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SLAVES OF FREEDOM

By Coningsby Dawson

New York: Henry Holt And Company

1916


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A SLAVE OF FREEDOM


                   The Night slips his arm about the Moon

                   And walks till the skies grow gray;

                   But my Love, when I speak of love,

                   Has never a word to say.

                   I set my dreams at her feet as lamps

                   For which all my hope must pay;

                   But my Love, when I speak of love,

                   Has never a word to say.

                   I fill her hands with a gleaming soul

                   For her plaything night and day;

                   But she, when I speak to her of love,

                   Has never a word to say.

                   I give my life, which is hers to kill

                   Or to keep with her alway;

                   And still, when I speak to her of love,

                   She’s never a word to say.

                   _The Night slips his arm about the Moon

                   And walks till the skies grow gray;

                   But my Love, when I speak of love,

                   Has never a word to say._





BOOK I--LIFE TILL TWENTY-ONE




CHAPTER I--MRS. SHEERUG’S GARDEN


Nother bucket o’ mortar, Mr. Ooze.”

The excessively thin man glanced up from the puddle of lime that he
was stirring and regarded the excessively fat man with a smile of meek
interrogation.

“‘Nother bucket o’ mortar, Willie Ooze, and don’t you put your ’ead on
one side at me like a bloomin’ cockatoo.”

Mr. William Hughes stuttered an apology. “I was thin-thinking.”

“Thin-thinking!” The fat man laughed good-naturedly. Turning his back
on his helper, he gave the brick which he had just laid an extra tap to
emphasize his incredulity. “’Tisn’t like you.”

The thin man’s feelings were wounded. To the little boy who looked on
this was evident from the way he swallowed. His Adam’s-apple took a
run up his throat and, at the last moment, thought better of it. “But I
_was_ thinking,” he persisted; “thinking that I’d learnt something from
stirring up this gray muck. If ever I was to kill somebody--you, for
instance, or that boy--I’d know better than to bury you in slaked lime.”

“Uml Urn!” The fat man gulped with surprise. He puckered his vast chin
against his collar so that his voice came deep and strangled. “It’s
scraps o’ knowledge like that as saves men from the gallers. If ’alf
the murderers that is ’anged ’ad come to me first, they wouldn’t be
’anging. But--but----” He seemed at last to realize the unkind
implication of Mr. Hughes’s naive confession. “But I’d make four o’ you,
Willyum! You couldn’t kill me, however you tried.”

In the face of contradiction Mr. Hughes forgot his nervousness. “I
could.” he pleaded earnestly. “I’ve often thought about it. I’d put off
till you was stooping, and then jump. What with you being so short of
breath and me being so long in the arms and legs, why-----------! I’ve
planned it out many times, you and me being such good friends and so
much alone together.”

The face of the fat man grew serious with disapproval. “You?
’ave, ’ave you! You’ve got as far as that! You’re a nice domestic
pet, I must say, to keep unchained to play with the children.” He
attempted to go on with his bricklaying, but the memory of Mr. Hughes’s
long arms and legs so immediately behind him was disturbing. He swung
round holding his trowel like a weapon. “Don’t like your way of talking;
don’t like it. O’ course you’ve ‘ad your troubles; for them I make
allowances. But I don’t like it, and I don’t mind telling you. Um! Um!”

The thin man was crestfallen; he had hoped to give pleasure. “But I
thought you liked murders.”

“Like ’em! I enjoy them--so I do.” The fat man spoke tartly. “But when
you make me the corpse of your conversations, you presoom, Mr. Ooze, and
I don’t mind telling you--you really do. Let that boy be the corpse next
time; leave me out of it---- ’Nother bucket o’ mortar.”

_That_ boy, who was sole witness to this quarrel, was very small--far
smaller than his age. In the big walled garden of Orchid Lodge he felt
smaller than usual. Everything was strange; even the whispered sigh of
dead leaves was different as they swam up and swirled in eddies. In his
own garden, only six walls distant, their sigh was gentle as Dearie’s
footstep--but something had happened to Dearie; Jimmie Boy had told
him so that morning. “Teddy, little man, it’s happened again”--the
information had left Teddy none the wiser. All he knew was that Jane had
told the milkman that something was expected, and that the milkman had
told the cook at Orchid Lodge. The result had been the intrusion at
breakfast of the remarkable Mrs. Sheerug.

For a long while Mrs. Sheerug had been a staple topic of conversation
between Dearie and Jimmie Boy. They had wondered who she was. They
had made up the most preposterous tales about her and had told them to
Teddy. They would watch for her to come out of her house six doors away,
so that as she passed their window in Eden Row Jimmie Boy might make
rapid sketches of her trotting balloon-like figure. He had used her more
than once already in books which he had been commissioned to illustrate.
She was the faery-godmother in his _Cinderella and Other Ancient Tales:
With!6 Plates in color by James Gurney_. She was Mother Santa Claus in
his _Christmas Up to Date_. They had rather wanted to get to know her,
this child-man and woman who seemed no older than their little son
and at times, even to their little son, not half as sensible. They had
wanted to get to know her because she was always smiling, and because
she was always upholstered in such hideously clashing colors, and
because she was always setting out burdened on errands from which she
returned empty-handed. The attraction of Mrs. Sheerug was heightened by
Jane’s, the maid-of-all-work’s, discoveries: Orchid Lodge was heavily
in debt to the local tradesmen and yet (it was Dearie who said “And yet.”
 with a sigh of envy), and yet its mistress was always smiling.

When Mrs. Sheerug had invaded Teddy’s father that morning, she had come
arrayed for conquest. She had worn a green plush mantle, a blue bonnet
and, waving defiance from the blue bonnet, a yellow feather.

“I’m a total stranger,” she had said. “Go on with your breakfast, Mr.
Gurney, I’ve had mine. I’ll watch you. Well, _I’ve heard_, and so I’ve
dropped in to see what I can do. You mustn’t mind me; trying to be a
mother to everyone’s my foible. Now, first of all, you can’t have that
boy in the house--boys are nice, but a nuisance. They’re noisy.”

“But Teddy, I mean Theo, isn’t.”

It was just like Jimmie Boy to call him Theo before a stranger and to
assume the rôle of a respected parent.

Mrs. Sheerug refused to be contradicted. She was cheerful, but emphatic.
“If he never made a noise before, he will now. As soon as I’ve made Theo
comfortable, I’ll come back to take care of you.”

Making Theo comfortable had consisted in leading him down the
old-fashioned, little-traveled street, on one side of which the river
ran, guarded by iron spikes like spears set up on end, and turning him
loose in the strange garden,