Date: 2022-01-22T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Magic; Childhood
Description: The story of a little girl’s adventures in a strange, dreamlike world of her own hyperactive imagination. ~ ~ ~ ~ “Maria, a motherless, lonely ten-year-old, takes refuge in a fantasy world of playmates created from the prune pits arranged around her father’s breakfast plate each morning … One evening she is forced to enter the part of the house which has been shut up and deserted for months. Here she discovers a world outside of normal time. At first all is delightful, but gradually a sinister note creeps into the adventure …” (— “Classics of Fantastic Literature”) ~ ~ ~ ~ “Algernon Blackwood
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less.

THE  FRUIT  STONERS

BEING THE ADVENTURES OF MARIA
AMONG THE FRUIT STONERS

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

MobileRead Edition
2022

The story of a little girl’s adventures in a strange, dreamlike world of her own hyperactive imagination.

“Maria, a motherless, lonely ten-year-old, takes refuge in a fantasy world of playmates created from the prune pits arranged around her father’s breakfast plate each morning … One evening she is forced to enter the part of the house which has been shut up and deserted for months. Here she discovers a world outside of normal time. At first all is delightful, but gradually a sinister note creeps into the adventure …”
(— Classics of Fantastic Literature)

“Algernon Blackwood … has written a tale which instantly courts comparison with those perennial classics of childhood dear to the hearts of adult readers. Indeed The Fruit Stoners itself may conceivably become such a classic — containing as it does some of the fragrance and innocence of youth, and a certain amount of wistful nonsense, and a great deal of excellent and musical prose writing. It is in fact, a kind of solemn Alice Through the Looking-Glass.”
(— New York Times, 02 Jun 1935)

One of the foremost British writers of supernatural tales in the twentieth century, Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951) wrote stories in which the slow accumulation of telling details produced a foreboding atmosphere of almost unendurable tension. Though he wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, “His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer’s except Dunsany’s.”

Blackwood’s literary renown began in 1908 with the publication of a highly successful collection of stories, John Silence — Physician Extraordinary, featuring a “psychic doctor.” His two best known stories are probably “The Willows” and “The Wendigo”.

The Fruit Stoners, by Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951), was first published in 1934. This ebook is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less.

CONTENTS

… Cover

… Titlepage / About

• I •
• II •
• III •
• IV •
• V •
• VI •
• VII •
• VIII •
• IX •
• X •
• XI •
• XII •
• XIII •
• XIV •
• XV •
• XVI •

• XVII •
• XVIII •
• XIX •

•  I  •

“Tick tock! Tick tock!” went the clock on the mantelpiece, and it sounded, thought Maria, like the step of an animal padding through the jungle. But that, of course, was partly because she was lying on a great tiger’s skin at her father’s feet while he ate his stewed prunes and read his newspaper.

The lamps were lit in the cosy library of the old country house, for the autumn dusk was falling, and a bright log fire blazed upon the hearth. The curtains, however, were not yet drawn, and through the French windows the great cedars could be seen shadowy upon the lawn, a layer of thin mist creeping towards them from the park beyond.

“Tick tock! Tick tock!” sounded the white-faced clock on the mantelpiece, as with remorseless cry the fingers moved forwards round the solemn disc. They showed twenty minutes to six exactly.

“Why,” exclaimed Maria thoughtfully, sprawling across the tawny tiger-skin at her father’s feet, and remembering that she had only twenty minutes before bedtime, “why are women sometimes called catty? Are they really catty? You said this morning that Mrs. Binks was rather a—”

She stopped abruptly. Her father, raising one eye above his newspaper, was examining her.

“Puss,” the child finished her interrupted sentence, but too low, she believed, to be audible.

The newspaper rustled ominously. Maria waited, stroking the tiger-skin a little nervously.

“Probably,” came the delayed answer, a trifle absent-mindedly, perhaps, “because they can smile and show their claws at the same time.”

His head disappeared again abruptly behind the open sheet, where he was reading with a mixture of pride and exasperation the report of his speech at the local Dog Show.

Maria stroked the yellow stripes on which she sprawled, passing her fingers over the big, sharp teeth and dreadful claws. She shivered. Skin, teeth and claws, she thought, were terrible and splendid. The faint, bitter odour of the large skin was not so pleasant.

Maria reflected for some moments.

There sat her father behind his paper in his heavy shooting-boots and damp knickerbockers, his pipe alight. Before him, beside his teacup, was the plate of prunes that she considered a fad, but that he declared kept him fit. A dozen prunes. She was allowed to count the stones, borrowing his fork or spoon for the purpose, and Judas, her black cat, was allowed to help, provided they did not, between them, knock the stones off the plate on to the carpet.

Maria stared at them. The white-faced clock went “Tick tock! Tick tock!” She looked at the brown crinkly stones, seeing a vivid mental picture in each case of Tinker, Tailor, Ploughboy and the rest. She looked at the clock — eighteen minutes to six. She continued her reflections.

Judas, of course, always regarded this counting stones as a game arranged for his especial benefit. He did his best, pushing forward tentatively a blunt, black paw of velvet, to send at least the Tailor or the Tinker sprawling across the library pile carpet — whereupon her father, calling her Marigold (sure sign of annoyance), or Mrs. Binks, saying sharply, “It’s time now, Maria,” would interfere and spoil the fun.

Usually it was Mrs. Binks who interfered just when Pig Stye and Barn were reached with “Now, Maria dear, it’s time, you know,” or some such desolate pronouncement. So that Maria, always hurrying to finish her game with Judas, forgot that she was actually choosing the type of man she would one day marry — this year, next year, never — and thought only of whether she could count all the stones before Judas misbehaved himself and sent one of the Prune Stone People to make a tiny dark stain on the library carpet. It was difficult, too, to arrange the eight persons in the four places of abode. Time, anyhow, interrupted all happy things.

“It isn’t fair to them,” was what she invariably said, the Tinker’s helpless face crying to her from the floor. “They depend on me, you see!”

Only this time Judas, innocent as any black sheep, was absent, and Mrs. Binks, thank goodness, was not in the room.

Her reflections ended. She turned to her father again. It was now fifteen minutes to six.

“But a cat,” she protested, “can’t really smile, Father. It hasn’t got one.”

“It’s got a grin, I suppose,” issued the voice from behind the newspaper. “A sort of grin — hasn’t it?” he added impatiently, yet not unkindly. His face did not appear.

Maria’s eyes quickly searched to see if she could verify this statement, but Judas, being elsewhere, did not show his expressionless face.

“Oh, I suppose so,” she agreed a little doubtfully, then fell into a period of silent thinking before she put some other question she had ready and waiting up her sleeve.

“And what exactly are felines, Father?” she resumed presently. “What is a big feline? Are there little felines too? Do they all hunt something? — does Mrs. Binks, I mean—”

Again she stopped dead. It was a deep voice, half grunt, half growl, that made her pause.

“Now run away and play, Marigold, I want to read” — with a sideways glance at the clock. “We can talk about cats and felines another time. Yes, there are big and little felines. A tiger is a big feline. He’s chief of them all — a terrible fellow. You’re lying on one now. Judas is a little feline. Yes, everything hunts something in this world. Now get along with you,” as his eye took another quick glance at the clock. He sighed audibly.

The sigh and the Tick tock! ran mingled together through her mind.

Maria knew that voice, even without the “Marigold.” She rose slowly from the hearth-rug, kissed the top of her father’s head, and left the room without another word. She knew that “Get along with you” must be obeyed. The door closed behind her inaudibly.

“Well, I’ve got along with me,” she said to herself, as she faced the big empty hall. “And now — what?”

No sooner was the question asked than it was answered. Maria always knew her own mind, and it was in her mind now to find Judas, to speak to him, to examine his face carefully, and to see if it would be made to smile or grin. He would be somewhere about, she knew, though not, of course, where she expected. It would mean a hunt, but there was nothing to prevent a hunt, and her father had just said that everything in this world hunted something else. The whole of the great rambling house, too, lay at her disposal, just as it lay at Judas’s disposal, for her Swiss governess was away on holiday, and Mrs. Binks, the lady housekeeper, was always reading in her room after tea.

She tiptoed across the hall towards the wide staircase.

At the age of ten Maria was so bright-eyed that her eyes popped and sparkled as though any minute they would spill their light in a shower of tiny crackles. Though plump and solid, she moved lightly, almost dancingly. An only child, she had learned to play alone, she was self-reliant, she possessed the extra thoughtfulness that solitary children are apt to have. Her invalid aunt, her father, too, provided other children from time to time, but as her aunt was usually in bed, while her father was a busy man with nothing particular to do, these parties were rather gloomy affairs, badly mismanaged. Maria, by nature independent and resourceful, preferred playing alone. She found plenty to amuse herself.

Judas, for instance.

She was fond of Judas, though he puzzled her a good deal, keeping so much to himself, and always preoccupied with strange business of his own she could not understand. Interesting business evidently, since it absorbed him so entirely that he could not even blink when she addressed him. “Judas, my black beauty, what are you thinking about?” or “Judas, darling, what’s in your deep black mind now, I wonder?” — these friendly questions brought no sign of response, not even a wink of the big shining eyes. The most they produced was a tiny quiver of the tail at its very tip. It was only the last quarter of an inch that quivered.

She resented this extreme privacy on the part of Judas. The world he lived in was mysterious and queer. She longed to get into it with him, yet not to force her way in. It was not intrusion she desired, it was a personal request that she should join him.

A personal invitation from Judas Maria would have greatly valued.

Now, as she tiptoed her way from the library to hunt for him, she found herself instinctively copying his way of walking in wet grass. She picked up her feet neatly; moved silently across the big empty hall; trod softly and delicately up the wide staircase and along the deserted passages. She advanced with an air of careless indifference, as though it really mattered nothing where she went, as though her mind was elsewhere, as though she was not even going where she was looking. She kept stopping and staring at nothing, gazing into space, scratching her head suddenly, pretending to listen when there was nothing to listen to — nothing, that is, except the Tick tock! of the gilt presentation clock on the landing, and this she decided not to hear. She disliked the sound. It gave her an unpleasant sense of hurry.

“He’s just hiding somewhere,” ran her thought, “and watching me. He can see me. He’ll like it if I walk and act like him. He’ll be pleased. He’ll think perhaps I’m a sort of catty woman, a sort of big feline. Then he may suddenly dart out and give me an invitation — invite me in! Only, if he does, I must pretend I don’t care an atom and am quite indifferent….”

She expected that any minute now his black body would appear, tail erect like a rod, whiskers spraying, and would rush up to her, then stop abruptly, rubbing and purring, against her legs.

“Miss Marigold,” he would say, “I shall be delighted if you would join me.” Or, on the other hand, he might say more familiarly, “Hi, Maria, you, come on!”

Whichever it would be, she reminded herself again that she must not jump at it, but must pause, look the other way, scratch her head, perhaps even walk off in the opposite direction, as though matters of urgent importance demanded her attention elsewhere. Later, but a good deal later, she would follow where he led. To show direct pleasure, in any case, would be a grave mistake.

Judas, however, did not make an appearance, and in due course Maria reached the big doors of green baize hung on their swinging hinges. And here she stopped. Beyond those doors lay the other wing of the big house, the unused wing. For times were hard, and her father, his income much reduced, had closed this end of the mansion, so that only half of the building was now occupied. With the bad times he had also reduced what he called the staff, letting his own manservant, William, go as well, and had engaged Mrs. Binks, a distant cousin, as lady housekeeper, and Mrs. Binks, among her other duties, was very precise about this other wing not being used. Being much larger than the occupied portion, it was known to Maria as the Big House, the part the family lived in being the Little House.

The child now stood against the green baize door among the shadows. Her little skirt hung straight and short. Her bright eyes sparkled. She pursed her lips. For coming up against the green baize door, beyond which was a sort of Out of Bounds, she came up also against the personality of Mrs. Binks, whom her father had described the other day as a puss. And Mrs. Binks, though not present actually, stopped her.

She disliked Mrs. Binks instinctively, having no reason except perhaps that Mrs. Binks addressed her as “Maria, child,” interrupted her game with the prune stones, and, in her opinion, was a bit too familiar with her father into the bargain. Too young to analyse jealousy, she had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Binks made far too many opportunities when it was “important she should see the Master.” She was too respectful besides, and even when she got her own way, which was almost always, she laid the credit for it at his feet, though fully aware it was her own. Maria thought this a little sly. There was a good deal of humbug and flattery going on, she decided. Her father, though grumbling and growling, never refused Mrs. Binks the interview, though she, Maria, was often put off with an excuse. He was a busy man, of course, but he invariably found time to see Mrs. Binks, when there was no time to talk to Maria or play with her. At the same time she pitied him a little: she felt he was rather being chased, as it were. Was he also, she sometimes asked herself, a tiny wee bit afraid of his lady housekeeper?

Another reason for rather distrusting Mrs. Binks was that she was a widow and an Honourable. She had dropped the honorary tide when poverty drove her into service, and this seemed a silly thing to do. But being a widow was apparently even worse, dating from a time when her father had used in her hearing a phrase “widows and that sort of person,” in a tone of such scornful contempt that, though the context was missing, the stigma had left an indelible impression. Her own mother, Maria knew, had never been a “widow.”

Leaning now against the green baize door, and thinking thus inevitably of Mrs. Binks and her tortuous ways, she found suddenly that the door had begun to give a little. It was yielding slightly. It was moving. Her weight, perhaps, was slowly pushing it open. It gave and gave, an inch at a time. From the unheated halls and corridors beyond a cold air crept through the chink and brushed her cheeks. Undoubtedly now the door was wider. At the same instant something brushed past her legs as well. It slipped along soundlessly. A small, dark, shadowy thing rushed by. It came from behind her. It shot swiftly, noiselessly past from the Little House into the unused wing she called the Big House. Yet not quite noiselessly: the beat of little pads was audible.

Even if she had not caught a glimpse of the small, black, glossy outline, she would have known from the touch against her stockings what it was. Something ran up her spine and told her. Judas, who had been watching her stealthily all this time, had just rushed through. The darkness swallowed him at once. Now, at this very instant, she realized, he stood just across the threshold, silent and invisible. He waited.

A shock of startled surprise and excitement ran over her. Was he expecting her to follow him? Was this, at long last, a real invitation? Would she presently hear “Hi, Maria, you”?

Maria paused, holding her breath tightly.

For the sake of the new economy, few lights were lit in the occupied body of the building behind her, and the single lamp in the hall far below threw only the faintest glimmer into the corner where she now stood holding her breath. Among these shadows, therefore, she was practically invisible — except to Judas standing in the impenetrable blackness just beyond. To him, of course, her outline showed up plainly against the glimmer from the hall.

A voice startled her … calling suddenly from the depths of the hall behind her:

“Maria! Maria, child, where are you?”

Maria stood stock still, breathing as low as possible. An answer, she decided, was unnecessary. She waited. There was no sound of steps.

“Maria, child!” was repeated, echoing shrilly through the hall and passages.

In front lay the enchanted region of the forbidden wing — with Judas. It was not seriously forbidden; there was no penalty attached: only a mild scolding, a gentle reprimand, would follow if she were caught there. It was not any fear of this that made her hesitate and stand still so breathlessly. It was simply the question of the invitation. It was far more important than anything Mrs. Binks might have to say.

Was Judas still standing there and waiting? Had he watched her all this time with a purpose? Did he really want her to join him?

The swing door remained propped open, for unconsciously she had set her foot against it. It was even a little wider open than before.

Her head, which had been listening sideways to the voice from the hall, now turned round and looked downwards at her feet — and stared straight into two shining discs of green and amber that blazed up into her face.

“My gummy!” exclaimed Maria under her breath. “You’re as close as that!” She gave an involuntary little jump.

From the level of her feet Judas was examining her intently, his wide-open eyes reflecting the glimmer of light from behind her. And the next thing she realized was that, almost without knowing it, her foot was withdrawn, and the baize door had swung to with a soft, gulping sound at her back. She now stood close to Judas across the threshold of the unused wing.

And it was then, with the soft thud of the closing door behind her, that a sudden illumination flashed across her, flooding her mind. The imagination of the solitary child, left so long to its own resources, was lit up with understanding. This, she realized with a start, was, of course, his country. It was here he withdrew when he was nowhere to be found. This was his region, his secret kingdom where, in the unlighted chambers and sheeted corridors, he plotted, planned, adventured. He knew the huge banqueting hall by heart. Among the dim shadows of these deserted stairs and cool, lofty halls he was at home, his black figure invisible in their darkness. Judas, lover of the night, was master here, and she, Maria, stood now beside him — and at his express invitation.

The question of the invitation was solved simultaneously with this blaze of understanding, and the call of the lady housekeeper was neglected utterly. The closing of the swing door behind her made it impossible to see his lambent eyes, but she could feel his sleek, dark body rubbing invitingly against her legs. She heard him purr.

It seemed too good to be true — he was asking her to join him. She stooped and stroked him, feeling his warm back yield a little beneath her fingers … then curiously melt away, as though suddenly there were no bones. The purring stopped; her hand, her fingers, no longer found him. He was suddenly no longer there.

She stood upright in the darkness, calling to him beneath her breath. No answer came. There was no sound of his pads on the carpetless boards. There was no sound of any sort at all. Judas was gone. Abruptly, he was not there. Judas, indubitably, had left her.

A curious feeling stole over her, a slight sensation of uneasiness, for though Judas was certainly in the unused wing with her, he might, by this time, be lost among distant rooms and passages, even down in the vast banqueting hall; so far as a friendly presence was concerned, she was alone. Her heart sank a little. The faint distress she experienced was partly due, doubtless, to the fact that she was trespassing, partly also to the effect of the darkness and silence that enveloped her. Thus she explained it to herself, at any rate, while perfectly aware that it was not the entire truth, and that there was another ingredient in her uneasiness that she recognized yet could not properly account for. A faint shiver ran down her back.

Maria was not the child to be afraid of the dark, no bogey-thoughts had ever troubled her robust imagination: the faint touch of dread that came to her now was of quite another kind. Very faint it might be, but its advent — a movement of cooler air across her cheek, the flutter of a feather across her heart — was beyond all question.

“It’s just stuff and nonsense,” she told herself a trifle defiantly, asserting her independence even while she shivered. “Of course it’s just nothing at all!”

Yet even while thus assuring herself, she stood unusually still, listening, waiting, peering into the blackness in what was certainly an expectant attitude. She kept moving from one foot to the other. Then, suddenly and without apparent reason — she sniffed. Automatically, without knowing why, Maria gave this long and audible sniff. She found herself sniffing the musty, rather chilly air of the long closed corridor, wondering at the same time, perhaps, if there was not something besides the frowsiness that made her do it, something that included a remote hint of warning, of self-protection almost. But the notion was too faint and fugitive to leave an impression; it vanished as soon as born. Afterwards, however, she remembered this curious, sudden, automatic sniff.

For several minutes she stood motionless in this expectant way, and then, since nothing happened, and Judas did not reappear, her thoughts, which had been arrested rather, resumed their normal flow. If there was a tiny shudder of excitement and anticipation in her, it was certainly not due to fear. She was not afraid, she kept telling herself. She listened intently. Nothing stirred. The empty, untenanted wing, itself as large as many a country house, yawned before her in deep blackness. She stood at the beginning of a long corridor which was a sort of picture gallery, yet with several bedrooms, she remembered, sandwiched in between the portraits, and she knew that down its vacant length her ancestors gleamed bleakly out of their heavy gilt frames. Beyond them, at its farther end, the gallery led to a great staircase that curved down into a drawing-room. A vast banqueting hall opened out of this. The whole place was familiar enough to her in the daylight, but now, with the night shrouding it, these great rooms and corridors seemed less familiar, less attractive.

Thoughts poured through her while she waited, listening, yet her chief thought, naturally, was still about Judas and his wonderful invitation. She had accepted it, yet he had instantly made off and vanished. Something, of course, was wrong … and she realized suddenly that she had made a bad mistake, and that this was the explanation of his abrupt disappearance. The mistake, she decided, lay in her manner of acceptance. Her acceptance was at fault — she had shown obvious pleasure, when she should have shown complete indifference. She had been too precipitate altogether. Instead of walking in the opposite direction, as though she had far more important things to attend to, she had followed him with a beaming face, and even in the dark he had seen this beaming face and had despised her for it.

“Judas, where are you?” she whispered nevertheless. “Judas, my strange black beauty!” And the whisper, low though it was, travelled away down the long, empty gallery, past staring ancestors and heavy sofas and armchairs, all draped in dust sheets, and died into silence far beyond where the staircases wound down into impenetrable depths of gloom.

Of course no answer came. Judas, she knew, hid somewhere in those dark, silent depths, his velvet paws, his marvellous eyes, guiding him faultlessly upon some business of his own. There was no false step in his going. This was his kingdom. In here he was at home.

Maria waited, none the less. She would rather have welcomed a sound perhaps, a sound of some sort or other, even the distant cry of Mrs. Binks from the Little House behind her. But nothing came. Even the wind against the outside walls was silent. She heard nothing but the droning hum of the blood inside her ears and the beating of her heart.

Moving from one foot to the other, she decided at length that the time had come for her to act. It was impossible to stand forever waiting, listening. Time was passing, moreover; that horrid Tick tock! was beating away the precious minutes.

And her clear young brain recognized at once the two possible alternatives — she must go forward or go back.

There was none to give her counsel; her mind must be made up without assistance; but, as a young child with no one to shape her adventure or her play, this was no new position. Unfearful of that yawning darkness in front of her, she was eager to go forward, eager to explore the gloomy, empty rooms, with the chance possibility of surprising Judas in some strange night-fantasia of his own. This was her strongest urge — to creep along the corridor, steal down the great staircase, and peer into all the dim corners of the banqueting hall below, Already, she had one foot stretched out, feeling its way, her blood pulsing with the new tremor of exciting dread — when the other and opposite alternative stepped in and made her hesitate.

Having already made one bad mistake with regard to Judas, she did not want to make a second, perhaps a graver, one. If she went to look for him he might disown her more deliberately than ever. She might sink so low in his estimation that he would never, never invite her again. On the other hand, if she pretended to go back, he might — who could say? — rush suddenly up and claim her. Moreover, she was out of bounds after all. Her father … Mrs. Binks …

Her hesitation became more marked. She slowly withdrew the outstretched foot, when suddenly something happened that made her catch her breath sharply. Her movement stopped.

“Hi! I Maria, child! Where are you?” sounded shrill and faintly from the distant region of the Little House behind her.

While, at the same instant, rose another sound that startled her far more. And this came from the Big House, the unused wing, in front of her.

So faint and distant, it rose from the depths of the banqueting hall below, but drawing quickly nearer. It came with great velocity. It tore rushing down the long dark gallery towards her. It made a curious, scattering noise, its origin invisible, but a moment later, not intangible. A movement of the air came with it, a brushing against her legs as it swept past, and then, abruptly, a sound of violent scrabbling and clawing against the closed baize door behind her that was too familiar not to be recognized at once.

Acting instinctively, Maria pushed the door wide open, and Judas — but Judas frightened, terror-stricken — dashed through helter-skelter, and vanished like a streak of black lightning along the passage and down towards the dimly lighted hall of the inhabited Little House.

Maria stood gasping with amazement. She was too astonished to think or feel clearly. The first thing in her mind was, why was Judas frightened, terrified even? The second was her deep-rooted disappointment that she had not penetrated into the unused wing to explore. This unfulfilled wish, this frustrated desire, was poignant and even rather bitter. It took first place in her thoughts and feelings, which, though scattered, were extremely strong. She had missed an amazing and exceptional chance she might never get again. That she felt a little frightened added to the intensity of her loss. To see Judas terrified was, of course, a shock, but to have lost the opportunity of exploration of the unused wing, possibly also to have discovered why Judas was terrified, this was a disaster she could never, never forget.

Slowly, reluctantly, ready for tears almost, she turned and followed him. There was again a tremor down her spine. The green baize door swung to behind her with a series of little diminishing thuds and gulps.

Sick at heart, intense regret gnawing at her, she made her way slowly back along the landing. How feeble! How unenterprising! was her chief thought. Just because the unused wing was out of bounds, just because Mrs. Binks had screamed her name, just because — well, because, to tell the truth, she was a wee bit frightened, she had missed a chance of adventure that might never come again. Judas might never give her another invitation. Had she crept down into the banqueting hall, she might even have discovered what frightened him….

“Bah!” she exclaimed under her breath.

“What’s the good of being good? It only means you miss things that may never come again!” There was no sign, no sound either, of Mrs. Binks, as she stole back down the staircase. No sound of any kind except the gilt presentation clock on the landing that went “Tick tock! Tick tock!” It was a horrible sound. It reminded her that sharp at six she must go to her room. And it must be close on six already.

She hurried, making her way straight to the library, where she burst in upon her father, still behind his newspaper.

As she pushed the door open her mind held one thought only — the burning, intense regret that she had lost a great adventure; and, on entering the room, the first thing she noticed was that her father had finished all his prunes, and that the stones stood invitingly in a ring round the rim of the white plate. Also she saw at once that Judas was not there.

Her father uttered simultaneously with her. Both voices spoke together.

“Oh, Father, have you seen Judas?”

“Oh, Maria, Mrs. Binks has been yel — I mean, calling for you!”

They stared at one another.

Their voices again spoke simultaneously, each answering the other’s question:

“Oh, has she, Father?”

“No, Judas isn’t here — thank goodness!”

•   •   •

In the first second of Maria’s reappearance this happened. The same second almost he glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. The child’s eyes followed. It was exactly six minutes to six.

He still wore his heavy shooting boots, Maria noticed next.

“Oh, Father,” she exclaimed, “I’ll run and get your slippers.”

“Oh, thank you, Marigold, dear.” He turned to relight his pipe. “And — er — perhaps you’d better just run and see what Mrs. Binks wants,” he added, carelessly enough, it seemed. “I think I heard her calling.” The voice sounded to Maria nervous.

He puffed away, looking at her inquiringly over the burning match, his brown face draped oddly with clouds of blue smoke. Below him she caught the great gleaming, glass eyes of the tiger. They glared at her. In her mind rose again the bitter, keen regret that she had missed a great adventure — poignant, unsatisfied. It gnawed behind all she saw and thought and felt. A queer acrid smell rose to her nostrils.

“Father, what a funny st — smell, I mean!”

“Damp,” he said gruffly. “The weather’s changing. Better hurry up,” he added, glancing at the clock. “You’ve only got five minutes, you know.”

“Yes, Father,” she agreed obediently, “but after the slippers. Do you think she really wants me?”

“Better just see, Maria — dear. She’s been calling a bit.”

It dawned upon her more clearly than ever — he was a little afraid of Mrs. Binks. She came even before his slippers.

“Yes, Father, but I’ll get your slippers first, I think.”

“Umph!” he said. “Thanks, Marigold. But I’m afraid my room’s in an awful mess. You’ll never find them.”

“Oh, Tinker and Sailor will help me look. Perhaps the Gentleman, too.”

She longed to count the prune stones first, but there wasn’t time, of course. She gave them one yearning look.

“I’ll be back before five minutes is up,” as she rushed to the door. “Before you can say knife, Father.”

“Jack Robinson, you mean,” he called after her. “He’s quickest of all, you know. Quicker than time itself!”

She darted back, kissed the top of his head again, swallowed a gulp of smoke, and was out of the room — with five minutes in hand — to fetch his slippers.

“Jack Robinson, remember…!” she heard, as she closed the door behind her and ran helter-skelter on her errand. She had exactly five minutes for its fulfilment. “Tick tock! Tick tock!” the sound beat after her as she ran.

•  II  •

Maria possessed an active, even an intense, imagination, and it is not to be wondered at that many years later her gift produced an original and distinctive harvest. In those early days, however, she lived her dreams, and hence knew nothing of the torture that demands production. Her outlet, being natural and instinctive, had no need of artificial construction. No question of form cropped up to worry her. She was happily ignorant, too, of the troubles of accumulated repression. Her intake was expressed adequately by her output. The law of compensation was thus satisfied automatically.

Having no regular playmates, the natural instinct of the young animal found the next best satisfaction — she played with herself, or with what was at hand. All she demanded was some reasonable measure of response. Cows and horses were obviously too big, lambs and kids too shy, worms too inert, birds too unapproachable. Insects, again, were too wriggly — they tickled, and some were dangerous — while dogs, though she loved them, were too simple, honest and unromantic. They played willingly enough, but they suggested nothing beyond a romp. They had, besides, a tendency towards blood-thirstiness that quenched any ardour she might otherwise have felt.

There remained, then, nothing but a cat, and a cat, in the form of Judas, having survived a drowned litter in the gardener’s cottage, was installed in the role of principal playmate.

As she ran now across the hall from the library her thoughts were chiefly on the slippers, but partly also on Judas and his recent odd behaviour, for his undignified terror of a few minutes before disturbed her rather. The question of time was in her mind as well. She had only five minutes. She must be quick. Even as she crossed the hall she heard the “Tick tock!” of the great clock in the corner knocking off the seconds. She hurried. The staircase yawned like an open mouth in front of her.

Her father’s bedroom lay on the side of the Little House away from the green baize door; to reach it, find the slippers, and return, should take five minutes at the very most — provided she found them at once. But since his man had gone the room was dreadfully untidy, a veritable pig-stye, and the search might take her longer than she expected. Once on the landing, she would have to go all round the gallery that overlooked the hall, and now, as she raced up three steps at a time, it came suddenly back to her that a few minutes before, when she was racing down from the unused wing, she had noticed out of the corner of her eye — no more than that — a figure leaning over the balustrade and looking down. She had been too excited, too upset, by the unusual spectacle of Judas in a panic, to pay any attention to this person. The light was of the dimmest, the outline alone discernible. She had only registered that, since it was not Mrs. Binks, it did not matter much who else it was. One of the maids possibly, but at any rate no one who was of any account.

The detail, indeed, had wholly left her mind, but now, as she took the stairs in the reverse sense, bounding up at full speed to her father’s room, she became aware that the figure was still there, standing in its original position, leaning over the balustrade and looking down into the well of the hall, looking, she then realized with an uncomfortable start — straight at herself.

Maria paused an instant in her breathless ascent and returned the look. She looked hard, she stared. Who could it be? Who was it? The figure did not move. She saw the white face peering down at her, returning her gaze steadily. The shoulders were hunched forward a little, the hands clasped together in the air over the railing. It was, she then saw, a man, a man, moreover, she recognized. It was the Man who Wound the Clocks.

She was more than surprised, she was startled, for it was extraordinary that he should be in the house at all, above all that he should be here at this late evening hour. And she at once asked herself, a trifle nervously, what he could be doing there.

The Man who Wound the Clocks was, of course, no stranger — in the sense that he came regularly once a week from the neighbouring town to attend to the numerous timepieces of variegated sort that her father found necessary in the big house. It was his business to adjust these clocks, and wind them properly, and see that they all kept the same time. He was a recognized figure in the old house once a week — but invariably in the morning hours.

Maria was very familiar with this individual. But she had never spoken with him, for the very good reason that he himself never uttered a word. Even to her “good morning” he merely bowed in silence. She might watch him at his work with the bigger clocks for several minutes at a stretch, but he never spoke, he never smiled, his face betrayed no expression, he made no attempt even to pass the time of day; he just ignored her.

It was quite natural, therefore, that her active imagination should have busied itself with this enigmatic workman, attributing to him mysterious qualities his strange silence earned. He moved oddly, she had thus noticed, for he always went on tiptoe, his long thin legs striding from clock to clock quietly and swiftly; he wore striped trousers, one leg considerably shorter than the other, with a black tailcoat that gave him, she decided, the appearance of a tall, weedy bird, his feathers rather draggled. He might have been an ancient stork or crane. His silence, his pale, expressionless face, his flapping coattails and long stride, one trouser-leg hitched always higher than the other, provided material for almost any imaginative picture she cared to make. And the fact that while some of the clocks apparently liked him, welcoming his touch, others obviously feared him, as was shown by the grinding creak and rattle they made even before he reached them, increased the sense of importance that she attributed to him.

Yet, if uncommunicative, she had always hitherto felt him friendly.

Now, however, as she stood staring up into his pale face, she got the sudden unwelcome impression that somehow he was not perhaps quite so friendly as she had always imagined. She was vaguely conscious that she would be glad to avoid him if she could. To reach her father’s bedroom for the slippers she must go past him. She felt now that she would rather not go past him. Something in her shrank.

Her pause on the stairs, anyhow, was brief, for she was not the sort of child to dawdle over a decision. Making no sign of recognition therefore, she ran straight on, reached the landing a moment later, and turned boldly to the left. It was her intention to go straight past him without even a nod of greeting, since he had never yet returned even her polite “good morning,” but now, as she drew level with him, she saw, to her amazement, that he suddenly straightened up and faced her. He stood bang in front of her. He barred her way. He deliberately stretched an arm and hand across her path.

Maria stopped and stared. She saw the disc of his pale face, bent sideways a little towards her; she saw his striped trousers, one leg higher than the other; she saw his black tailcoat. Through this picture she caught, rather ominously, and louder than usual, the Tick tock! of the big gilt presentation clock on its shelf behind him.

“Good evening,” she said, being too surprised to think of anything else, her breath a little uneven.

He did not answer, but he straddled farther across her path.

Maria felt at a complete loss. A dozen ideas flashed through her. Her first impression — the grotesque idea that this mournful, even sombre figure, wanted to play — she rejected instantly, for though the arm and hand were stretched out, they were quite obviously not stretched out in any sort of invitation. Her second impression — that in the dim light he was possibly making a clumsy, shy effort to move aside — she equally dismissed. Impressions, indeed, were just waste of time. His intention was perfectly plain — he meant deliberately to bar her way.

Before she could make up her mind what to say or do, he spoke.

“Miss Marigold,” he said, in a creaky whisper that, she thought, sounded just like one of the bigger clocks, “Judas expects you.” He pointed in the opposite direction to which she wished to go — towards the unused wing. “Over there.”

Maria stood motionless and speechless.

“Over there,” the man repeated, still pointing towards the green baize door.

Maria’s lips opened, but no sound came forth.

“In the Big House,” he repeated, and the same minute, bowing rapidly so that his coat-tails flapped out like wings, he darted to one side, and whispering “Allow me,” while glancing behind him sharply, he took a step to lead the way.

By this time several seconds had intervened, and Maria had found her voice. She had come to a decision too. For she was not easily put off her purpose, much less frightened. She had come to fetch her father’s slippers; her father’s slippers she meant to fetch. It would take more than the nonsensical behaviour of a servant in the house, above all of a man who merely wound the clocks and did not even belong to the general staff, of a man perhaps a little queer in his mind into the bargain — it would take more than that to stop her.

She drew herself up; unaware probably that her two fists were very tightly clenched. She looked him full in the face.

“Thank you,” she said in her stiffest voice, “but I’m just going in the other direction. I’m going to fetch — to find—”

She got no further. Her voice stammered and died away. From her mind also died away what it was she was going to fetch and find. It vanished from her thoughts completely. She no longer had the faintest notion what it was she had come to fetch and find and look for. Indeed, in her mind at that moment one thing, and one thing only, seemed to echo, and this was the persistent Tick tock! of the gilt presentation clock behind them on the landing. It was going faster, she fancied, than before. It was hurrying. It produced such a sense of confusion in her thoughts, such a sense of a race against time, as it were, that she could think of nothing further to do or say at first.

She made another effort then, a more determined effort.

“I told my father,” she began — “I promised him — that I would go and get his s—”

Into the eyes of the Man who Wound the Clocks there came a sudden curious glare that stopped her.

“S — s — sl—” She made a last desperate attempt, trying to feel indignant, even angry. She got no further than the first two letters. The word itself had disappeared. Her mind was blank of it. Her voice died away into a soft and futile hiss.

“Hush! Hush!” he whispered, putting a finger to his lips. “They might overhear.”

A soft confusion settled like a cloud upon her mind and memory.

“Allow me,” he repeated, his coat-tails making an elaborate flourish as he passed in front of her. “I will lead the way.”

She followed. His authority was overmastering. All volition had apparently left her. There was nothing to do but to obey.

•  III  •

Maria has never forgotten the few steps they made along the passage towards the green baize door. She remembers chiefly a curious sense of urgent hurry. Her time was short. Unless she hurried she would be late. Late for what? She did not know. There was a sense of almost nightmare rush. The remorseless Tick tock! of the passing seconds seemed in her very blood.

What she would be late for she could not think. She had not an instant to spare — that was the only thing she knew.

She stepped along briskly behind the Man who Wound the Clocks, staring at his flying coat-tails, and noticing that one striped trouser-leg, as usual, was longer than the other. She remembers trying to count the number of stripes in his trousers, and that after counting four the stripes grew blurred and ran together with a queer yellowish tinge she did not like. They should have been dark grey and black. This tawny colour kept creeping in. It was unpleasing somewhere.

Surprise that she was thus following him at all had apparently left her already at this early stage. Nor did it occur to her as odd that Judas should be waiting for her. Judas had always liked this Man who Wound the Clocks. He would rub, purring, against his striped trousers while the man attended to the timepieces in the various rooms and passages. It was not astonishing that some connection might exist between the two queer beings. Perhaps the Man was right when he said the black cat waited for her with impatience. At any rate, she thought, there was nothing to do but to follow him and see. Once she knew that, she could go about her real errand — go back and get about her real business — go somewhere and find the thing she had come to look for. Only, she had completely forgotten what it was. What was this something she had come to find? It had entirely left her memory. To find it was the immediate and important object of her very existence. For the life of her she could not think what it was. It would, of course, come back to her as soon as she got away from her unpleasant guide. She felt sure of that. The sooner this trip was over, the better. She would remember then.

So she followed the striped trousers along the dark corridor without a word. They reached the green baize door. The Man pushed it open and stood aside for her to enter the Big House — the empty, unoccupied portion of the great mansion, the part where no one lived — and, without a word from either of them, she crossed the threshold and passed inside. The door closed behind her with its little gulps of sound, and she found herself again in the opening of the picture gallery. Only a little while ago she had stood in the very same place, while Judas rushed past her in a panic. She again looked down its gloomy length. The Man stood close beside her, saying nothing. There was no sign of Judas anywhere. It was all silent as the grave.

“This is rather queer,” thought Maria. “It’s very extraordinary somewhere. I don’t — don’t quite understand it…!”

A sudden reaction came over her. It was absurd, she now realized, that she should have followed this man so meekly into the unused wing, into the forbidden part of the house. It was utterly ridiculous and impossible that he should know anything about Judas and his ways or wishes. It was outrageous; it was against all her sense of what was right and proper, that he should clothe himself with this assumption of authority. He was nothing, after all, but a paid menial; he was not even a member of the household staff, but a man who came in twice a week from the little town outside; whereas she, Marigold, was the daughter of the house, the daughter of his employer. Moreover … she had been upon some important errand which his mysterious and impudent actions had interrupted. He had interfered — had stopped something vital and urgent she was going to do. She had been on her way to get something, to look for something. She must find this, or miss the whole purpose of her being.

“Tick tock!” came from some empty depths of air beyond, reminding her that time was short and she must hurry. It was an unpleasant reminder. A feeling of discomfort, almost of uneasiness, rose in her heart, making her skin prick and tingle. She looked down the long, deserted corridor. It was not inviting. There was no sign of her friend Judas. Her discomfort increased. Was it a trap, she suddenly asked herself? Had the man used Judas as a decoy?

“I’m going back,” she exclaimed abruptly but very clearly, and took a preliminary step in the direction of the door behind her — only to find the Man’s arm stretched out against her chest like an iron bar. She took a deep breath. “At once,” she added loudly. “This very instant.”

The Man who Wound the Clocks looked at her calmly.

“Your time is short,” he said quietly. His eyes looked stern as he added: “You have five minutes only.”

Maria stiffened, bridled. This was sheer impudence.

“Let me pass at once,” she repeated firmly, her voice loud and strong. “I’ve got to fetch something to begin with, and besides—” Her words somehow died away in her mind.

“I cannot give you the time,” the Man replied, with resolute distinctness.

Her eyes flashed angrily. This impertinence was really too much. She stamped her foot.

“How dare you!” she cried. “What have you got to do with my time anyhow?” She found herself, nevertheless, taking a quick gulp of breath.

Again he gazed down at her calmly.

“You’ve got no time of your own,” he replied coldly. “You’ve got only what I can give you — five minutes.”

Maria felt something shrink within her. Her self-confidence wilted slightly. His words, though she might think them impertinent, were somehow true, she felt — horribly true. Her heart failed her a little. She made, none the less, a great effort to assert herself.

“How — how dare you?” she cried again. “Who are you? You’re only the Man who Winds the Clocks!”

“Exactly,” came the quiet reply. “That’s why.” And she heard a curious long, deep sigh float through the air.

She found herself trembling a little, but if she felt alarm she refused point blank to acknowledge it. Only one thing held steady in her wavering mind — if she could get rid of this impudent man and find her way back into the familiar part of the house, she would recover her authority again, her memory, too. She would recollect her errand. She would remember herself; she would know what it was she had come to find. There was a phrase, besides, a sort of name, she fancied, that could make him obey — only she could not find it.

Her lips may have trembled a little, but her voice was a loud command.

“Let me out!” she ordered in a final effort. “Let me pass. And please open that door for me at once!”

Again that long, deep sigh passed through the air.

“It’s gone, and I, too, must go,” she heard him whisper, and it seemed exactly like the voice of a great, steady clock that was going to strike.

She turned the same instant. To her amazement there was only a solid wall where the door had been, and when she looked back again to face him and ask what it all meant, the man himself had also disappeared. He was no longer there beside her. The Man who Wound the Clocks had vanished. There was no sign of him anywhere. The long picture gallery was empty. Her eyes searched it in vain for a figure, indeed for anything that moved. It lay silent and deserted before her, stretching away to where the staircase began.

One thing, however, struck her as curious — it was not dark. She had just come from a house — though completely forgetting where or what it was — that lay deep in evening shadows. It was dimly lit and dark. But here there was no darkness. The picture gallery that stretched before her was bathed in light as though it were eleven o’clock on a sunny morning. And this she found comforting. Another thing she did not like so much — that down its deserted length she heard, faint but quite distinct, the Tick tock! as of some giant clock.

•  IV  •

The first thing she realized clearly, as she stood there alone at the head of the long, empty corridor, was — oddly enough — that there was no immediate hurry. To rush about, to get in a panic, to become excited and flurried, was not only useless, it was quite unnecessary. There was plenty of time, heaps and heaps of it. The five minutes allowed her seemed an eternity. If the door and the Man who Wound the Clocks had disappeared in this strange and sudden way, they might equally reappear in an even more strange and sudden way.

Confused she felt, bewildered, perhaps even a little frightened, yet something told her there was no need to fuss and worry and dash about, much less to scream or cry. The door had vanished, so she could not go back, wherever “back” might be, to look for the thing she had been going to find; the Man had vanished, so she could not ask him questions, scold, stand on her dignity or play the Daughter of the House. And as for Judas, who was urgently expecting her, his black outline was nowhere visible, and if he did not want her urgently enough to make a sign of some sort, and to say at least, “Hi, Maria, come on!” that was his look-out, not hers. It was this Maria felt.

She therefore swallowed the tears that threatened to rise, and with her handkerchief wiped her lips where her teeth had bitten them. She also clasped and unclasped her hands, which had been so tightly clenched that the nails had left marks in the tender flesh, and the muscles were stiff and cramped.

She looked about her. She wanted badly to call out, “Judas! Judas!” but everything was so still that she felt the sound of her voice in this deep silence would be unpleasant rather. So she just stood and looked about her.

How well she knew this picture gallery, with its guest-bedrooms and the big staircase down into the halls below! Only six months before it had thronged with the coming and going of all manner of human beings who arrived for shooting-parties, for dinner and bridge, young people who carried tennis rackets, servants in attendance, maids and footmen, even a stately butler. Mrs. Binks had flustered and bustled up and down its length, her father had stumped along; Maria herself with other children had once or twice played hide and seek all through this wing until it had been closed.

Yet all this flitted across her mind as though half remembered only, faint and fugitive, a dim jumble of scenes that rose from some old picture-book she had looked at ages ago. Pallid, not sharply realized, without significance, the scenes floated past, barely stirring the dust of memories that seemed strangely distant, and of no importance anyhow. They formed merely a sort of shadowy background to what she was now feeling and observing so much more vividly and intensely.

If the long gallery had once echoed to voices, laughter, calls and singing, it lay now, at any rate, silent as the grave, untenanted, deserted.

But was it untenanted, deserted, she asked herself with a new touch of uneasiness? A feeling began to steal over her that it was, after all, not empty perhaps, that she was not quite so alone as she imagined. Somehow it did not feel entirely unoccupied.

Maria moved from one foot to the other, and then back again. She listened intently. Her weight shifted once more from one foot to the other. She took a long, deep breath. Only the Tick tock! that never stopped, it seemed, was audible far away at the distant end.

“Anyhow,” she decided suddenly, “there’s no good my standing here like a stuck pig. I think I’ll go and explore!”

And she came to this plucky decision because she knew that if she waited much longer she might not have the courage to move at all. None the less, a considerable interval passed again before she summoned up the actual energy to start.

Along the right side of the gallery were several windows that looked out over the lawn and gardens, and on the other side hung the series of family portraits. Between them were the doors into the guest-bedrooms, and these, she vaguely remembered, bore fancy names. There were six of these at least — the Lavender Room, the Lily Room, the Rhododendron and Daisy Room and so forth, while dividing them in half was a private chamber that was never used because Queen Elizabeth had slept there. Once, perhaps, she had known them all quite accurately, but now the names floated across her mind like half-forgotten memories from some old picture-book.

She found herself moving cautiously towards the nearest window, and, having reached it safely, she leaned heavily against it, clutching the windowsill with both hands. Her light, anxious tread woke echoes that ran off into the distance.

Very cautiously, again she looked about her, hoping chiefly, perhaps, that Judas, her familiar friend, might show himself, for the sight of her beloved black cat would have been a comforting and friendly thing. He had invited her after all; if only now she could hear his call, “Hi, Maria, you!” How gladly, how impetuously she would respond…. But her eyes searched the long gallery in vain, there was no sign of him, nor for that matter of anything that moved. Nothing stirred, no sound was audible, silence and stillness reigned supreme. She waited, wondering what she should do next, wondering what was going to happen, waiting, watching, listening with all her eyes and ears. She took in every single detail. Her heart pumped.

Suddenly, then, she noticed a detail that had not struck her before: the door of the room nearest to her, the Dandelion Room, was standing slightly ajar. That it should be open at all seemed to her not quite natural; the door of an unoccupied room ought to have been closed surely. The same instant, to her great surprise, to her alarm as well, she saw that it was moving. She stared with eyes intently fixed. It was not moving now, it was stationary again; but it had moved; it had, of course, been moved. The room, therefore, was not unoccupied. There was somebody inside.

Maria, still staring fixedly, held her breath. Why she was not cold and stiff with nervous terror she did not know. That she was not seemed all that mattered. Intense curiosity stirred in her, but not fear. And this absence of fear had something to do, she felt vaguely, with the delightful sensation of leisure she had already noticed, the positive conviction that there was no hurry, that there was heaps and heaps of time.

Her eyes, none the less, were popping out of her head, and the next thing they popped on to then was a sign of movement at the far end of the corridor. With the tail of her eye she caught this movement first, then, turning her head, she saw it fully — the figure of Judas advancing slowly towards her from the far end. And the sight of him banished the last vestige of fear or nervousness from her mind.

She found her voice.

“My black darling!” she cried impulsively, unable to restrain herself. “How frightfully glad I am to see you! Where did you get to? Why did you leave me?”

She did not run to meet him, but stooped, making coaxing noises and holding out her hands with affectionate gestures. Judas, however, did not hurry, he did not even quicken his stately pace. He moved very slowly towards her along the whole length of the corridor, advancing daintily, picking his steps as in wet grass, giving the impression that he really did not want to come particularly, and that any moment he might stop and attend to something else of much greater importance.

She continued to make inviting noises with her lips, crouching patiently with both hands outstretched, and eventually he reached her so that she could grab up his warm, soft body and plunge her face into the fragrant fur.

“Oh, I knew you wouldn’t desert me,” she went on eagerly, “but where have you brought me, and where has he got to, that Man who Winds the Clocks, and why aren’t I in an awful hurry when I’ve only got five minutes, and what, oh what, is the thing I’ve come to find, and is there really somebody in that Dandelion Room? Oh, Judas, my black beauty, tell me everything, everything!”

She drew her face quickly out of the fur.

Tick tock! sounded somewhere in her ears.

Judas, far from reciprocating her embraces, was struggling. She set him down on the floor, where he straightened himself and then began to wash, behaving as though he did not know her, did not want to know her, and had never seen her before. But she kept her eyes on him closely, for the washing would end abruptly as it always did, he would suddenly look round, leaving a leg pointing to the ceiling, and attend to something else.

Which was precisely what then happened.

He rose, turning his back upon her, and stepped deliberately towards the Dandelion Room across the corridor. There, pausing a moment, he sat down, raised a front leg and half tapped, half scratched at the panel, as though he wanted to push it wider and go inside. His paw had hardly touched it when the door was quietly closed against him, shutting with a little bang. But before Maria could recover from her surprise, Judas added to it by what he did next. Trotting quickly now, he turned and ran down the entire length of the corridor, stopping for a fraction of a second at each room in turn, his paw tentatively raised as though he wanted to get in, while each door in turn was similarly then closed against him. Maria watched in amazement. She heard the doors closing in succession all the way down, each little bang a shade lower than the one before it, so that it sounded almost like a scale running down the piano.

Each of the eight rooms, therefore, was occupied; each door had been closed by the tenant inside. And Judas now was coming back again, marching slowly this time, with tail erect in the air and whiskers twitching. Too amazed to act or speak, Maria watched him, holding herself motionless, hardly responding, indeed, as he reached her side and began rubbing himself against her leg.

He glanced up at her, narrowing his eyes, then looked back at the door, as though to invite her attention to it.

“Judas!” she whispered eagerly, “I believe you know who’s in that room! You know who’s in all the rooms! You know them. And if you do — they must know you too!”

She was very excited; she hardly knew why she said it.

“Tell me. Tell me quickly. Are they friendly? Oh, who can they be?”

For answer, Judas marched to the Dandelion door, looked up at the handle, then threw her a glance of entreaty over his black shoulder. He made no sound, but his attitude was plain; he wanted her to turn the knob.

Maria did not hesitate. An invitation from Judas meant a tremendous lot to her; it was a rare occurrence, too rare to be trifled with. If she refused now, another opportunity might never come again. Her mind was made up instantly; at whatever risk, she would find out who the mysterious occupant was, but she would not turn the handle and fling the door wide, for that seemed taking too great a liberty. She would first knock and make polite inquiries. Smiling affectionately at Judas, while trembling a little inwardly, she therefore approached the door and gave a gentle knock. At the same time she spoke.

“I beg your pardon,” she said in a low voice, “but are you at home, please?”

A reply came at once. “Yes,” answered a gentlemanly voice. “I am in my room.”

It was not a voice she recognized, but it had a pleasant, musical sound that made her feel the speaker must be gentle. Her trembling became less and her confidence returned a little.

“Oh, thank you, sir,” she called, somewhat louder than before, “and would it — disturb you if — I opened your door?”

There was a short pause, but at the next words, astonishment made her catch her breath.

“To see you,” the voice said, “could be no possible disturbance, for it would be, on the contrary, the greatest privilege of my whole existence. But unfortunately,” it added with a sigh that was audible even through the panels, “you are not alone.” Maria gave a little gasp. She shot a look at Judas, sitting beside her with the innocent expression of a lamb. “So you do know him,” ran sharply across her mind, “and he knows you!”

She spoke no word to the cat, but with a great effort she continued to address the invisible occupant of the Dandelion Room, wondering how on earth he knew she was not alone. It came back to her then that he had, of course, seen Judas when he closed the door a moment ago.

“Only my cat, Judas, is with me, sir,” she said politely, for this unknown voice belonged, she felt sure, to a distinguished sort of person. “He is my pet, and he would not hurt a” — but “mouse” was the wrong word, and she changed it quickly — “a baby. Really, sir, he would not.”

The voice replied at once if without conviction. “I accept your word of course,” it said quietly. “At the same time he has not always treated me with the consideration I claim to deserve, for I have suffered even violence at his paws.”

At his paws! Maria did not smile, however; she merely felt an intense curiosity to know who this strange speaker was. While she looked down into the inscrutable black face at her feet, the muffled voice behind the door continued.

“Yet the honour of meeting you,” it went on, “is so great that I am more than willing to take what risk there may be, and if you will kindly control your animal, I will comply at once with your wish and open my door.”

“I promise, sir, I promise,” exclaimed Maria as she stooped and picked Judas up in her arms. “I’ve got him now,” she added. “He’s quite safe.”

Wondering what it all meant, but too astonished to think of anything clearly, she stepped back instinctively as the brass knob began to turn, and the next instant the door was flung wide open and out marched the occupant of the Dandelion Room. Holding Judas tightly, she stared, as the saying is, with all her eyes — at the figure of a man. And her very first impression, before grasping a single detail of his appearance, was one of vague familiarity. She had seen him before somewhere. But where, or who he was, she had not the faintest idea.

He was tall, elderly, lean in the flanks, distinguished looking, spotlessly clean, and marvellously well groomed. His nose was hooked, he wore a small moustache, with a sharp little imperial beard. His black, cut-away tailcoat was not new, but fitted smartly across the broad shoulders and drew closely in about the rather marked waist, and his trousers of shepherd’s plaid hung beautifully over the black buttoned boots of patent leather. An eyeglass on a broad black ribbon dangled from his neck, his watch-chain included a fob, a gold signet-ring adorned the tapering little finger of his left hand. On his head he wore a curly-brimmed top-hat, polished till it shone, and a high stiff collar of spotless white, with a carelessly arranged black stock about it, completed his costume.

He stepped out with an air, courteous yet subdued. The easy, debonair grace of high breeding pervaded his least movement. So handsome was he, indeed, that Maria, wondering for a moment, caught herself thinking he was too handsome almost, too handsome to be quite a gentleman. But her doubt did not survive a second. Her flash of hesitation passed. She made her mind up finally. Nor did she decide by his clothes, of course, but by his face, his air, his manner. No doubt remained. For her — he was most assuredly — a gentleman.

She gazed at him, he gazed at her. She could think of no single word to say. The turmoil of questions in her all died away as she took in this splendid and romantic figure. Admiration and pleasure were all she felt, and her nervousness was gone. He was adorable. He was indeed the perfect gentleman.

He was the first to utter and his voice was music in her ears. Raising his top-hat and sweeping it gracefully through the air, he made a most courteous bow. Straightening up the next second, he slipped the eyeglass into his rather melancholy blue eye. He managed it with consummate ease, she noticed, without opening his mouth at the same time.

“Your humble servant,” he addressed her suavely, a respectful smile upon his lips, “and my profound apologies for the delay in opening my door to you. As you so graciously understood, I was naturally a trifle anxious” — he glanced suspiciously at Judas in her arms — “regarding the intentions of your playful pet—”

“But he’s as good as gold,” broke in Maria, finding her first words. “Look at him!” She stroked his back. Judas peeped at the ceiling.

“He is in your arms,” the other bowed, turning a graceful compliment, “yet he has a powerful paw,” and before she had time to think what he meant, his deep, musical voice continued. “Though we have met before, Miss Maria, we have not yet spoken. My firm belief that you would one day come among us was unshakable. It has never wavered for a moment. It is justified at last. May I have the profound honour of introducing myself? I am — the Gentleman.”

He bowed so beautifully that she felt she could have watched him forever. The eyeglass dropped neatly.

“My name is — Marigold—” she began, trying to make a curtsy, while gripping the now struggling Judas and holding out her free hand.

“We call you Maria,” he observed, “Miss Maria,” he added with deep respect, taking her hand and lifting it to his lips. He kissed it gravely. Carrying his hat with a sweeping gesture across his heart, he replaced it on his head, standing erect again.

Her sense of familiarity quickened as he told her his name and mentioned having met before. She had somehow known, of course, that he was the Gentleman, yet where she had seen him entirely escaped her. He had used the plural “we,” as though there was a party and he was only one of several. There were others, of course, the occupants of the other rooms. She knew it. But who and what were these others? Where and when had she already come across them? Her mind was confused, her memory had gone astray. At the same time she had a curious unpleasant feeling that something was going on behind her and that there were other people near, that somebody was watching and listening. She caught faint sounds at the far end of the long corridor as though doors were opening cautiously, but when she turned to look there was nothing visible, no movement anywhere.

The Gentleman, having carefully adjusted the angle of his hat, was speaking, and she listened attentively, wishing only that he would use shorter sentences and not be so terribly polite. His courtesy, his grace, his winning smile and lovely voice had won her heart at once; but his perfect appearance dazzled her, and his deference was so overwhelming that she found it difficult to take in the meaning of his strange words, while the struggle to remember her very best manners made her a little self-conscious.

“And you will make full allowance, I beg you,” he was saying, “for the emotion we experience upon coming face to face, after so long waiting, with one to whom we owe so much enjoyment and adventure, to whom, indeed, our very existence, of course, is due — to Miss Maria — our wonderful creator.”

The word came upon Maria with a shock. She gave a little start. She wished Judas would not struggle and wriggle so.

“Your — creator, sir!” she exclaimed in bewilderment.

Raising his head from yet another deep bow, he looked meaningly into her face. His voice was respectful almost to reverence, but his eye was steady.

“You have given us life, Miss Maria, for without you we should never have existed. You called us into being.”

Some lost hint of memory began to dawn as she heard these solemn words, so that almost — almost but not quite — she caught their full meaning. The shock repeated itself at the same time, making her muscles relax involuntarily, and Judas, aware of the weakening grip, gave one final wriggle and was free. He leaped suddenly to the floor and scampered away at his top speed without a second’s pause. Right along the corridor he flew, and as he ran, the descending sounds of closing doors passed down the scale again. The others, whoever they might be, had been listening. They, too, were afraid of her black pet.

It all happened in an instant, and the Gentleman was himself again even before the cat’s figure vanished in the distance. He had, however, stepped back, his hands had shot out in self-protection, he had been unable to control a sharp exclamation of alarm. His self-possession now returned immediately, however.

“My temporary weakness,” he began to explain and excuse himself, “is over,” he murmured apologetically. “He has knocked me down so frequently. I naturally expected he was about to attack me again. I ask your pardon and indulgence. At my age—”

“Judas — knocked you down, sir?” Maria cried, flabbergasted.

“On to the carpet merely,” came the reply quietly, a little ashamed as well. “But it was nothing, for you invariably, in your great goodness, picked me up and put me back again.”

“I picked you up! I put you back again! Off the carpet!” She could think of nothing but to repeat his own extraordinary words.

The Gentleman bowed, a trifle stiffly, perhaps, as though the incident were not particularly to his taste and best forgotten.

“At my age, I was about to say,” he explained further in a lower voice, “I am unable to stick on as tightly as I could wish. The rim, too, is narrow as well as sloping. Oh, I blame myself,” he hastened to add, “I blame myself entirely. You, Miss Maria, were always kindness and gentleness personified.”

She stared at him with open mouth, and with such utter and obvious bewilderment that he smiled in quiet sympathy. Memory, however, began vaguely to stir in her. A faint picture was rising in her mind.

“The — er — plate, you see,” he mentioned, as if casually.

And memory burst open like a bubble in her head.

“Oh! Oh!” she cried aloud. “The plate, the plate! The stones balanced round the edge! Judas playing with them and knocking them off on to the carpet! The fruit stones! My Fruit Stones! And you — you are, of course, the — the Gentleman!”

She felt her eyes popping out of her head. Her hand groped for the wall to steady her.

“We are — er — the Fruit Stoners.” His calm voice came as from a distance. “Your Fruit Stoners. And I,” he added, with a sweep of his glistening hat, and the most graceful and adorable bow she had ever known, “I am — your Gentleman!”

•  V  •

Maria realized that she had been staring so hard and so long that this beautiful person must think she had no manners at all. She now, with a great effort, tried to collect her scattered faculties. But though she remembered perfectly how she and her black cat had played once with a row of prune stones balanced round the rim of a plate, and that Judas had sometimes knocked one of them off on to the carpet, her memory utterly refused to tell her where this was. The Fruit Stoners! she reflected, thrilled to her very inside. Of course! Tinker, Tailor, and the jolly rest of them! The Gentleman, indeed, she now recognized, was exactly the figure her mind always conjured up when it was his turn to be counted. She had always seen him just like that. He was, moreover, the one she had always chosen for a husband. He was adorable.

Remembering her manners, however, now at last she interrupted her rude staring, and found the best words she could to follow his surprising announcement. For there had been rather a long pause.

“I am delighted to meet you, sir,” she murmured with a pretty smile, while making a graceful curtsy, “and I hope — the others — will like me too.” Stammering a little, she added quickly: “And I’m awfully sorry about — about that carpet business.” The Gentleman shrugged his lordly shoulders with an air of careless abandon that she found quite magnificent. His shapely hand made a gesture in the air as though to sweep aside all such unwelcome memories as not worth a moment’s thought.

“Please believe,” he replied with grave deference, “that I am entirely at your service, now and always, and that I bear no ill-feeling of any kind whatsoever. I appreciate the difficulties of life, both your own and mine — or, I should say, ours. You will, no doubt, now bring order, permanence, security, meaning and even — may I mention it? — comfort too, into existences that have so long been without them.”

He swept his hat about a little more, then drew himself up straight as a ramrod, slipping the eyeglass back into his eye.

“Your gracious advent,” he concluded with serious emphasis, “has been eagerly awaited, longed for, I may even add prayed for, by us all.”

He stood there like a courtier ready for the next duty his sovereign would request, and the silence between them might have been indefinitely prolonged, but for something that then happened. Maria’s heart, indeed, was beating so fast that no reply of any sort occurred to her. Such admiration, praise and deference rather overwhelmed her. Nor, indeed, had she understood a quarter of his long speech. What happened then to save her, while at the same time to set her in a sudden panic, was a sound. From far away it came and faintly, but unmistakable.

Tick tock! Tick tock! echoed somewhere through the building.

And as she heard it, a feeling of urgent haste, of alarm, with terror not far behind, entered her very blood. The sense of hurry caught her, the awful knowledge that time was passing, that she had only five minutes in which to accomplish some important purpose for which she came, and that her time must now be nearly up.

Like a cold wind this now rushed over her, the delightful feeling of endless leisure vanished.

She turned eagerly, more than a little frightened, to the Gentleman at her side.

“Oh, I quite forgot, it’s awful of me, I quite forgot,” her words rushed out in a confused stream. “That sound’s only just reminded me. I came here to look for something, you see. Only I can’t remember what it is. But it’s something I must find. And I’ve only got five minutes. Oh, please, sir, Mr. Gentleman, can you help me? You will, won’t you?”

She drew breath, aware at the same time that the sound she feared now seemed fainter a little, as though it were dying away.

“Miss Maria, we will all help you,” exclaimed the Gentleman magnificently, “for, as you must be aware, there is no hurry,” and he wore an air as though a thousand retainers, ready to do or die, must answer his beck and call. “The whole Ancient Order of Fruit Stoners, all eight of us, are at your service. We ask, indeed, nothing better than to do your slightest bidding.” He bowed as a great statesman, a great aristocrat, a noble, might have bowed. “Pray, command me, Miss Maria,” he added, with his nose still lowered towards the floor.

Looking down upon his beautifully oiled and brushed hair, Maria wondered what on earth she could “command.” While realizing in a vague fashion that she had created these Fruit Stoners, had brought them into being, as it were, she yet could think of nothing definite and practical to ask. Confusion grew in her, for there was such a vast quantity of things she wanted to ask and know, that to choose between them was too difficult.

“I was brought here by the Man who Winds the Clocks, you see,” she said at length. “I came to look for something — something terribly, oh, terribly important. And he said he could allow me five minutes only. And, besides, I’ve forgotten what the thing is I’ve got to find — simply got to, you see.” Although this was merely repetition, the Gentleman listened with an air of absorbed attention. Waiting with deep interest, as though to make sure she had quite finished, he then gazed into her face so gently that she knew at once he was a marvellous diplomat as well as a perfect gentleman.

“The Man who Winds the Clocks,” he repeated suavely, yet indulgently a little too, “led you here?” It was as though he mentioned a figure in some fairy-tale, a personage to be summoned and dismissed at will, a trifler even, yet an amusing one.

“Yes,” she told him, “the man in the black tailcoat and striped trousers, with one leg longer than the other. He looks like a bird. You know the one I mean?”

“Ah,” came the non-committal comment, “ah, yes.”

“And he’s completely vanished now. He said he couldn’t stay. He seemed in an awful rush. You know who I mean?” she repeated. “That was his sound, of course, just now.”

The Gentleman smiled faintly. “We have seen him, yes,” he observed politely, “from time to time, that is. He never stays, of course.” He smiled again, as though the idea of the Clock Man amused him rather. “He cannot,” he added positively. “He’s always catching something up — himself, so he’s always late, as he calls it. Always trying to strike, or something fanciful like that.” He smiled benignly at her, fiddling carelessly with his eyeglass ribbon. “Here, of course,” he reminded her, “there is no such thing as hurry. Endless leisure is all we know. There is, indeed, no end, of course, to anything.” He almost laughed outright. The Man who Wound the Clocks seemed merely a figure of fun to him.

“But he gave me my five minutes,” Maria reminded him a trifle impatiently, “and I’m sure he’s after me — trying to catch me. The time must be nearly up now, and I haven’t even begun my search yet.”

Even as she said it, however, she was aware that the feeling of being hurried had grown less: it seemed weakening more and more in some strange way. The Tick tock! had gone. The delicious sense of endless leisure was stealing back upon her.

“How long do you think five minutes really is?” she asked suddenly. “Can it be longer or shorter, perhaps?”

“Five minutes?” the Gentleman repeated blankly. The smile left his face and was replaced by a gentle gaze of complete bewilderment. “Five minutes, five minutes,” he said again, to himself rather than to her. “Exactly, yes, of course. Er — ah — it is a curious question, is it not?” His puzzled expression deepened, as though he made an effort to grasp something entirely beyond him. His face became strangely darker, with queer wrinkles. “Five minutes, yes,” he said once again, looking for a moment, she thought, exactly like a prune stone, lined and crinkly, “I — I fear I am no philosopher, Miss Maria. Our Apothecary, perhaps, would tell you better than I can. I propose that we go and find him, for you have not come across him yet.”

“The Apothecary!” Maria cried. “Oh, yes, please let’s!” She had always — somewhere — known a ridiculous apothecary, who could answer any question.

She was all agog again with excitement, too, to meet the rest of the Fruit Stoners; the Tinker, the Tailor, the Soldier, the Sailor, every one of them. Her feeling of alarm and hurry had entirely disappeared. Five minutes, whatever they meant, could evidently stretch like elastic, and she needn’t worry about it. It was only the dreadful sound of Tick tock! that brought the sense of nervous haste and hurry, and, thank heaven, she could not hear it now. But, as she turned to her companion, expecting him to lead the way, she noticed quite a new expression on his face. The wrinkles had all smoothed away, a smile was there, but it was a different smile, a smile of peace. A look of strange beauty touched the eyes and mouth. His whole being for a second conveyed something solemn, a hint of awe, almost an idea of worship. He seemed still reflecting deeply.

He bent towards her, offering his arm with courtly dignity.

“You look so happy but so serious,” she said. “Is it my fault, please?”

“It concerns — this five minutes you speak of,” he murmured in a grave, hushed whisper, stumbling slightly in his speech, “it must concern, I suspect” — the voice sank to a solemn murmur — “Jack Robinson.” He straightened up again, taking her hand in his arm. “Come, let us go,” he said in his ordinary voice, as though the moment was too radiant to talk of solemn things, “and find the Apothecary and the others.”

Jack Robinson! The name went through her like a stroke of lightning. She shivered. How did she know that name? Where had she heard it? What did it mean to her? It thrilled her fearfully. Why did the Gentleman utter it in that voice of solemn awe, as though it were sacred almost? Why was his manner mysterious and hushed? Jack Robinson, Jack Robinson! It had a friendly sound, a meaning of tremendous power — yes, a powerful, tremendous name and meaning lay behind the syllables. And yet the syllables were familiar somehow. It was connected, she felt instinctively too, with the unpleasant Man who Wound the Clocks, the man who had given her only five minutes for her important, difficult search. In her heart of hearts, she was positive, Jack Robinson was more powerful than the other. Jack Robinson was friendly, and would somehow help her. Oh, what a strange, strange world this was, but how deliciously enchanting!

She looked up into the Gentleman’s face, taking his step, for he had already begun to move.

“Jack Robinson,” she exclaimed, wondering why she whispered it — but could find no further words.

The Gentleman said nothing either. She felt a slight shiver run along his arm. He lifted his hat slightly, bowed almost imperceptibly, screwed in his eyeglass more firmly, and quickened his pace along the empty corridor. And Maria, stepping along beside him arm-in-arm, felt inside like a boiler about to burst, for the excited delight and wonder in her was so tremendous they might have drawn a luggage train, or driven a great liner across the Atlantic.

She had no words, at any rate, to add to what had just been said. She just left the conversation where it was. This was her instinct and she obeyed it.

“Oh, Mr. Gentleman,” she cried instead, “what a marvellous place I’ve come to! What a wonderful world I’m in!”

He bent his head towards her. “It is his world,” he murmured, “but you made it. You made us too.” And with his free hand he pointed down the corridor, at the far end of which, she now saw, yet somehow without surprise, a group of figures. A confused sound of voices rose from them, like the buzzing of bumble bees in clover, then died away into silence as they approached.

Yet long before she reached the group that stood huddled about the top of the great stairs, she had recognized them. Their faces, peering across one another’s shoulders, stared at her expectantly, like a band of penguins she had seen somewhere waiting to be fed. For their heads twitched jerkily, rising and falling, as though they tried to see behind her.

They were standing in a ring. They were nervous obviously, and she was quick to guess the reason.

“It’s all right,” she called out. “My cat isn’t with me. And if he was he wouldn’t hurt you.” There was an audible sigh of collective relief by way of answer, as Maria picked out the figures she had seen in her mind so often. They shifted to and fro like a kaleidoscope, but there was no mistaking them, and they certainly all seemed entirely friendly, judging by their smiles. It was marvellous how they kept in that circular formation.

“One at a time, if you please,” announced the Gentleman in a voice of authority, as though he were their leader. “This is Miss Maria who has at last come down among us, as we always believed she would. Our hopes are fulfilled, our faith is justified. If we have much to ask of her, she, too, has many things to tell us, perhaps, indeed, to ask as well. And — we may hope — to do for us. With all our hearts, and in the name of us all, we bid her welcome, and if some of the questions she puts to us may seem — may seem — er — if we find difficulty, that is, in — er—”

Whether he realized that no one, Maria least of all, was listening to his long-winded speech, seemed uncertain; but, at any rate he stepped back now and leaned against the wall, mopping his face with a coloured silk handkerchief, while he searched, perhaps, for the lost fragments of his broken sentence. Maria, for her part, was so intent upon the group before her that she was hardly aware of his withdrawal. These were her Fruit Stoners! It was the Sailor, perhaps, she thought of chiefly. One of them, who had been examining her steadily through a long telescope that he rested on the shoulder in front of him, now shut it down with a click, and skipped out towards her. He was dressed in blue. And it was, of course, the Sailor.

Her heart gave a leap of pleasure as she saw him. He was light as a feather. Gold rings swung from his ears. He hitched his loose trousers, did a rapid hornpipe step with crossed arms, sang a bar of something about a “lass upon the quay,” then doffed his little blue cap, clapped the long telescope back to his eye though she was only two feet away, and before she could do anything, cried out with a merry laugh: “How d’ye do, Miss? Why, you’re lookin’ splendid, so ’elp me gawd! Better than I ever saw you, or I’m a land-lubber, which of course I ain’t!”

“So are you, Sailor!” she cried back, pleased and flattered that he recognized her, and finding him too lovely for words. “Looking splendid, I mean. You’re just exactly what I thought you’d be!” She wanted to dance herself. Her heart was thumping.

“Just what I feel on lookin’ at you, Miss,” he laughed gaily, catching the whistle that swung on a lanyard round his neck. “I’d like to pipe all ’ands on deck to see you.” And he actually blew a short, shrill blast, as he danced round her. “I’m always at home to you, Miss, if you’re ever this way, and I’ve been a weary long time waitin’ for a sight of you, shiver my timbers, if you’ll forgive my saying so, though I knew — oh, I was positive sure of that — I knew you’d turn up one day.” He flung his legs and arms about in his happy dance, and he seemed the very spirit of careless fun and jollity.

His hand stretched out to her and she caught it; she began dancing with him. He whirled her about, swinging the telescope above his head.

“Oh, but I’d love to come,” she cried rather breathlessly. “It’s just exactly what I’ve always wanted.”

“A sailor’s life for me,” he went on singing, “but a bloke does get tired o’ waitin’, all the same, while the seas go rollin’ by—”

“I can come any time,” she repeated, afraid he might forget that he had asked her. She paused to get her breath. “When will you be in, please? And where do you live?”

He stopped dancing and singing, and gazed at her as though she were some strange craft at sea. The merry laughter left his face.

“Well, Miss,” he replied, hitching his trousers nervously, “that, I take it, depends on you,” and a curious note of respect and deference came into the voice.

“Depends on me?”

“Well — ” he hesitated, his manner a little anxious, almost grave — “of course there ain’t no ’urry, not where I’m concerned,” he mentioned. His clear blue eyes looked at her with a question in them, yet a question he did not dare, it seemed, to put into words.

“Oh, my five minutes, of course,” she exclaimed, her heart sinking a little. “Yes, I’ve only got five minutes. I forgot. That awful, horrid Clock Man!”

He gazed at her with the same expression of puzzled blankness the Gentleman had shown.

“Five minutes, Miss, five minutes?”

“That’s all he gave me,” she explained.

A sign of laughter flashed back into his face, almost contemptuous laughter.

“’Im!” was all he said.

“Yes, ’im.” Maria copied him before she could correct herself.

The Sailor now laughed outright, and his laughter seemed somehow to laugh the Clock Man out of existence, for the moment, anyhow.

“It’s only flashin’ in and flashin’ out again, gone as soon as come,” he chuckled. “He don’t count, not ’ere with us—”

“So I can come and see you any time, can I?” she asked quickly, greatly relieved, if hardly knowing exactly why.

“Depends on you, Miss,” he repeated. “It’s any time and place you say, of course. Choose the year and I’ll be there. I’m a bit all over the place with this year and next year and sometimes never. Sort of rovin’ life with a vengeance. But no complaints, Miss, no complaints from me, understand. Long voyages all the time and just off on another — next year’s, I think, if it ain’t last. But ’oo cares, so long as we’re all ’appy!”

“Yes, ’oo cares?” she cried, clapping her hands in her excitement.

He began to dance again, his lanyard swung, his gold earrings tossed about. And the meaning in his strange words dawned in Maria’s mind as she watched and listened.

“Only say the word, Miss,” he went on, more gaily now, “and the moment I’m back with me pockets full o’ money I’ll be lookin’ for ye on the quay.”

“Oh, this year, please,” Maria cried quickly, “this year, of course — now! I’ve only got five minutes! Let’s make it a party — with the Soldier and—”

The Sailor seemed growing oddly smaller, as though distance had crept in somehow.

“I always said you’d be turnin’ up one of these fine days” — his voice reached her more faintly now — “and ’elp to put us straight. I always believed in you. I knew you didn’t mean no ’arm, making us the way you did, and I shall always love you, Miss.”

She saw him clap the telescope to his eye, but it was a long way off. He was going, oh, he was going, she realized. He was already among the group. He was in the ring again. He was disappearing. And with him was going, too, all the romance and mystery of the sea, of wind whistling in the rigging, of hidden treasure, of pirates, of coral islands basking far away in calm, blue oceans, and of long voyages she had always yearned to make.

“This year, this year, Sailor — Now!” she cried out, and took a quick running step after him.

Tick tock! Tick tock! sounded at that same instant in her ears. She pretended, she tried hard, not to hear it.

The Sailor was going; he was gone. The ring of figures was whirling round and round. The Tick tock!, on the other hand, was coming nearer; it was growing louder. Oh, what was she to do? What could she do? The feeling of rush and hurry, of being late, of wasting time, the panic of being caught before she was ready, before her search had even begun — all this came pouring over her. Her five minutes must have been up ages ago. And she had done nothing, nothing. That dreadful sound! It haunted her. It always came just when she was enjoying herself.

Tick tock! It sounded all about her, coming from every direction at once, from behind her, in front of her, and above her. It filled the air. It beat remorselessly in her ears. She began to feel she was losing her head, when suddenly it once again lost volume, it grew much fainter, it was dying away, it was gone. Had it only been a warning again after all, perhaps, a warning that she was here with an important purpose, a warning that time was passing? This thought flashed through her at high speed. She tried to remember the powerful name. It all left her gasping.

“He’s come and gone, Miss,” a calm voice said quite close to her. “He never can stay, anyhow. It’s only one of his little tricks really. Just forget it.” She turned to see who spoke such comforting words, and even as she did so it struck her that all this time she had quite forgotten there was a whirling, circular group at all. She had forgotten their existence, as if they simply were not there. Queer, she reflected. “When I don’t think of them perhaps they just go out!” If that was so, she must never forget them again, or it might hurt their feelings terribly. She threw a quick glance at the Gentleman, and it relieved her to see that he, at any rate, was still there, leaning against the wall, mopping his face. He caught her eye and instantly raised his hat an inch or two, while his skin, which had become very dark and crinkly, a little shrunken even, at once regained something of its former colour and smoothness. They exchanged a rapid smile. Oh, he was a darling!

All this happened while she was in the act of turning round to see who it was had spoken. It was, she saw, the Soldier, in a bright red tunic, his blue trousers smartly creased, standing just in front of her at attention, and in the act of saluting.

“He’s gone, Miss, gone into next year right enough,” he went on in a deep, steady, husky voice, “so I hope now we’ll all get the same chance. I speak for the army. Thanks for coming.”

He saluted once more, then took a pace sharply to the rear, and clicked his heels as if awaiting orders.

Whether he referred to the Clock Man or to the Sailor, as having gone into next year, Maria did not know; nor did she seem to care much, her heart was fluttering too fast to think. She gazed at the figure steadily enough, however. His tight trousers wore a stripe of gold down the sides, his belt was white, his buttons sparkled, the braid on his peaked cap shone and glittered. He was quite gorgeous. He stood stiffly, as though rods of iron ran down his back and legs. He stared straight before him, looking neither right nor left. His face, darkly crinkled like the others, had less expression than a block of wood, but his jaw was aggressive, his shoulders of iron stood four-square. He was a fighter, a V.C., of course.

This was the man who had just saved her from the Clock Man, she was convinced; it was also the Soldier exactly as she had always imagined him. He had comforted her, at any rate.

“Thank you for rescuing me so — magnificently,” she heard herself saying in a voice that shook a trifle, yet was low and quiet. “I feel very grateful to you.” Her heart was fluttering.

“Oh, that’s all right, Miss,” came the gruff answer, as though a relief force long expected had turned up as a mere matter of duty. “I’m always at ’and when needed.”

“You’re even better than I expected,” Maria said, with a thrill in her voice, “and I’m glad you’re not a Colonel. I like a private best. I always thought of you as a brave fighter with a V.C.”

“I took the shilling. God bless the King,” he said, moving no muscle of his face. “They gave me a V.C. I did nothing in particular.”

Maria found it rather difficult to carry on a conversation with a man so splendid but so stiff. He might have been made of marble. She racked her brains. An army phrase occurred to her.

“Oh, please stand easy,” she produced with a nice smile, and was so relieved to see him suddenly relax all over, moving his arms and legs as if he had no joints at all, that she went up close to him and looked up into his face without hesitation.

“Soldier,” she said as sweetly as she could, “will you do something for me?”

“Anything, Miss Maria,” he replied, using her name for the first time and pronouncing it, she thought, delightfully.

“I’ve come here — been brought here, that is — to look for something.”

“Look for something,” he repeated.

“And I’ve forgotten what it is—”

“Forgotten what it is,” he repeated as before.

“Yes, isn’t it awful?”

“Awful!”

“And I thought perhaps you might help me to remember — if we tried — er — together.”

An expression of deep thought came on his face. He did not reply for a moment.

“I’ll do my best, Miss Maria,” he said presently. “What is it you’ve forgotten?” he asked simply.

“But that’s just what I can’t remember. If I knew, it wouldn’t be forgotten.”

She spoke with a touch of impatience, but he did not seem to notice it. “No, of course it wouldn’t, would it?” was all he said.

“It’s frightfully important,” she went on; “most terribly important. I know that. I’ve got to search and search everywhere for it, oh, everywhere. If I don’t find it — I daren’t think what would happen.”

“We’ll all help,” said the Soldier, moved evidently by her distress. “Every one of us. We’ll search with you. Oh, we’ll — you’ll find it right enough. Only don’t forget us whatever you do.”

“I’ll never forget any of you for a single minute,” she assured him. “I promise. But, remember, I’ve only got five minutes.”

“Only got five minutes,” he repeated, in the odd way he just repeated all she said, as though he never thought for himself.

Yet that was right and natural, she reflected, for a soldier’s job was not to think, but to obey orders and be a brave fighter. That was why he had asked her what she had forgotten when he had heard her tell him she had forgotten. He could help her search, no doubt, but only in the sense of doing what he was told to do.

“I can depend on him,” she told herself. “Whatever happens, he would never let me down. He would protect me too.” His bravery must be something awful. There was no question about his steadiness, nor about his splendour, and her heart, still fluttering with admiration, warmed to the stalwart fellow.

Oh, she was going to have a grand time, she was going to enjoy herself tremendously. It was a very wonderful place she had come to. That haunting, following sound now alarmed her less; it had gone, anyhow, its dreadful warning was no longer audible. What puzzled her more was the way the Fruit Stoners all smiled when she said she had only five minutes. The Clock Man seemed almost a figure of fun to them. The Soldier had even said something about a “trick.” He was smiling now, as she looked at him. A touch of laughter hovered about the corners of his stern lips. “Five minutes, five minutes,” he kept repeating, though more to himself than to her, “only got five minutes.” The laughter ran visibly beneath his skin. And it was plain that his habit of rigorous discipline alone prevented his exploding into a loud guffaw.

Would all the others, too, show this same happy indifference towards a matter that to her seemed so grave and serious?

The others! There, she was forgetting them again. There were several more to see; she wanted to meet them all, all — the Tailor and Tinker and Ploughboy, oh, every one of them. There was, above all, she remembered, a Thief, and — oh, more important still — the Apothecary. The Gentleman had referred to him particularly. The entire Company of Fruit Stoners, that is, passed through her mind at once, and she did not fasten her thought upon any one of them especially.

The Soldier, still standing at ease, had not moved. She had better get him out of the way first, it occurred to her, though she did not want him really to go. Still, he would always be within reach, she remembered.

“Dismiss!” The word sprang to her lips, and she saw him instantly give the salute, turn on his heels with a click, and step back towards the top of the stairs. It was queer, she thought, how instantly he appeared to dwindle, pass into a kind of distance, melt and merge into the rather shadowy background where the top of the great staircase met the angle of the walls. He retired to join the whirling ring, but as her eye followed him, the group was not so clearly visible as it had been. A confused and rather dim medley of figures and faces was all she could make out at first, with no one in particular she could pick out definitely.

“Oh, please, my other Fruit Stoners,” she called aloud, “please come and talk to me. I want to meet you all — every one of you.”

•  VI  •

What then immediately happened in response to her invitation was certainly, she thought, remarkable; it took her, at any rate, unawares. For she had expected that the other Fruit Stoners would answer her summons gradually, coming up to her one by one, and rather shyly. There were only five or six of them to come, for the Soldier and Sailor had gone, and the Gentleman was still mopping his face against the wall behind her.

Instead of advancing singly, however, and with hesitation, the whole group was upon her in a whirling flash. She was surrounded by them, they were all about her, and they seemed like two dozen instead of five or six. They seemed to fly up to her as if blown by a wind. Their hands were outstretched, their crinkly faces swirled like eddying water, their figures merged indistinguishably as they whirled past and round her. It was quite impossible in this jumble to pick out one definite outline from another. And at first this puzzled her completely, until the explanation a moment later flashed upon her. She saw then that they appeared so numerous because they moved so rapidly, and they were indistinct because this movement was circular. They were running round her in a circle. She stood in the centre of the circle. But the reason she saw them merged together, as it were, was because she had thought of them as a general group rather than as separate individuals. Movement round the rim of a plate, she remembered, was, of course, the one that came most easily to them.

She must choose the one she wished to meet and call him out, and it was the Tailor, for some reason, who earned this privilege. She knew of no special reason for picking him out, nor was there anything particular she had to say to him. It was merely that his name popped into her head.

“Oh, Tailor,” she cried out, “come, please, and talk to me. I want to ask you something,” for in the act of speaking his name it occurred to her that his very sharp eyes would help her in the great search. She would tell him about it at once. “Come, Tailor,” she added, “there’s no plate spinning really. I’ve a very important thing for you to do, and I need your sharp eyes. Come, my Tailor, come, please!”

The whirling movement ceased, the main group whirled back into the shadows by the stairs, and a single figure was at once in front of her; yet the instant she set eyes on him clearly she found him so delightful, and he made her laugh so, that the important questions she had meant to ask passed from her mind completely, and the urgent matter of her search was all forgotten. He had never been in any way a special favourite of hers, but now, as he stood out sharply against the less visible group behind him, he seemed uncommonly attractive, and he was, moreover, exactly as she had always imagined him.

A little fellow with bright eyes in a sallow face, he darted out in his shirtsleeves, carrying round his neck a long tape-measure, and in one hand a very large pair of scissors. He was extremely light on his toes, shooting here, there and everywhere with what she called a hoppity-skip sort of movement, and the first words he spoke were similar in kind to what the others had also said.

“I’m quite ready, Miss,” he exclaimed in a piping voice, “quite ready for you. It’s been a long time waiting, but I knew you’d be coming to see me as soon as you could. I felt sure of that. Will you step this way, if you please, Miss?”

He seemed pleased as Punch, yet his manner was most attentive and respectful, though he did not move aside to lead the way, because, she supposed, there was nowhere particular to step to. He skipped, instead, from foot to foot, examined her closely and critically all over, touched her, pinched her, stooped to measure her length from neck to feet, and then finally, as he passed the tape about her waist, exclaimed with great decision, “Blue serge for winter, merino for summer, I should advise, Miss, only the skirts are worn now a trifle longer,” and then his voice became suddenly fainter, and he fell to mumbling a long string of words to himself as though he had learned them by heart and did not really know their meaning, all of them, however, names of stuffs for dresses she would have liked to wear. “Organdie, georgette, chiffon, taffeta, charmeuse, crêpe de Chine…” she caught, and a host of other enchanting words, and then, his voice growing quite loud and ordinary again, “silk, satin, calico, rags.,” and as he called these last four, he began dancing about again on his toes, snapping his big shears vigorously, even dangerously, she thought, to mark the time.

“Ready for the fitting, Miss, whenever you are. Any time suits me,” and then he added suddenly with a wry face, “Alas!”

The laughter left her as she looked down into his rather puzzled and crinkled face. He was kneeling on one knee now, taking another measure over again.

“Oh, then are you too bothered by something?” she asked.

Holding the tape between finger and thumb as he marked off the inches carefully, he turned up his darting eyes to her.

“Not to say bother, Miss,” he replied, forcing a quick, polite, even fervent smile. “I wouldn’t call it that, seeing as how it’s yourself that calls the tune. But I’m moved about a good deal, what with the Big House, Little House, Pig Stye and all the rest. I’d get a better fit, maybe, if I was fixed sort of more permanent. And by myself. There are eight of us, you know, and only four places to live in. Myself, I don’t like doubling up much.”

He opened and shut his big scissors thoughtfully, and a rather weary expression in his eyes stirred a feeling of pity in her as she saw it. She had never thought of it before, but eight men with only four places to live in was not right, and doubling up, as he called it, must be most uncomfortable. “Oh dear!” she thought to herself, “to create things means an awful lot of care!”

“It’s troublesome with my needles, you see, Miss, for one thing. I keep leaving them about. A lot of them are in the Barn still, only I’m not sure if it was some year or last year I left them there. You moved me off so quickly. I’m afraid they’re lost — and you put me in with the Thief as often as not—”

“Lost!” she interrupted sharply, for the word woke something in her with a sting. “But I’ve lost something too. I’m here to look for a lost thing — a forgotten thing — only it isn’t needles. It’s far more important than needles.”

He eyed her doubtfully. “What could be more important, Miss?” he asked. “How am I to pin you up without my needles?”

She could think of no really good answer to that, so she asked a question instead. “Who are you doubling up with at the moment — er — this year, I mean?” she inquired sympathetically.

“Well, I’ve got the Tinker just now, Miss, as you know, but he isn’t much of a bother really, because he’s out on the road so much!” He looked over his shoulder quickly towards the group. “But he’s here now, I see,” he added. “He knew you had come, of course. One more fitting, Miss, will do the trick — only one—”

The voice grew fainter, dying away, fading, less convincing. An odd sound interrupted the chattering Tailor, who was now gone before she had time to say good-bye, and the new figure that stepped forward she recognized instantly as the Tinker, her beloved Tinker, for he was not only the first to be mentioned in the old saying, but in imagination she had always visualized him with peculiar clearness. A whiff of the open road came with him, the tang of fragrant wood smoke, and the odd sound that had preceded him was the rattling of pots and pans and a kettle with the lid tied on by string, that swung jangling from his belt. Behind him was a travelling grindstone on wheels, and with his left thumb he was feeling the edge of a long-bladed knife in his other hand. His bearded, crinkly face, tanned and weathered by the open life, was just as she knew it would be, his ragged, tattered clothing, the frayed rim of trousers over the old boots too. It was on the knife, however, her eyes seemed to fasten with peculiar interest.

“My faithful Tinker,” she exclaimed affectionately, “here you are at last.”

“Here, there and everywhere,” he said sadly, “come today and gone tomorrow, and the way you’re always shifting me — by your leave, Miss — is something awful.” A grin showed on his crinkled skin, but it was a kindly grin. “Still, there’s a road past every door,” he added, “and leastways, there’s a good edge on this at last,” as he felt the blade lovingly again. He looked up at her with a kind of respectful wonder. Also he looked significantly at the knife in his hand.

“It does look terribly sharp,” mentioned Maria tactfully. “It took you some time, I suppose?”

He gave a deep chuckle in his throat. “Begun in the Big House, Miss, when you put me in silk, continued in the Little House with a strip of calico to cover my old bones, and just finished now on my way from the Pig Stye in rags to the Barn in satin, I suppose.” There was a grievance in his voice and manner, but not one he took too seriously.

“I’m so sorry,” Maria murmured, “I — I”

“It’s the knife,” he interrupted her rapidly but gravely, “the one you’ve so often spoken about,” and as he said this a familiar phrase flashed across her mind: “Before you can say knife!”

“Will you keep it for me,” she said quickly, for he was already holding it out to her, “till I need it,” she added, lowering her voice.

“It will be quite safe with me, yes,” he whispered, putting it away behind him somewhere in the wheeled stand, “but you mustn’t forget it — or forget me either—”

“Forget it — forget!” She seized once again on the word.

He gave her a searching look. “That’s your trouble, Miss, especially with us, isn’t it? Forgetting, always forgetting. And they tell me there’s something you’ve come here to look for—”

“I should think there is, indeed, Tinker,” she exclaimed under her breath, “something most frightfully important—”

“I haven’t noticed anything pertickler on the road this last year or two, Miss,” he put in casually, “but I’ll keep my eyes open now. Any idea what it would look like,” he asked, “in case I see it?”

“Its very name has gone out of my head,” she explained eagerly. “That’s the dreadful part of it. I only know that the Man who Winds the Clocks put me here to find it and allowed me five minutes only—”

“That bloke!” the Tinker remarked with a sniff of contempt.

He fell to ruminating, but Maria could see that the laughter in him was not far away. They were all alike where the Clock Man and her five minutes were concerned; neither one nor the other meant anything much, it was clear, to them.

“You know whom I mean, of course — don’t you, Tinker?” she asked.

After a further short rumination, he glanced up, his brown eyes twinkling.

“Oh, we’ve heard tell of him,” he admitted, “and some of us say they’ve seen him. Now and again, they say, he rushes through with a swish like a bird after an insect, but so fast you can’t see him proper.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

He shook his tangled head. “On the road — in the open air — there ain’t no nonsense of that kind, Miss. Among ’edges and ’aystacks we don’t ’old with that. It’s just a bit of nonsense likely, sort of childhood nonsense, to my way of thinking.” Then, after a little pause, he added with rather a melancholy smile, “Childhood nonsense is just what we know nothing about, because we ain’t never been young. Nor even been married — never seen a wife since you first made us.” He heaved a sigh. “All men, you see, Miss, and not quite young ’uns at that.”

He gazed up at her with an expression that was not so much critical as searching. For a second she thought he was going to cry. “What does it look like, Miss, really — a wife, I mean, and — and a little ’un?”

Maria, half choking long before this with mingled shame and pity, felt as if the fountain of speech had dried up in her forever. His gaze, however, was irresistible. She must say something.

“A wife! Oh — er — like — something like — me, I think,” she stammered in a low voice.

“Oooo!” issued from the tangled lips. “As lovely as you, Miss! No wonder you couldn’t make one when you made us — not eight of ’em anyhow.” He ruminated again for a minute or so. “Never too late to mend, though, perhaps — that’s my cry on the road as I go along between the cattle and the corn, sleeping in haystacks and — Ah, that reminds me,” he interrupted himself, “the Ploughboy’s looking for you, Miss. I passed him as I came along. Standing in the middle of a stubble field, he was, and looking like a scarecrow with the birds nesting in his crooked hat — and always nibbling at the same old turnip—”

“The Ploughboy!” cried Maria. “Oh, I had nearly forgotten him! Where is he? Come, Ploughboy, come and talk to me, please!”

The rattling of tin cans, the drone of a grinding knife, already sounded in the distance, and the Tinker had slipped away so swiftly that she did not even see him go. But nobody took his place at first. Far away she just caught the cry, “Any old knives to mend, to mend, any old knives to mend,” and as she heard it, a familiar phrase flashed into her. It sprang to her lips.

“Before you can say knife!” she called out, and almost instantly the place beside her was occupied, while with it came the smell of cows and hay and the sweetness of moist turned earth.

“I found all the gates left open, so I guessed you was about,” said a slow, country voice. “There was a sky, too, last night I’ve never seen afore. Something ‘stonishing! The birds was making a rare noise when I got up at dawn. I’m right glad to see you.”

“So am I,” replied Maria honestly, staring at the big, clumsy lad, with corduroy trousers tied below the knee. “Are you — all right — the way I made you?” she asked. “Are you tired of ploughing, I mean, and where do you live?” The blunt questions were all she could think of to say.

He scratched his untidy head, and the straw he was chewing jerked round to the other corner of his mouth.

“Never known anything else,” he brought out slowly, gazing at her with a sort of stupefied admiration. “The Pig Stye and the Barn suit me well enough. Oh, I’m all right, thanks.”

It was a relief to find one of them without a grievance. There was a gleam in his eyes that lightened the otherwise stolid face, and he had, she thought, a delicious smell about him.

“I think you’re rather splendid,” she exclaimed, “just like a grand picnic, or something.”

He might have looked cleaner, perhaps, but she omitted that. Brushed up and scrubbed, and with all that stuff scraped off his great boots, she could have gone anywhere with him. Yet he was precisely as she had always pictured him, and probably, after all, he was best unaltered. She felt a tremendous friendliness in him somehow. “The cows and pigs just love you, don’t they, Ploughboy? And the enormous cart-horses you drive and feed? The dobbins and huge, kindly creatures?”

The way he looked at her made her feel unimportant somehow, so that his obvious admiration rather puzzled her. The things she said to him were not at all what she had expected and meant to say, but just sentences that rose into her head from nowhere. It seemed to her he would understand and not feel hurt, and, while not exciting, of course, in any way, he was, she felt, a tremendously steady and reliable friend. He would no more fail her than he would fail one of his cows or horses. The desire to give him a good hug occurred to her.

“I’d like to shake your horny hand,” came abruptly from her lips.

She held out her own, and as he took it hesitatingly, she saw to her amazement a tear balanced in his eye. He only held her small fingers a second; instead of squeezing them so hard that it hurt, causing her pain she had been determined not to let him see, he dropped them at once.

“Oh, God, you’re better even than I’ve always expected,” he said very slowly, finding the words with difficulty, his deep voice not quite under control. “An awful lot better.” The tear overbalanced and trickled down his red cheek, while another that gathered was ready to follow it. “Never seen a heifer that could touch you, Miss.”

“What’s making you cry, Ploughboy?” she asked in a whisper.

He blushed crimson, a rather becoming crimson. “Pleasure,” he mumbled, gazing into her face with a kind of worship. And it seemed the last word he was able to utter. To everything else she said he replied only with a nod, a shake of the head, a gesture of his great awkward body, though she found a sort of grace in all his movements. The sight of her so close and real seemed to have stopped his power of further speech.

“You know, I’ve got to hurry up and look for something,” she told him. “I can’t remember what it is, but you will help me, won’t you? It may be hiding in your great fields and haystacks.”

He nodded, so that the second tear fell after the first, and though he took no notice of them, even to brush them away, a smile crept over his face.

“You’re not in a hurry,” she went on, “you’re never in a hurry, I know; but I’ve only got my five minutes, and that horrid Man who Winds the Clocks is always after me—”

His smile broadened into a grin that showed two rows of nice white teeth.

“—and I mustn’t dawdle, you see, or I shall — I shall be late — late forever perhaps,” she finished.

Though his skin puckered up to show that he was puzzled, and the grin seemed ready to break over into audible laughter, no sound left his lips. He merely nodded his great head affirmatively, thrusting both hands into his belt.

“So I think we’d better begin at once,” she added with decision. “And do you mind — if — if — I bring my cat?” For it had suddenly come to her that she had completely forgotten Judas all this time, and what had now reminded her was the feeling of something rubbing against her feet and ankles.

What happened then took her by surprise, though she had begun to think that nothing could surprise her any more in this strange world. The arrival of Judas did not frighten him; the Ploughboy held his ground; but there were two other figures besides that also held their ground; more than held their ground, indeed, for while the rest of the group had disappeared like smoke, these two were now advancing towards her. And the first, of course, was the Gentleman, bowing and sweeping his hat about, while screwing his monocle tightly into the eye he directed cautiously at the black cat below. That he was nervous about the animal was obvious, but he was determined not to show his fear. He wore a protective air, as of a policeman guiding a perambulator while he holds the traffic up.

“Your Thief,” he remarked, by way of cautious introduction evidently, buttoning up his coat. “He craves an interview.”

“I’ve nothing to lose,” remarked the Ploughboy, finding his voice again but without much body in it.

He took a whetstone from his belt at the same time and held it tightly in his muscular hand. He grew fainter.

Maria turned to examine the approaching figure. “My Thief!” ran across her mind. “Well, I suppose he is, if I made him!”

A faint shiver touched her. Her mental picture of the Thief had always made her shrink a little. The figure she now saw did more than that. She was conscious of a definite sort of shock that ran through her whole being from head to foot, for the figure attracted her tremendously while at the same time repelled her, as though he frightened her a little.

He was of nameless age, neither old nor young, with a dark, clean-shaven face, down at heel rather, and wearing a green frock-coat that had once been black, old grey trousers turned up over a pair of faded blue sand-shoes, and a dirty collar without a tie. The short coat-sleeves made his very thin, delicate wrists noticeable, setting off at the same time the slender hands which, though distinctly dirty, gave the odd impression of being white. They were beautiful hands. The long, sensitive fingers struck Maria particularly.

“If you don’t like me, Miss,” he began in a smooth, pleasant voice that was even refined, “it’s not my fault exactly, is it?” He held out a slender hand, which she took and shook before she quite realized it, wondering again at the tapering fingers. They felt like silk, she thought. The touch had something electrifying.

“I suppose,” she stammered slightly, “there had to be a thief — and — well — there you are.” Instinctively she shrank the slightest bit in the world, unable to control the movement, but yet aware he noticed it. He noticed everything. Judas, to her surprise, was making friendly advances to him, and for some odd reason she was pleased. “You’re an awfully good thief, I expect — aren’t you?” she managed to bring out.

He smiled a delightful smile, his intelligent eyes twinkled.

“I take everything I can,” he replied; “that’s natural. No one minds here, of course.” He stooped down and stroked Judas’s back. “I’d take him, too, if I could, but he’s always too quick for me—”

“Well, you can,” she said impulsively. “Take him, if you like.”

He shook his head.

“You mean, if something’s given, it’s not taking?” she asked.

He nodded. “It’s only taking if the other wants it and if I want it more still,” he explained. He looked at her with his twinkling, penetrating eyes. “You ought to know, Miss,” he added.

And Maria felt that she did know; she felt, indeed, a curious elusive sympathy with the queer fellow, as though they shared some kind of natural understanding. The fact that Judas liked him belonged to this.

“I think it’s a pity I made you, all the same,” she heard herself remark with surprise, yet she was still more surprised to hear his comment:

“You made us all out of yourself, Miss, or I’m an honest man—”

“Which you’re not,” she interrupted quickly, laughing in spite of herself, noticing that his eyes were fixed attentively on a necklace of beads she wore round her neck. “I like you, anyhow,” she added, “whatever you are,” and became aware for the first time that the Gentleman and Ploughboy had left her, and that Judas also had disappeared. Her interest in the Thief had made her forget about them for the moment. She turned her head, but the long corridor was empty and her eyes searched its whole length in vain. Even the whirling group of other Fruit Stoners had melted away, and she could see nothing but the bright pools of sunshine that fell through the series of windows upon the polished wooden floor. And the sight of this lovely sunshine gave her the desire to go out of doors, a desire, however, that merely passed suddenly across her mind without a definite purpose behind it. There was, of course, an out of doors, yet it seemed inaccessible. She could not go there quite. For the realization that she was now alone with the Thief was more prominent than anything else.

She turned her head back again to say something, to ask, in fact, one of numerous questions that sprang crowding up — to find that he, too, was no longer there. The Thief had gone. Her hand went instantly to her neck. The bead necklace was still there, but there was something missing. What was it? Her hand moved to her hair. He had taken — with those marvellous, lightning fingers — the blue silk ribbon. Those electric, slender hands had touched her hair, perhaps her face as well!

She was alone — in the long, deserted corridor.

•  VII  •

Was she, however, quite alone? A queer feeling came to her that somebody was close, that she was being watched by observant eyes belonging to someone she could not see, yet who could see her. The deep hush everywhere was like the hush that comes in a thunderstorm. She looked about her, but nothing stirred, there was no sound. It was all so still she could hear her own heart beating, and it was beating a little too rapidly for comfort.

Her mind and thoughts were in a whirl. The way everybody had disappeared made her uneasy. The introductions to the Fruit Stoners, with the scraps of conversation, must have taken a long time surely, yet they seemed to have come and gone in a flash. The series of brief scenes had passed like lightning, leaving behind them little more than a fugitive memory, a memory that in some odd way was not altogether real.

“Of course they are real, quite real,” she told herself indignantly. “I’m just being silly!”

But her mind whirled more than ever. Where had they gone to, the Gentleman, Sailor, Tinker,

Soldier, Ploughboy, Thief? Even Judas had vanished like a shadow. The way she kept forgetting things was dreadful, forgetting and forgetting. There! She had even forgotten why she was here at all. It was her interest in the Fruit Stoners that made her forget. They were so amusing, so astonishing, that they put everything out of her head. It was the Fruit Stoners who made her forget. That was it, she told herself. Did they do it purposely, or was she herself to blame? Her mind whirled on.

“There!” she exclaimed to herself, “if I haven’t completely forgotten again why I came here. I’ve got some tremendous, awful purpose. It’s the object of my life really.” A solemn shudder ran through her. She stared right and left along the great, empty corridor. “Oh! I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” flashed suddenly into her mind. “I’m here to find — to look for something — of course—!”

Yet she did not bring back this memory herself, it was a sound that brought it, galvanizing her whole being, a sound, yes, faint and distant: the small, quiet ticking that was so small and quiet it was now like the ticking of a watch.

“Tick tock! Tick tock!” But as though it came this time from a long way off. For a moment, indeed, it sounded on her own person, inside her almost, as from a watch she carried in belt or pocket, almost in her very heart. Much fainter it had grown.

“Tick tock! Tick tock!”

She knew now who was watching her, to whom the observant, hidden eyes belonged, and as the feeling of haste and flurry rushed over her with its horrid panic touch, she turned round and round, trying to look everywhere at once. A movement then quite close caught her eye, at the window facing her not two yards away, but outside. A figure stood peering at her through the glass, its face pressed against the very pane without quite touching it — the face of the Man who Wound the Clocks.

He was after her again! He was always at her heels!

The very first instant she saw the dreaded face it leaped across her mind that there was someone who could help. There was a name, a powerful and mighty name — that entirely escaped her. A prodigious, glorious name. Memory was too bruised and slow to find it. Oh, what was it? The lips of the face, she saw, were moving, and though she could not catch the actual sound, she could see that they were repeating “Five Minutes! Five minutes!”

A lesser word flashed into her. “Knife! Knife!” she cried out, though her voice was little more than a frightened whisper, and while the face withdrew slightly, the figure did not go. It faded a little, however, and the ticking sound seemed fainter. How the fixed eyes stared at her through the windowpane! How the lips opened and closed as they went on mouthing the phrase that gave her this sense of nervous hurry! “Five Minutes! Five Minutes!” — the movement of the mouth and lips was easy to read, the words almost audible.

The hands now rose above the sill, fingering the window fastenings. The shoulders hunched, two arms stretched higher. Horrors! He was trying to come in.

“But I’m searching, I am searching!” cried Maria. “I’ve begun to look. I shall find it — before — before anyone can — say knife!”

The words tore out of her, for she could think of nothing else to say.

“I’m not too late yet! I’ve still got time!”

The window-frame made a rattling noise as though about to open, and with it came a curious grinding that was, she felt positive, the sound of a clock being wound. Oh! if only she could remember that other name she had heard the Fruit Stoners use! There was something much more powerful than Knife, if only she could think of it. Was it — was it “Apothecary” perhaps? The word flashed across her bewildered brain, but it did not seem quite right…. Was she going to faint?

A low, pleasant laugh was audible behind her.

“You had nearly forgotten me altogether,” said a deep, quiet voice that startled her so much that for a moment the terror of the window left her as she turned sharply round. An old man stood beside her, gazing steadily into her face over the top of big, dark spectacles that balanced on his long, hooked nose. He wore a grey beard with yellow stains that she somehow felt certain were made by iodine, and there was a whiff of oil or medicine that was familiar to her, fragrant yet not entirely pleasant, as of a chemist’s shop. There was a suggestion of scented soap too, though not of soap that he used on his own person. “I have been expecting your advent,” he went on, “expecting it for ever and ever, yet with the unfailing belief that it must happen.” Pushing his spectacles up on to his wrinkled forehead, he looked her up and down with a respectful, wondering expression. His eyes were watery, but searching, searching, and very fine. “And now that you are really here among us,” he concluded solemnly, “it troubles me in a way I had not foreseen. It is almost more than I can bear.”

“Mr. Apothecary!” cried Maria. “You’re my Apothecary!”

The old body bent so low that she thought the spectacles must slip off his nose, and on the top of his lowered head a tiny black skull-cap became visible.

“I am as you made me,” his low, pleasant voice replied, and added, “and I am ready to believe you did your best.”

But the faint Tick tock! and the noise at the window still sounded behind her, and she hardly took in what the old man was saying. She was only vaguely aware of an intense respect he emanated, and of something else about him beyond her comprehension.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Apothecary,” she answered hurriedly, “but — don’t you see? — he’s getting in!” She pointed frantically to the window. “He’s coming to catch me! My Five Minutes may be up! Oh, can’t you help somehow?” And the hurry-scurry feeling rushed over her like a flood. “I’ve tried Knife, Knife, but it hasn’t had much effect!”

She was facing the window now, still pointing, and the Apothecary, having straightened up, turned his eyes to look. He was very leisurely about it, as though hurry was evidently a thing he did not know.

“The devil!” he murmured in his beard, as a smile of quiet amusement crept up from his lips and settled between the cheeks and eyes. There was not a vestige of alarm in him as he moved slowly past her to the window and peered through the glass. “Ah, yes,” he went on, smiling to himself, “we do see him from time to time — flashing past, you know,” as he turned back to her. “He peeps in at windows, knocks at doors. He’s one of your inventions, we always imagined, for he only appears when you’re playing with us.” He said “playing” as though the word hurt him rather.

It hurt her, too, a little. The thought that she had merely played with these delightful Fruit Stoners was painful now.

“You have brought him with you, no doubt,” the old man added, giving her a slightly reproachful glance. “He has never stayed so long before.”

The Clock Man’s figure against the glass held motionless, but the Tick tock! went on faintly, the unpleasant grinding sound as well.

“I didn’t bring him,” explained Maria, breathlessly, “for he brought me. And I didn’t ask to come. I’m just put here. I’m here to look for something frightfully important and he’s allowed me five minutes to find it, and I can’t remember what it is, and oh, ’Pothecary” — she left out the A in her excitement — “he’s come to take me back, so my time must be up — and that grinding means—”

The Apothecary stopped her flow of rushing words by calmly holding up his ancient hand.

“There is no hurry here,” he observed quietly, “as you, of all persons, must be aware. You need not recognize him unless you wish to.” And he smiled so powerfully that she already felt the wild scurry in her dying down. How soothing, how protective his voice and manner were. The feeling came to her that he knew everything — everything in the world. “Your five minutes, as you call them,” he added, “are your own, to be used, no doubt, where and when you will.”

“But that grinding—?”

“Let him grind,” was the reply, “provided he does not strike.”

Maria started, feeling still more comforted. She was safe, apparently, unless she heard a strike.

“Look again,” the other was saying, turning to the window, “and do not forget this time that we are on the first floor now high above the ground,” and then his lips murmured something too low for her to catch. Four syllables, it seemed.

She was already looking, and the rest of the sentence did not reach her mind, for she saw the Clock Man suddenly streaking away past the window as though he had been shot out of a cannon, his black coat-tails flying behind him like cloudy wings. He went so fast that it seemed as if he had never been there at all. The grinding sound went with him, the Tick tock! ceased, the windowpane showed nothing but the summer sky. And the shock of it stung something bitterly, pungently, in her memory at the same instant.

“Jack Robinson! Jack Robinson!” flew from her mouth as a swallow might dart flashing from its nest.

She stood stock still, then clutched her breast with both arms. It was as though she had said something stupendous. Her breath caught. Her heart stopped. Her mouth was dry. The Apothecary, she saw, also stood motionless, with bent head and folded hands.

“Of course,” she heard him murmur. He swallowed hard. He, too, felt emotion evidently. “Of course,” he repeated, the beard waggling as he half-whispered it. “I knew you would remember sooner or later. He never fails. He cannot, for he is your masterpiece. Always in the nick of time, as you see—”

“Was that a nick?” asked Maria.

He nodded. “Naturally,” he replied, gravely still. “He only comes in nicks.”

“But I didn’t see anything!” she objected. “Did you?”

“No one can see what is everywhere at once,” he told her. “To remember in the nick of time is the only way. It was all right anyhow, wasn’t it?” he inquired, smiling again a little. “There was no strike.”

The word reverberated strangely somewhere at the back of her head. Strike, strike, she repeated to herself.

“Strike!” she exclaimed aloud. “You mean strike you dead?”

The old man eyed her with the utmost curiosity and interest. He shook his head.

“So you have heard the old legends too?” he brought out at length.

“Legends—?”

He watched her eagerly before he went on presently. “We, too,” he observed, but rather to himself than to her, “have heard that there are people, beings of a sort, it seems, who — who come to an end — sometimes.” He laughed indulgently a little. Maria stared at him and he stared back.

“In any case,” he went on finally, “it is better if no strike comes in your presence, for if that happened — if you heard the striking — you would go away — probably — with him — taking it with you—”

He stopped, though his beard continued to waggle a good deal.

“Forgive me,” he added after a moment, “if I seem muddled and confused, but these thoughts are so deep and difficult, and though your being here inspires me, it also bewilders and amazes a little. We are not in your time, you see, but outside it, and so—”

But the only words Maria understood were “taking it with you.” She clutched at them.

“It!” she cried. “The thing I’ve come to find?”

He bowed his head. A rather mournful look replaced the smile.

“Now that you have remembered him,” he remarked with a touch of resignation almost, “you will probably soon remember it. I imagine,” he went on thoughtfully, “the Man who Winds the Clocks, as you call him” — he grinned a little — “knows what it is you want to find, but Jack Robinson” — lowering his voice as he pronounced the name — “knows where it is. So you may have to ask the one, and then tell the other. The first is just your invention, the second” — he whispered it — “is your masterpiece.”

Maria sighed. She only partly grasped his meaning. It seemed to her a heavy programme. “Oh, dear!” she heaved out.

“Oh, dear me,” the old fellow added, sighing too. “You know everything, I suppose,” she said. “You’re a philosopher!”

“I merely analyse,” he corrected her. “You made me a chemist.”

She again felt suddenly a little guilty as she heard it. It was dreadful really, the thoughtless way she had made all these people, and played with them, and muddled up their time, and dressed them all anyhow, and not even allowed them enough living places without doubling up, and even let Judas knock them off the rim of the plate, and — Was that a sound she caught faintly ticking? Was it a knocking at a door? Her whirling thoughts stopped abruptly, or, rather, they flew in another direction all at once. Her interest in the Fruit Stoners’ world had once again made her forget what she was here for.

She listened intently. There was nothing but the sound of her own irregular breathing. The sound, whether it was again the Tick tock! or a knocking at a door, was so faint and distant that it did not seem to matter much. The feeling came to her that, if she did not actually carry it about with her, inside her even, it was always there. Whether she heard it or not, it never really stopped.

“Oh, my Apothecary,” she interrupted her own whirling thoughts, “I believe you know everything.

You will help me, won’t you? To find my thing, I mean? And to remember?”

He gazed at her with a curious expression on his very crinkly face. “All of us will help,” he murmured, “if worship is help. For we all adore and love you naturally.” He was now looking, not at her, but at a sort of glass retort he had pulled out of a deep pocket in the long robe of pale yellow that flapped about him. It contained a transparent liquid tinged with blue, and as she watched him a strange wondering stirred in her, a faint, half familiar picture rising in her mind of a large window somewhere with great jars of coloured glass reflecting sunlight. It vanished again instantly. The Apothecary was mumbling something in his yellow beard. It prevented her following up her thought.

“I had better finish this,” he explained. “I am analysing it, always analysing it, ever since I was made, of course. I may withdraw, if you permit it.” It was a question. Oddly enough, it came just when she, too, felt she wanted to be alone a little, so that she could think things out. The old fellow stirred such profound reflections in her.

“Good-bye,” she said gently, “and thank you most awfully for — for everything,” she added lamely.

Already he seemed a little more shadowy, a little more distant too, and at the same time smaller surely. His beard was waggling as he went. If the words did not reach her audibly, she knew exactly what the wise old fellow was saying.

“Jack Robinson! Jack Robinson! Jack Robinson, remember….” And his outline merged into the shadows beyond the pool of sunlight from the window. He was no longer there, though Maria knew that in another way he was really always there.

“Bless him!” ran across her mind. “I must have made him with the very deepest in me, I suppose….”

Her thoughts, which had been calmer in his presence, began to whirl again. “That’s one, at any rate, I needn’t marry,” darted through her, “though I could live with him always. I’d like him always near. He knows everything. What wonderful things he said!”

But what were the wonderful things? She tried to go over them again, to recall them, only to find that every word he uttered, even that powerful name, had completely left her memory. Like the Fruit Stoners, her thoughts whirled in a turning, jumbled ring, throwing off occasional flying ideas as a whizzing Catherine wheel throws off sparks that flash and die. Marriage! Marriage was one of these flying sparks that hung in her mind an instant before it was extinguished. She was to marry one of these eight Fruit Stoners, of course. The Gentleman obviously. He was rather old, but she could make him younger, couldn’t she? Of course she could. She could change their conditions all round and make them happier. Well — but could she really? Did the Sailor, for instance, really want to dress in silk and live in a big house? And if she married him, could she settle down and spend her life on a ship, always making long voyages? He was so adorable that living with him anywhere would be bliss. Yet the same applied to the beloved Tinker and the frightfully brave Soldier, though she remembered that with the Tailor she would have endless new dresses, and the Ploughboy’s life with lambs and great horses and sweet-smelling cows and fields of daisies and buttercups was perhaps what she would really like better than anything…. Oh, life was very full and marvellous!

A long sigh escaped her, a sigh of complete confusion. Passing a hand across her forehead, she touched her hair and idly stroked it. The missing ribbon! Ah! The Thief! With a shock again his face and figure sprang into her mind, as a little shiver ran over her, leaving a queer, quick smile on her lips, a shining in her eyes as though a tiny fire burned in her somewhere deep below.

That dreadful man! She had made him too? With a part of herself, he said. But the marriage idea now darted away and faded, replaced by another — the idea that without the ribbon her hair must be untidy and she was not looking her best. There was no looking-glass in the corridor, of course, and the windowpane reflected badly. Marriage, anyhow, would come later, much later…. There was something else she had to do before she could settle down, something of such tremendous, such awful importance that it must be seen to instantly. Instantly, or she would be too late, too late forever. It had entirely left her mind again, and it came back now with a shock that turned her rigid. She drew a deep breath and made a violent effort. She remembered. A search, something she must find, a pearl of great price, five minutes only, the Man who Wound the Clocks ever at her heels, frantic hurry, endless leisure, a mighty name…. Oh! How wonderful and crowded with interest life was…! But how terrible…!

Confusion overwhelmed her, and the rigidity of her body turned to water as though her bones had withdrawn. It was like a dream-world, but for the fact that nothing so bitingly real could possibly be a dream. It was too packed with enchantment, this glorious life…! A feeling of utter tiredness overmastered her. She must sit down; she must rest and think. She turned, her legs weary and unsteady, but no chair, no sofa, no divan was to be seen, nothing but a door that faced her. Her eyes settled on the brass handle.

Faint, far away, but unmistakable, yet almost as if within herself somewhere, rose the ticking that was like the ticking of a tiny watch, close, close against her heart.

“It never, never stops,” she whispered to herself. “It’s always, always there, even when I’m not listening.” And she turned the door knob recklessly, and walked unhesitatingly into the room beyond.

•  VIII  •

In the first second, as she walked in, she recognized it. The room was familiar; she had been there before, she remembered it.

A phrase, though a phrase from nowhere, passed across her mind: “Queen Elizabeth’s Room.”

She caught her breath with a gulp. The same instant the sense of familiarity was gone. It disappeared, and remembrance went with it. All that remained was this vague, fugitive feeling that she had somehow been here before, had already lived through this scene once. And this, though it came and went like faint glimpses of a forgotten dream, persisted. It hung about her. This feeling of recurrence haunted her. This had all happened before.

The room was large and lofty, but dimly lit because the blinds were down, and it held a musty smell as though it had been long unused. An enormous cupboard stood against the wall, a sofa and several big armchairs wore dust-sheets, and a great four-poster bed outlined itself in the centre of the floor. The room, she saw at once, was empty, and she closed the door behind her, then looked about her for a resting-place. The chairs in dust-sheets were not inviting; the great bed, she noticed, was covered with a heavy counterpane affair she imagined was brocade. She felt tired, worn out, with little aches and twinges in her body, odd little aches and twinges that puzzled her. “Growing pains” shot into her mind, then vanished as meaningless as “Queen Elizabeth’s Room.” Where did they come from, these absurd darting phrases? There was something in her that kept inventing them. Growing pains indeed! As though she were a kitten! She smiled to herself; there was no sense of hurry, but the feeling of weariness was very strong, her mind and body ached, demanding rest.

She had been through so much; the scenes and talk, the whirling confusion and bewilderment, the alternate sense of wild hurry and endless leisure, the dreadful gaps of remembering and forgetting, the efforts, the fears, the happiness, the excitement — all these had exhausted her. They enticed, made promises, but did not satisfy…. She must lie down and rest now, try to collect her thoughts, to get things straight.

“Growing pains indeed! As though I were a kitten.” She repeated the queer phrases with another smile as her eyes turned to the wide, inviting bed while she began to calculate the effort she must make to drag that huge brocade away — and saw for the first time a small dark object lying in its very centre. She gave a start. She examined it. It was motionless. And it was black as night.

“Judas!” she cried out. “Judas, my black darling beauty!” And the same instant, with a flying leap, she landed on the bouncing mattress beside her beloved cat, and the pair of them danced up and down together like fallen acrobats on a loose-swung net. “Judas! My dark angel!” she went on, plunging her face and fingers into the soft warm pool of blackness that he made. “If I hadn’t nearly forgotten you altogether! Think of that, will you? And all the time you were just quietly waiting for me in here, knowing that of course I would come and find you, and just sleeping as soundly and tightly as a drum! Oh, Judas, my best beloved, now tell me all about it, all about everything at once, you tight, fat drum!”

She continued her endearments, though the drum made no response beyond opening a very narrow eye, making itself more comfortable with the slightest possible readjustment of the back paws against the nose, and emitting a faint, rumbling purr that was not, indeed, unlike the roll of very muffled drums. But Maria asked no more: she had found her friend, she was resting comfortably on her back, she could now think things over in peace and quietness, and utter her thoughts aloud, if she wanted, to an understanding friend who would help and advise, yet not interrupt or criticize.

With one hand buried in his fur, she lay and listened to the silence about her that, but for the low rumbling, itself now growing less, was unbroken. The air was still, not even a board or cupboard creaked; above all no Tick tock! was audible, not even the tiny voice of the dreaded watch she seemed to carry ever in her heart.

“Now, I must think everything out,” she told herself, “and see what it all means, and why — and who — no, where, I mean — no, no,” she corrected herself again, “that’s all wrong, Judas, isn’t it? It’s what I’ve got to do that’s the important thing—”

And she gave Judas little prods that had no effect beyond squeezing out tiny jets of purring that broke off in isolated fashion from the main sound and were slightly higher in tone, and almost querulous. “That’s a real help, my black darling. Thank you,” and prodded him again and again, until presently the shrill little, broken-off purrs stopped popping out altogether. “Yes, you’re right,” she whispered, “you’re quite right, Judas. There’s no good your giving me advice until I’ve told you what I want advice about. I must think everything out alone first, of course. I’ll come to you later.” And instead of prodding him, she fell to stroking him softly into deeper sleep.

At the same time she fell to thinking — only to realize almost immediately that she could not really think at all. Pictures came to her, but not thoughts. She could see pictures of all that had happened, and could ask herself questions about these pictures, but she could not really think. She could not reason, argue, analyse. Her mind was a rushing stream of jostling pictures above which, like dancing gnats, swarmed a host of question marks. Darting at one picture after another, she seized upon them in a series as best she could, hanging them on a wall inside her head, the nail being always a curly interrogation mark that wriggled into softness and let the picture drop and be swept away.

Yet, behind this phantasmagoria that ever danced and shifted, certain ideas persisted oddly, forming a dim background that held steady. Her mind, at any rate, always came back, back to these main ideas. Think about them she could not; but see them clearly she could.

“I’m in a wonderful, delightful world,” she told herself, “but I’ve been brought here, put down in it — plop! I didn’t ask to come. I can enjoy myself enormously in it, only there’s something I’ve got to do that spoils my enjoyment and even prevents it. I’m here to look for something, and if I don’t find it there’s no point in my having come. In fact I only came really to find it. But I’ve forgotten what I came to find, and no one can tell me what it is. Nor can anyone tell me why I came to find something — why I’m here at all. Ugh! It’s awful, wicked, cruel! I knew once myself, but that, too, I’ve forgotten. And I’ve only got a little time to do it in. Oh, dear, oh, dear! What a ridiculous muddle!”

In a flash all this came to her, in a single instant, but she turned away from the picture of the limited time because she did not care for it.

“It’s when I’m enjoying myself with the Fruit Stoners,” darted in next, “that I forget always. Only I’d much rather enjoy myself than go hunting about and fagging myself out to find something that I can’t even remember what it is,” her words jumbled on in a muddled sentence. And, this picture bringing rather an uneasy feeling with it, she let it rush away with its wriggling interrogation mark and vanish among a thousand others, from which she instantly picked out a more satisfactory one. She chose the Fruit Stoners with their funny, crinkly faces.

“Judas,” she whispered, turning to her silent, sleeping friend, “you like the Fruit Stoners too, don’t you, dear? I know you do, for I saw you rubbing against them and trying to get into their rooms. You knew them before just as I did — somewhere. You wanted to play with them, that’s what it was, you black rascal.” She squeezed her face down into his friendly fur. “Well, so do I, Judas. There’s nothing I’d like better. We’re both black rascals evidently. I could play with them forever. Only you mustn’t be rough, remember. That black paw of yours rather frightens them. It’s not kind to knock them about on to the floor.”

His silent sympathy helped and encouraged her, and though he made no comment or interruption, she knew he was listening to every word she said.

Her mind flew off among the queer, jolly Fruit Stoners again. They passed before her in vivid pictures and at lightning speed. The Sailor had left on a long voyage, but he would come back again, his gold earrings dangling; there was a new dress she must try on at the Tailor’s; the Tinker, sharpening that precious knife, would show her the wood fire where he cooked his supper below the hedge where the wild roses shone; the Ploughboy would lift her on to a great horse’s back — all of them in a series of coloured pictures danced about her, each with his alluring invitation, each busy with his particular calling, and the Gentleman would deck her in brilliant jewels and take her to marvellous dinner-parties at Buckingham Palace, where the Soldier would stand on guard behind her chair, and the Thief — The Thief! When she came to him, the rushing series halted, stopped its lightning flow, so that he seemed to stand out more closely before her, more definitely somehow, than the rest. That dreadful, dangerous man! He had stolen her ribbon, yet so swiftly, cleverly, that she had not seen it go. Those long, lovely fingers! Those slender, shapely hands that must have touched her very face and skin! Those quick, penetrating eyes that took in everything instantly! She shrank a little, as the tiny shock again raced down her spine, and while she wanted the figure to go, she yet clung to it as though it fascinated her. There! It was gone. In her mind she saw the whole group of Fruit Stoners whirling in their strange circle round the great bed.

“Judas!” she whispered into his pointed ear, whose feathery hairs tickled her lips, “aren’t they just gorgeous? And to think I made them! It’s too wonderful to be true, you know. And I’m going to make everything better and more comfortable for them too. Each can have a house to himself, and wear nice things, and then — Oh, Judas, I think I must really marry every one of them in turn and live in the Big House and be happy ever afterwards — in silk—”

Her thoughts, these picture-thoughts, broke off abruptly as a gigantic interrogation mark hung wriggling over the bed. She stared at it fixedly.

“Where did I know them, Judas? Where have we met before? Where used you and I to play with them? Why do they seem so familiar?”

Judas knew, she felt sure, but it was clear he did not wish to talk about it at the moment. This feeling of vague familiarity haunted her uneasily, and a curious little ache came with the question, for the question seemed unanswerable. Everything would become so much easier and more comfortable if she could only know where she had come from, and exactly why she had come at all. There was this flaw in her happiness. Yet was the question really unanswerable? A queer certainty rose in her that somewhere deep down inside herself the answer lay, that in the long run she would remember and would know.

“Someday, Judas, I shall get it all clear—”

The pointed ear had given a sudden twitch, and she drew her lips back sharply.

Someday! Someday, indeed! The hideous reminder flashed in — that she had only Five Minutes, and her calmness scattered, for with it came that sense of puzzled bewilderment that had fear behind it. Here was something that lay utterly beyond anything she could possibly understand. Minutes! Days! Months! Years! All passing. A strange phrase tore through her like a lost, hunting wind. A thousand years in thy sight — gone before she could catch its end, its tail. There! She was inventing these odd phrases again. Where did they come from, these absurd phrases without meaning? Why did her spine again go all shivery and tickly?

Five Minutes! She tried to drive the picture away, to force it into the background, to hide it from her mind. It brought discomfort with it, a touch of alarm, a sense of that awful hurry-scurry. She made an effort to bring the Fruit Stoners back in its place, the jolly crew that were never in a hurry, and though they instantly flooded her mind again and danced in their ring again about the bed, the other unwelcome picture did not go, but stayed and mingled with them.

She must think about it. These ridiculous Five Minutes! They had been given to her by that horrible Man who Wound the Clocks, the man who had brought her here, dumping her down unasked in this lovely and exciting world, only to warn her, it seemed, that she could not enjoy it — because her time was limited to these ludicrous Five Minutes.

She did now make a very great effort to get this straight a little, while Judas, by his quiet, sympathetic attitude, helped her. The outstanding fact that he just accepted the situation without question or criticism pointed the way.

“Judas,” she thanked him, “I believe I’ve got it, my dark angel. And if you’ll stop twitching your ear and keep the tip of your tail still for once, I will tell you about it. It’s like this, you see, you bag of mystery: my Five Minutes only count — while I’m using them. When I’m not using them they’re not being spent — they’re not passing! When I’m with the Fruit Stoners, the time’s different. There’s no hurry then!”

So inconceivably rapid was the rush of thought-pictures in her, that even while she whispered this into the furry ear, a hundred others had come and gone. The Fruit Stoners, she remembered, all laughed at her Five Minutes, and thought of the dreaded Clock Man as rather a tricky figure of fun, a fairy-tale person of no importance. The Apothecary regarded the idea of anything or anybody coming to an end as a sort of legend only, and one of the others — she had forgotten who it was — had used the word “nonsense.” The Apothecary, indeed, had stated definitely that her time was different to theirs, but that at any rate it was her own to spend where and when she pleased. He had warned her, however — she had better not let the Clock Man strike in her presence. If she heard that strike, her Five Minutes — whatever they might be, he had laughed — her time would be up and she would have to go. And all of them, every one, had mentioned as a serious grievance the divisions of This Year and Next Year, which somehow enclosed and limited them stupidly, and in any case muddled them all up badly. Their natural condition was endless leisure. They lived now. They knew no past or future, only a gorgeous Present. To be made to jump about from this year to next year, then to dodge back again each time she played with them, was, of course, a disconcerting, crippling business they were right to look upon as a grievance. She could, and would, alter that, of course, but just now she was busy with her own Five Minutes, and she was sure that she had made a great discovery. It had dawned upon her mysteriously, coming she knew not whence. From Judas probably, since he knew all that sort of thing. For all these ideas passed in a single instant through her mind while she whispered the few words into his receptive, feathery ear.

Her Five Minutes — which otherwise must have finished ages ago — only passed while she was actually using them. This she suddenly realized. The rest of the time, which was the Fruit Stoners’ sort of time, were the great intervals between, and these intervals, of course, never passed at all. They could not pass away. The alternate sense of endless leisure and panic hurry-scurry seemed clearer to her now. The hurry-scurry had to do with the Man who Wound the Clocks, while the other — yes, the other—

“Oh, Judas, Judas,” she whispered, with a touch of anguish rising through her, “it’s gone again — that tremendous name — the powerful name that — that keeps me safe — and makes hurry silly—!”

The pictures had vanished, her mind was an empty, gaping blank, and the strenuous efforts she made to recover the forgotten name filled her with such confusion that at first she did not notice that the deep silence of the room was broken by a tiny sound. It was faint and distant, but it was coming closer, growing louder. Steadily, steadily, it approached. It emerged from the depths of the great, dim room. And then suddenly she became aware of it.

Tick tock! Tick tock!

It seemed both inside her and at the far end of the room.

She sprang into a sitting position as if she had been shot. She listened, quivering all over, and in the same instant, Judas, startled from sleep by the bouncing mattress, took a flying leap on to the floor and vanished like a shadow. He went so fast that she could not even see what direction he took, or where he disappeared to. He was gone.

Tick tock! Tick tock! the warning sound continued. The awful Man who Wound the Clocks was there, watching, waiting, ever at her heels. The feeling of wild hurry-scurry swept over her, the sense of delightful leisure vanished. She had been wasting time again, enjoying herself with all these exciting and amusing pictures. She had entirely forgotten that she had a purpose to fulfil, a thing of tremendous importance she had come to look for, a pearl of great price that she must find.

Now, as she sat rigid on the bed and listened, this swept back upon her with its solemn warning. Her heart was beating rapidly. Was a strike coming? Did she hear a sound of grinding?

Tick tock! Tick tock! It did not stop, but it seemed to get no louder, it came no closer, it merely beat on steadily, remorselessly. Of course, she then realized again, it never actually stopped at all. It was beating always, always. Only her mind had been too occupied with other things to notice it. She had been so busy with her pictures that she had not heard it.

Was she too late now?… She was aware that a long, long interval had passed over her since she came into the room. A period of time, yet not of ordinary time, somehow, had queerly flowed over her, something she could not measure and yet recognized. A touch of panic came into her blood, and she sprang from the great comfortable bed and stood bolt upright in the middle of the floor.

“The search!” she cried out aloud. “I must begin my search, or I shall be too late! I shall be too old! Perhaps I’m too old already.”

Too old! The strange, awful notion steadied her. Had she grown older? Was she growing up? Where did the idea come from? What in the world was happening to her? Too late, too old, to begin! What did it mean — this sense of a long interval and growing older?

The sound was fainter now, farther away, like warning bells a sad wind bore into the distance. There had been no ominous grinding, anyhow, no sign of the dreaded strike. But her sense of urgent hurry, of being perhaps too late unless she acted at once, did not leave her.

“I must, I must find it,” her voice cried out again. “Once I’ve found it, the strike won’t matter. I shall be ready to go then — go back with it! Oh, my Pearl! My Pearl of Great Price!”

She did not realize quite what she was saying, did not quite understand what her own words meant as they rushed out of her mouth. The shock of urgent, anxious hurry that galvanized her towards this imperative need for instant action seemed to shake them from her lips. The memory that there was someone who could help her, a name she could call upon that would bring calm to ease her wild hurry, did not even occur to her. She could think of nothing but the fearful importance of beginning her search before it was too late, with the disturbing certainty that this long interval of wasted idling had passed over her.

She must start immediately. Her great search must be made at once. The Fruit Stoners had promised to help her. She took a quick step across the floor, and then another, but instead of going straight towards the door, she found she was moving round the great room, examining the walls and furniture, the tables in particular. Her hand went to her untidy hair, where no ribbon now gathered it together.

“Well, I declare!” she exclaimed, a sharp feeling of disappointment in her. “There’s not a looking-glass anywhere! Not a single mirror in the whole place!”

She flung out of the room to find the Fruit Stoners, tidying her wild hair with both hands as best she could. Her feet, at any rate, looked neat, her dress was comely, she had slim calves and pretty ankles.

“Probably I look awful,” passed through her mind, as she ran down the corridor, “but I can’t help it!”

Yet, even as she ran, taking quick, excited steps, the sound of ticking accompanied her. It was very close, inside her almost, this faint Tick tock! as of a watch that beat against her heart, as of a small, insistent voice. She was aware of it, this tiny voice, no more than that; the anticipatory excitement of finding the Fruit Stoners again and having adventures with them dulled any sense of uneasiness she had felt formerly.

“There’s lots of time,” she persuaded herself as she ran. “There’s no hurry with them. I only wish I looked better.” Her hand flew to her untidy hair again. “I must get my ribbon back from that dreadful Thief,” and a thrill again passed over her as she thought of him. Her eye glanced down at her short frock then with disapproval. “I’m simply in rags,” occurred to her. “It’s much too short. My knees show! I must see the Tailor about that new dress at once!”

She raced along breathlessly, her mind filled with darting pictures of her jolly and amusing Fruit Stoners, though it was the Gentleman and the Sailor who seemed to hold the first place. The Gentleman she had made younger now, she remembered, and she had planned a long voyage with the dancing Sailor. Overshadowing them all, however, somehow loomed the bearded figure of the wise Apothecary. It was as though in some way she could not fathom he was the most important of the lot. She realized this, but deliberately put him aside. That, she told herself, could come later.

“This is a nick,” she assured herself, “and I’m jolly well going to use it while I can!”

•  IX  •

And then suddenly she caught sight of them. She had reached the end of the corridor and could see over the railing into the great banqueting hall below. From the top of the stairs where she stood, the gallery ran round the whole length. There, underneath her, stood the whole Ancient Order of Fruit Stoners, every one of them, all talking busily among themselves. They stood in a circle, exactly, she thought, as though they were balanced round the edge of a plate, and she paused a moment and picked them out in turn, for they had not seen her yet. There was a curious distance about them, now more, now less, as though she looked through field-glasses and adjusted the screws that made them come and go. There — the focus was sharp and clear at last.

The Gentleman was a young man now, slimmer than ever, but still wearing an eyeglass and a beautiful top-hat, a white one with a very curly brim, while a red carnation gleamed in the buttonhole of his perfect cut-away coat. She felt her heart beat faster as she saw him, but it beat faster still as her eye then picked out the Sailor’s deeply tanned face and caught the sheen of his dangling gold earrings. Swinging his telescope about, he was gazing through it smartly at anything he could see, whether it was near or far. He was resting it now on the shoulder of the Ploughboy next him, examining apparently the Soldier’s gleaming gold braid, then switching it to gaze at the Tinker in whose ragged pocket, she saw, the Thief was cleverly inserting his long, slender fingers. One and all were there, the Tailor snapping his big scissors in the air to the danger of his neighbours, and every one of them making a characteristic movement of one kind or another, with the exception of the Apothecary, who stood quietly combing his long, dirty beard in an attitude of deep thought. The general movement gave the circle an appearance of turning round and round, though she could not be sure of this. It was perhaps her own mind that whirled.

“Here I am, my dear Fruit Stoners!” she called out loudly with her head over the railing, and the same instant the Sailor’s telescope turned up and pointed at her face.

“Three sheets in the wind and breakers ahead!” he shouted, his feet starting a quick, merry dance, while she noticed for the first time that he now wore a close-cropped brown beard that, she decided instantly, was most attractive.

A general roar of voices at once drowned his words, as every face turned up to look at her. It was a roar of welcome that made the rafters ring and seemed to shake the great glass chandelier till it tinkled in a wind. While all eyes looked up, she noticed, the Thief, profiting by the fact, neatly abstracted a knife from the Ploughboy’s pocket, while joining in the general shout.

“Maria! Maria! Come down to us for tea!”

As she took the stairs, three steps at a time, she realized that she, too, was ready for tea, hunger and thirst both ardent in her. Tea, of course, was their great meal, occurred to her, though why this was so she could not think. Tea, yes, was their important meal, their only meal; it was at tea she had first made their acquaintance. Where? Oh, where? The thought burned her before it vanished — somewhere — This flashed through her as she tore down the great curved staircase, only to be forgotten again the same instant. “I hope there won’t be any prunes,” flashed through her too. Somebody — oh, who was it? — liked prunes with his tea. Tea! Prunes! Fruit stones! The rim of a plate! Her mind was in a jumble with it all, but there was no clear memory. What did it matter, anyhow? She was going to enjoy herself. This was life!

She had reached the floor now and was among them all; the ceaseless ticking was forgotten, there was no hurry, everything was wonderful, happy and exciting. She was leaning on the arm of the Gentleman, who, slim and debonair, was leading her to the table. She had rejuvenated him in her thoughts, and he was now fascinatingly young, and his lovely white hat made her certain that, of course, he knew the Queen personally. He carried it gracefully in his hand as they stepped along. “I do believe he sleeps in it,” she decided, stealing a glance at his face bending above her and noticing that the dark crinkles were all wiped away. His eyeglass swung against his coloured waistcoat, his fob and watch-chain shone. He was the perfect gentleman, she knew, as he intercepted her glance with an entrancing smile and a most courtly little bow. Thrills coursed through her blood and body at his touch.

“Pray — ” she whispered, “pray, cover yourself,” wondering if the words were quite what she searched so hard to find, as well as where they came from. “I beg of you.” Her whisper died away against his shoulder — on a sigh.

“Your slightest wish is a command,” he replied, bending from the waist so that his buttons tickled her ear, while he slapped the hat on at a rakish angle, and made her chair ready. She sat down, and the rest of the group who were all standing by their chairs till she was seated, did likewise. All were talking, gesticulating, smiling. All watched, too, her every movement.

“And what,” inquired the Gentleman, screwing his eyeglass in and surveying the table, “may I serve you with?” He tossed a slender hand with jewelled fingers above a score of imaginary dishes. “Scrambled eggs, or oeufs à la coque, kidneys on toast with devilled mushrooms, a delicious young quail perhaps, a rasher of crisp bacon, or — or” — he hesitated a moment, looking vague — “or — a plate of porridge,” he ended abruptly, “with a poached egg to follow.”

The long list of exquisite dishes, whose names sounded familiar to her though she had tasted few of them, seemed to vanish in the air. It was the way he spoke the words that made her feel she almost tasted them, but it was her good common sense that told her such fancy cooking was hardly suitable at tea-time.

“A cup of tea, please, sir — weak tea,” she replied, smiling up into his face, “with a finger of buttered toast, is what I usually have — if there is any,” she added politely as an afterthought.

He bowed, removing his hat and sweeping it across his heart.

“The entire cuisine,” he assured her in a melting tone, “is at your service. Allow me to procure it for you.”

Replacing his hat with a graceful flourish, he bowed himself away, his eyes lingering on her face so beautifully as he went half backwards towards the sideboard, that it was all Maria could do to prevent herself running after him and giving him a kiss and a hug. “He loves me, he loves me,” her heart told her between its rapid beats, “and I do believe I’m in love with him. It’s glorious, glorious! I couldn’t swallow a mouthful. I hope I shan’t choke over my tea!” And the odd mingling of the child and the young woman in her somehow caused her no surprise. She only knew, and knew it quite naturally, that the feeling of a long interval having passed over her while she was upstairs, was true, and that she was now really older. So naturally, indeed, this came to her that she stole a quick look at her knees and legs beneath the table, and saw with relief and delight that her longer skirt was becomingly modest, and that georgette was exactly the material that suited her.

Across the table in the same instant she caught the Tailor’s eye, a question in it, yet a discreet veiled question, as though only he and she knew what it referred to.

“It’s quite all right,” she heard herself telling him. “The fit is splendid. I’m very satisfied, thank you,” and while she spoke, even while the words left her lips, she remembered going to try it on in his room, and even suggesting certain alterations. That had slipped her memory in some queer way, but she now recalled it all; it had taken place in the interval, of course, the strange, long interval that had passed over her….

“The other gowns are ready when you are,” the Tailor was saying, while busy with his meal, and she was not surprised somehow to see that he was using his big scissors to slice his bread and butter, then measuring each piece with his tape before putting it into his mouth.

“This is a nick, of course; I’m in a nick,” she told herself, and the same instant felt something touch her shoulder. Turning sharply, she looked straight into the face of the Sailor, who had slipped into the chair next to her, and was so close that his blue sleeve lay against her arm. He was staring at her even at this absurdly close range through his telescope; it was, in fact, the end of the long tube that had touched her shoulder.

“Oh, Sailor, my Sailor!” she cried, “wherever have you been? I thought — I wondered—” She broke off, aware that unaccountably she was blushing. “If you’re looking at me,” she went on hastily, “you’d see better without the telescope, I think.”

“Ah, Missie,” he laughed, without lowering it however, “but you’re closer this way. You can never see too much of a good thing,” as he took it from his eye, his tanned face smiling all over, his gold earrings tinkling, “and I’ve been ’arf-way round the globe since I looked into that rosebud face.”

While he eyed her with open and unabashed admiration, his feet, she saw, were doing some little twinkling step beneath the table. It was the beard, however, that interested her as much as anything. Was it genuine? It was incredible that he could have grown it in so short a time. Was it a “short time” though? Was it a question of that interval again? She stared hard a moment, wondering if she dared ask about it. That stupid flush in her cheeks crept down towards her neck.

“Is it a real one — really?” The words then shot out before she could prevent their bluntness. “The beard, I mean—?”

The Sailor gave a jolly laugh, no whit offended.

“Lor’ bless you, yes,” he cried, “while the stormy winds do blow. Real as you are! I let it grow after we rounded the ‘Orn. It’s neater that way — don’t you think?” He stroked it. He looked, she thought, exactly like a handsome sailor she had seen somewhere on a poster. “Like it, Missie?” he inquired with a sly, merry grin. “‘Cos if you don’t off she comes in less than ’arf a jiffy—”

“No, no,” Maria interrupted, “you mustn’t take it off. I like it — awfully.”

“Splendid!” he cried, his feet jigging away, while he whipped the telescope back to his eye and fell to examining her again.

Maria, though she felt embarrassed, loved the examination, and wondered how her hair looked. She must get her ribbon back as soon as ever she could. She must find a mirror, too.

“But your — voyage, your long voyage,” she stammered, feeling she ought really to change the subject, though not really wanting to. “You were going on a long voyage when I saw you last, and I — I was to go with you, I thought—”

She broke off again, for her voice seemed a little unsteady. An immense longing rose surging over her. The romance of the sea, the tang of the salt spray, a flying picture of coral islands, golden sands, of treasure, pirates, rose before her with a sound of wind whistling in the rigging.

But the Sailor’s face, she saw, had lost its smile suddenly.

“Ah, Missie, that’s just the trouble,” he murmured, stopping his dancing feet and lowering his telescope. He leaned nearer, turning his blue eyes down to her with almost a beseeching expression. “That, you see, was ‘sometime,’” he told her. “You made me ‘sometime.’ Now, if you could change me to ‘this year,’ or even ‘next year,’ why — then — we could get a-going together, maybe.”

“Oh, I’m going to change all that for you,” Maria whispered hurriedly. She was trembling a little. “Of course I will.”

His face shone again as though the sun had come out from behind a cloud. The laughter danced back, the feet began to jig.

“But I brought you back something,” he went on in his cheerful voice once more, producing a curly, beautifully coloured shell, “so that when you get to your counting again, maybe, you’ll remember the pore sailors on the ’igh seas, with their lasses crying their eyes out — and give me ’arf a chance.” Maria was amazed at the words she heard herself saying next.

“Sailor,” she whispered, “I’d like to be your lass.”

“Name your port, Missie, and it’s a go,” he laughed back, handing her the shell. “Cross my ’eart on it,” making a gesture to suit the words and shouting, “Yo ho!” as he saw her cross her own.

“Upon my word,” thought Maria to herself, taking the lovely shell and stuffing it in her pocket, “I shall kiss him in a minute if I’m not careful, and I don’t want to be careful either. This is real life with a vengeance,” and she was already leaning a little closer to her breezy Sailor, when a voice behind her interrupted.

“I am delighted to bring you this at last,” murmured the suave and musical voice, “and I apologize for the long delay. I noticed, however — ahem — that you were engaged — delightfully engaged — and consequently I did not hurry.”

There was a faint perfume of lavender about the sleeve that brushed her cheek, and she saw the gold signet ring on the shapely hand that set down a cup of tea before her, followed by two fingers of buttered toast on a plate.

“Engaged!” she exclaimed, turning quickly to thank the courtly Gentleman. “Oh, no, sir,” she stammered, “we were only—” and broke off, unable to find the exact word that suited.

“Occupied, I should have said,” the Gentleman corrected himself with an entrancing smile, adding as he bent lower above her chair, “but is not ‘sir’ a trifle formal between us two? Though you have given me no Christian name, may we not find something a little more happily intimate than ‘sir’?”

This took her with such surprise that for a moment she hardly knew how best to answer, and that silly flush went careering over her cheeks and neck again. With a quick sideways glance she noticed that the Sailor was not listening, but was indeed examining dishes across the table with his telescope. Her interest in him dwindled a little too. It was rather absurd and a little childish, that telescope. That beard seemed suddenly less attractive somehow. It would be nice, she decided, awfully nice, in fact, if she could think of some better name than “Gentleman” or “sir,” a little more friendly and intimate, a shade more affectionate even. She searched for one, she racked her brains, but nothing occurred to her.

“May I venture a suggestion perhaps?” the soft voice whispered in her ear, his cheek close to hers. “‘Gentleman’ is so long, and ‘sir’ so formal! Might we not find a happy compromise in ‘Gent’?”

The idea delighted her the instant she heard it. Gent was so short and intimate; it was such a jolly name.

“Yes — Gent — my Gent,” she agreed instantly, smiling into his face, and the same moment the two cheeks touched and she gave him a happy kiss.

“Wind’s changing a bit — shifted a point to the south’ard — seems to me,” she heard the Sailor saying to himself with a chuckle. “But I’ll let you know when we start. A good blow won’t ’urt anybody!” He was not looking at her as he spoke, but was busy pouring his tea into his saucer, then blowing over it to cool it. Whether “blow” referred to the sea or his tea she did not know.

The Gentleman, meanwhile, his eyes sparkling from the kiss, had taken the chair on her other side, and was softly murmuring in her ear.

“Let us sip our tea while it is still hot,” he said, lifting his cup daintily, with his little finger exquisitely curved in the air. “These fellows in calico,” and he shot an aristocratic glance across her at the blowing Sailor, “are a little uncertain in their table manners.”

The Sailor merely went on chuckling. “Fingers was made before forks,” he remarked, looking across his saucer as he puffed. “A bit of a blow seems kind o’ natural to me.”

“Oh, please, please don’t quarrel,” Maria put in hastily between them. “I love you both, you know—”

“Your good ’ealth — Gent!” chuckled the Sailor, cutting her off, drinking noisily from the saucer.

“The same to you — Captain,” replied the Gentleman, rising to his feet and sweeping his white hat about. “And to you, my Lovely” — bowing to Maria — “my profound and unalterable devotion.” He drank delicately and noiselessly from the burning cup of tea. “Quarrels,” he whispered to her, “are impossible with us here. Such a thing is unknown. The Sailor and I, besides, are the oldest friends. We have shared the Barn together again and again, doubling up if somewhat unpleasantly, myself in silk, and that Sailor fellow in calico, exactly as you, my Beautiful, arranged us—”

“Oh, my Gent—” began Maria, ashamed and uncomfortable, “how awful of me — did I really? — I’ll never again—”

“There, there,” he purred consolingly, his hat now at the back of his head, giving him the fascinating air of a really dangerous rake, “we know that you will do everything possible for us. Your having come among us is itself a guarantee of that. You must graciously forgive any little — er — excesses” — he threw another pitying glance through his eyeglass at the Sailor, who was now soaking his buttered toast in his tea. “The wonder of it has affected our equilibrium here and there—”

She wished he would use shorter words, but of course a Gentleman could not use the speech of ordinary people.

“Tide’s jest on the turn,” the Sailor was half-shouting. “’Eave the anchor, lads, and let’s get a move on,” and a whole finger of sopping toast went into his mouth at a single gulp.

But when she turned her head again, after watching the performance for a moment, to say something to the Gentleman, she saw that he was looking down his lovely aquiline nose with great intensity, staring under the table where a white hand with long fingers came creeping up stealthily towards his coloured waistcoat. And behind it, peering up, a bright, sharp face with penetrating eyes was just visible. The fingers reached the dangling fob, then with the utmost skill abstracted the gold watch, and dipped out of sight the same second.

“Look out, Gent!” whispered Maria. “You’re being pickpocketed!”

But her whisper trembled, nor could she bring herself to use the pickpocket’s name, for the Thief had looked for a moment straight into her own eyes, and she had realized that for nothing in the whole world, no matter what he did, would she betray him. Her warning, besides being too late against such lightning cleverness, produced no effect whatever.

“That bauble!” mentioned the Gentleman contemptuously with a careless glance, his ringed finger stroking the empty pocket. “It has no meaning, anyhow, for it serves no purpose, does it? He is, moreover, as you made him, dear, the Perfect Thief, and has taken it at least ten thousand times already. It’s merely that our equilibrium is in jeopardy.” She felt for a moment as though the whole table was spinning round, as though she and all of the Fruit Stoners were balancing a little on its edge. “The Perfect Thief,” she repeated to herself, and saw him looking at her across the cloth as he stirred his tea, and managed his cake with deft, neat, tidy hands. It was queer how his face both attracted and repelled her. Making a great effort, she looked away, but a slight shock, as of electricity, had again run through her whole being. She turned hurriedly to the Gentleman, only to find that he had left her side and was now sitting in a big armchair at what seemed to her the head of the table, though a round table, of course, had no real head. The Tinker now occupied his former seat.

Oh, that delightful Tinker, with the fragrance of wood-smoke about him and the suggestion of wild roses — what in the world was he saying to her? Something about a knife that he was sharpening, a knife, a knife. Only the bewilderment of all these sudden changes confused her so that she did not catch his words quite clearly. In any case, he was too friendly and understanding to take offence. Such a companion too. She felt she could live with him forever. He would never nag or worry or ask her to repeat, would never tell her she was not listening to what he said.

“I’m not listening, anyhow,” she realized, “only he’s far too good-natured to mind. He’s so frightfully kind and sweet and gentle. And his laugh is — oh, it’s just like honey.”

She turned abruptly to him. “Tinker,” she said, “I think you’re a perfect dear,” and she kissed him on the cheek, while he went on talking exactly as before, while, as before, she hardly took in what he was saying. For she was thinking of her ribbon, her untidy hair, her general appearance, and wondering if everybody noticed the stupid blush that simply would not leave her cheeks. The blush seemed permanent, born of the inner excitement she was feeling. All this love and companionship and fun was so glorious and wonderful, too marvellous almost to last. There was the Gentleman waiting to take her out dining and dancing at palaces where only the most select could go, the Sailor waiting on the turn of the tide to go with her on a ravishing long voyage, the Tailor to make all the dresses she could possibly wear, the Ploughboy, Soldier, Tinker, all of them ready to indulge her lightest whim in their own particular way — oh, it was all too glorious and wonderful to be true, while yet it was true. Life! Life! Life! she thought….

“Yes, of course, I’ll fry bacon with you under a hedge,” she heard herself answering at last, “and I’m not an atom afraid of toads and moles and things. Oh, Tinker, I’d just love to!” And she clapped her hands in glee.

But even while she did so, talking over the joys of the open road with the Tinker, it was the eyes and face of the Thief that held her mind. Why was he so insistent, so important? Why did the eyes and face persist? He was nothing but a thief, even if a clever, perhaps a perfect, thief. He was horrible and dreadful, he had stolen her ribbon; she disliked, despised, detested him. And yet he was always there. He had even taken her Gent’s gold watch.

“Bother that blood of mine,” she exclaimed beneath her breath. “I keep on blushing like — a schoolgirl!”

She looked towards the Tinker again, thinking how gentle, kind and decent he was, how safe she was with him. He would never dream of taking her ribbon, for instance; no, nor any liberty either. Her heart warmed as she watched his weatherbeaten face with its deep crinkly lines. How worn, even threadbare, his clothes were, she thought. Often they must be soaked with cold rain, and such thin stuff could never keep the wind out. It was rather pitiful. She was aware of a deep feeling that he needed looking after, mothering. The instinct to do something for him stirred in her. She wanted to sew his buttons on.

“Tinker,” she asked abruptly, “have you got warm underclothes, I wonder, or are they full of holes? If you’ve got any socks that want mending, you know, I”

He looked at her strangely. “Oh, I’m orl right, thank you—” he began, when something interrupted, something behind her chair.

Whether it was a sound or a voice she could not say, but she turned quickly — to see the Soldier standing close. He stood like a figure of iron, straight and stiff. He seemed a solid mass of bright, gold braid, as if he were a General, a Field-Marshal, or some tremendous officer who commanded all the forces in the world. He was so wonderful that her breath caught, and all she could do was to smile sweetly and adoringly up into his graven face.

“Hullo!” she said softly. “Are you going to have your tea with me?” She felt her skin was flaming.

He saluted smartly, staring straight in front of him with no expression on his face.

And even in that brief second while she gazed at him, waiting for his answer, the thought poured over her again that she was, indeed, having a marvellous time, that it was all intensely enjoyable, and that, if a bit puzzling and incoherent somewhere, it was exceedingly worth while. Was there ever such a tea-party before? It rushed along helter-skelter, yet at the same time stood still, getting no further. It whirled in a circle, coming round and round again. It seemed an eternal sort of affair that need never end. All the Fruit Stoners jabbered away, full of their own grievances, proposals, schemes, plans for adventure with her. These seemed alternately meaningless and full of purpose. It was a rushing and tumultuous business rather, and the one thing that held steady was her inner certainty, her absolute conviction indeed, that she herself was somehow actually in control. She held the reins, the guiding strings, if and when she cared to use them. It was all the happy and exciting emotions she felt that persuaded her there was no hurry. She loved these emotions, she meant to enjoy them…. Immense intervals swept past, long periods flowed by; she was positive that she was older, older than she had been, while yet — oh, it was all too delightful and enjoyable to stop and think about. One and all, the Fruit Stoners were frightfully seductive — “and soon I may be too old to play,” she heard herself thinking, and wondered why on earth the idea crashed into her mind.

For this all occurred to her in the brief second as she turned her face up to the magnificent Soldier, asking herself at the same time where, oh where, had she known him first.

He was speaking now, answering her remark. It was a stern, cold, military voice she heard.

“Beg pardon, Miss,” he said gruffly yet at the same time respectfully, “but I’ve been sent to hen-quire wot’cher got on?”

He saluted again and looked straight before him, while the blood left her cheeks at this astonishing question.

“What I’ve got on!” she repeated indignantly, surprise putting further words out of her head for the moment.

“Wot’cher got on today, Miss?” said the Soldier again, a curious clank in his voice as though he were some huge, wonderful kind of automatic toy. “And they want to know very pertickler — asking your pardon, Miss.”

His meaning dawned upon her.

“Oh, you mean what I’m going to do!” she exclaimed, laughter now rising in her.

“That’s it, Miss. Wot’cher got on today.” And he stood more erect, more square, more stiff, more military-like than ever, waiting for her answer without any expression on his wooden face. He looked, at the same time, terribly handsome, she thought, the sort of man who would save one’s life without turning a hair, then walk carelessly away without even giving his name. His chest stood out like a drum, and she could see his muscles bulging against his tunic. Probably he could toss her over his shoulder as if she were a rabbit. Such strength! Such modesty! So grand and silent too! And what a fighter! Oh, he was a beautiful man.

“You know I think you’re a hero, Soldier,” she whispered, “in fact I know you are!” — the blood creeping up her neck again. “I wish — I wish” — she whispered so low that she could hardly hear it herself — “I wish I was in danger — now — so that you—”

A low, steady voice froze the marrow in her bones. “You are in danger.”

It came across her other shoulder, and she turned as though her head had been jerked round by wires to see the old bearded face of the Apothecary gazing calmly at her. The blood retreated from her own, the whirling excitement died, the din and confusion about her withdrew. There was a sudden calm, a queer sudden silence, a sudden coldness, too, that caught her heart. She stared hard into those grand, thoughtful, rheumy eyes.

“In danger?” she whispered. “Me?”

The old head bent slightly in a little nod, but the eyes were not lowered. For a flashing second the queer notion came to her that he alone of all the eight was real, the other Fruit Stoners shadowy as mechanical phantasms in a dream, or at least, that he was more real than they were. Gone before she could seize it, swept away, yet leaving in its train a faint uneasiness in her nerves. There is something more real than all this, ran a deep whisper through her, somewhere, yes, there is. Then this, too, vanished.

“In danger, my ‘Pothecary?” she heard herself whispering, as the wise old head rose again from its gentle nod.

“Your five minutes,” replied the cool, steady voice, lower than before, “cannot last forever.”

The words fell like drops of ice into the sudden inner silence that enveloped her, heard evidently by no one but herself, while behind them, also from the heart of that inner silence, rose the faint voice that was like the beating of her own heart: Tick tock! Tick tock! Tick tock!

“Answer his question,” murmured the Apothecary’s ghostly whisper. “It comes from all of us. Answer — before it is too late — and then act.”

“To know wot’cher got on now, if you please?” clanked the military voice behind her chair, as though he was asking it for the first time and not a second had passed meanwhile.

•  X  •

“To know wot’cher got on today,” clashed through her mind. “To know what you’ve got on, what you want to do?”

“Answer his question. It comes from all of us. Answer — and then act. Before it is too late…!” The spoken words, the inner whisper too, banged through her whole being like an angry bell. It was as if the Soldier’s question sprang out of herself, as if it was she who had made him ask it, as if — almost — she herself had uttered the actual words.

She rose automatically to her feet. Here was something she must deal with. She must speak. Possibly, she must act.

In the instant of rising, of straightening her knees and lifting up her body, a flood of thoughts and realizations poured over her in a great tidal wave. Such is the speed of thought, of emotional realization, that this torrential flood swept over her instantaneously. The tumultuous turmoil of what she felt and thought, if it seemed an eternity, lasted actually but a single Tick of that horrible Tick tock! that beat her heart, as it were, to pieces.

“Before it is too late.”

“Tick tock! Tick tock!…”

One thing stood out with appalling, horrifying clarity — she was here with a purpose and she had forgotten what that purpose was. She had come to find something, a pearl of great price, and what that “something” was, that Pearl of Great Price, she had not the least idea — because it had left her memory.

She had grown older. Her time was limited. She had Five Minutes by the clock.

Before it is too late. Tick tock!

Too late for what?

“Oh, God!” she gasped inside, as her frozen knees grew straight.

“Five Minutes!” she gasped again, as the icy breath drew rushing through her lungs!

It all rushed back upon her — that there was something she had come to find, and that her time was short. Horribly short it was, and it was shortening while the inner Tick tock! in her heart beat remorselessly away.

The new feelings in her lasted hours, it seemed. Actually, they passed through her in a second. Yes, new. So many things she had thought, had said to herself before in empty words, now suddenly held meaning. For the first time she understood them. Never again could she kiss a Fruit Stoner — quite as before, for instance. No longer did she want to sew their buttons on or mend their socks; that maternal impulse was replaced by something different. The kiss of innocence, the kiss of passion, were separate and different things. She had altered in herself. She had changed. She had grown older — older, yes. That was clear as day. Life was passing, whether she realized it or not. She had felt it coming — the loss of her ribbon, the anxiety about her appearance, her vexation that no mirror was to be found.

“Oh, heavens,” she thought, while her stiff and frozen knees grew straighter, trying to support her body, “I am older — I have grown older…! My time is shorter…!”

Too late! The Apothecary’s words blazed dreadfully across her mind, while the sense of panic hurry scattered all her faculties. Too late to play … too late to search … too late to find … ah! Yet not too late to remember perhaps…!

Heavens! Why had she dawdled away her precious minutes? Why had she let herself be amused and seduced by all this eating, this fun with the Sailor, the Gentleman, the Tinker and Tailor and Soldier and Ploughboy, this excitement about food, about making love — all humbug love at best — when there was something of real importance that she had forgotten? Delirious and delicious though it was, it was not real, this fun, this pleasure, it was not genuine. The real, the genuine thing was the Pearl of Great Price she was here to find. That was the only object worth a moment’s thought….

Only what was it?

The delightful Fruit Stoners seemed in a conspiracy against her. Did they not deliberately combine to bewilder and entice her with their golden fripperies and entanglements? Were their promises of banquets, voyages, picnics, battles, dresses and the rest, all so much lovely gossamer? Did they wish, intend, to keep her here, a prisoner of pleasure and enjoyment?

While her left knee straightened, these upsetting thoughts rushed over her in a tumultuous tidal wave.

That she had grown older was a definite, outstanding fact. It made her gasp, it made her ache, it brought a sense of tears into her throat. The pity of it! The remorselessness! The drive and drain of it! The futility of resistance, the sense of hopelessness it gave her! Older … and no way of preventing it…!

Over her then swept a queer realization suddenly of the many-starred phantasmagoria of the life she had entered. If attractive and enticing, it was also meaningless and incoherent. It numbed, it stupefied her. A doubt even as to its reality disturbed her. How real were these exciting Fruit Stoners and their purposes? The confusing roar and rush of their existence were in her blood already; she shared the joy and adventure of their lives. But did it mean anything, this confusing, fatuous, unintelligible jumble that was her life?…

Her left knee had straightened, the right now followed it; on both legs she stood firm and upright. Hardly two seconds had passed since she began to rise. She was now up, she was about to speak. There was something of great importance she had to say. “But, glory be,” said Maria to herself, “what is it?”

Her mind had gone blank, as though a sponge had swept it clean.

She faced the table, the ring of upturned faces, all watching, staring, waiting. There was an intense silence. And it was at this moment that something happened, something that galvanized her into self-control again, bringing back a measure of realization, even of memory too. It seemed a nightmare happening. It emerged, surely, from some nightmare world, this tall, swift, passing figure.

From the shadows at the far end of the great room it issued; it rushed along, its face looking straight ahead, turning neither right nor left; it moved with flowing stride, and silently, yet not quite silently, for the ominous Tick tock! accompanying it grew louder as it advanced. The faint beating that seemed always in her heart became audible now in the very air about the table.

She saw the sharp, keen face, the sloping shoulders, the black coat with the long tails that flapped like the feathers of an angry, watchful bird, the striped trousers, one leg shorter than the other — the nightmare figure of the Man who Wound the Clocks, the Author of her terribly brief Five Minutes. And, reaching the spot directly opposite to her, though without stopping his swift passage, he turned his head for an instant, gazing straight into her face. He looked hard at her. It was a tiger’s look. There was a tawny touch. No sound left the tight, thin lips, but there was another sound that issued, apparently, from his whole body, and it was a slow, hoarse, grinding sound.

His head turned away again almost instantly, looking straight in front as before; there was a flash of striped trousers, of flying coat-tails, of something streaked black and yellow, the grinding sound hung in the air. Horrors! The strike was coming!

She stood, in that second, as if arrested, petrified. Yet there was no strike. It was the clear sound of her own ringing voice that drowned that ominous grinding. But the shock had galvanized her memory, and the knowledge of what she had to do crashed upon her like a hurtling projectile.

“I know what I’ve got on,” she cried out in a panic. “I know now. I’ve come here to look for something. There’s something I must find. And you all promised you would help me search. I must begin at once! Before he strikes!”

She looked frantically about the room; she pointed with her outstretched hand.

The figure glared fixedly at her. His Up was curled as in a frozen grin. She saw his teeth. It was a tiger’s grin.

“That’s the man who gave me my five minutes,” she cried breathlessly. No answer came, no sign of interest even. “And I’m behind-hand already! Perhaps too late already! Oh! Oh! He’s going to strike!” she called out with desperate and passionate impatience.

The ring of faces that stared so fixedly at her turned somewhat listlessly in the direction where she pointed, then turned idly back again. There was no figure visible; the Man who Wound the Clocks had vanished, and the awful grinding sound, the audible Tick tock! too, vanished with him. Only the faint beating in her heart went on as before, though evidently none could hear it but herself. A collective smile, she saw, spread over the faces that now gazed up again into her own.

“There was no strike, was there? You didn’t hear anything, did you?” Her voice was shrill with almost feverish anxiety.

The collective smile grew broader, the faces almost beamed, the eyes were twinkling more and more. They knew no anxiety evidently, no hurry either, these leisurely Fruit Stoners. But why, oh why, couldn’t they say something?

“You saw him, didn’t you? You heard him?” her voice rang out, to which the only answer was a collective shaking of the smiling heads. “He went like a flash, but he was there,” she repeated, “the Man who Winds the Clocks and gave me my five minutes.”

“Man who Winds the Clocks … five minutes…” they began whispering among themselves, turning to one another as if in amused surprise and question.

“You’ve given him the slip again anyhow,” laughed the Sailor gaily, sweeping the room with his telescope.

“He’ll never strike in ’ere,” exclaimed the Tinker, sharpening his knife idly with a merry grin.

“Not while you’re with us, Maria,” chuckled the Tailor, and snapped his big shears.

“Not while we’re with you, Maria,” agreed the Ploughboy, wiping his eyes, though his lips were set for a guffaw.

“Maria” — but how wrong that sounded. “Maria” was a child’s name. And she was no longer a child. Maria, indeed! Marigold, they should have said, Miss Marigold even! It was not impertinence, she knew, but it was rather careless just the same. This flashed across her mind as she heard it.

“Maria, Marigold, Marigold, Maria. Miss Marigold…” beat rhythmically through her head, keeping time with the Tick tock! in her heart.

The Gentleman, she realized, was on his feet.

“Oh, my Gent—” she began, when his voice drowned her own. The Soldier, she noticed, had just whispered something in his ear, making his report perhaps. Whatever happens, she thought swiftly, I must remember my search. She held on to that with tooth and nail, so to speak. Slowly, she sat down again and listened.

“It was I, Miss Marigold,” began the Gentleman in his suave, musical voice, raising his hat with consummate grace, “who sent the Army to inquire what your intentions might be…” and his voice trailed away into a long, beautifully modulated series of wordy phrases that she hardly followed, for she found her attention wandering again as his voice meandered on and on. What a lovely voice, what a lovely man! “Miss Marigold”! Why not the intimate and affectionate “Maria”? This hung in the forefront of her mind, while behind it she still gripped with tooth and nail to her urgent decision to begin her search — the search for the Pearl of Great Price she had come to find.

There … at last his lovely sentences were running down, were coming to their end, and she must get up and reply. “What I’ve got on, what I want to do?” A moment ago, she realized, her reply would have been, “I want to play, I would like some sort of game, a romp,” but now, suddenly, it was no longer play she wanted. “I’m too old for play, too grown up. It’s too late for play!” And this realization brought a shock with it. All in a moment, it seemed, the change had come.

His voice at last ran downhill and buried itself in his coloured waistcoat somewhere, inaudible, the last words murmured in a whisper, while he bowed, swept his hat across his heart, then sat down and screwed his eyeglass in more tightly. The faces of the Company turned towards herself, all moving together as though a swivel worked. She rose to her feet at once. “I must tell them I’ve got to begin my search, begin my search, begin my search,” whirled in her brain as she got up. “They must help me look, help me look, help me to remember, help me to remember. That’s what I’ve got to tell them. That’s all I want to say.”

A rather good opening sentence thanking the Gentleman for his charming words, left her mind completely. She used instead the words that came to her naturally, pouring them out spontaneously.

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Gentleman, Ploughboy, Apothecary, Thief,” her clear young voice rang out through the great room, “I’ve got this on: I want to look for something. I’ve come here to find something — something of extreme, of ultimate importance. And my time is short, frighteningly short. I must begin my search at once, without a second’s delay. And — you’ve already promised to help me. I claim your help.” Staring hard into the ring of upturned faces, she was in the act of sitting down again, when another sentence came rushing up and out: “I’ve already looked in the Big House and the Little House, so that leaves only the Pig Stye and the Barn. And we’ll begin, please, with the Barn.” Plump, she was sitting down again. Her reply was made. “The Barn,” she added finally with a sort of shout.

For an instant a deep silence reigned, but for an instant only. The chorus then broke out, and it was a bewildering chorus, whirling like a storm about her. Everybody spoke at once. There seemed not merely eight Fruit Stoners, but a score, a hundred. It was difficult, impossible almost, to disentangle the separate voices. All, too, had sprung to their feet, gesticulating, waving their arms like a forest of branches in a wind, while moving from chair to chair round the table, giving the impression of a ring that turned and spun. The faces, so rapid were their movements, merged and separated alternately, and all were lined and crinkly like — yes, like fruit stones — like a single, huge, composite fruit-stone visage even.

Here and there she picked out a definite voice, attaching it to its owner, but so swiftly, instantaneously even, that both face and voice became merged again hopelessly in the whirling ring of sound and movement. The sentences reached her simultaneously, it seemed, as in a shower of pelting rain where yet each drop makes its sharp impression. Oh, the glamour and tumultuous whirl of life!

“This year, next year, some time, never!”

“Silk, satin, calico, rags!”

“Big House, Little House, Pig Stye, Barn!”

“Pig Stye, Barn, Pig Stye, Barn, Barn, Barn!”

“The Man who Winds the Clocks!”

“Five minutes, five minutes, five minutes!” These words rolled and roared in a continuous chorus behind certain definite sentences that reached her:

“Ready when you are, Maria. The sea’s a-sparkling and there’s a bellyful of wind!”

It was the Sailor’s voice, careless and merry as a sandboy, calling her to adventure, while close behind it boomed the Soldier’s steady cry, “Company — march! It’s a forlorn hope, but you and I are leading it. To death or glory!” stern as a roll of drums.

Breaking across them both like a snatch of song came the Tinker’s drone, “Any old knives to mend, to mend! The ’oneysuckle’s sweetest when the sun goes down, and ’ere’s a grand ’edge for sleeping,” merging into the Ploughboy’s quiet call with its scent of hay and clover, “The cows is milked, only the chickens waitin’ to be fed.”

Sharp and snappy followed another piping cry with the metallic click of scissors, “All ready to try on now for the final fitting and the best of all. This way, if you please, this way!”

Though all cried simultaneously, she yet heard the phrases separately and distinctly, offering pleasure, adventure, happiness. It was the enticing sweet cry of life itself. The Gentleman’s seductive phrase disturbed her rather too sharply: “The banns are up.” His courtly tones broke through the chorus, “and the Best Man’s on his way,” though there was another voice, low as a whisper yet terribly, compellingly penetrating, that sent a shock like lightning through her, its owner unmistakable, “I’ll show you how it’s done, Maria, when you come to me — teach you in a jiffy, I will. We’ll take everything together when the ’and deceives the eye!” Only the Thief could speak like that and stir that curious, sharp distaste, yet with the deep, curious afterglow of glamour.

The voices rose and fell, the ring of faces swirled, each separate call found its way straight into her heart, for all these invitations expressed exactly the things she longed to do and experience. The collective call plunged into her irresistibly, as though one single yearning overmastered her with immense power. If the idea of banns being up already startled her, there was hidden sweetness in the sudden surprise it held; if that other penetrating whisper roused some touch of furious dislike and shrinking, there was yet a terrible attractiveness about it that she knew was inescapable.

One last voice, however, amid all this incoherent jumble of noisy cries, it seemed, was missing. It came now, last of all. It fell, by chance as it were, into a brief, sudden lull.

“The Barn,” came the quiet words that seemed muffled through the tangled beard, “the Barn, before it is too late.”

It dropped with the solemnity of a warning bell into the tumultuous uproar which was the collective voice of the world beating against her ears. It made, as it were, a stillness about her, it brought a touch of coldness, too. None of the others, judging by the way they were going on, had heard it, but she, Maria, had heard it, and it brought her to her feet again with a sudden leap, half-frantic but wholly determined.

“Stop!” she shouted imperiously, holding out her hand. “Stop this instant! Or — or” — the threat came out spontaneously, as a surprise even to herself — “or I’ll just forget you all!”

The effect was magically effective. The whirling crew subsided like burst bubbles in a glass of soda-water. The Tinker, in the act of coming up to her, sank into the nearest chair. The Tailor followed suit, and so quickly that he almost sat down on his dreadful shears. The Sailor’s dance ended in a slither, as he whipped neatly into a third seat. The Ploughboy flopped abruptly, the straw he was chewing dropping from his opened mouth, and the Soldier, attempting a clumsy salute, jerked himself stiffly on to a fifth. The Thief also came to a dead stop, yet so cleverly and subtly, that he gave the impression he had never moved at all. The Gentleman, alone gracefully nonchalant among them all, resumed his seat calmly, screwing in his eyeglass and adjusting his top hat as he did so. And the Apothecary — ah, the Apothecary, whose low warning it was that had brought her to her senses — the Apothecary, she saw, having never left his chair at all, remained where he was, his eyes cast down in thought, while he went on searching absent-mindedly for a crumb that was lost in the tangle of his beard.

The whole violent whirl subsided in a moment, the shouting uproar ceased. A deep hush fell upon the great room, where all now sat motionless and silent in their chairs. The eight heads and sixteen eyes turned to Maria, still standing in her place.

“I mean to begin and search in the Barn at once,” she announced firmly in a tone of quiet authority, “and I count upon your promise to help — help me to hunt as well as to remember.”

The eight heads bowed like one man, and it was a bow obviously of assent.

“Willingly,” said the Gentleman, rising and taking his hat off, while a murmur of agreement ran round the entire table.

“Thank you, my Fruit Stoners, thank you,” replied Maria, though she could tell by their faces that their help was not likely to be of value. They wore the same vague, polite expression as when she spoke of the Clock Man and her Five Minutes, the only difference being that their expression held no hint of amusement, far less of laughter. Earnest, even slightly troubled perhaps, but certainly not indifferent.

“And may we inquire,” resumed the Gentleman, on his feet again, “the nature of the search? What, precisely, the object is you desire to find?”

“That s just the bother,” Maria informed him with blunt honesty, “I’ve forgotten what it is. I knew,” she added, “when I first came here, but now it’s left my mind completely.”

“Ah!” murmured the Gentleman, with his perfect, non-committal smile. Did he shrug his shoulders? She really could not say.

“And I think you’re to blame,” Maria went on boldly. “All of you, I mean,” she qualified quickly. “You make me so happy that I forget. Your invitations and proposals” — she felt herself stupidly blushing — “are so wonderful. I think of nothing else.”

“We have waited your coming so long,” apologized the Gentleman in his blandest voice, “that we feel there is nothing — nothing we can do — nothing adequate — to show our overpowering sense of—”

“Is it going to be worth while when you do find it, Maria?” interrupted the Sailor bluntly.

“And ’ow are you going to reckernize it if you don’t know wot it is?” the Soldier rather gruffly followed suit.

“And reely valuable, is it?” the Thief chimed in with a sly grin.

“Everything,” mumbled the Apothecary in his beard, “is here. So a search is bound to find it sooner or later.”

These several interruptions came in a shower all at once, and so abruptly that even the suave, self-possessed Gentleman seemed nonplussed. Pretending he had not heard them, he began to brush his top-hat with his sleeve.

“What would its measurements be, do you suggest, Miss?” asked the Tailor, fingering his tape, but his meek voice was drowned the same moment by the Ploughboy who, leaning forward with both elbows on the table, cried in loud, earthy tones, as though a bull bellowed:

“Tell us what it is, Miss. Then we shall know.”

“I can’t think,” cried Maria in desperation. “That’s just it, you see.” She gazed into his friendly face. She saw the smile of sympathy spread over the broad features.

“I understand, Miss,” he said slowly. “Thinking’s awful hard.”

But the Gentleman, she saw, was sweeping his hat about and bowing. These interruptions were ridiculous, his gesture said. He was evidently on the point of another long-winded sentence when Maria, determined to stop him, took charge again.

“Fruit Stoners,” she began, “I simply cannot answer all your questions truthfully — because I simply do not know. I only can tell you that I have come here to find something that is of — of supreme importance to me. It’s the reason why I’m here at all. It is, to me, a matter of life and death, I believe. I must look for it and find it. For if I don’t — there was no sense in my coming here at all. When I see it, I shall know it. It is my Pearl of Great Price, and by God I mean to find it.” And then she added in a louder voice, “Before I am too late!”

Such was the determination and authority in her voice that the words were again followed by a deep silence. No voice was raised. A faint sound of shuffling feet was audible beneath the table, but no one moved visibly. All eyes remained fixed upon her face, but they were expressionless eyes. The Gentleman’s mouth hung slightly open, a proof that he, at any rate, had nothing he could find to say. To her surprise, the old Apothecary then rose up slowly. So great was the tension that though he first wiped his stained fingers on the Gentleman’s shiny coat, the latter remained unaware that he had done so.

“Our promise is given,” he mumbled, “and we will keep it. Whether this search pertains to her world or to ours, to her time or to our own, we need not inquire. Let us be content to honour our commitments faithfully. It may be — and can we question it in view of her shattering arrival in our midst — it may be, I repeat, that there are more worlds than one. Let us go, then, to the Barn! Let us search with open minds!”

His voice, as he proceeded, had changed from its first mumbling sound to a note of clear-toned power, as though wisdom, learning, even authority lay behind it. That the few sentences held his audience was unmistakable. They listened with deference, if a trifle uneasily perhaps. Maria herself was conscious that she shivered slightly. The Apothecary seemed suddenly head and shoulders greater than them all. If they did not comprehend him, they were undeniably impressed. But it was what he said next that brought the most extraordinary change into the room. It was two words only, but it was the way he uttered them that perhaps explained the change. For as he spoke the four syllables, the hush deepened profoundly, and even the rustling, as the whole company of Fruit Stoners dropped on their knees and hid their faces behind folded hands, was scarcely audible. With bowed heads all knelt and hid their faces.

And the two words, the four syllables, the old Apothecary pronounced sent through Maria a great wave of hope and yearning.

“Jack Robinson,” was what she heard.

She also heard the low voices about the table issue from the lowered, hidden faces. “Amen, amen,” came from them in accents of great awe. A majesty of sound like a rushing, roaring wind swept through the room. It entered, tore across, and passed out. She heard it, felt its touch against her face and body, but she saw no visible outline, it was gone.

The Apothecary sat down again, the Fruit Stoners raised their heads once more, the Gentleman, waving his hat, was on his feet.

“We shall meet, then, in the Barn, Maria,” he said with an entrancing smile.

“Thank you,” replied Maria. She felt suddenly exhausted, tired, as though she wanted to sleep, and yet she felt extraordinarily stimulated. “Before the search begins I think I had better rest a little.”

And she crossed the great hall, passed up the wide staircase, and walked slowly down the corridor towards the door of Queen Elizabeth’s Room. Her sense of panic hurry, of frantic haste, had left her, the fear of being too late was gone. “That marvellous name!” she whispered in her heart. “That glorious, tremendous name!”

•  XI  •

What thoughts, what emotions were in her at this moment she hardly knew herself. There was now no press, no urgent need for haste; ample leisure and ample time were hers, and it was due, this wondrous change, to the power of Jack Robinson. She was not in her own world, but in that of the Fruit Stoners. That, at least, she realized, and the feeling of peace it brought was marvellous.

While still determined to search — oh, yes — the sense of frantic hurry had left her. It could wait a little after all. She wanted to rest first.

At the top of the stairs she paused an instant and looked back, and the Fruit Stoners, she saw with a smile, were already busily searching among themselves in a muddled, futile way. They were looking under the chairs and tables, lifting cups and saucers and peering underneath them, hunting even in their own pockets. They were very leisurely about it, turning this way and that, keeping somehow their old circular formation, and moving generally, it occurred to her, almost automatically, even mechanically, so that, for a second, the picture she watched below her suggested an unreality of dream, if not of nightmare. But one of the figures, she then noticed with a start, had broken out of the ring, and was following her upstairs. The Gentleman, she remembered, when she spoke of going up to rest, had made a gesture of conducting her himself, but his deep bow was so endlessly prolonged that she had slipped away before he straightened up again. This following figure, moreover, was not the Gentleman. It was the Thief. Invariably quicker than any of the others, he had nipped in like a flash and seized his chance. Already he was close upon her heels, then, quick as lightning, had actually passed her and now stood ready to open the door for her as she reached it.

Thus it was that she found herself walking towards him and that he stood waiting for her. It placed her at a slight disadvantage. Why had she not walked faster and got there first? A small detail, she reflected, but stupid, very stupid. It annoyed her. Yet with a certain excitement she prepared to deal with him.

“You’re the Thief,” she said when she was close, making to brush past him though his hand was on the door-knob. She could think of nothing else to say — nothing better at any rate. She felt that she was again blushing, and the stupidity, the idiocy, of this made her furious with herself.

“That’s me,” he agreed. “But — your Thief, please.”

Was he going to be insolent? If so — well, she could easily deal with that, and of course he knew it. But his expression was grave and deferential, his manner merely that of a gentleman opening a door for a lady. There was no suggestion of anything offensive, she decided. How ridiculous he looked, trying to play the gentleman.

“What do you want then — my Thief?” she asked, patiently pausing in spite of herself and conscious of an odd tenderness rising in her.

“All I can get,” was his blunt reply, looking her straight in the eyes.

Maria thought a moment, hesitated. She saw, too, that he took note of the hesitation.

“Yes, that’s quite natural, I suppose,” she said quickly, trying to cover up that foolish hesitation with a self-possession she hardly felt. “You’ve taken my ribbon already,” she added, wondering at the same moment why she did not make him give it back at once. She felt confused a little; that idiotic blush, now mounting from her neck, stole something of her self-confidence perhaps. The Sailor’s shell, she remembered, lay in her pocket. And she was wearing an amber necklace.

“Yes,” agreed the Thief, “and I’m keeping it.”

Maria stared at him. But she stared because she found it difficult to take her eyes away from his, as though, besides their penetrating quality, there was a sort of light and fire in them that fascinated her. While she inwardly shrank from him, she was aware of another feeling overtopping her revulsion.

“You may,” she heard herself saying. And then she paused again. “Is there anything else I can give you that will make you happier?” she asked presently.

He shook his head.

“You don’t care about what’s given?”

He shook his head again.

“Only what you can — take?” Why had she not said “steal” as she had first intended?

“By my own power, my own right,” said the Thief proudly, drawing himself up so that he looked for a moment rather extraordinary.

At the same time Maria, who had been watching him intently all the while, noticed that his eyes settled more than once upon her amber necklace. His hands, too, had long ago left the door-knob, and were now constantly on the move, shifting swiftly here and there, darting about in the air with extreme rapidity, as he gesticulated, the long, slender fingers literally all over the place. The last words and the way he said them sent a sudden deep thrill down her spine that she could not explain. She admired him for talking like that. He was not a sneak-thief merely.

“And — when you’ve — taken — everything there is to take, you will be happy, my Thief?” she asked. “Is that it?”

He nodded again, but with a curious smile. “You too,” he said, in such a low tone that she was not sure she caught the words correctly. Her hand, ; too, was now upon the door-knob, and its rattle, as she began to turn it, drowned his voice rather.

“Tell me one thing, my Thief” — she asked a final question, shivering a little as she spoke — “if you found, by chance, the great thing I’m searching for — would you keep it, or would you give it to me?”

He did not hesitate. Turning his big fiery eyes full upon her, he answered immediately: “Keep it.”

“Why?”

“When you find it, Maria, you will go away — go back.”

Maria felt frightened. A deep uneasiness rose in her. She opened the door wide to go in. His fingers seemed everywhere. Did he somehow manage to lift her hand to his lips and leave a kiss of respectful homage on it? She hardly knew. His whole manner, she saw, suddenly bespoke reverence, worship, awe. It both bewildered and comforted her. Yet certainly, as she brushed past him to enter the room, he must have touched her somehow, for the same electric shock she had felt before raced through her body. But it was a confusing moment, and she could not be quite certain what actually had happened. He spoke as well. He said some rather extraordinary words — that is, if she caught them correctly: “When I’ve taken all, you will remember…” but the same instant she had closed the door behind her, and the Thief had gone.

As she closed the door, facing the big room for the second time, the words rang on in her ears, with the sudden odd feeling that they were her own, that she herself somehow had spoken them, or, at least, that it was she who had made him use them. But this was nonsense, obviously, and the strange notion disappeared. They had no meaning anyhow. The interest of finding herself in this great bedroom a second time filled her mind. It looked exactly the same, of course. Why should it not? How long was it, she asked herself, since she had been here last? Was it long or short? It seemed such a little time ago, while yet it seemed also a long, long time, ages and ages even. Though this sense of interval puzzled her again, it did not really matter; no, it did not matter in the least. These odd jumps and intervals and periods seemed quite natural; feeling older and younger again seemed natural too; it no longer startled or upset her. For a long stretch she was certainly a child, then, with a sudden leap, as it were, she realized that she was older. It was not a gradual business at all, this change of age; and though the moment of sudden realization startled her uneasily at first, she became used to it almost immediately.

Well, so it was, she said to herself, and so it is, and she began to examine the room, walking round it, thinking how oddly familiar it seemed, and looking, chiefly, for a mirror, which she did not find.

“Well, I came up here to rest,” said Maria to herself, “and so, I suppose, I’d better rest,” and she sat down on the edge of the huge bed, dangling her legs, only to find that rest was the last thing she really wanted now. Her thoughts were whirling too violently for rest.

Such strange details popped up first. That “Oh, God!” for instance. Why had she suddenly said “Oh, God!”? It had shocked her even as she said it, and yet she had meant it earnestly, literally, reverently. Was she a child, then, or a young woman now? Or was she both at once? Her thoughts at this moment, at any rate, were hardly a child’s. She had got older somehow. Was growing up just a thin pretence after all, merely a pose through which the child keeps bursting up spontaneously? Could one be both at once like that? The Fruit Stoners could apparently. For them, two things simultaneously seemed possible, and natural. But that was due to their queer time, of course, their queer eternal present, without past or future.

“Anyhow,” she reminded herself again, “this isn’t thinking like a child. These thoughts aren’t a child’s thoughts. I must be older, or I couldn’t have said ‘Oh, God!’ like that.”

And she looked down reflectingly at her dangling legs.

“How old, then, am I really?” swept through her with a sharp, anxious twinge. She examined herself as thoroughly as was possible without a mirror.

“Am I pretty, I wonder?” she asked herself. “I expect so. My legs are, anyhow.” She pulled up her skirt above her thighs and admired them, their smoothness, their milky whiteness. Her bust, too, she noticed, was a little rounded. She was slim and long and supple. “Oh, perhaps, I’m lovely!” she exclaimed. “Perhaps I’m even a beauty!” A deep sigh escaped her. Her thoughts flew to the Fruit Stoners, eight of them, and all men. All adored her too.

It was very troubling.

“And I’m — engaged — to the Gentleman,” flashed up. The banns were already announced, the best man on the way. But there was the fascinating Sailor too, the ravishing Sailor with his gold earrings and his rich brown skin. There was a weakness in her for the Soldier, too, though some instinct whispered sharply that that was perhaps chiefly gold braid. Then the Tinker and the Ploughboy — a softness for one, an undeniable sweetness for the other. Even the sallow Tailor had his fugitive claim, and the Apothecary — ah, bless him, her’Pothecary she really loved, even if he scared her rather. She lowered her skirt an inch or two.

Was that all of them, all eight, or was there someone missing? Had she missed one out?… It was enough, at any rate. If there was another, he didn’t matter. Following some instinct that refused to disclose itself, she abruptly pulled down her skirts as low as they would go, hiding her pretty legs.

Her thoughts whirled and flamed and rushed and sparkled. It lay beyond her to control them. She leaped from the bed and walked round the room again, looking at everything, wondering why it was both familiar yet unremembered, striding to and fro, rapidly, lithely, gracefully, unaware that subconsciously all the time she was really hunting for a mirror.

Yes, a long interval had slipped by somehow since she was here last. It startled her.

“I’ve been through a lot since I lay here last with — yes, with Judas, my black cat…!” she repeated aloud, coming back to the bed again.

Her thoughts creamed up and bubbled like milk in a milking-pail, each bubble bursting into formlessness before she could examine it….

This growing up — what was it, after all? It was just adding up experiences and thinking about them afterwards, while the body that had known them became too floppy to record them as before. But the mind — oh, yes, the mind skimmed the cream off the results and then became too cautious to repeat them. But the heart — oh, yes, the heart just sweetened and grew rich, or soured and grew tiny. But she — yes, she herself — oh, yes, she gathered up the results of crumpling body, shrinking mind, crinkling or expanding heart, and realized that it all meant something, or else gave up the search and sank away into nothingness….

Maria sprang from the bed, gripped with an awful terror. Were these thoughts her own? Where did they come from, these rather mature and cynical reflections? A mortal chilliness stole over her. She shivered icily. She flung herself back and buried her face in the pillow. She felt old, old, old. Old as the hills. Her whole life was passing, going, wasted. She had done nothing, accomplished nothing, missed the object of coming here, of being alive. It was too late. These were the thoughts of a tired, worn-out being — the final thoughts. Oh, God…!

Her face dug deeper and deeper into the soft pillow — and came up against something warm and soft and fragrant suddenly, something that smelt like heaven and felt like it too, something that emitted a lazy purring sound, something that she loved — in childhood.

She straightened up, dragging the reluctant Judas with her.

“You black darling monster!” she cried. “Pretending you didn’t see me! Pretending you weren’t there at all!”

She snuggled against him, hugging him with all the absurd headlong affection of a child again.

“And I only left you a moment ago, or rather you left me. I saw you tear away like a streak of black lightning — oh, yes, I did. And the moment you’d caught your mouse and swallowed it, you slipped back in here to sleep it off, did you?”

Her recent thoughts had vanished. Only a muddled ghost of them remained. The anguish and the biting sadness, at least, had disappeared.

“Now, Judas,” she went on, talking into a sleeping face that hung sideways yet kept its eyes tight shut, “I’m going to tell you something. Now, listen! I’m at this moment in the very prime of life. But after the prime, I go downhill, don’t I? Well, you understand that, of course. And the next thing is — that I’ve got to look for something. I’ve got to search and find it, and it’s a pearl of great price, my black beauty, a pearl of great price. I jolly well mean to find it too, make no mistake about that. Only,” she went on to her irresponsive pet, and with a shade less conviction, due doubtless to the fact that no sign of sympathy was forthcoming, “only, I think it’s a pity rather — don’t you? — not to enjoy my prime and my loveliness — for you know I’m lovely, don’t you, darling? — instead of wasting it in a difficult and tiresome search? I may just as well wait till I am actually going downhill a little. That will be time enough, I feel. And searching downhill’s easier too, isn’t it? So, as you evidently agree…”

Tick tock! Tick tock! Tick tock!

It was so faint, so distant, it might have been buried inside the warm fragrant body she fondled. But it was audible, none the less. Her fingers weakened, so that the cat fell back into his deep sleep upon the pillow, while Maria sat bolt upright and rigid, listening with her whole body in an icy room.

Tick tock! Tick tock! Tick tock!

Was it growing louder, coming closer? She could not tell. Was there a grinding sound behind its dreadful beat? Though it filled her ears, she could not truly say. She felt frozen. She could not move. She could not think. She could only listen.

Strange words rose in her mind, only half heard and far away.

“The night cometh when no man can work!” Where did that come from? Why was it familiar? Like some dark insect it darted up to sting her.

“When all is taken you will be happy — and remember.”

It came with a shock she could not understand. Where had she heard it? Who — who had used those words? In a flash she saw the great penetrating eyes hanging in the air before her face, the voice, the figure.

“Oh, Thief — my Thief!” she cried aloud — then wondered half dizzily why she called for help to one whom she despised.

Nothing happened, of course, in response to her foolish cry; there was no answer, no one came. She sat and shivered, listening, listening.

Tick tock! Tick tock!

She was being watched, she knew; someone was observing her; the hideous sensation of hurry began to grow; her blood was racing, her heart was beating. Panic was close upon her. Her time was short. Her Five Minutes were nearly up. She was too late, too late. She had made no search, looked for nothing, found nothing, wasted her time, lost her opportunities. There would come, any instant now, a grinding noise, a strike…! Oh, God…!

She clenched her hands so tightly that the nails dug into the flesh, and her lip was bleeding where she bit it. Her mouth went dry, breath failed her, there was ice against her skin — when suddenly there flamed up into her collapsing mind the memory of a name, the name, the power, the Apothecary had used.

“Jack Robinson … Jack Robinson,” she murmured, and fell upon her knees against the bed.

“Jack Robinson” she repeated, breathing it with intense faith and fervent belief against her folded hands. “Jack Robinson…” and there came a soft majestic roaring as of a rushing wind that swept about her.

The relief seemed instantaneous, for her whole body slipped into an easy and delicious relaxation, and the blood, that had been congealed, flowed on again. Her muscles lost their stiffness, terror passed, the air all round her became warm and gentle.

She rose slowly to her feet. The roaring died away.

“Jack Robinson,” she said again in a firm, clear voice into the empty chamber. “Jack Robinson.” The wind was gone and a deep silence followed.

The sense of hurry, of limitation, the feeling of being a caged prisoner with a dreadful end quite close, all these nightmare emotions left her and melted away. In their place a realization of ineffable peace and happiness invaded her whole being. There was a deep conviction of timeless content, of infinite leisure, of calm serenity that lapped her round as with the blessing of some endless summer’s day.

She stood facing the great room, steady and unafraid.

“Eternity must be like this, of course,” she whispered to herself. “Perhaps Jack Robinson is Eternity. The other” — she did not use the name — “is merely Time.”

Her trifling thoughts had all subsided, her anguish vanished, her wild emotions smoothed away. No high, ecstatic flame of glory touched her; it was merely that she realized peace, quiet, content, endlessness. She drew the deepest breath she had ever known in her life, and moved calmly towards the bed.

“Now I can lay me down to rest,” she heard herself saying quietly, though the words seemed to fall upon her from the air, as though she had known them somewhere long ago. And she began in leisurely fashion to take her clothes off, noticing now for the first time that her bead necklace was missing. It was no longer round her neck. Yet its loss did not trouble her.

“Of course, of course,” she exclaimed, but quite calmly, “he took it at the door. The Thief took it after all.”

She felt no annoyance or vexation, only an admiring wonder. It was marvellous. Such skill, such swiftness, such accurate delicacy were beyond praise. She had noticed nothing. “Perhaps he took my shell as well!” she went on, and at once put her hand into the pocket of her frock. The shell, too, was missing. “So he’s got my ribbon, my amber necklace and my shell!”

It rather pleased her. A wave of happiness rose in her. She stood now in the centre of the room with hardly any clothes on, smiling to herself as with some secret inner joy.

“I made him better than I knew,” she whispered tremblingly to herself. “It’s grand! I made him almost perfectly!”

She climbed into the huge bed and repeated these assertions to Judas, and Judas did not contradict them…. She lay there calmly and comfortably on her back, staring at the ceiling, and repeating softly under her breath, “I made him with the best that was in me, I made him with my very best….”

The room wore a pleasant darkness, though there had been no candle to blow out, and she lay restfully at peace, with no particular desire to sleep, but wrapped in a deep, glowing content. Hurry, the restless demon, had left her; she was in the keeping of Jack Robinson, and the sense of endlessness was comforting beyond all words. It was a golden state. She understood something of the sweet leisure the Fruit Stoners knew, for she was in their timeless world. It lulled and blessed and soothed her. Judas evidently knew it too, lying unperturbed against her ribs, warm as a breathing hot-water bottle.

“Jack Robinson, Jack Robinson,” she murmured, staring at the ceiling. “If only I could see him — just once!”

Oh, what peace it brought to be in his delicious kingdom. She need not get frantic now about her brief Five Minutes. These harrowing Five Minutes came from somewhere else, a place she had escaped from — into this timeless, endless region where haste and hurry had no meaning, where there were no limitations, where age and growing older held no final meaning. A golden, yes, a golden age….

How white and smooth the ceiling was above her; no fly, no spider traced the faintest pattern there!

Childhood, youth, growing older, age, old age — they held no interests now, no definite measurements, and certainly no terror. She could be — she was — both older and a child at once; the wise maturity of one and the gay thoughtless spontaneity of the other belonged to her simultaneously.

“I am older a little,” she realized, passing a hand caressingly over her smooth curves under the sheets, “and at the same time I’m just a happy child who wants to play. I’m in my prime. It must be a nick!”

She sighed and laughed and stretched out her long legs as far as they would go, wondering which she wanted most of all….

Some fly, some busy spider, she saw, had now traced dim lines across the snow-white ceiling. Well, why not? What did it matter? Was she getting drowsy, she wondered vaguely, ready to fall asleep perhaps? No, sleep was ridiculous and impossible here. The Fruit Stoners, she was positive, never slept. She had never tucked the Tinker into bed, or packed the hay tightly against the Ploughboy’s back, or warmed the sheets for the gold-braided Soldier….

But what was happening? Why were those faint spider lines so much thicker and darker now? And where had those cross-lines come from that were not there a moment ago?

“I’ll marry the Gentleman first,” she told herself, “before I begin that awful search. After him, perhaps the others. I hope he isn’t just all words and manners. And would he be too polite to live with, I wonder? For ever and ever and ever with that top-hat and eyeglass and those bows?”

The lines above her head had broadened surely, and sunk at the same time a little lower.

“Of course, I’ll never forget the search — my Pearl of Great Price — oh, never, never — but the Sailor with his songs and dancing and trips to distant lands — the Sailor would make me laugh more perhaps. Though, if the singing and dancing never ended — well, Judas, there ought to be a limit somewhere, don’t you think?”

Each Fruit Stoner came under review, each with his particular attractions and disabilities, until finally she reached the ‘

She stopped dead then. She thought about something else.

“Youth — but early youth — just before my prime — that’s what I’ll choose,” she decided. “Yet more of a child perhaps—”

Maria sat suddenly bolt upright in bed, craning her neck, her eyes fixed upon the snow-white ceiling. For it was no longer snow-white, and the fly and spider lines had now thickened into broad solid things that looked like heavy beams of wood. These beams, moreover, were trembling, settling down. Walls and ceiling no longer joined together quite as before. A faint shiver ran. The air was shaking. Distances appeared that puzzled her. The great chandelier that hung from the centre of the ceiling had disappeared. Everything was melting. Above her head she saw a smudge of gloomy space where thick rafters showed like enormous ribs. A shiver ran through the air as though a vast shape of jelly trembled….

•  XII  •

Her muscles relaxed; her eyes, if they had ever been closed, opened. A dim but pleasant light lay everywhere; there was a delicious fragrance in the air, and Judas, soft and warm, lay curled up and purring on her lap.

“Am I in my prime still? Is this a proper nick? Am I too late to begin?” rose confusedly in her mind, as she stared about her. A start of uneasiness followed. “There’s something I’ve got to look for — at once—”

Her uneasy whisper went drifting, floating through the pleasant semi-darkness, and she realized the same second that she sat perched high above the ground upon masses of comfortable, soft hay, and that great rafters stretched, dimly outlined, in the gloom above her. Far below, she dimly made out a broken cart, an old mowing-machine, a great heap of potatoes, rakes and poles, iron netting, and a pile of dirty rope. An earthy, tarry smell mingled with the hay on which she sat. It was all unmistakable, of course. This was a place she had been in before, had seen in a picture, or at least had dreamed about.

“This is — the Barn—” she began, then stopped dead. Something had moved. There was a movement somewhere just where she could not see it, a movement the corner of her eye had caught. She held motionless.

“I came here to look for something,” her uneasy thought ran on, “to search. I was interrupted, delayed — but now I must get on with it — I must hunt and find—”

The concealed movement made her pause, but her uneasy thought ran on.

She took a step or two and sank almost to her knees in the deep hay. She turned about her, wondering where to begin the search, and her hands flew automatically to her head. “I wonder how my hair looks! I must be horribly untidy! I wish I had a mirror!” She patted and pushed her hair about…. These masses of stacked hay! They might hide anything — from a thimble to an elephant! What a place to search!

Her fingers plunged in wildly, recklessly. It pricked and stung. Crawling, floundering along, she reached the edge of the hay and peered over. It dropped in a sheer wall below her. The sides had been cut into a smooth, straight wall. Her eye looked down it dizzily to the dusty floor, then upwards to the shadowy rafters that ran across the gloomy ceiling.

“That’s where something moved,” she told herself, “or did I only imagine it?”

Was something perched there on one of the big rafters? Did it move? Had it moved? Or had it just stopped moving as she looked? Something was watching her; she was not alone, she felt positive of that, and she shrank down and tried to hide herself with a mass of loose hay. She concealed herself like an animal or insect.

Again that curious sense of interval, of a long interval, passed over her. It alarmed her, bringing a sense of hurry.

“Judas, my black demon, am I older, or younger, or about the same? And — what is this thing I’ve got to look for? Will you tell me that?”

But Judas, asleep where she had left him, gave no answer.

She peered down the precipice of hay, she plunged her hands feverishly into the sharp prickly stalks, and then she looked down at her short serge skirt and spindly legs, the legs of a little girl, of course. Her bare hands stung and pricked, but it was worth it — there was something she wanted to find, something she had come to look for, something she must find — and quickly. For time was passing…. The feeling of hurry grew. A restlessness caught and twisted her….

“I was so happy somewhere, peaceful, lying cosily and dreaming—”

Then, suddenly, it all came back more sharply to her: her urgent search, the shortening time, the Fruit Stoners, the Barn!

She was digging and ferreting blindly close to the edge when this all flashed back upon her like a thunderbolt. A touch of panic shot over her like fire. To hunt for anything in this mass of hay would take a lifetime; to search all that loose, untidy paraphernalia below would need years. Something was rushing past her, rushing at unchecked, uncheckable speed, and she was rushing with it, being swept along with it helplessly — towards an end — an end that was coming nearer.

She gave a gasp of startled surprise as something, but something solid this time, darted past her face and went scuttling down the precipitous wall of hay and landed on the floor below almost soundlessly. It made her jump, so that she nearly lost her balance, but the same second she realized what it was: Judas, in a single rushing spring, had left her side and safely reached the ground. She peered down and watched him. His tail was in the air, his black face thrust forward, his whiskers twitching, as with slow, cautious footsteps he advanced towards the wall of hay. He was nosing now against the lowest bales, he was sniffing inquiringly, with great interest, and as she watched his mysterious antics, her first impulse was to get down somehow and join him. But could she make the effort for that dizzy slide? Could she manage to slither down the sheer sides? That giddy, awful drop!

Excitement whirled through her. She must somehow join her beloved cat. Her body automatically made the first muscular movements, gathering the legs taut beneath her; her hands clutched the hay and tried to make a rope of it; she felt herself just beginning to slither helplessly — when a sudden noise overhead caught her ears.

Digging her heels in violently, she stopped sliding just in time and looked up, and there, moving along the big central rafter, was the dark object she had seen before. She had known all along there was something or someone perched up there, watching her in the gloom. An involuntary cry escaped her, and the movement stopped instantly, but, though the object was now stationary, she got the impression of great agility, almost as though a large monkey crouched up there, observing her from the shadows, noting everything she did. She strained her smarting eyes to their utmost, but the outline remained a blur, and at that moment a little cry of excitement from Judas, half miaow, half purr, made her look down again, and what she saw going on below was so interesting and peculiar that the rafter and its mysterious occupant were momentarily forgotten.

For Judas was now standing right up against the wall of hay, tapping it with a tentative paw, then springing sharply away again, as though he saw a movement in it. He sat down a couple of feet away and stared with gimlet eyes. The hay was moving, the tight smooth surface was parting; Maria saw the separate stalks give sudden tiny jerks; something was trying to force a way out. She watched with popping eyes. Plainly enough, the opening in the surface widened. A tip appeared, a pointed tip that was pink and shiny. It wriggled, it pushed out farther, the breach grew bigger.

She stared with such concentrated interest that it seemed her eyes must pop out of her head, bounce on the ground, and roll away like two marbles.

“Now, Marigold, is the moment to be careful,” whispered a cautious voice inside her, while another followed, but more eagerly, “Get down, Maria, and see for yourself!”

For while she dreaded the dizzy drop, she knew she could really manage it quite easily, and both voices sounded in her simultaneously as though two ages uttered. The pointed thing with the pink, shiny tip pushed out farther still and was now wriggling aimlessly in the air, while Judas, advancing calmly, stalked up and with signs of obvious pleasure, sniffed it. It instantly drew back, then thrust forward again; it touched his head; it scratched the black hair. Something glinted on it lower down — a ring, a signet-ring!

“Glory be!” cried Maria aloud, with amazement. “It’s a finger!”

What she then witnessed drove everything else completely out of her head. The finger protruded farther. It worked the hole bigger and bigger. The hay was not as tightly packed as it appeared, evidently, for soon a hand came into view, after the hand an arm, after the arm a shoulder. There was a sound of heavy breathing, almost panting. Next, from a point closer to the floor, a foot protruded, a wrinkled sock, a piece of trousers, at each of which Judas sniffed cautiously in turn. With a burst of loose hay higher up then came into view a patterned waistcoat, a chain of gleaming gold across it, a fob, an eyeglass swinging on a black cord; and finally, amid a shower of dust and stalks, and with a great blowing and puffing and spluttering, emerged the full outline of — the Gentleman.

He reached the air in a crumpled mass, bent sideways like a tangled parcel that had burst, but immediately, giving a violent shake as a wet dog shakes off water, he straightened up and recovered his natural elegance with surprising ease. Judas, whose head he had scratched without knowing what it was, stood, fortunately, behind him, and before he could add to the Gentleman’s discomfiture, he gave one look of amazement, turned tail, and raced instantly out of sight.

Maria gave a look of amazement, too, from her giddy perch. The Gentleman stood up stiffly, swung his arms about, puffed and blew noisily, shook himself again like a drenched dog, and flung out his legs alternately as though an ant’s nest had crawled inside his crumpled trousers.

“Odds bodikins!” he cried, whistling windily past a dry dandelion that caught in his lips.

“Gadzooks! It’s all down me back and next me skin, and it pricks like thistles. Zounds! What a place to search in! Devil take me, if I’m not covered with fleas as well!”

His white top-hat, bristling with stalks, its surface all brushed the wrong way, had the air of a ruined beehive, and the next thing he did was to remove it for inspection. “Upon me soul!” he exclaimed with elegant disgust as he breathed upon it, polished it carefully against his sleeve, and then replaced it upon his head at a very rakish angle. He looked about him more contentedly then, brushing his coat, and patting one pocket in particular, a pocket, Maria noticed, that had a peculiar bulge. “Whew!” he half whistled again, “there’s no knowing what may be expected of a fellah—” and stopped dead, as he glanced up and for the first time caught sight of Maria overhead.

“Oh, sir — oh, my Gent!” she cried, a torrent of words set free as their eyes met, “I’m so awfully glad to see you!” With a tremendous effort she kept her laughter back. “You look adorable! But how on earth did you manage to squeeze in there? You can’t have been very comfortable, I’m afraid—”

Her greetings were cut short abruptly, for leaning too far forward in her excitement, she suddenly lost her balance and slid bodily over the edge, landing with a bang and clatter at his very feet. She arrived on all fours in a heap of loose, tumbled hay, and as laughter seemed natural now and could not hurt his feelings, she let out peal after peal that had been suppressed before with such difficulty.

“Your obedient, Maria,” said the Gentleman collectedly, though his voice was still choked with dust a little. He bent instantly to help her rise, his swinging eyeglass tapping against her cheek, his hat already sweeping about as he made his usual bow. “I trust you are not hurt?” he inquired gravely, for he did not join her laughter. “My arrival seems well timed, if I may dare to say so.” And he steadied her on her feet again. He was dignity and aristocratic elegance personified.

“Oh, my Gent!” was all she could get out between her gusts of laughter. “I do thank you ever so much, and I must give you a kiss at once,” and she forthwith planted a hearty peck on his dusty cheek.

“My darling, my affianced darling,” he replied gallantly, returning the kiss with fervour, “for we are affianced still in spite of all this hay and stuff?” He puffed and blew with great delicacy.

“Of course we are,” Maria agreed quickly. “And I’m not a scrap hurt, thank you. Why, that’s nothing,” she added, referring to the slide. “I’ve often and often climbed to the top of the cedar, the very top, I mean—”

Her lips closed with a snap. What was she saying? She tried to collect her thoughts. “And you, Gent,” she went on rapidly, “how in the world did you ever get inside that hay? And what were you doing there? Wasn’t it frightfully stuffy, and weren’t you” — she tried violently to find a dignified and suitable word, for it was clear he was in no mood for laughter — “incommoded?” she brought out finally, with an expression that held at least no visible smile.

She looked hard into his face. He seemed different somewhere, she thought, not quite as young, but more as she had seen him first, the skin crinkly rather, looser, too, as when the air escapes from a toy balloon. It was filling up again, however, now, and the blood seemed pouring back. Yet — did he look a shade less real? Had a great interval passed over him as well?

“I was — er — searching,” he replied, blandly courteous, “searching, as you asked. And I found — this,” he added proudly, while his hand dived into the bulging pocket and drew out a huge horse-pistol. “Can this be, Maria,” he asked solemnly, “the thing you wish so ardently to find?” He held it out for her examination.

Maria looked at the big weapon cautiously, inspecting it with curiosity.

“No, my Gent, it’s not that,” she answered decidedly, shaking her head. The ugly weapon, dangerous though it was, seemed trifling somehow. A touch of impatient resentment flashed across her. It was as though he tried to pacify her with a toy, she felt. Compared to what she had come to find, it was a toy. “But I thank you all the same, you know. It was sweet of you to look. You kept your word. And — and are the other Fruit Stoners searching too?” she asked suddenly. “Are they all looking for my Pearl of Great Price too?”

He made a profound bow, betraying no interest, no emotion of any sort.

“They are all somewhere about here,” he told her casually, “in the hay probably, more or less. This is the Barn, you see, where you wanted us to search.”

“In the hay!” Maria gasped. “And searching! Oh, Gent — how splendid of them!”

The Gentleman calmly screwed his eyeglass in, patted his top-hat more firmly on his head, and gazed into space above him.

“Halloa there, my good fellow,” he called loudly, “and have you found anything?”

“This,” replied a voice from the rafters. “Here goes!” And a flashing object came hurtling down between them and fell with a metallic rattle on the floor at their feet. It was so close it might easily have struck them. It missed the Gentleman’s top hat by an inch. “An old cutlass,” laughed the voice, “but I’ve polished it up a bit, and it fairly shines now. Buried in the ’ay it was, but a pirate’s weapon, if ever there was one.”

Maria agreed with that, as she stared down at the gleaming curved blade lying against her very shoe. Then, with a rush and scuffle, down came the speaker after it. The dark blob of an object on the highest rafter, the thing that had moved and watched her, came down with the light agility of a big monkey. A leap, a slither, another leap, a light plop, and the dashing Sailor shot dancing across the floor towards her.

“All I could find, Maria, and a merry search it was. Keep it, Miss, it’s the best I could do. It’s all yours, and if it ain’t right, we’ll look again and find something better, maybe!”

Maria shook her head disappointedly. “You keep it, Sailor. It’s not what I’m looking for.” And again she felt that she was being fobbed off with a foolish toy. “But I’m delighted to see you, Sailor! I’m really frightfully glad.” And she was on the point of kissing him when — well, she just decided not to. She gazed at him with obvious admiration instead. His beard was gone, the gold earrings dangled from his sunburned ears, his telescope swung loose, he brought a whiff of salt and seaweed with him. But his skin, too, seemed to have crinkled a little more. He was not exactly less real, she decided, but he was somehow less — what was the right word? — spontaneous — less himself perhaps. There was something mechanical about him. A strange feeling passed over her as she gazed.

“Seen a bit since I saw you, Missie Maria,” he half chanted, “but now I see you again it’s the best bit I ever saw.” His singing voice rolled enchantingly along, deep and jolly. “Grown a bit, too, ’aven’t you, I will say.”

What Maria said sounded ridiculous, but she could not help it.

“I like you better without the beard after all.”

“The tropics took it off,” he explained; “’ot as a hoven down there, you’ve no hidea.”

“Hawful,” agreed Maria, before she could prevent it.

“Wouldn’t ’ardly believe it,” he replied.

“So you were down in the tropics and searching in this Barn at the same time?” she asked.

“That’s it, yes. Same as usual,” agreed the Sailor, clapping the telescope to his eye and gazing into her face two feet away.

“That is our melancholy fate,” put in the Gentleman. “You see, nothing matters here — er — much.” He smiled a trifle mournfully, catching the Sailor’s eye.

It seemed to Maria — or did she fancy it merely? — that they exchanged a swift glance together. A touch of uneasiness brushed her mind, but instantly was gone again.

“Something matters to me very much,” she said with quick decision: “my search.” Either she had not heard the Gentleman’s words properly, or had not understood them quite. “My search,” she repeated firmly. “And I must get on with it at once.” She looked hurriedly round her. “Are the others coming?” she asked impatiently. “You’re all going to help me look, aren’t you?”

“They are already here,” the Gentleman said quietly, “and every one of us at your service. All are searching and have doubtless found something. There is, however, no hurry, as you know.”

Why, she wondered for a second, did his words disturb her? How did she get the odd impression that they were playing with her, trifling, fobbing her off with a pretence that was really wasting precious time? Both question and impression, however, came and vanished again so swiftly that no trace seemed left. A sound of rustling movement stirred about her, of breathing, of feet shuffling softly, quietly. From all sides it came, from in front as well. So quickly then that she had not even noticed them emerging from their hiding-places in the hay, from behind the cart and plough, from beneath the heap of potatoes and coil of rope in the corner, the other six Fruit Stoners stood already grouped about her.

She looked at them with some bewilderment. They stood in silence, hardly moving, no voice audible. They stood about her, she noticed, as usual, in a circle. What was the matter with them? Why did they seem different somewhere? What was it? Why did she feel uneasy? Why did her heart sink a little? Her eyes ran rapidly round the group, passing over each face in turn. How lined and crinkled they all looked. Yet why did they seem less real, less vital? An odd sense of distress deepened in her. These figures of real life, why — how — could they suggest a dream…?

This shock — that it was all unreal and shadowy — staggered her. She recovered her manners.

“Thank you all — all of you — for coming to the Barn,” she heard herself saying, “and for helping me to make this search.” She trembled.

Her eyes, running round the group, found difficulty in picking them out individually. The faces were a blur. Vaguely she noticed that the Tailor fumbled with a pair of rusty garden shears, the Tinker with a broken saucepan, the Ploughboy with a long-handled spud, while the Soldier seemed trying to unwind a piece of copper wire. Only the Apothecary and the Thief stood out with really vivid sharpness. And they held nothing in their hands. She met the Apothecary’s eye for a fraction of a second, but without expression, without the smallest exchange between them, yet in that brief instant a strange, sweet longing disturbed her heart, a poignant yearning swept her, then passed as swiftly as it came. “Oh, God!” ran through her bitterly, “there’s something more real than this!” The Thief’s big, penetrating eyes, gazing fixedly into hers, set something shivering in her. A thrill of unbelievable excitement rushed over her like fire.

“And have you — found anything?” she asked. “Is there any sign of what I’m looking for? My great, important thing—?”

All held out optimistically their articles as one man — the shears, the spud, the saucepan, the Gentleman brandishing his dreadful pistol. Only the

Apothecary and the Thief had nothing to show, smiling quietly behind the outstretched hands. And again the fierce, deep longing, the strange, exciting fire danced through her blood.

“It is very sweet of you,” said Maria, hiding as best she could her deep disappointment, “but we must go on looking. These have nothing to do with what I’ve got to find, dear Fruit Stoners. My thing, you see, is very hard to find, I’m afraid. It is of frightful value. It is a pearl of great price — it is beyond rubies,” she added, thinking it an odd phrase to use and wondering why she chose it, “and if I can’t find it, I’ve” — her voice faltered — “come here — for nothing — haven’t I?”

“Off we go again then!” someone cried cheerfully, and the circle suddenly broke up.

She no longer stood in the centre of a ring. The Sailor started dancing again as he moved away towards the hay, the Tailor and the Tinker went off arm in arm, the Ploughboy and the Soldier followed slowly. And as they scattered, the feeling of something solemn and grave, of something uneasily disturbing that had oppressed her, dissipated. A mood of light-heartedness came back. She had been distressed and frightened about nothing after all. That ticking in her heart was really not worth bothering about, it was so faint, so far away…. These people, after all, were quite real, their various activities were real, too…. Oh, yes….

“Thank you, thank you, my Fruit Stoners! I know we shall find it in the end!”

They looked over their shoulders and smiled at her, and she threw back a similar smile. They had offered their toys, she had inspected them, and it was all well meant. Only the Apothecary and the Thief, she saw, did not move, but stood there watching her.

The Gentleman, however, his perfume, she thought, a little too sweet, came up to her. The Sailor was already by the door, flashing his scimitar as he poked it vigorously about in the hay.

“I am afflicted,” remarked the former, brandishing his pistol, “that this is, after all, not exactly what you are looking for, Maria, but it may prove useful none the less. In a search like this it is safer to go armed.” He raised the pistol to his face, and blew down both barrels so violently that a shower of seed and dust flew up into his eyes. “Many a kingdom,” he went on, wiping his face, blowing his nose and readjusting his hat, “many a kingdom has been lost because the dust was in the leader’s eyes.”

“I wish you would point the barrel away from me,” said Maria nervously. “It might be loaded, you know, Gent.”

“It is,” he replied quietly, bowing so low that she thought he was going to kneel to her, “for an engagement involves certain risks, and of what use — anywhere — is an unloaded pistol?”

“None,” she muttered, wondering what he meant, yet admiring his air of careless bravery, as though he was prepared for any odds. “Do you mean — a battle?”

An expression of reckless grandeur came upon his face.

“Take this,” he murmured, in the tone of a man who would defend her honour with his life, “and heaven grant you shoot straight if, and when, the moment comes!”

He passed the heavy blunderbuss gingerly into her outstretched hands, the barrel pointing well away from himself.

Maria took the thing still more gingerly and held it tight.

“Oh — can you use it?” he inquired politely. “I suggest pulling the trigger — to make quite sure it won’t — explode.”

She obeyed. There was a loud report, a blinding flash, and the Sailor, still standing by the door, sprang a foot into the air.

“Admirable!” remarked the Gentleman nonchalantly, as the smoke cleared away. “Your courage does you infinite credit. You placed the slug between his feet. A perfect shot!”

“I haven’t hit him, have I?” cried Maria breathlessly. “Is he wounded? I didn’t aim at anything really.” Her heart was in her mouth.

But the Sailor, having sprung into the air, continued springing. He was doing a kind of hornpipe, singing at the same time, waving his cutlass, and clasping his telescope to his eye to discover who had fired at him. He was not wounded certainly.

“You hit no one,” observed the Gentleman, “for you could not hurt a Fruit Stoner, no matter how you tried. We are, alas,” he added in a melancholy tone, “invulnerable, of course!”

Invulnerable! The word ran through her like a knife. They could not feel physical pain, because they could not end; they could not die, they had no past, no future, they just went on and on, endlessly, growing no older … whereas she … she was different…. To her an end must come…. Sometime, someday … when she had found what she was looking for … when the object of her being here was accomplished…!

The Gentleman’s melancholy smile burned in her hauntingly, her thoughts scattered, she felt a sudden dismay, uneasiness, so that her heart sank, and the dreadful ticking that never, never stopped inside her gained in power and loudness surely. She listened a moment intently. She could smother its hideous voice for a little while, but never altogether.

Invulnerable! She pretended she had not caught the word — not noticed it anyhow. For a second or two something frantic stirred in her, a sense of panic tried to show its head. There was another word, a name, a mighty name, she sought as with a gust of passion. A name that brought golden security, peace, ineffable peace … but she sought in vain, she could not find it, it had been so long neglected, its syllables utterly escaped her.

“Gent!” she exclaimed abruptly, “let’s search now — let’s search properly, I mean — please, please — we must get to work — at once!”

He bowed, taking the blunderbuss that she held out, and moved off with graceful steps towards the old broken-down cart, while Maria, pulling up her sleeves, turned back to hunt in the hay again.

“If only I knew what it was,” her thought plunged violently. “If only I could remember that!” and found herself blocked by two figures, the Apothecary and the Thief, standing in her way.

The other Fruit Stoners, she was generally aware, was already shuffling here and there among the shadows, looking in a vague, automatic way for what they could find, but these two, she remembered, had not yet stirred an inch. The Thief was nearest to her, but the Apothecary held her eye.

“Oh, you…!” she exclaimed, startled, staring up into his face, thinking for a moment it looked like a wax figure. “Aren’t you helping too? We’re all looking now.”

His old head shook gently to and fro, so that the stained beard brushed her cheek as it waggled. Goodness, how thoughtful his expression was, like a whole library! Could there be anything he did not know?

“I cannot help,” he said, without even looking up, and as though he spoke to himself almost, “for you alone can find it. No one else but you,” and he moved quietly away, like a shadow that joined other shadows.

She knew in her heart that what he said was true. She found herself alone now with the Thief, and she turned, shaking a little inwardly, to face him.

Oh, that exacting, that demanding face, those big, penetrating eyes that hung in the air and would not be put off! That dreadful, rather dangerous, attractive yet repulsive personality whom, after all, she had made with her best, her very best! The ruffian who had taken her hair-ribbon, her shell, her amber necklace and had them at this moment in his pocket doubtless.

“You too!” she exclaimed, and though she meant to frown, she smiled, and if she shivered, it was not with the horror and revulsion she knew she ought to feel. “Aren’t you doing anything to help?”

He fixed those big starry eyes upon her face, but he did not smile, nor did he betray the smallest sign of shame.

“How can I take anything,” he replied, and his voice was oddly silvery, “unless I find it first? So far,” he added, “there is nothing I can do.”

She glared at him half angrily; at least, she intended the glare to be an angry one, but the way he gazed at her seemed to make her eyes melt into his. They held a fire that set something blazing in her.

“Oh, I understand you, Thief, I know what you’re up to. You don’t want to find my precious thing. You don’t mean me to find it either.”

Was he changing a little before her eyes? Was he growing younger, sweeter possibly in expression, even — even — more desirable? “And that’s the truth — that’s the real truth,” she cried, as that same old shock, as of electricity, pierced through her very bones. “Isn’t it? Is it not, my Thief?” she shouted at him.

For an instant the eyes seemed to hang there before her in the air without a face, without a body behind them, like ghostly living stars.

“I don’t want you — to — leave,” his silvery voice fell through the air.

So that, for a second, Maria stood spellbound in front of him, utterly unable to find any words at all. It was his voice again that filled the empty gap, yet not before she had caught herself murmuring something that rose like lightning from the centre of her being where that dreadful ticking sounded, something she was utterly unable to control, something so low, however, that he could not possibly hear it even: “Have you enough to eat, Thief? Are you warm and comfortable? Does somebody look after you … and care for you?”

A violent reaction shook her the same instant. He was a worthless scoundrel. And then his words dropped into that waiting gap.

“And you’ll never find it till you’ve first done everything, gone through the rest … all that you came to do.”

He smiled an odd superior smile, he shrugged his shoulders.

“I know what you mean,” she found her voice, noticing for the first time that her pretty belt had loosened. But her attention was fixed upon the challenge in his words and manner. “You mean — I’ve got to — marry one of you!”

He made a curious little bow, coming a shade closer as he did so, and the belt was whipped off her waist with such amazing speed and dexterity that she never even saw it go.

“Silk, satin, calico, rags,” he chanted with a grin, as he straightened up again, “and Big House, Little House, Pig Stye, Barn, and Gentleman…”

“Well, I am affianced to the Gentleman,” she forced out in a loud, strong voice, “and you heard him mention the engagement a moment ago.”

“One of us,” was the quiet rejoinder, stuffing the pretty belt into his pocket, “one of us will do.” He shrugged his shoulders again, with a repetition of that curious, waiting smile. “The choice is your own — Maria.”

A sharp darting pain ran through her heart. What would happen, she wondered, if she kissed him full on the lips? Oh, how that inner fire danced and spread.

“I believe you’re right,” she murmured in a low voice. “Once that’s out of the way — I shall be more free — to search properly. I’d better go through with everything first!”

They looked at one another for a moment. Heavens! Was she burning up?

“I’m ready,” said Maria, furious with herself because her voice gave a queer little tremble. “But all the same, I know you’ve got my belt.”

He gave a delicious, understanding laugh.

“Gentleman! Hi, there!” he called, and at once the Gentleman came prancing up with that air of debonair grace and courtliness that belongs only to those who have daily intercourse with kings and queens. And Maria, watching it, felt her whole being sink down in a gulf of bitter and violent disappointment.

•  XIII  •

The marriage had its queer aspect — for, looking back, it seemed a sort of long endless dream that had yet happened all in a moment. Its prospect had appeared so tremendous an event somehow. “I shall be a bride, a married woman!” The change in her life so drastic, the difference so startling. After marriage she would be really another person with new characteristics, thoughts, ideas … and yet now she found herself much the same as before. Looking back, yes, it seemed merely an event in dreamland after all. Nothing had altered much. She herself, at any rate, was surprisingly just the same as before. Oh, exactly the same.

The nightmare touch had not yet pounced in and gripped her; flashes of uneasiness now and again, yes, but no real nightmare touch — as yet.

“I’m now ‘Mrs. Gentleman,’” she said to herself, and it was natural enough. “I’m married. I’ve got a husband. Yet I’m — yes — I’m just the same.” It was rather dull. A husband was just a husband. He had not changed merely because they had got married.

•   •   •

But was she “Mrs. Gentleman” — or “Mrs. Sailor”?

Mind and memory reeled a bit. A long period stretched behind her. She was sure of that. A long period of life in which little events stuck up sharply like almonds in a tipsy cake. She looked back and saw the stretch of dreamlike surface that had passed. It was nothing but a drab stretch. It reached away into the distance. Almonds stuck out here and there that she had nibbled at, almonds with shiny tips that were definite events….

The stretch, the period, was nothing, just commonplace existence. It had no particular colour, no rough bright points that caught and startled. Only the almonds — events that marked off the uneventful stretch — stood out and stung her vividly.

She picked one out and bit it, nibbled and tasted it.

“Mrs. Gentleman…!” It had a dull taste, flat and insipid.

She cast her mind back a little.

The Fruit Stoners, she recalled, leaving their futile searching, had emerged from the hay and formed in a ring about her, as she stood there, holding the Gentleman’s hand. All that was clear enough; it rose sharply enough from the colourless grey stretch. She remembered having first watched the Fruit Stoners a long time at their searching. They just went muddling about ineffectively in the hay, picking up all manner of little objects and stuffing them in their pockets. Anything they found, they stuffed away, from a broken comb to a tennis racket that had hardly any strings left. Each new article excited them, making them squeak and cackle noisily. She watched them hopefully for a bit, but then realized that their search was quite worthless. They seemed merely playing among themselves. It was of no help to her. The Thief’s curious words had flashed back upon her, and she decided she must do something quickly, and the best thing to do, obviously, was to get married. She shouted at them. She called them impatiently.

“Fruit Stoners!” she had cried, and they instantly emerged and assembled round her. “The Gentleman and I are going to get married, please, so you needn’t go on searching for the moment. It can wait!”

All this came back to her with a certain sharpness.

The Gentleman, bowing and scraping, had advanced with a gallant air and taken her hand. It was natural enough, of course; they had been affianced for a long time; they were now getting married, and were going to have a lot of children. She remembered bits of the ceremony even, of some conversation, too, they had enjoyed together. It was after that the blur came … the queer, dim smudge of forgetfulness that made her question whether she was Mrs. Gentleman or Mrs. Sailor…. She distinctly remembered, at any rate, asking if he had the ring, for she could still see him drawing it off his own finger and slipping it on to her own. It was the big gold signet-ring.

“We shall be one now,” she had murmured, standing beside him on the end of the broken cart, the Fruit Stoners grouped before them in a semi-circle. “For ever and ever, or at least — till — till something do us part.” She had no notion where her words came from, but they came. “And our little ones will — rise up — and call us blessed.”

The Gentleman himself, it seemed, had said hardly anything, nor could she for the life of her recall who had performed the ceremony, though there was a faint picture of a fugitive figure in a beard, rather like the Apothecary. What she did see clearly enough was something that happened with such suddenness that, really, she was not quite positive that she and the Gentleman had ever got married at all. She saw herself distinctly standing beside him on that broken cart-tail, looking him up and down, and wondering uneasily if, after all, she was not making a mistake. The sharp crease in his trousers, the white top-hat, the eyeglass, the fob, the coloured waistcoat, the whiff of sweet scent, the terrible politeness and courtliness and grace, with the long-winded sentences and lovely smiles — could she live with all this for ever and ever? The aristocracy, the formality, the perfection of behaviour, could she stand it day in, day out?… “It is my proud privilege,” she heard in his suave musical tones above a sweeping top-hat, “to inform you that it is a boy, and that he weighs ten pounds!” And then came a noisy shout that escaped from her lips with great, even with violent abruptness.

“But haven’t you got a Best Man, Gent?” Whereupon, as he indicated with a beautiful bow a figure close beside her, she had turned and seen the Sailor, his telescope full upon her face.

It was a glorious and dramatic moment, for she knew instantly that this marriage with the Gentleman was what is called a “terrible mistake.”

“I’m afraid, Gent,” she said at once, with great courage, “I’m afraid — he is the best man, and I must ask you to forgive me, if you don’t mind. It’s not too late, because our first-born hasn’t really come yet, so my life isn’t ruined, and you — you will get over it.” All this stood out quite sharply in her memory, and how she had shown great knowledge of the world, and kept her dignity, and acted with a courageous decision that had prevented much future unhappiness.

This was clear enough.

What escaped her, what remained an uncertain blur, was whether or not she had first passed through a long dreary period of married life in the Big House with the perfect gentleman waiting for that ten-pound first-born. Details, at any rate, kept hidden behind this indefinite blur, and she was only positive that, when the Sailor took her in his arms and kissed her, the Gentleman behaved exactly as she always knew he would behave. His action, words and manner were absolute perfection. Both of them, indeed, for that matter, proved themselves exactly what she had expected. The whole scene was quite an unforgettable picture in her mind. She was dealing with “real hairy men.” The dreadful fight, each man stripped to the waist, his jaw set, his eyes charged with undaunted courage, did not exactly materialize. But their language and behaviour — these were marvellous. The Gentleman never forgot he was a Perfect Gentleman, and the Sailor made no single false note. He was a true salt, if ever there was one.

“Ah!” had exclaimed the Gentleman, very quietly, screwing his eyeglass in, “so this is the Best Man — gadzooks!”

“Blew into port las’ night, yes,” replied the Sailor, spitting with perfect aim on to the polished boot in front of him.

“I honour you, sir,” remarked the Gentleman, “and I offer you my respects. Permit me,” he added, with a delicious bow, “to introduce you to Miss Marigold, my fiancée.”

“Good enough,” returned the Sailor, spitting upon the other boot.

“And you, my dear fellah, are my Best Man, I am delighted to inform you.” He withdrew both feet carefully a little farther off. “We were just getting married, you know.”

The Sailor glared at him, drawing his trusty cutlass.

“I am Best Man,” he shouted, “and our appointment was on this very quay. I’m sailing in an hour, and the Captain’s ready to splice us right away.”

He looked terrible, unconquerable, ready for any weather.

But the Gentleman looked precisely the same, in spite of his languid, lackadaisical air.

Two dauntless heroes — she was positive of that — were on the point of fighting for her, and that, at least, was clear. There would be blood, and broken teeth, and hard, exhausted breathing. Each man in turn, apparently finished, would pick himself up from the floor, and with amazing courage, incredible fierce energy, would fling himself headlong against his bloody foe.

Instead of that, however, the Gentleman called upon his inexhaustible resources of blue blood. With infinite tact and resource he remembered his dizzy line of ancestors.

“The Senior Service,” he murmured suavely, with a bow that lowered his head almost to the floor. “England’s bulwarks! God save the King!”

He was the gallant gentleman down to the tip of both his damaged boots.

“If the Admiral,” he added courteously, “will accept, I — I have no option.” And he bowed himself backwards as only a gallant fellow could.

Maria remembered that she had been delighted, and she had kissed the Sailor with tremendous zest, while the Gentleman, diving into his pockets, showered rice and old shoes all over them. It was a lovely kiss, tasting of salt and seaweed, and she knew in that same instant when the Sailor’s arms were tight about her that she was going to be happy with him in every port in the world … for ever and ever….

The ports, at any rate, were wonderful — there was golden Rio, and Punta Gazzo, with its rice and breadfruits; Marango, with its peaches and azaleas; Marzipani, with its yellow sand and its tarantulas; Tipsi Caki, with its hot blue seas, alive with man-eating sharks and cannibals on the shore, and a thousand coral islands where the dangerous surf thundered in snowy spray into lagoons that were bubbling with coconuts flung by blue-based monkeys from a thousand luscious palms. The Sailor, full of pluck and tireless resource, was equal to the demands of every shipwreck. He made a wind-proof house out of a single oar, a dress for her from a single palm-leaf. He repulsed an attack of bloodthirsty pirates by pretending — in the nick of time — that his telescope was a machine-gun, and the famished cannibals, swarming round their hut at night under that ghastly tropic moon, worshipped them as gods when he merely lit a match and showed them fire for the first time in their lives. They found treasure as well, more than they could carry, deciding then that they loved one another too much and too passionately to bother about gold or money.

Oh, it was a happy, rolling-down-to-Rio time, a time of unutterable romance, this married life with the sailor-man…. The romance, the flaming Amazon, the tigers, elephants and boa-constrictors, the gorgeous butterflies and orchids, the nights of tropic moon, the overpowering perfumes….

It was the multiplication of the ports that then began to trouble her. Her husband had so many Captains and old pals to see. They kept him out so late. It worried her a little. There was another thing that worried her as well.

“I think—” she began delicately one night, just before he left to see a pal or Captain. “I’m afraid—” And she burst into tears and shivered.

“It’s coming, I think,” she murmured, behind her palm-leaf fan. “It’s on the way.” And she flung herself helplessly into his muscular arms.

His deep emotion took him in a curious way, she thought. He called upon his god, the only one he knew.

“Oh, hell—” he said below his breath, squeezing her so tightly that she was afraid for a moment not only that she would lose her breath, but that he meant her to lose it.

It was after this “unsuspected disaster” that she guessed the truth. The Sailor was untrue to her. Her interest in elephants, tigers, tropic moons and orchids waned.

It was not a successful marriage, she decided, her eyes quite dry.

“If you’re tired of me, Maria,” he whispered briefly, “why — just say so. Don’t be afraid.” He held her very tight, though he looked the other way.

Though this seemed odd somehow, she kept a stiff upper lip, and, while it hurt and pinched a bit, she knew it was the proper thing to do. Keeping it very stiff indeed, she gave a quiet gulp.

“I am — perhaps — a bad sailor — rather,” she murmured tactfully.

He understood. “You’re a good sport, anyway,” he praised her. “I will say that for ye, Miss.”

“Mrs.,” she reminded him. “Mrs., please…”

And, as she now looked round the Barn, these odd, broken memories came back to her, with the elusive sensation of long intervals having passed, a long, drab-coloured stretch of existence that really had very little meaning after all. These events, like almonds out of a tipsy cake, emerged. She nibbled at them, and while in one sense they had a slightly stale taste, in another they had so little flavour that they were almost tasteless, as though something was lacking in them, something important that would have made them more real, as it were. None of them were real. The half-sweet, half-bitter taste she felt ought to have been there was absent, the pungent, rather medicinal, even biting tang she had expected.

It was now, as she looked round the Barn, that she discovered the reason of this suddenly. She knew what had been missing, but also she knew why. The tang of actuality in the two marriages was missing because—

No words rose in her mind, for her thought blocked dead as she saw the pair of large, penetrating eyes hanging in the air just beyond the great heap of potatoes. The shadows in that corner were rather thick, so that no complete figure showed, and she only saw the dim patch of a face with these two familiar eyes that shone like veiled lamps. They looked straight into her own. To her deep vexation she felt the accusing blood pour up her neck and throat and cheeks again. And yet she welcomed it.

“The Thief,” she heard herself whispering, though too low to be overheard. “The Thief!” She was trembling a little. She bent her head, busily searching again in the hay about her, and when she glanced up a moment later the eyes were no longer visible. Her hand went to her hair and waist and neck with a gesture of impatience. Her ribbon and belt and necklace, of course, were still missing. She glanced down at her skirt and legs, but the hay smothered both. “I must look awful,” darted across her mind, thinking it a pity that the curve of her slim calves was hidden. “Why, I’m not properly dressed even….”

The telescoping of time was scarcely noticed; it certainly caused her no distress. It seemed quite natural, apparently, that intervals should come and go, even that two intervals should occur and pass at once. Voyages and marriages could take place simultaneously easily enough when there was neither past nor future. Being older and younger could run parallel and side by side without upsetting or destroying anything. Time here was a braver adventure than she realized. The sense that intervals passed and occurred swept over her, none the less. She had jumped ahead in a fashion as with a jerk. That, too, was natural enough, she felt. Growing older was not measured by the accumulation of minutes slowly passing, but by a sudden startling jerk that announced the fact “I’m older,” a jerk that brought with it a definite shock.

It came now, this startling jerk, dropping upon her with a shock there was no denying. A shadow fell from nowhere, an awful sense of foreboding with it. A cold touch as of an icicle was laid upon her heart, interrupting its rhythmic beat, making it first stop, then scamper rapidly. She caught her breath. She listened. A sinking horror came. Her fingers clutched the loose hay.

In between the irregular beating of her startled heart another, and a different, beat was distinctly audible.

Tick tock! Tick tock! It tapped its way towards her, growing steadily louder as it came.

All this time, ages and ages, she had completely neglected her great purpose. She had trifled away every opportunity while the minutes droned unsuspectingly away. The call of pleasure, adventure, amusement, the call of life, had been so urgent and delicious that she had persuaded herself everything else could wait. The search for her Pearl of Great Price, of course, could wait. There was no hurry. Let it wait. There was lots and lots of time….

And now came the reminder again that her time was short, that it was passing, that much of it, far too much, had passed already. Tick tock! Tick tock! Tick tock!

It had never really ceased, but she had smothered it away, decided she need not, would not, bother with it yet. And there it was again, louder, closer, more insistent than ever, in all its panic horror, in all its remorseless certainty, a hoarse, grinding sound somewhere at the back of it. And it was those fiery, hanging eyes that now made her hear it.

It was as though she suddenly woke up, this nightmare terror clutching at her heart. Those penetrating eyes, why did they always galvanize her in this way? Was he — the Thief — more real than the others? What was it about him that brought this odd, unpleasant, stimulating shock that seemed to make her more aware? More real? More awake? More conscious? What was she saying to herself … where did these queer notions come from?…

Tick tock! Tick tock!

It was louder, it was coming nearer, it was both inside her and in the air about her. The end of her Five Minutes, whether she had used them or not, was closer. The grinding noise persisted. All that had been happening now seemed suddenly to have been a sort of semi-consciousness, not wholly real, though certainly not a dream. This air of unreality shimmered over it. More awake? More real? Yes, the shock of those eyes brought the sense of breaking out of semi-consciousness into a state where she was becoming more aware….

Her eye ran rapidly over the Barn, taking it all in. The Fruit Stoners were only pretending to search, they were trifling, playing with her, doing it all on purpose, beguiling and amusing her deliberately, keeping her with calculated intention from her real object in coming here. Her Pearl of Great Price, it darted across her, was not in the Barn at all; she was only wasting precious minutes looking for it here: it was in the Pig Stye. Her search in the Barn had been nothing but idle pretence anyhow. The Pig Stye was the place. Naturally — of course — it would be in the least likely place of all. She must find the Pig Stye….

At which moment exactly in her frantic efforts to think clearly had the figure looking like a Guy Fawkes stepped up and interrupted. He came from behind her so that she had not noticed his approach. Head and shoulders were sprinkled with loose wisps of hay, dust covered him as though he had been burrowing underground, a string of dusty cobwebs trailed round his neck, and it was only when she caught sight of a beard among the dandelions and thistles that she recognized the Apothecary.

“This is not what you seek, Maria,” said his quiet, thoughtful voice, “but it may be useful to you!” He held something out to her that she took automatically without looking at it, for her mind choked with two questions she burned to ask him: “Do you hear it — that Tick tock?” and “Can you show me the way to the Pig Stye?” And she was on the point of asking them when something in his manner stopped her. She hesitated for a second, glancing down at the object he was holding out. Bright and shining it was, cold to the touch, as she took it automatically. His low voice continued mumbling.

“… Useful, perhaps, to see yourself … make you more conscious … more aware…” he whispered behind that straggling beard.

Maria fastened her eyes on the cold, glittering object in her hand, lifting it instantly nearer to her face. She peered into it. For a moment she stood frozen, spellbound. Her entire being seemed congealed, arrested. It was the voice that first recovered its power to function, the muscles followed. A high, uncontrollable shriek rushed echoing through the Barn.

“I’m too late, too late!” rang out in a scream of terror. “Oh! where — where is the Pig Stye?” as she flung the object violently from her.

And she began to run wildly, frantically, but without knowing it, running in a circle, while at her very heels now, like the tread of an animal stalking her, came the following beat: Tick tock! Tick tock!…

•  XIV  •

It was not the fact of at last seeing herself reflected in the Apothecary’s little broken hand-mirror that terrified her, it was the awful dread of being too late, perhaps too late forever. This was what appalled her.

She had somehow known already that she would “look just like that.” She had expected it. The shock of greying hair, of lines and wrinkles, of dropped muscles along the neck and jaw, of sunken cheeks, was a small matter compared to the amazing fact that she had seemed suddenly to “wake up” to the devastating reality that she might be too late. She had become abruptly more “awake,” more conscious, and the cause lay in something intensely real communicated to her by those eyes. For a flash, at any rate, she now saw more clearly. Here, at last, was a promise of something real.

The numerous intervals, the stretches and periods, had all slipped past her — with nothing done. The nightmare dread increased apace.

“I haven’t really looked at all — not properly, honestly. I’ve found nothing. And now it may be too late. I’m old!”

Tick tock! Tick tock! It put ice into her veins. Any moment the dreaded strike might come, the strike that would mean the end.

More aware, more conscious! What did it mean? What was the flash of something more real she had caught from those penetrating, hanging eyes? Could there be anything more real than this world she was in? How could she become more aware, more conscious?

“I’m wide awake already!” she told herself. “How can I be more awake?”

And a quiet voice mumbled in her ear, “You can wake up a second time,” as she turned to see the Apothecary moving away among the bundles of loose hay. He disappeared among the shadows. The other Fruit Stoners had disappeared too, for no figures were now visible. The light, she fancied, too, was growing less, the shadows encroaching, sharp outlines fading all about her.

“The Pig Stye!” she cried aloud. “I must find the Pig Stye! Where, oh, where is it?” And her voice fell dead and echoless against the masses of hay that swallowed it. Tick tock! was the only sound that held its first sharpness, though it grew no louder, nor apparently drew closer to the dreaded strike. More and more, it now came to her horribly, it resembled the noise made by a footstep, a footstep that dogged her, ever on her heels, the audible pad of a stealthy animal waiting the moment to spring and pounce.

The nightmare power was in full swing about her, the nightmare of some final rush, a rush to find something of overwhelming value and importance, or else — miss the purpose for which she had come.

“The Pig Stye, the Pig Stye,” ran on violently through her mind. “Yes, I must look for it in the Pig Stye, of course. It’s the only place left now.”

With it, however, ran other phrases, too, odd phrases that puzzled and alarmed her, laying nightmare fingers on her heart: for while they held a strange, familiar flavour, they yet brought no meaning she could grasp, nor could she catch the faintest memory where she had heard them before: “You can wake up a second time,” of course the Apothecary had mumbled through his beard, but how did she know queer sentences like, “Before I go hence and be no more seen,” or “The night cometh when no man can work,” and others, too? And what had such odd words to do with looking for something in a Pig Stye?

Tick tock! Tick tock!… It became more and more a definite tread, rather than the mechanical sound of something beating time away. One of the cat tribe occurred to her horribly, one of the great cats stealthily padding at her heels. Already, once or twice before, the idea of a tiger had flashed unpleasantly across her mind. A feline! A great feline! The word flashed and vanished. Yet it brought a memory with it, a memory of something long, long ago, and the picture of a childhood’s pet, a black cat, terribly adored, darted into her brain and out of it again. Jewel, Judas, some such outlandish name the creature had. Then she had been somewhere else before coming here, another sort of place, a kind of Golden Age, where things were more real than anything she experienced here. Or was it perhaps that she had understood them better? She had certainly been happier there, too. Some such wild fancy flashed over her, then vanished utterly again.

Maria stood still and listened. Her breathing came irregularly. The nightmare feeling deepened. The shadows grew.

She was quite alone now, for all the Fruit Stoners had disappeared, had melted away, though, with the exception of the Apothecary, she had not actually seen them go. She stared round her at the huge, deserted Barn, listening, watching, waiting, trying to collect her thoughts. Despite this urgent and imperative sense of panic hurry in her, this desperate necessity for decisive action immediately, she did not move at first. The horror of the true nightmare immobility held her rigid, while she battled to collect her thoughts.

If only she could remember where she came from, and what she had come to find! If only that terrible Tick tock! Tick tock! would stop, or put an end to her suspense — and strike! The actual strike would be better than this hanging suspense.

Her heart was thumping audibly, she felt it hammering against her ribs. Passing, passing, passing, rushing, rushing, rushing, its beat warned her remorselessly, while that other stealthy tread that was like the padding of a great animal kept rhythm with it.

Shivering all over, eager to be off and yet afraid to start, Maria made a valiant effort to force some memory back at least, to reduce some of her whirling thoughts to order. But such was their kaleidoscopic speed that she could retain nothing for more than a fleeting glance. Her very feelings were a turmoil of criss-cross currents in which nothing had more than an instant’s permanence.

Life, life, life! What a tumultuous rush of incoherence it all was!

One thing, however, stood out with a naked and frightening sincerity that she felt convinced was genuine. If her own existence here was nothing but a huge interrogation mark, the life and world of the Fruit Stoners were more questionable still. If her own existence here was less real than some other state she had tasted long ago, their life and existence, with its incoherence, its futility, its absurdities, were an utter sham and illusion, the flimsiest of elaborate phantasmagorias.

“It is possible to wake up a second time” slipped in and out between her whirling thoughts incessantly.

And at the heart of the whole ridiculous phantasmagoria was not fun — but horror. Here lay the essence of this hideous nightmare. Trapped in unreality, caged and prisoned in bitter limitations, these puppets she had herself created were merely fooling her. By coming among them, she had taken on their own futile conditions. They told her she would set them free, release them, save them, yet she could not even set herself free. She was caged and imprisoned equally with them. She had come for a brief Five Minutes, and had passed an entire lifetime. She could control them, having made them! Could she, indeed? What did she control, she asked herself? Nothing. When she imagined she controlled and drove things, she was actually being driven herself. Something outside her happened and she just responded automatically, as a stove gets hot when coal is shovelled in. She did nothing — of herself. Nothing. Things were done through her merely. They merely happened outside her and she responded. She was not enough aware, not conscious enough, not awake enough even to be real.

“But you can wake up — a second time,” the words flashed back.

Ah! Her memory made a violent and frantic effort to snatch at something that presented a peeping tip — only to vanish instantly again. There was, she vaguely remembered, a name she had once known, had even used — a name she had forgotten and neglected….

Her thoughts whirled away towards the Fruit Stoners instead, and the positive certainty came over her again that they had merely deluded and enticed her, that their helping in her search was nothing but deliberate sham and nonsense. A glittering phantasmagoria! They wanted to keep her here. They did not want her to go. The Thief — yes, it was he, the Thief, whose eyes had galvanized her with that strange, haunting message of something more real and permanent only a little time ago — the Thief had admitted as much with honesty.

And it was the thought of the Thief, now darting into her hopeless confusion, that galvanized her suddenly with its customary shock, so that her nightmare immobility lifted slightly. The Thief, whom she had made with the best in herself! She must act at once. She must depend on herself alone. She must search for that vital, missing thing while there was still time. Before it was too late forever. Her Pearl of Great Price she had come to find. That was the message those haunting eyes had flashed. He promised something real — at last.

All her whirling thoughts, her tumultuous impressions, her terrifying sensations ended in this overpowering conviction — that to find her Pearl of Great Price was the only thing that mattered. This was the reason of her being here. She must fulfil her great purpose by finding what she had come to seek.

She must ignore, even forget, the Fruit Stoners, leave on one side all their fun and jollity, their efforts to amuse, their idle, vain pretences of being real. It was just so much flummery and nonsense. Let them play and act their parts, let them voyage on country roads and the high seas, let them fight their battles, plough their fields, design their dresses, mix their medicines, dine with kings and queens. Let them marry and give in marriage too, though she forgot for the moment that she herself, being the only woman among eight men, might play a responsible part in altering a state of celibacy no single one of them had as yet complained of. Let them go their own way, anyhow, was what she decided, while she went hers.

She had made up her mind, and the Tick tock! she fancied, became slightly less insistent, less mercilessly audible perhaps. “The Pig Stye! The Pig Stye!” echoed down her bewildered, but now determined, mind.

But a Pig Stye was not likely to be found in a Barn. She would have to go outside. So far, in all her long experience, she had never once been outside. Outside — where there were trees and fields and flowers and sweet fresh air blowing, even perhaps a garden. Yet where also, it suddenly struck her with a gust of hideous terror, she might see, might even meet face to face, the owner of the dreaded steps, the great animal whose stealthy, audible tread haunted her whole life.

It was a fugitive memory of the Thief’s challenging eyes that brought back her courage to the sticking point. She put out a leg, a foot, and naturally her body followed. She moved forward towards the great wooden doors that closed the Barn.

“My Pearl of Great Price!” The words hummed in her heart. “I shall find it at last — in the Pig Stye — and then — escape!”

Escape!

As she moved slowly forward an intolerable yearning swept over her, shaking her to the very core, so that trembling a little, she felt she must burst into tears. Somewhere, she knew, lay an incredible happiness, a reality grand and satisfying, a beauty beyond words, yet also just beyond her reach unless she first found her pearl. Her whole being strained towards it, and the intensity of this wild, fierce yearning amazed her, as though her heart must break. But, sweeping over her like a tempest, it was too vehement to last. It was already fading, weakening, passing away, yet leaving behind it a golden trail, so that she realized herself a prisoner, a prisoner in some sort of cage that was yet a cage of her own making.

She must get out of this cage, she must escape. It was possible to wake up “a second time.”

She reached the huge wooden doors and pushed against them. On the other side she would find the reality his marvellous eyes had flashed to her — something really real and satisfying at last….

•  XV  •

Yet even here the nightmare sense was present, for the massive doors yielded rather too easily to her touch as she opened them cautiously a quarter of an inch and peeped outside through the narrow crack. The blaze of sunshine was dazzling after the gloomy shadows of the Barn. With the fragrant freshness of the open air came a suggestion of some more pungent odour that sent a shiver down her spine, for it held a faint acrid tang that brought with it one of those queer reminders that so puzzled her because they remained beyond all possible recapture. A sense of danger lurked in it somewhere, and that was all she knew.

The dazzle passed. After blinking once or twice, her eyes accustomed themselves to the delicious brilliance, and she pushed the doors another inch, and then another. She could see clearly now. The miracle of the open air made her catch her breath. It was Out of Doors at last. She had not been out of doors for ages. Drawing a deep, invigorating draught of this sweet air into her lungs, she pressed her eyes against the rough wood and peered through the widening crack.

Instead of the rough fields she had expected, a lovely garden lay before her, drenched in bright sunshine. A smooth lawn spread its emerald carpet, daisies creaming its surface, with fringes of golden buttercups spilling their yellow glory round the farther edges. It was, thank heaven, empty. No figures were visible. Nothing moved. She waited a moment, staring intently, watching, listening, then boldly flung the great doors wide open and stepped outside.

The first terror that something would dart up and seize her passed. Not a living soul was there. No one rushed up. Only the haunting beat of the stealthy padding footsteps still sounded in the air, though fainter, she fancied, less insistent perhaps. The sound, indeed, seemed everywhere about her, even in the sky, as though something still watched her, circling, waiting the moment to come close, yet always keeping a measurable distance. And though that unpleasant odour still stung her nostrils, she now caught another sweeter smell that drowned it, a perfume of flowers, of lilacs, pinks, verbena, wallflowers. She inhaled it with keen delight, taking a dozen steps out on to the lawn and looking nervously about her.

“The Pig Stye,” she said under her breath quickly, “I must find the Pig Stye. That’s where my Pearl of Great Price lies hidden!”

Maria, however, made no further movement for some time; she stood motionless, taking in the scene with all its fragrant loveliness. She realized instantly that this happy, tender garden, for all its beauty which intoxicated her, was not quite complete. Something was missing, something that could have made it perfect.

Yet what this something was escaped her; she knew only that it was akin to hunger or thirst, an essential lack her whole being missed. Yes, it was something she felt was real.

She stood still, breathing the fragrant air, and looked about her. Behind her rose the great wooden Barn, with fields and farmlands stretching beyond it into the summery haze of blue distance, but at her feet lay this lovely garden, the wide lawn dotted with beds of flowers and intersected by winding paths whose gravel looked like brown sugar. There were nooks and glades and clumps of rhododendrons, a thatched summer-house, and farther off two spreading cedars towered into the blue sky. Beyond these she saw an old grey stone house, flanked by a large conservatory, its glass glistening in the sun. The stone walls were covered with ivy, and from a single chimney a column of pale blue smoke rose straight into the air.

Maria took it all in and felt peculiarly at home. She had seen a picture of it somewhere — the ivied house, the cedars above all, she had seen these before. The whole garden, in its peace and stillness, was familiar. She had known it long, long ago, perhaps in that forgotten Golden Age far, far behind her, for it held this haunting atmosphere, as of some sweet, imperishable glory, some radiant happiness almost too fugitive to last.

Something was trying to break through into her mind, pushing up tiny fronds as it were, but whether from the past or future, whether of memory or anticipation, she could not tell.

For there stole over her the sense that she was now ageless, neither old nor young, or perhaps both old and young together; that her nightmare fear and her ineffable yearning were merely different ways of looking at the same thing; that the moments of alternate peace and panic sweeping over her were also one.

“If I was more awake — just a little more awake,” came to her, “I should understand. A bit — just a little bit more conscious and I should see it all clearly…. Age has nothing to do with it.”

But this flash of radiance came and passed like a meteor; even as she experienced it, it was gone. Yet it left a gleaming trail she caught at. “I know what’s missing!” she cried suddenly. “I know now why it’s incomplete…!” And before the words were wholly out of her mouth, she became aware of the slight stirring of the lilac bush, saw the hanging blossoms move aside, so that first the bright, penetrating eyes appeared, then the face in which they hung like lamps, and after that the tall, thin figure to which they belonged. He stepped across the lawn towards her, this man who moved with the graceful lightness of a fairy prince, and the garden in that instant was complete, with nothing lacking. Something real at last was coming to her.

“Thief! My Thief!” she cried, as the lightning shock passed through her heart. “Oh, I knew you would come, I knew it!”

She looked into those eyes as they came nearer across the lawn, and all the confusion in her, the jumbled incoherence of everything, the puzzling nightmare turmoil, turned simple. Almost — she knew what she had come to find, knew at least positively that it was in the Pig Stye; almost — almost — even remembered the syllables of that mighty name…. Oh, this rich and tender moment, could she but hold it….

“You are the one I’m going to marry,” and her voice came out like singing. “And then everything will be happy for ever afterwards!”

Whether he heard her or not she did not know. He was much nearer now, and as she watched him she noticed again his well-shaped hands, his long slender fingers, the marvellously light and delicate way he moved. His feet, it seemed to her, scarcely pressed the daisies down. “I believe he could steal even with his toes!” she thought, feeling the delicious flooding tide of blood rise up to her very eyes. He looked so young too, exactly as she had always seen him in her mind, of course. “My husband…!” she breathed too low for anyone to hear.

But he heard it.

“Maria,” he said, “you chose me, and here I am.” He held out her hair-ribbon, her necklace, her coloured shell, her belt. “And I’ve brought these back.”

Maria examined them. “Thank you,” she replied, a trifle stiffly, for she knew it was a mistake to let a man take one too easily. “But you stole them from me first, you know.”

“If I hadn’t,” he agreed, “I couldn’t bring them back.”

“And you said you would take everything — even my Pearl of Great Price if you found it. That’s what you are — a real thief.”

He smiled, while his great eyes looked her through and through.

“I have already taken everything,” he said in an enchantingly low, mysterious voice, “even your heart,” he added, coming right up to her and putting his arms miraculously about her.

“I gave you that,” she whispered, “the first moment I saw you.”

“Then I’m not a perfect thief after all.”

“Oh, yes, you are,” she told him, her lips against his cheek, “because,” she added softly, “you stole that too. I made you with my very best—”

His kisses stopped her words. It was most lovely. He lifted her off her feet and kissed her in the air, he set her down again and kissed her on the lawn; he was very strong and very gentle. Radiant and glorious it all was. It was the very acme of reality. All the rest of her life and adventures was a dream, but this at last was real. Here was the explanation of the shock his eyes had given her in the Barn. Here was the message they had flashed. This surely, at last, was being more awake, more fully conscious! The other Fruit Stoners, even the Sailor, Gentleman, Apothecary, were but unreal shadows compared to this. Even the menace of the Tick tock!, the sharp odour, died away, the sense of panic hurry faded, the Pearl of Great Price itself in the Pig Stye could wait a little…. The nightmare horror all withdrew.

“I’ll weave the ribbon in your hair,” he said, and she liked the determined way he said it. He did not ask. His touch was marvellous as he caught the tresses and fastened the little ribbon in.

“Your belt must go on too,” he told her, and though his clever hands had clasped it in a second round her waist, their faces came together again while he did so, and the perfume of the lilac that had first concealed him lay deliciously in his breath.

“And the shell goes against our ears,” he murmured like sweet music, “so that we shall both hear the singing of the sea at the same moment….” They were a long, long time listening to the singing of the sea in that curly coloured shell he held between their ears, face against face, cheek against cheek, and the singing of the sea held rapture.

Long, long, long in that lovely garden, they listened to the old, old tales, the old, old songs. The sunshine lay warm upon them; the perfume of the flowers breathed over them; they listened and they listened…. She gave him everything she had to give, and he took everything. For she loved him, yes, she loved her Thief, with body, mind and soul; she held nothing back, she gave and gave until there was nothing more to give, for there was nothing left…. At last, at long last, she told herself, she had found something that was beyond all question real….

Oh, the happy comfort of it, the security, the peace that wrapped her round with her Thief’s arms about her, the untold bliss. Here, in this starry ecstasy, lay her ultimate reality at last. She was in her prime. It was the absolute and perfect nick….

“Everything I’ve given you, my Thief,” she murmured in his ear against her lips, for it never even occurred to her to ask what he gave. “All I am and all I have. Everything.”

His answer puzzled her. “I’ve taken everything, Maria, for you made me a perfect Thief.”

She drew her face back a little and looked up into his big shining eyes, and what she saw perturbed her, for though the fire in the eyes burned as intently as before, a change she did not like had come into the face. The skin was darker, though it lay in the full blaze of the sunshine, and the darkness seemed spreading even as she looked. There were lines, too, she had not noticed before, lines that deepened visibly. There was this wrinkly, loosened skin. She gave an involuntary start, disentangling herself slowly from his arms, and the face, as she now gazed at it from a little distance, turned distinctly crinkly. His arms at the same moment weakened about her, then dropped down by his side. The scent of the lilac that was so sweet in her nostrils no longer drowned that other unwelcome odour she had till now utterly forgotten. She noticed its sharp, acrid tang again.

“You have nothing left,” she heard, “for I have taken all.”

Already he stood a little away from her.

“Nothing,” she whispered, terror stealing back upon her, for she knew that what he said was true. Her heart sank dreadfully, and the glory she had experienced, it seemed, for ages, left the world, and the garden died, the lovely garden where she had tasted a bliss she had called real. “Nothing,” she repeated, “for you have stolen it all away and left me empty.” But she said it to herself and not to him, the words fluttering soundlessly in her heart alone. “Nothing … everything…”

She looked despairingly about her.

“The garden’s — dead,” ran through her, and as the sad words went clanking like broken bells across her thought, she heard that other sound she dreaded.

Tick tock! Tick tock!…

It was certainly a padding tread, a footstep.

She had forgotten it, though she knew it never ceased. She had neglected and despised it, postponing the warning it repeated endlessly. Automatically, she sniffed the air. The queer, acrid tang came to her nostrils. The flowers — pinks, lilac, wallflowers — all were dead.

“Thief, my Thief…!” she called faintly, her heart breaking and panic catching her.

He was still visible, but in the distance now. He had left her side. He looked smaller, insignificant somehow. The face, even across the lawn, was dark and lined and crinkled. He waved a hand, that slender, beautiful hand that had caressed her youth.

“Are you going — are you leaving me?”

His voice came shivering on the wind: “I have taken all you have to give. Why stay?”

Maria knew herself utterly bereft, drained empty, all she had ever had taken from her. What was there left now? The Thief was as unreal as the others. What, then, was real?

Very small he looked, over there against the door in the wall of the ivied house. Her heart went out to him, then came back as with a hollow crash into her ribs.

“Where — are the others?” she called faintly. “Are you leaving me to join them?” Her youth too, she knew, he had taken her youth away….

Halting an instant by the door he had now opened, he raised his hand and called, but the only word that reached her across the lawn was “Listen…” and the door banged behind him.

The song, muffled by the thick grey walls, came indistinctly, so that she barely caught the words. Male voices chanted it.

“Time is a tiger… stalking every man… streaked like the lightning… taking all he can….” And as she heard it, feeling its odd rhythm in her blood, the full awful nightmare power swept back upon her out of the very sky.

•  XVI  •

With a gigantic effort Maria held her ground. She made no sound, no movement. Her sense of loneliness seemed utterly intolerable, yet she faced it. Her heart, though it seemed to stop an instant, went on beating again.

Tick tock! Tick tock!

The beating sound rang on, sounding everywhere about her, in the very air, while behind the dying fragrance of the flowers hung ever that strange acrid tang. Her eyes roved nervously over the whole scene inch by inch. No figure now was visible. All, all had failed her.

Tick tock! Tick tock!

Her distraught mind whirled with questions that flew off unanswered, while the padding tread came closer. It was made by something that never, never stopped, that never left her in peace, by something forever passing, racing, rushing past.

Time, she thought, as the sound beat stealthily in rhythm with the hammering of her own pulses. Invulnerable, she remembered the Gentleman’s comment on her pistol shot. The Man who Winds the Clocks came back to her. Five Minutes followed.

Then rushed upon her, as that ominous chorus rang through her mind again… Tiger — Tiger — one of the most awful words she knew. Tiger… streaked like the lightning… stalking every man… Why was this pitiless monster associated with the sound?

Tick tock! Tick tock! Like the beating of some giant heart, some relentless, immortal heart that never hurried because its end was sure.

She turned with a start suddenly and looked behind her, as though she expected to catch something in the act of moving. Something had stirred, making a faint rustling. She sniffed, she stared, she listened. There was nothing to be seen, yet there was a change. The lawn and house and garden now abruptly wore a different look, showing themselves less clearly, less brilliant, less defined. Though the sun still shone in a cloudless sky, its radiance had dimmed a little, as on those summer days when the air thickens almost imperceptibly before a storm. There was less light — yes, that was it, less light. The light was fading. Daylight was leaving the world. It was as though the wick of some great lamp was being turned down. A beginning of twilight dusk was spreading. It was a frightening, nightmare change.

It was then the shadow fell. From above her in the sky it fell; it fell across the lawn and flowerbeds and garden, upon the shrubberies, upon the cedars farther off, upon the old grey house. It draped the world, as though a veil had passed before the sun, and something, she then realized, was indeed actually passing above her through the air, and it was this shadow that took the light away.

Something was passing overhead. It cast its shadow.

She gazed with horror, for the shape was quite distinct, and she saw its outline clearly racing across the lawn at her feet. As the shadow of a cloud sweeps over bare hills, the general form was unmistakable, recognizable too, the body drawn out to its full length behind the tremendous neck, the mighty limbs stretched forward, as the great animal swept past in the full cry of the eternal hunt.

For a second its dark pattern lay clearly outlined on the lawn.

“A feline! A monstrous feline!” rose in icy terror to her mind. “A Tiger — Time the Tiger!”

The awful padding steps roared over her like a wind: Tick tock! Tick tock!, with the deep, hoarse, grinding sound that came before the strike, the growl of relentless pursuit. If only the strike would come! Dreadful though the thought was, it was better than this heartbreaking suspense. Her time, she knew, was almost up; on the very edge of the last minute she balanced dizzily. She sought frantically for a name, a mighty name that could help and save her, but could not find it, for it had been too long forgotten. Pig Stye was all she found. Pig Stye, and something she must look for, a pearl of great price that lay hidden there.

If she could only find this, the nightmare would end; it would be explained, a meaning would come into all this incoherent, purposeless jumbled terror that was her life. Once she found it, she would become real, wake up out of this thick, horrible phantasmagoria where nothing was real, not even the Thief’s intoxicating love. She would become more conscious, awaken a second time.

“The Pig Stye! The Pig Stye!” she shrieked in that nightmare voice that made no sound, though the effort behind it was tremendous.

“The night cometh when…” but this, too, was soundless.

She turned quickly, her legs shot forward, she rushed, but the darkness made it impossible to choose her direction. It seemed to her that she moved in a circle as the Fruit Stoners did, moving violently yet not advancing. Round and round like a squirrel in a cage, round and round, automatically, mechanically, caged, a prisoner, whirling round the rim of a plate.

“The Pig Stye! Which is the way to the Pig Stye?”

And as she rushed headlong through the darkness, or perhaps only round and round, a thought rose with alarming conviction before her — the sudden certainty that she must meet the owner of the footsteps face to face, must challenge it even before her precious object could be found. Whether Tiger or the Man who Winds the Clocks, she must somehow snatch her pearl from beneath his very eyes before she could — escape.

“The Pig Stye! The Pig Stye!”

Frantically she rushed headlong through the increasing darkness, knowing that she must soon meet the owner of the footsteps face to face. It was the true nightmare rush. She made no progress despite the most terrific efforts. Her heart, it seemed, must burst. This darkness, she knew now, was a final darkness. Light at some distant end was problematical. Her time was up, her five minutes, her — life.

“The valley of the shadow of death” crashed through her with an awful resonance. And she knew she was old, old, old. Childhood, youth, maturity, her prime, her nicks, her ecstatic and her ghastly moments, all were but aspects of some hideous automatic mechanism to which she was enslaved — because she was not awake enough, not conscious and aware enough, to realize their absurdity. Only one thing, after all, was worth while, only one thing was real — her search. Without it, all this adventure, amusement, emotion, experience, was just a meaningless jumble, an incoherent picture of glitteringly attractive rubbish. None of it was real. It was no better than a silly dream, yet with horror, dreadful horror, at the heart of it, the horror of ultimate nightmare. The Fruit Stoners were but a fragment of her own ghastly dream…!

“I’m old, old,” she kept saying to herself as she rushed headlong in the nightmare circle, balancing dizzily on a rim like a fruit stone on the edge of a slippery plate. “I’m old, or I could not think like this!”

Think! The word exploded with a shock in her frenzied brain. The blank futility of thought struck like a blow into her heart. Thinking was utterly useless. What counted alone was action, action backed by feeling. Here lay a direct way to finding something real. And it lay for her now — through a Pig Stye.

These thoughts, she knew, were old, old thoughts belonging to the Valley of the Shadow whose darkness now beat against her eyes. She had lost everything. The Thief had left her empty and bereft; his love, her final effort, was unreal like all the rest. It had given her a few mechanical baubles only — a glass necklace, a shell, a pretty belt, a blue hair-ribbon.

“When I’ve taken everything… you will be happy….” The words came floating from a great distance, a distance both of time and space.

He had taken everything.

It was this vivid, flashing conviction of her final and utter emptiness that somehow made her whirling circle stop. There came an abrupt jerk and she stood still, facing her final emptiness.

“The Pig Stye! The thing I came to look for! The one thing that I simply must find!” she whispered to herself with an intense conviction that burnt like fire. “It’s all I’ve got left… my search…!”

And in the sudden singleness of her heart she remembered that there was one who alone could guide and help her. There was one who could stop, or who at least could change, perhaps even arrest, this remorseless, pitiless swift rush of time that must destroy her. There was a mighty name, a name of fire and thunder and gorgeous magic. It could make time and clocks ridiculous.

“Jack…!” burst from her tightened throat, that then instantly restricted in a dreadful gulp, for the rest of the marvellous name escaped her memory. Her breath choked as she made frantic efforts to recover it. There was an “is,” and “on,” a “rob” as well, but the proper sequence of the syllables were lost.

“Jack … Bonsinor…!” She shrieked aloud in her panic. She knew it was somewhere wrong. It was as though she told a lie. Yet part of it was right. Jack certainly was right.

“Jack … Jack…!” she yelled again in her helplessness, leaving out the rest. And perhaps it was this honest refusal to humbug herself that lent her courage and direction.

“Jack! The Pig Stye!” she cried at the top of her voice, and took the plunge.

“Here goes!” she added, like a child of ten years old.

And even half the wondrous name, apparently, worked magic.

•  XVII  •

For she went — straight across the lawn, darkness or no darkness. It seemed easier now. It was absurd to spin round in an aimless circle when you wanted to reach a point in front of you. She went straight in front of her towards the old ivied house. That a Pig Stye should exist inside a country house did not bother her an atom. She was as full of confidence as though some mighty and all-powerful being held her by the hand. That Judas should be scampering in his idiotic fashion beside her, tail in the air and whiskers spraying, caused her no surprise at all. She knew where she was going and what she wanted, and Judas, naturally, knew too.

On reaching the back door, she opened it and stalked in, and was not in the least perturbed to see that her spindly little legs were stained with mud, or that her short serge skirt had hay and dandelions sticking to it. She brushed them off and walked down the passage towards the kitchen.

“There’s a Pig Stye somewhere — upstairs probably,” she said to herself, “and there’s something in it I’m going to find. And I’ve got to be quick too!” Her intense sincerity and earnestness kept her calm.

She hurried. She passed through the kitchen, left it by another door and found herself in the banqueting hall. Then she stopped dead. A shrill voice in the distance had reached her ears:

“Maria, child! Where are you?”

“There she is again,” Maria exclaimed to herself impatiently, “shrieking for me even when I’m doing nothing!”

But who the “she” referred to hovered just beyond the rim of memory and remained a mystery. It was a voice that was familiar, just as the spontaneous words in her mind were familiar, and further than that at the moment there was no occasion to analyse or question, least of all to feel bothered. Indeed, it was the darkness of the great hall that bothered her far more. There ought surely to have been a bright, giant chandelier that hung blazing from the ceiling.

“But anyhow, I’m all right,” she assured herself. “Jack is with me. Besides,” she comforted herself still further, “I haven’t done anything wrong except dawdle a bit, and if the big chandelier is not blazing — well, it isn’t, and that’s not my fault!”

She walked on across the vast empty floor, feeling as safe as though some mighty power held her by the hand. For no sense of naughtiness, much less of guilt, lay in her. She was here to look for something she had a right to look for: she had come to find something she was perfectly entitled to find: more, she was expected to find. She had delayed and dawdled, yes, but she had never forgotten quite; it had never left her mind entirely. No, never entirely or quite, she told herself. That haunting memory of something important she must find had dogged her whole life…. She had lazed and dreamed and loafed, of course, but — she had not fallen asleep exactly, for playing with a dream of sorts was not precisely sleeping. And if her dream had not been quite real, neither, for that matter, had she herself been quite real. How hard, oh, how hard it was, she now perceived, to keep awake and real! How easy and natural to drift into a sort of mechanical dream-state where things and persons happening outside oneself took on a clever mask of reality, and pricked one into automatic action that seemed real….

“Maria, child! Maria…!” called the distant voice.

Tick tock! Tick tock! Tick tock! beat the ever-ever-hunting footsteps.

She heard them both; the high-pitched, exasperating voice, and the grinding sound that followed the other, the strike close at hand. And while she heard them both and hurried her walk perceptibly, almost running now, strange objects, strange because they were half familiar, came poking up above the horizon of her thoughts, objects that held an air of terrific, startling reality compared to anything she had experienced here. A dear, kindly face with a beard and a ridiculous and helpless smile she saw; a tiger-skin; a teapot; a tray, a plate with prune stones arranged round its white rim; a pair of legs with bulging calves in rough woollen stockings; a mantelpiece where a white-faced clock stared ominously down….

She saw them all motionless, as though suspended calmly in deep water, clear enough in outline, yet blurred by the depth in which they hung and floated. They refused to disclose themselves entirely. There! They popped down again out of sight. They were gone.

“The Pig Stye! The Pig Stye!” she heard herself crying out. “Where is it? It must be upstairs, of course! Upstairs!”

She had crossed two-thirds of the enormous empty room. It seemed endless. She bumped and bruised herself against the corners of the table, the edges of chairs. It was a haunted and a haunting journey, a real nightmare passage, but her pluck did not fail her, her purpose held. She would find the Pig Stye or die in the attempt. Delay even for a single second, she knew, was utterly impossible. It was now or never. And yet her best pace was little better than a crawl. What odd, whispering sounds there were, too! As if others were just in front or just behind her, and more than once she heard a door being opened, another closed, with faint tappings, rattlings of handles, and queer, soft sounds as though someone went past her swiftly in stockinged feet.

“I shall be an old woman before I get to the end,” ran the frightening thought.

“You are already,” came a whisper, as a door opened with a soft thud above her somewhere.

She looked up.—

“You’ve lived your life and haven’t found it. Come, stay with us and play with us….”

The whisper was behind her. She turned, staring across the immense space she had already crossed. The nightmare flooded over her with its appalling power at full tide.

“Maria, child! Where are you?”

Tick tock! Tick tock!

“Streaked like the lightning, stalking every man!”

“Darkness cometh when no man can work!”

“No abiding city here!”

“Pearl of Great Price … few there be that find it … needle in a haystack…!”

“Too late … search and you shall find…. Pig Stye…!”

All these words and phrases, jumbled up together, rushed tumbling through her head as she turned and looked across the immense space of floor that she had just crossed. For there, right before her bewildered eyes, she saw the Fruit Stoners, the whole Ancient Company of her queer Fruit Stoner friends, and they were seated in a circle on the floor. Yes, all seated in a circle on the floor of the vast banqueting hall.

“Was I all that time crossing it?” she asked herself with a bewildered shudder. “How did they manage to slip in like that?”

They had faded horribly. She had entirely forgotten them. She had forgotten everything, all her past life, her married years, her adventures, her voyages … all had faded into some dim, measureless obscurity. How crinkled, dark and tiny their faces looked…. How unimportant and absurd both they and her own past, vivid existence now seemed suddenly….

A shiver as of death passed through her as she stared at this circle of figures seated on the floor. Was nothing, nothing real? Had everything, everything been illusion? She felt lost.

A hand in the darkness crept into her own, though she could see no outline of a figure. She felt long, slender fingers clasp her own. There was a fantastic, a magical delicacy of touch. A shock, as of delicious lightning, that stung yet did not injure, raced with fiery conviction along her arm and straight into her heart. She was aware of some touch of instinctive, infallible guidance. A flash of delirious, joyful radiance burned her.

“Then — love is real, at least!” darted across her being in its depths, for she recognized the touch, the guidance, with a spasm of such intensity that it was pain.

“Watch,” came an answering whisper. And the guiding hand, ever invisible, drew her to the side of the room. “I tell you this, because you have given everything. Watch … when you see it — act. We shall enter paradise together…!”

Without understanding, she yielded to the guidance and obeyed. Leaning against the wall, she stood and watched.

In a dim light which seemed to come from nowhere, and was more like pale moonlight than anything she could think of, she saw the Fruit Stoners in a circular group, not upright and standing, but seated in the middle of the vast floor. There they were in a circle, sitting cross-legged fashion, and busily intent upon something they were doing.

She held her breath, still as any mouse, and stared. What on earth were they so intent upon? Their whole attention was concentrated on it. They evidently had not noticed Judas scamper across the floor, they seemed equally unaware that she now stood watching them. Their whole minds were focused on what they were doing.

What was it? It looked like a game. They seemed to be playing a game of sorts. Behind their backs, under the arches of their legs, they were passing something swiftly from one to another. They were trying to hide it, trying to find it, each making sudden violent grabs to snatch at it before it was passed beyond the reach of the outstretched hand. She then saw the Gentleman rise abruptly, and with top-hat on the back of his head, eyeglass swinging and coat-tails flying, tear round and round outside the seated circle, and make frantic efforts to seize the mysterious object over their shoulders.

A trembling of great violence ran over her. She had flashed back into childhood with a sudden bang that startled her. This game they were playing secretly was a game she knew, a game she had played herself somewhere long ago, though where and when escaped her. She felt herself upon the verge of remembering. Any instant now her memory would pour back in a flood. It balanced just out of sight, hovering, ready to topple over and declare itself.

She would remember what she had come to find! The purpose of her whole life and being would be fulfilled!

The game rushed madly on, half alarming, half absurd, yet of stupendous importance, for the object the Fruit Stoners kept hiding, snatching, passing from one to the other, was, of course, the object she had come to find.

“I am a silly ass to have forgotten it!” she cried under her breath. “I know exactly what it is. I’ve known it all along. It’s — it’s—”

But the name still held away. The name escaped her.

Immense periods, as she stood there watching, seemed to stretch behind her, years and years and years; she had stood there for ages; childhood, youth, maturity had all slipped past her since she first came.

… Moreover, it was all as familiar as getting up in the morning and going to bed at night. She had lived through it all a hundred times before, and she would live through it all a hundred times again. The whole business just went on happening over and over again in this recurrent, mechanical, futile way….

She became abruptly aware that the Gentleman was looking straight at her with a fixed and unsheathed eye. The object he had just successfully snatched from the Tinker in front of him was actually in his hand. His fingers clutched and hid it, but she knew he held it, her precious object, her Pearl of Great Price, the thing of ultimate importance, whose finding would explain the purpose of her coming here, the aim and meaning of her entire life and being.

That fixed, unsheathed eye looked steadily at her, and Maria returned the gaze unflinchingly. The whole Company now turned their heads to stare at her. A sudden horror invaded her as she met their stare, a sense of the horrible futility of all these doll-like, mechanical, unreal figures she had created, a horror due to the awful realization that she herself — almost — resembled them. The same instant she sprang forward.

“Give it to me!” she shouted frantically at the top of her voice. “Give me that thing at once! It’s mine! It’s what I came to find! And your game is nothing but — but—”

The name escaped her. It hung just out of sight … as she dashed across the floor. A piercing scream escaped her as she ran. For at the same moment the grinding sound of the terrible Tick tock! broke on the air like thunder. Close, quite close to her, crackled out the roaring clamour of the long-dreaded strike.

It was the first strike of six o’clock.

Her Five Minutes were almost up.

She had already taken half a dozen rapid strides, her hands stretched out almost within touching distance of her precious object, when the Gentleman darted back and mingled with the main body of the still seated Fruit Stoners. The same moment the whole circle rose to its feet. And what happened then was so swift, so unexpected, so atrociously of nightmare quality, that she could hardly believe her eyes. For it took place instantly, and instantly it was over. Above the great banqueting hall ran the circular gallery underneath the high white ceiling, and the entire Company of Fruit Stoners, led by the hideously agile Gentleman, had whirled across the floor, flowed up the wide staircase, and were seated round the upper gallery before she could even draw a breath. Like the loops and coils of a flung rope, whirling like a turned wheel, they were there above her, seated again and playing their ridiculous game, the game she could not quite remember. Maria craned her neck upwards, stared in amazement. The very next moment she had reached the foot of the stairs, and was flying up them when her eye saw the tall grandfather’s clock standing on the landing at the top, its round white face staring grimly down at her. It had not been there before. It looked enormous. Was it — horrors! — moving? It was there the awful strike had sounded, the first stroke of the dreaded six o’clock that had haunted her whole existence.

All this happened in less than a second. She could hardly think, she could scarcely feel, for there was no time left for either. But she could, at least, see. The chaos in her mind was beyond all telling, but sight remained clear and vivid. There were five strokes of that monstrous clock to sound yet before her Five Minutes were up, and it was in the intervals between these strokes of doom that her eyes saw what they saw.

She gave one last upward look. Was it an optical delusion? Was the great space of gallery and ceiling shrinking? Was the ceiling lowering itself towards the ring of seated Fruit Stoners, growing smaller as it dropped?

She had no time to ask herself these questions; it was simply that her eyes told her what was happening. The circle of Fruit Stoners, and the vast white ceiling above them, both grew still — till she saw nothing but a ring of crinkly prune-stone faces placed at tiny intervals round the white edge of a — yes, of a white plate.

She saw also, beyond all possible confusion of her senses, the huge upright clock, standing like a lion in her way. She would have to pass this giant clock that barred her way. She must rush upstairs close underneath its dreadful figure in order to reach the tiny figure that still clutched her precious object, her Pearl of Great Price. It was already grinding. Any second the second stroke would crash out upon the air.

“The Pig Stye! The Pig Stye!” roared through her frantic mind.

There was not a second, not a fraction of a second, to lose. She braced her muscles, but her muscles seemed so heavy; in spite of the most violent efforts, her legs carried her so slowly, oh, so slowly towards the stairs. Her heart was bursting. Her very tendons seemed to crack. A curious pungent odour stung her nostrils. “Time is a tiger, stalking every man, streaked like the lightning…” whizzed across her brain. She sniffed. She coughed. Her breath betrayed her. Though her courage did not fail, her body refused obstinately to hurry, so that where she should have rushed, she merely crawled.

Could she believe her eyes? Had it really moved again? Was it still moving, imperceptibly, very slightly, but yet definitely now standing squarely between her and the stairs — leaving hardly room for her to pass?

Just beyond its grim, menacing outline, she could see the ring of crinkled-faced Fruit Stoners, one of them clutching her Pearl of Great Price in its fading little hand.

Oh, she must seize her precious object by force, by violence, she must be up the stairs and in the gallery before — before she could say Knife! Knife! Knife!

Only there was a better name, a better phrase than Knife! What was it? What was that powerful, comforting name that had once helped her, and now was lost again? Only the half of it came to her.

Her mind was a ghastly whirlpool. Pig Stye! Pearl! Fruit Stoners! The purpose of her life fulfilled! That dangerous, acrid smell! Tiger! The Man who Wound the Clocks! The Tyrant who had given her five minutes in which to accomplish the ultimate aim of her whole life and being!

Crash! The second stroke fell with its violent thunder on the air.

She took several racing but faltering steps and reached the foot of the great staircase. She managed the first few stairs in a brave, reckless stride. She knew then that her eyes had not deceived her. The giant grandfather’s clock had moved. It was moving now. It was bending forward, its slow, lumbering giant outline distinctly visible. The whole eight feet of it, the great square shoulders hunching themselves, leant over towards her, till the white, menacing visage seemed to thrust itself in front of her very face. The white disc almost shone. There was not a foot between them.

She stared straight into the appalling visage of her enemy.

“I knew I must meet you sooner or later,” ran a whisper of icy courage through her inmost heart.

And nightmare opened its awful mouth and took the entire universe in its jaws. Had it been possible, Maria would have closed her eyes, only the lids refused to work. Her eyes remained wide open as if they would never close again. The clock changed even as she looked. The main body of it shortened, the square outline below divided into two straight supports like legs. Long stripes ran down them. They were legs, legs in striped trousers. Below the hunched shoulders a pair of arms thrust out. The white disc became a human face, the face of a man. She gazed at the monster, the tyrant, who had given her her Five Minutes.

For a second she held her ground, though he was now close enough to touch. Then, as she gave a shuddering start, the striped trousers, the black tailcoat as well, took on a yellowish tinge. The body grew longer suddenly, the flanks showed curiously lean and hollow, the arms and shoulders wore a tawny, streaked appearance, the eyes flashed with amber fire. The lips next drew back upon long pointed teeth, and the same instant the whole immense body dropped upon all fours. It leapt.

The Man who Wound the Clocks! The Tiger! Which was it? Were they both the same?

For a rushing instant she saw the glaring disc that was its face. A terrible white dial she saw. The two hands hung in a dead straight line, the big hand uppermost, the little one below.

It was six o’clock. She had — at most — some thirty seconds left.

It was an animal she faced, streaked like the lightning, a tiger, and a tiger about to spring. There was a grinding of its entrails. The third stroke was upon her. Already it had risen upright again, its seven feet of terror erect upon its hind legs. The dreadful mouth was open wide.

CRASH! came the third terrific roar.

Bereft, stripped bare, empty, her courage met it with the single-hearted prayer that saved her.

“Robinson!” she gave back a terrific shriek. “Jack Robinson!” And was past it and up the stairs at lightning speed, the monster at her heels.

•  XVIII  •

She had found the full name. There was no terror now. The nightmare spell was lifting. Her muscles worked, her heart, her brain, her nerves. Her memory as well. She was young once more, young as a horse-chestnut bud in spring. Age had fled, and horror with it. This almost was a spree. Light-hearted, gay, she felt. Memory and vitality burst round her in a shower of dazzling sparks.

“Glory be! This is a spree!” she almost sang.

Jack alone had worked half a miracle, but it had not taken away that grinding inner horror. It was the Robinson that rooted out that ghastly dread. The name had come back to her in its full glory, the syllables correct, the power of inhuman kind.

“Jack Robinson! Jack Robinson!” she sang, racing like the wind, knowing that, with only three strokes still to come, thirty seconds at most, she was yet safe. The beauty and power of that wondrous name filled her with a glory of the awful stars.

“Golly and glory be!” she cried breathlessly.

How could she have neglected and forgotten it all these ages!

•   •   •

Time stretched out behind her like an immense elastic, yet the faster she ran, the less it drew her back. Jack Robinson, dancing along beside her with immense power and superhuman grace, made Time seem ridiculous.

He was superb, invisible, yet everywhere and always. Faster than Time he was. Thirty seconds and five minutes had no meaning. She was timeless and divine. Young, tireless, inexhaustible. Nothing was left to her, since Time and Experience had taken all. She owed the Apothecary, above all the Thief, a fortune. They had left her, between them, so naked that she was light as wind, and as wind now she raced and flew.

She knew, none the less, that the Man who Wound the Clocks, the Tiger of her nightmare, was at her heels. If she had her limitless eternity, they had their schedule of time and space, as well. She realized quite clearly that she must not be caught and overtaken.

In front of her, too, she could see the rushing Ancient Company of Fruit Stoners going like greased lightning. They kept to their circular formation, balanced carefully round the rim of a large, white spinning plate. Holding on for dear life they were, keeping just ahead of her. She saw them all as they whirled along the floor of the passage, ridiculous yet marvellous. It seemed incredible how they held on to the edge of that whirling plate. Yet they did so quite comfortably. The Sailor’s gold earrings flashed, the Tailor’s scissors gleamed, the Soldier saluted the air while polishing his buttons, a burnished tear lay on the Ploughboy’s cheek, and the kettles of the Tinker sang their tinny song. Each and all pursued their usual avocations, the Apothecary thinking too hard to notice the pace, the Gentleman urbanely waving his bright silk hat, the Thief — his exquisite hands in everybody’s pocket in turn — casting his shining eyes back towards her as Sirius might peep across space at a violet….

At the same time, the whole Company continued its idiotic game, the game whose secret still hid away from her. Reduced to the size of pygmies, with crinkled, ageless faces, the Fruit Stoners still played their ancient game, passing her precious Pearl from hand to hand, hiding it beneath their arched knees, slipping it with furious speed from one to another lest someone outside their circle snatch it away.

What was it — oh, what could it be…?

In less than a fraction of a second she saw this going on and took it in. Thirty seconds she had still, racing, racing, rushing, rushing, the air whistling past her ears, yet her mind quite clear and steady, because Jack Robinson flew ever at her side.

She realized quite definitely that she must overtake these mechanical whirling dolls that aped reality and mimicked life; she knew she must catch them up; she knew that one of them held at a given moment her Pearl of Great Price. She knew also that her faith must not for a single instant fail, that close behind her, rushing and ready to roar, followed the wild tread of Time, the Monster, pausing upon his final spring against her neck, with its upright seven feet of hideous yellow terror. The acrid breath came to her nostrils. Her very heels were almost touched.

Thirty seconds! Yes, with Jack Robinson that was enough. But she must not dawdle nor forget. The framed ancestors shot past her like a streak of coloured light, a grinning, deathly series. The doors of the flower-room flashed by. She did not falter, she made no false step. She believed in Jack Robinson, and his majestic power did not, could not, fail her. Her smarting eyes streamed water, her heart pumped and banged against her ribs, but, in spite of that acrid breath, those fearful feet upon her very heels, she kept just ahead.

“Oh, Jack Robinson,” she cried, “I could face anything with you! Time, age — anything…!”

The green baize door appeared in front of her. It stood ajar. The spinning plate with its freight of Fruit Stoners whisked through like the dart of a frightened dragonfly. But Maria was after them. Once past it she was in the familiar Little House again. The door closed behind her with its soft, queer, sullen gulp of sound.

Had the monster come through too?

Maria never knew exactly what had happened.

She only knew that the great white plate still spun before her eyes along the familiar corridor, and that the Fruit Stoners, one by one, flew startlingly off its rim and fell higgledy-piggledy upon the carpet. One alone kept his balance — the Gentleman. She saw him bend over suddenly, make a wild clutch in the air, then straighten up again and wave his hand above his top-hat.

“I have it! I have it!” he cried triumphantly, and the voice that issued from his tiny crinkly face was small and tinkly, though it rang clear as a bell.

Maria gasped and held her breath. She shivered.

He held something in his hand, snatched from his companions in the game, her Pearl of Great Price, the thing she had come to find. Oh, what could it be, this jewel above rubies?

But for the knowledge that Jack Robinson was close beside her, breathing the power of his ineffable presence about her like a soft wind of beauty that takes a frozen garden in the spring, she must have collapsed. For the moment was genuinely awful. What could it be, this grand, terrific thing she had spent her life to find, this object clothed in some majesty of ultimate importance, this lost difficult secret, whose finding would explain the meaning and purpose of her entire being, the clue that would bring sense, significance, beauty into her long, tiresome and painful existence?

The Gentleman, waving his silk hat and bowing profoundly, had fallen off the plate and yet stood elegantly upright — against a door. In his hand above the shining top-hat the Thing lay clutched.

Maria stared a second. She gazed upward at that closed hand. She hesitated. Her breath, her muscles, her resolution, all were braced for the effort.

“Jack Robinson,” she sang out, and power at once poured through her like a mountain wind.

Instantly then she recognized the door. Memory opened like the sky. It was the door of her father’s bedroom. At the same second she saw the Fruit Stoners collected again at her feet, sitting in a circle, waiting for the Gentleman to join them again.

CRASH came the awful roar, as the fourth stroke fell with a shattering bang behind her.

Maria screamed … for in the same instant memory finally flung wide its immense doors.

“It’s Hunt the Slipper — your idiotic game! And what you’ve got in your hand” — turning to the Gentleman with radiant confidence — “is — slippers! That’s what I came to find — Father’s slippers!”

A pair of bedroom slippers!

She pushed and drove upwards to seize them, her Pearl of Great Price, and falling through a figure of mist and air, burst headlong into the room.

“I’m awake at last — more conscious — more aware,” flashed through her, as she cried at the top of her voice, “Good-bye, Jack Robinson, and thanks awfully!”

Then memory closed down like an iron shutter.

She looked quickly about her and thought it was the most untidy room she had ever seen, for its disorder was really disgraceful. It was scandalous that her father’s bedroom should be left in such a state.

“It’s nothing but a pig-stye, I declare!” Maria exclaimed in disgust. “Why doesn’t that — that Puss look after him better?”

In the dim light that came through the open door it was difficult to see outlines clearly, and the general litter of clothes and things made it still more difficult.

“Now where can those slippers be?” exclaimed Maria, bustling about and colliding with bits of furniture. “I declare! It’s like a haystack!” She knew she must find them quickly if she was to be back in the library by six o’clock as she had promised.

Something fell with a bang and rattle at her feet, as she bumped against a piece of furniture. There they were at last! She had knocked them off the end of the sofa. She stooped, groped a moment along the floor, and the same instant felt them under her fingers.

“Got ’em!” she cried, clutching them, one in each hand, and was out in the passage at once, banging the door noisily behind her as she ran.

“Maria, child! Where are you?” sounded a high voice somewhere in the house, for the banging door had betrayed her. But Maria did not answer. The sound of a clock striking took all her attention. She counted the strokes: One, two, three, four. Then it stopped. It was the presentation clock on the landing, of course, and it was out of order. That was why the Man who Wound the Clocks was fiddling with it.

“I can just do it!” she thought, as she tore along the passage, aware that Judas was scampering beside her. “Just! But I must be quicker than Jack Robinson!”

Whipping along at full speed, she raced past the Man who was fiddling with the clock, noticing his striped trousers as he moved a little to let her pass, and hearing a grinding of the machinery as though the next strike was just coming. There was only a second or two left if she was to reach the library in time. She was down the stairs like a lamplighter. As she flung across the hall the fifth stroke fell with a crash behind her in the gallery.

•  XIX  •

The door of the library stood ajar. There! She had forgotten to close it in her hurry when she left five minutes before. She hoped her father had not noticed. Pushing it wide, she burst into the room, and as she crossed the threshold the last stroke of six rang out from the white-faced clock on the mantelpiece.

“There, Father,” she cried breathlessly, “I’ve done it! I took just five minutes. And here are your slippers!”

She flung across the room to his side, giving a queer sudden start as she saw the great tiger-skin with its yellow stripes — then sat down on its head and began to undo her father’s heavy boots.

He looked up with a jerk from what was evidently a moment’s doze, the newspaper slipping from his knees. Judas, she noticed, was playing with the prune stones arranged round the edge of the white plate where the tea-tray stood close to the ground on a dump. His black paw, tentatively stretched out, had already knocked one off — the eighth, she saw, quickly counting in her head.

“The Thief,” darted across her mind, as she glanced at the dark, crinkly little object on the carpet. “He’s come with me…” but she had no notion why she said it or what she meant. A touch of supreme ecstasy poured over her that turned the world golden with an incredible hope, followed the same instant by a deep yearning pity, a sense of compassion that passed all telling. She felt that she was going to burst into tears.

“Get out, you rascal!” exclaimed her father, smacking Judas playfully, then turning to thank her. “You’ve been wonderfully quick,” he praised her, “quicker than Jack Robinson. But then I knew you would be. One, two, three — go!” as with a final effort the big shooting boot came off and fell noisily on to the floor. “And did you find them easily?” he went on. “Of course you did. Just where I left ’em — eh?”

Maria heard the words but made no answer. She was looking round the room, taking everything in. Her free hand stole automatically to her bead necklace, her hair-ribbon, her belt. Was all this quite real — her father’s talk, the library, the tea-tray, the prune stones, Judas, her own self? A curious deep doubt flashed swiftly. Her life in this Big House in the country, the failing family fortunes, Mrs. Binks, her daily existence, her age, her occupations, hopes, fears, pleasures … were they all quite real? Wasn’t it all a dream of sorts, something she might wake up from — if only she were more aware, more conscious — waking up a second time…?

For an instant her whole being ached with the poignant certainty that something much more real lay just beyond her reach.

“… just where I left ’em, eh?” she heard her father’s voice.

“Oh, but, Father,” she burst out, still breathless a little from her headlong run, bewildered, too, as the haunting passion raked her heart and mind in vanishing, “your room is simply awful, you know — awful” — starting on the other boot — “and it’s a wonder you don’t lose everything you’ve got!”

“Eh?” he said innocently, watching the operations with a scrunched-up expression on his face. “You don’t mean it — really?”

“I do,” Maria insisted. “I’ve never seen a room in such a mess in my whole life. It was a perfect Pig-Stye.”

“There!” he grunted, as the boot came off with a sudden jerk. “You really mean it,” he went on laughingly. “A perfect pig-stye?”

“I do,” she declared with emphasis, and she looked up into his face with sympathy and pity, but with indignation too.

“Well, a perfect one is better than an imperfect one,” she heard him say with a chuckle that seemed to come from a distance, his voice far away in the air almost. For a moment the odd feeling came over her again — the feeling that they were talking in a dream, that her father’s outline in the chair turned shadowy, the tea-tray, the heavy boots, the slippers she was fumbling with, the entire room, in fact, and everything in it, all were merely insubstantial pictures in her mind.

A faint odour, slightly acrid, rose to her nostrils from the tiger-skin on which she sat, and a sudden shiver ran swiftly through her. Turning her head she saw that a group of tall, silent figures stood about her, shadowy, their outlines only just visible. They crowded the air against the bookshelves, all still and motionless, but with eager, peering, spectral faces. Who were they? What were they? Why did her heart ache so? Were they merely shadows? She looked more closely, and as she did so a moment’s icy horror swept her, followed by a deep, yearning pang that gripped her very entrails. There was something she half remembered, something that floated over her like the ghost of a forgotten dream. These figures were real. Somewhere she had known them, loved them, feared them, played with them. They belonged to some lost portion of her life and being, half sweet, half terrible, but at least indubitably real. They had filled her hours, her days, her years; in childhood, youth and age they had been comrades. She had known adventure with them, but she had known dread and anguish too. She had known … love.

The storm of pity in her grew and deepened. Compassion swept her like a tempest.

“I love you,” she whispered, the pain in her almost unbearable, “for I made you with my very best.”

A passion of affection, longing, of fierce regret rushed over her, but no answer came from the row of dim, undecipherable faces. She was aware of their friendliness, their patience, their reverence, their loving worship, their steadfast belief, and somehow of their courage too. She could not understand it. What they meant escaped her. The spectral faces caused her an extraordinary pain as she strove to recall them to her memory, but without success.

… Real, real, real they were, she felt positive, for all their shadowy insubstantiality.

A face thrust closer from the general group, so that she saw dimly a grey straggling beard, and caught a whiff of something that reminded her of a medicine cupboard as it came close against her own.

“Real then, of course we were,” issued a clear whisper from the tangled hair, “just as now all this seems real,” and his hand swept round the library. “But you can awaken from all this too, awaken a second time…” as both hands included the room with a gesture — and the same instant the whole strange picture shivered before her eyes, shattered into a thousand fragments….

“Maria, child! Where are you? Don’t bang the doors like that!” came in a shrill voice somewhere on the upper landing.

Her father gave a little start.

“And if my room is really as untidy as all that,” he went on, “I suppose I must do something about it. I must have it seen to, mustn’t I? Yes, Maria darling, I must have it seen to. I’ll speak to Mrs. Binks tomorrow. She’ll soon send the maids about their business. My things have never been done properly since I had to let William go.”

He drew her down upon his knee, for both slippers were now safely and comfortably on.

“She’s wonderful, really wonderful,” he went on, putting his arm about Maria’s waist. “I don’t know what I should have done without her. Why, you’re still out of breath, Maria. Your body’s trembling. You took those stairs too fast. It’s tired you out, you little monkey!”

“It’s nothing, Father. Only Jack Robinson’s pace is terrific, you see.”

She nestled down against her father’s shoulder. He had stopped speaking, but she knew quite well what was coming. She could feel him drawing a deeper breath so to speak, could feel all his inner machinery collecting itself as with a clock just going to strike. His voice, as he praised Mrs. Binks, had softened a little, a note of shyness, yes, of tenderness, in it. Oh, she knew what was coming well enough, and that queer feeling of having been through this all before came over her again. She had lived it over and over again, as though it just went on happening forever, a recurrent business, a recurrent sort of dream. It had no reality. It was all something she could wake up from — if only she knew the way: wake up into something else that was finally and definitely real, wake up a second time….

A touch of drowsiness was stealing over her as she waited.

“Yes, Father…” she murmured almost sleepily, trying to help him.

“Talking about my cousin,” she heard him, a distinct effort in the voice and the tone considerably lower as though he was going to let her into a great secret, “I — er — wanted to tell you something, Marigold darling—”

“Yes, Father, I know,” she mumbled softly, nestling deeper against his old smoky shooting-coat as though cuddling into sleep. “And if you really want another, of course take it. I’m going … to marry … a thief … myself…!”

But the last words were so low they seemed spoken out of sleep, and it is doubtful if her father heard them even. He picked her up in his arms and carried her up himself to her bedroom, for he saw that she was half lost in dreams and slumber.

“Tick tock! Tick tock!” sounded the old clock on the mantelpiece in the deserted room where only Judas remained playing with a crinkly prune stone on the carpet which he evidently believed to be a real and living mouse — Judas, the eighth fruit stone and the ferocious tiger-skin whose eyes and teeth and fearful tawny limbs had no reality in them….

•  THE END  •