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Half-Past Bedtime

<h2>MARIAN'S PARTY</h2> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/ill_013.jpg" width-obs="431" height-obs="500" alt="The Little Temple" title="" /> The Little Temple</div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>XI</h2> <h3>MARIAN'S PARTY</h3> For a whole month after Cuthbert and Doris had had tea with old Miss Hubbard the snow lay white upon the ground, and the ice grew thick over the ponds. Day after day during the Christmas holidays the children went skating or tobogganing; and Cuthbert and Doris learnt to waltz on skates, and even Marian learnt to cut threes. And then the frost broke, and it rained all through February, and then came March with its blustering winds. Sometimes it was an east wind, drying the wet fields or powdering them over with tiny snowflakes; and sometimes it was a west wind, shouting in the tree-tops, with its arms full of sunshine and golden clouds; and the week before Marian's birthday, which was on the 27th, was the windiest week of all, chasing people's hats across the tram-lines, and blowing the chimney-smoke down into their sitting-rooms. Marian always had a party on her birthday, and this year it was going to be a specially nice one. Twelve of her friends were coming, and so was Uncle Joe, and so were Captain Jeremy and Gwendolen's aunt. So was Mr Parker, who lived with Uncle Joe, and so was Lancelot, the bosun's mate; and the most wonderful thing of all, so was old Miss Hubbard. It had been Cuthbert's idea to ask Miss Hubbard, and she had promised to come on one condition—that she might be allowed to bring the birthday-cake and the nine candles to stick into it. For Marian was going to be nine, and it was nearly two years since she had met Mr Jugg; and she sometimes wondered—it seemed so long ago—if she had ever seen him at all. Cuthbert used to tease her by pretending that she hadn't, and that Mr Jugg was only a dream, just as he used to tease her by telling her that the 27th of March was a silly sort of day on which to have a birthday. That was because his own birthday came in April, so that it was always in the holidays; but Uncle Joe, who knew a lot about birthdays, used to take Marian's side. March was the soldier's month, he said, full of bugles, and one of the best months to be born in; while, as for Cuthbert, anyone could tell by listening to him that he had come in April with all the other cuckoos. So Marian was naturally rather excited; and then, on the very morning of her birthday, Cuthbert woke up with a strawberry-coloured tongue and a chest as red as a cooked lobster. That was just the sort of thing, Marian thought, that Cuthbert would do, although she knew that she ought to feel sorry for him; and then the doctor came and said that he had scarlet fever, and that was the end of Marian's party. For Mummy had to put on an overall and begin to nurse Cuthbert, and a big sheet was hung across the bedroom door, and Mummy had to sprinkle it with carbolic acid, and of course Marian wasn't allowed to go to school. But she could go for walks, said the doctor, as long as she went by herself and didn't go near anybody, or travel in trams and things; and so she spent the morning in taking notes to her friends, telling them that there wasn't to be a party after all. As for Uncle Joe, Mummy sent him a message by a carrier who passed near his house. "And the first thing in the afternoon," she said to Marian, "you must slip across the fields to old Miss Hubbard's." Now a little girl whose only brother has just been silly enough to get scarlet fever is one of the loneliest people in the world; and that was just how Marian felt. Even her mummy tried to keep away from her, because she was nursing Cuthbert, who was so infectious; and she had had strict orders when she arrived at Mother Hubbard's not to go inside her house. "Everybody's happy," said Marian, "except me," as she saw the people laughing in the country roads, and the horses biting at each other's manes, and the birds circling together in the soft air. For, as if Somebody had known that it was going to be her birthday and waved a wand during the night, the wind had dropped and the clouds vanished, and the air was full of a thousand scents. There were earth-scents, warm and wet, and hedge-scents of primroses and growing weeds, and the scents of small animals, and cow-scents and lamb-scents, and tree-scents of bark and cracking buds. Invisibly they rose and spread and mingled, like children flocking upstairs in their party frocks; and the sun beamed down on them like some gay old admiral who had just spied summer on the horizon. But Marian was still unhappy and disappointed, and when she had given her message to old Miss Hubbard she wandered across the fields, not very much caring where she went or what might happen to her. That was how she was feeling when she came at last to a small wood, called the Pirate's Wood because it was shaped rather like a ship, with a lot of masts in it, easy to climb. It was Cuthbert who had christened this wood, because he had climbed higher than the others—almost to the top of the tallest tree. But Doris had climbed nearly as high, and they both laughed at Marian, because she would only climb half-way up. It occurred to her this afternoon, however, that she would climb higher than either of them; and she didn't care, she said, if she fell from the top. So she swung herself up on to the lowest branch of the big elm-tree near the middle of the wood; and presently she saw above her the fork between two boughs that Cuthbert had christened the crow's-nest. Level with her nose, cut in the bark of the trunk, was a big D, standing for Doris, so that already she had climbed as high as Doris had climbed, and was able to look out over the other trees. But now she had come to the hardest part of the climb, for in order to reach the crow's-nest she would have to swarm up a piece of the elm-trunk from which there were no branches sticking out to help her. There were only roughnesses in the bark, into which she would have to dig her fingers, and first of all she had to pull up her skirt and tuck it down inside her knickers. For a moment or two she began to be frightened. But then she told herself that she didn't care; and soon she had swarmed high enough to reach one of the forking boughs, and had swung herself up into the crow's-nest. She was now as high as Cuthbert had climbed, and rippling away below her she could see the fields and farm-lands stretching into the distance. Two or three miles to her right lay the spires and chimneys and crinkled roof-tops of the town, and two or three miles to her left, golden in the sunlight, the hills lay strung along the sky. Then she saw yet another fork between two slender boughs, just about a foot above her head, and in a minute or two she had climbed higher even than Cuthbert had done, and was safely perched in the top of the tree. If only the others had been there she could have sighted imaginary ships for them sooner than any of them had done before; and then she remembered again how sad and lonely she was, and that nothing really mattered after all. So she stuffed her handkerchief into a crack in the tree just to prove that she had really climbed there; and it was just then that she saw a young man swinging across the fields toward the wood. He was wearing an old shooting-jacket and grey flannel trousers; and he was singing a song, of which she couldn't hear the words. She saw him climb a gate—rather cautiously, she thought; she had expected from his general air that he would vault it; and then he disappeared under the trees just as she began to climb down. But climbing down anything is often more difficult than climbing up, as Marian found; and half-way down she suddenly discovered that she had somehow worked herself to the wrong side of the tree. Below her were two or three branches that she thought would bear her, but there were long gaps yawning between them; and the main trunk was growing broader and broader, so that she could no longer span it with her arms. Once a piece of bark broke in her fingers, and she slithered down a yard or more and nearly fell; and she could feel her heart jumping against her ribs, as she stood with both feet on a bending bough. Then she heard the young man singing again in a cheerful voice, and she thought of shouting to him, but she felt too shy; and then she began to lower herself very carefully until she touched the branch below her with the tips of her toes. The young man stopped singing. "Steady on," he cried. "You're touching a rotten branch." Marian pulled herself up again. "But it's the only one there is," she said. "I can't reach any other." She heard him whistle. "Hold on," he said. "I'm trying to find you—half a tick." He came to the bottom of the tree and looked up. "Where are you now?" he asked. Marian thought it a silly question. "Why, just here," she said. "Well, why don't you come down," he asked, "the same way that you got up?" "I don't know," she said. "I wish I could. But I've got wrong somehow. I'm stuck." She saw him touching the elm-trunk with his hands, running his fingers lightly and quickly over it. Then he swung himself up on to the lowest bough, and soon he was near enough to touch her hand. "Now catch hold," he said, "and jump toward me. Don't be frightened. I'm as firm as a rock." Marian jumped, and he caught and steadied her. "Now you're all right," he said. "You'd better go down first." In another moment or two he was on the ground beside her, looking down at her with a smile. He was about six feet high, she thought, with queer-looking eyes and curly brown hair and a skin like a gipsy's. "Well, what are you doing here," he asked, "climbing all alone?" Marian told him about her party, and how she had had to put it off. "And it'll be seven or eight weeks," she said, "before Cuthbert's well again, so that I shan't have one at all." "Yes, I see," he said. "That's jolly bad luck. What about having some tea with me?" Marian looked at him a little doubtfully. "But where do you live?" she asked. "Do you live near here?" "Well, just at present," he said, "I'm staying with Lord Barrington. But I have a flask in my pocket full of hot tea, and I stole some cakes before I came out." So they sat down together between the roots of the elm-tree, and the sun poured down upon them, almost as if it had been summer. "But why did you come here," said Marian—"to this wood I mean?" "Oh, just by accident," he said, "if there's any such thing." Marian looked him up and down again. She wondered what he was. Perhaps it was rude, but she ventured to ask him. "Well, I used to be a painter," he said, "once upon a time. I was rather a successful one. So I saved a little money." "But you're quite young," she said. "Why aren't you one now?" "Because I had a disappointment," he said, "just like you have had." Marian began to like him. "Was it a bad one?" she asked. "Pretty bad," he said. "I became blind." For a moment Marian was so surprised that she couldn't say anything at all; and then she felt such a pig that she didn't want to say anything. For what was a silly little disappointment like hers beside so dreadful a thing as becoming blind? But he looked so contented and was humming so cheerfully as he counted out the cakes and began to divide them that her curiosity got the better of her, and she spoke to him once more. "But how did you know," she asked, "that I was up the tree?" "Quite simple," he said. "I heard you." "And how could you tell that that was a rotten branch?" "Because I heard the sound of it when your toes touched it." Marian was silent for a moment. "You must have awfully good hearing," she said. "But I suppose you've practised rather a lot." "Well, a good deal," he admitted. "You see, I was in the middle of Asia when I first lost my sight. I was camping out, and painting pictures, and shooting an occasional buck for my breakfast and dinner. Then a gun went off while somebody was cleaning it, and the next moment I was blind; and for a couple of months there was only one thing I wanted, and that was to die as soon as I could." He poured out some tea for her and dropped a lump of sugar into it. "And then one day," he said, "there came a man to see me, and he told me that I oughtn't to be discouraged. He was an old priest of some queer sort of religion that the people of those parts believed in; and he was sorry for me, and took me to stay with him in a little temple up in the mountains. I never knew his name, we were just father and son to each other, and I suppose that most people would have called him a heathen. But he had lived all his life up among the mountains, studying nature and praying to God. Well, I stayed with him for more than a year, and he used to talk to me about the things he knew. I was a bad pupil, I'm afraid, but he was infinitely patient; and after a time I began to learn a little. 'You are blind, my son,' he used to tell me, 'but only a little less blind than other people. And you have ears that are still almost deaf. Why not stay with me and learn to hear?' I told him that I could hear, but he only smiled—it's a lovely thing to hear people smile—and then he began to teach me, just as he would have taught a child, the ABC of hearing." He finished his cake and filled his pipe. "Did you know," he went on, "that everything has a sound, just as it has a shape and colour of its own? Well, it has; and presently I seemed to be living in a strange new world, all full of music. Of course it wasn't really new. It was the same old world. Only, like most people, I had been almost deaf to it; and when I first heard it, up in that little temple, I nearly went mad with joy. Day after day and night after night I went out by myself and listened, and gradually I began to distinguish the separate sounds of things, like the notes of instruments in an orchestra." He stopped for a moment. "Just behind us, for instance, there's a clump of anemones singing next to some primroses." Marian turned and saw them, just as he had said. "Oh, I wish," she cried, "that I could hear them too." The painter smiled. "Wait for a moment," he said. "Well, then once more I began to grow miserable. For I was an artist, you see, and every artist wants to make other people see what he sees. That was why I had painted my pictures. But how could I make people hear what I heard? So I told the old priest about it, and he said that, if I were a real artist, the power would come back to me somehow. 'Wait a little,' he said, 'Stay a little longer. You've hardly begun yet to hear for yourself.'" He paused again and lit his pipe. "And at last it came to me," he said. "Hold my hand." Marian slipped her hand into his. "Now close your eyes," he told her, "and listen." For a moment she could hear nothing but a ploughman shouting to his horses and the tap-tapping of a woodpecker; but slowly as she listened sounds began to come to her, as of a hidden band far in the distance. Presently they drew nearer, and at first they were confused, like hundreds of people gently humming through closed lips; but at last she began to recognize different notes, like tiny drums and flutes and fifes. All the time, too, close at hand, there was a faint persistent ringing of bells; and these were the anemones swaying on their stems; and the little trumpet-sounds came from the primroses. Then there was a rough sort of scraping sound; and that was a mole, he said, burrowing in the earth two or three yards away. And there was a sound like a chant on one full note from a big field of grass just in front of the wood. Those were the distincter notes; but there was a continuous sharp undertone, like millions of finger-tips tapping on stretched parchment; and those were the buds opening all along the hedges and upon the leaf-twigs up above them. But deeper than all, deeper and softer than the softest organ, there was a great sound; and that was the sap, he told her, rising like a flood in all things living for miles around them. Then she opened her eyes and dropped his hand, and it was as if she had suddenly become almost deaf. She lifted her fingers and put them in her ears. "It's as if they were stopped up," she said. "Hold my hand again." But he turned and smiled at her. "Are you still unhappy?" he asked. Marian shook her head. "No, not now," she answered. "That's right," he said. "The world's much too good a place for a little girl like you to be unhappy in." Then he held her hand again, and as the sounds of the world came back to her there happened the oddest thing of all. For now there came other sounds, clearer and nearer, lighter than breath and closer than her heart. They said "Marian" to her, "Marian, Marian"; and the strange thing was that she seemed to remember them—just as if their names were on the tip of her tongue, like the names of old friends, stupidly forgotten. "That's what they are," he said. "They're the voices of the friends that we left behind us when we were born. Whenever we go back, and whenever we have a birthday, they come flocking down to greet us." He stood up and stretched himself, and Marian rose to her feet. "So you've had a party," he said, "after all." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> Could we, down the road to school, Run but with undeafened ears, Then what joy in this sweet spring Just to hear the gardens sing, Scilla with her drooping bells Playing her enchanted peal, Primrose with his golden throat Shouting his triumphant note. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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