LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

the Mineral Waters too fountain-like foaming. They spread the shape."

      Near the end of the letter came this:—

      "You remember the chapter of 'The Golden Gondola' that I wrote for the People's Pageant just before I had the honour to lead to the altar, &c. I mean the one that ends in the subterranean passage, with Geraldine's hair down, and her last hope gone, and the three villains stealing upon her with Venetian subtlety in their hearts and Toledo daggers (specially imported) in their garters? I didn't care much for it myself, you remember. I think I must have been thinking of other things when I wrote it. But you, I recollect, consoled me by refusing to regard it as other than 'ripping.' 'Clinking' was, as I recall it, Oswald's consolatory epithet. You'll weep with me, I feel confident, when you hear that my Editor does not share your sentiments. He writes me that it is not up to my usual form. He fears that the public, &c., and he trusts that in the next chapter, &c. Let us hope that the public will, in this matter, take your views, and not his. Oh! for a really discerning public, just like you—you amiable critics! Albert's new aunt is leaning over my shoulder. I can't break her of the distracting habit. How on earth am I ever to write another line? Greetings to all from

      "Albert's Uncle and Aunt.

      "PS.—She insists on having her name put to this, but of course she didn't write it. I am trying to teach her to spell."

      "PSS.—Italian spelling, of course."

      "And now," cried Oswald, "I see it all!"

      The others didn't. They often don't when Oswald does.

      "Why, don't you see!" he patiently explained, for he knows that it is vain to be angry with people because they are not so clever as—as other people. "It's the direct aspiration of Fate. He wants it, does he? Well, he shall have it!"

      "What?" said everybody.

      "We'll be it."

      "What?" was the not very polite remark now repeated by all.

      "Why, his discerning public."

      And still they all remained quite blind to what was so clear to Oswald, the astute and discernful.

      "It will be much more useful than killing dragons," Oswald went on, "especially as there aren't any; and it will be a really truly wedding present—just what we were wishing we'd given him."

      The five others now fell on Oswald and rolled him under the table and sat on his head so that he had to speak loudly and plainly.

       THE FIVE OTHERS

      "All right! I'll tell you—in words of one syllable if you like. Let go, I say!" And when he had rolled out with the others and the tablecloth that caught on H.O.'s boots and the books and Dora's workbox, and the glass of paint-water that came down with it, he said—

      "We will be the public. We will all write to the editor of the People's Pageant and tell him what we think about the Geraldine chapter. Do mop up that water, Dora; it's running all under where I'm sitting."

      "Don't you think," said Dora, devoting her handkerchief and Alice's in the obedient way she does not always use, "that six letters, all signed 'Bastable,' and all coming from the same house, would be rather—rather——"

      "A bit too thick? Yes," said Alice; "but of course we'd have all different names and addresses."

      "We might as well do it thoroughly," said Dicky, "and send three or four different letters each."

      "And have them posted in different parts of London. Right oh!" remarked Oswald.

      "I shall write a piece of poetry for mine," said Noël.

      "They ought all to be on different kinds of paper," said Oswald. "Let's go out and get the paper directly after tea."

      We did, but we could only get fifteen different kinds of paper and envelopes, though we went to every shop in the village.

      At the first shop, when we said, "Please we want a penn'orth of paper and envelopes of each of all the different kinds you keep," the lady of the shop looked at us thinly over blue-rimmed spectacles and said, "What for?"

      And H.O. said, "To write unonymous letters."

      "Anonymous letters are very wrong," the lady said, and she wouldn't sell us any paper at all.

      But at the other places we did not say what it was for, and they sold it us. There were bluey and yellowy and grey and white kinds, and some was violetish with violets on it, and some pink, with roses. The girls took the florivorous ones, which Oswald thinks are unmanly for any but girls, but you excuse their using it. It seems natural to them to mess about like that.

      We wrote the fifteen letters, disguising our handwritings as much as we could. It was not easy. Oswald tried to write one of them with his left hand, but the consequences were almost totally unreadable. Besides, if any one could have read it, they would only have thought it was written in an asylum for the insane, the writing was so delirious. So he chucked it.

      Noël was only allowed to write one poem. It began—

      "Oh, Geraldine! Oh, Geraldine!

       You are the loveliest heroine!

       I never read about one before

       That made me want to write more

       Poetry. And your Venetian eyes,

       They must have been an awful size;

       And black and blue, and like your hair,

       And your nose and chin were a perfect pair."

      and so on for ages.

      The other letters were all saying what a beautiful chapter "Beneath the Doge's Home" was, and how we liked it better than the other chapters before, and how we hoped the next would be like it. We found out when all too late that H.O. had called it the "Dog's Home." But we hoped this would pass unnoticed among all the others. We read the reviews of books in the old Spectators and Athenæums, and put in the words they say there about other people's books. We said we thought that chapter about Geraldine and the garters was "subtle" and "masterly" and "inevitable"—that it had an "old-world charm," and was "redolent of the soil." We said, too, that we had "read it with breathless interest from cover to cover," and that it had "poignant pathos and a convincing realism," and the "fine flower of delicate sentiment," besides much other rot that the author can't remember.

      When all the letters were done we addressed them and stamped them and licked them down, and then we got different people to post them. Our under-gardener, who lives in Greenwich, and the other under-gardener, who lives in Lewisham, and the servants on their evenings out, which they spend in distant spots like Plaistow and Grove Park—each had a letter to post. The piano-tuner was a great catch—he lived in Highgate; and the electric-bell man was Lambeth. So we got rid of all the letters, and watched the post for a reply. We watched for a week, but no answer came.

      You think, perhaps, that we were duffers to watch for a reply when we had signed all the letters with fancy names like Daisy Dolman, Everard St. Maur, and Sir Cholmondely Marjoribanks, and put fancy addresses on them, like Chatsworth House, Loampit Vale, and The Bungalow, Eaton Square. But we were not such idiots as you think, dear reader, and you are not so extra clever as you think, either. We had written one letter (it had the grandest Spectator words in it) on our own letter-paper, with the address on the top and the uncle's coat-of-arms outside the envelope. Oswald's real own name was signed to this letter, and this was the one we looked for the answer to. See?

      But that answer did not come. And when three long days had passed away we all felt most awfully stale about it. Knowing the great good we had done for Albert's uncle made our interior feelings very little better, if at all.

      And on the fourth day Oswald spoke up and said what was in everybody's inside heart. He said—

      "This is futile rot. I vote we write and ask that editor why he doesn't answer letters."

      "He

Скачать книгу