
Harold fell
behind, limp, squashed, obedient. “She wants me to write to her,” he began,
presently. “Says she doesn’t mind the spelling, it I’ll only write. Fancy her
saying that!”
“Oh, shut up,
will you?” said Edward, savagely; and once more we were silent, with only our
thoughts for sorry company.
“Let’s go off to
the copse,” I suggested timidly, feeling that something had to be done to
relieve the tension, “and cut more new bows and arrows.”
“She gave me a
knife my last birthday,” said Edward, moodily, never budging. “It wasn’t much
of a knife—but I wish I hadn’t lost it.”
“When my legs
used to ache,” I said, “she sat up half the night, rubbing stuff on them. I
forgot all about that till this morning.”
“There’s
the fly!” cried Harold suddenly. “I can hear it scrunching on the gravel.”
Then for the
first time we turned and stared one another in the face.
The fly and its
contents had finally disappeared through the gate: the rumble of its wheels had
died away; and no flag floated defiantly in the sun, no cannons proclaimed the
passing of a dynasty. From out the frosted cake of our existence Fate had cut
an irreplaceable segment; turn which way we would, the void was present. We
sneaked off in different directions, mutually undesirous of company; and it
seemed borne in upon me that I ought to go and dig my garden right over, from
end to end. It didn’t actually want digging; on the other hand, no amount of
digging could affect it, for good or for evil; so I worked steadily,
strenuously, under the hot sun, stifling thought in action. At the end of an
hour or so, I was joined by Edward.
“I’ve been
chopping up wood,” he explained, in a guilty sort of way, though nobody had
called on him to account for his doings.
“What for?” I
inquired, stupidly. “There’s piles and piles of it chopped up already.”
“I know,” said
Edward; “but there’s no harm in having a bit over. You never can tell what may
happen. But what have you been doing all this digging for?”
“You said it was
going to rain,” I explained, hastily; “so I thought I’d get the digging done
before it came. Good gardeners always tell you that’s the right thing to do.”
“It did look like
rain at one time,” Edward admitted; “but it’s passed off now. Very queer
weather we’re having. I suppose that’s why I’ve felt so funny all day.”
“Yes, I suppose
it’s the weather,” I replied. “I’ve been feeling funny too.”
The weather had
nothing to do with it, as we well knew. But we would both have died rather than
have admitted the real reason.
