Part 4

When she came to Whitehall, she was still a prisoner. It was as though she carried her dungeon with her. Whitehall was less kind even than the white high road, where at least she had found solace in the pity of the humble folk, who wept as she passed, and offered prayers for her safety. Fourteen days she spent in unfriended seclusion, with “no comfort but her innocence, no companion but her book.” Not for her the freedom of the open air, the chatter of tongues, the laughter of friends. Her oft-repeated request to see her sister fell upon the deaf ears of her jailers. A princess of less courage would have quailed before the ill-omened silence which enwrapped her. And how could she hope to regain the Queen’s affection, so long as the cunning servants of the Emperor and the King of France, Renard and Noailles, were there to distil the poison of hate and dread in Queen Mary’s ear?

Knowing well that her foes were the Queen’s friends, her friends the Queen’s foes, she was still of a stout heart. When Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, resolute to entrap her, urged her to confess and to submit herself to the Queen’s Majesty, “submission,” said she proudly, “confessed a crime, and pardon belonged to a delinquent.” For her part she had no crime to confess, and she asked no pardon. So for her temerity she was told that two hundred Northern Whitecoats should guard her lodging that night, and that in the morn she should be secretly conveyed to the Tower, without her household, there to be kept a close prisoner.

_The Tower_

It was a Palm Sunday when she set forth, under a guard, to that place of ill-omen, the Tower of London. Hers was no triumphal progress; neither palm nor willow was carried in her honour. And well might she dread the journey, which she was forced to make. Within the dark walls of the Tower her mother had laid her fair head down upon the block; and what cause had she to hope for a happier destiny? As she left Whitehall, to her a place of durance, she looked up to the window of the Queen’s bedchamber, hoping there to see some mark of favour, some signal of affection. The hope was vain, and in cold despair she came to the Stairs, where the barges awaited her. When she reached the Tower, she was bidden to enter at the Traitor’s Gate, which at first she refused, and then stepping short so that her foot fell into the water, she spake these words to her obdurate jailer:

“Here landeth as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs, since Julius Cæsar laid the first foundations of the Tower.”

The Constable, a wry-faced ruffian, lurched forth savagely to receive her, and in a harsh voice told her that he would show her her lodging. Then she, being faint, “sat down,” we are told, “upon a fair stone, at which time there fell a great shower of rain: the heavens themselves did seem to weep at such inhuman usage.”

[Illustration:

SCENES IN THE LIFE OF A PRINCESS

“They answered that their commission was to bring her to London, alive or dead.” ]

_Drawn for “The Flying Carpet” by H. M. Brock_

Presently she was locked and bolted in the Tower; her own servants were taken from her; to open her casement, that she might enjoy the fresh air of heaven, to walk in the garden—these were pleasures denied her. One sole thing was constantly demanded of her, that she should confess herself a rebel and submit herself to the Queen. Nobly did she refuse, and was left to silence and her own proud thoughts.

_Hampton Court_

She changed her prison, and kept unchanged her high courage. From the Tower she was carried to Woodstock. But what mattered it where the dungeon lay? The locks and bolts were no more easily burst asunder at Woodstock than at the Tower. And then of a sudden her keeper was bidden to bring her to Hampton Court, not as a free Princess, but as a guarded malefactor. At Colnbrook, where on the way she sojourned at the sign of the George, certain gentlemen, devoted to her service, came to do her homage. Instantly, at the Queen’s command, they were sent about their business, and the Princess was bidden to enter Hampton Court, without an escort, and by the back gate, like the humblest menial. Again for many days she was left solitary and in silence, when she was summoned one night into the presence of the Queen, her sister, whose heavy hand she had felt unceasingly, whose face she had not seen for two long years. The Queen, sitting on her chair of State, took up her promise of loyalty sharply and shortly.

“Then you will not confess yourself,” said she, “to be a delinquent, I see, but stand peremptorily upon your truth and innocence; I pray God they may so fall out.”

To which the Princess replied: “If not, I neither require favour nor pardon at your Majesty’s hands.”

“Well,” said the Queen, “then you stand so stiffly upon your faith and loyalty, that you suppose yourself to have been wrongfully punished and imprisoned.”

“I cannot,” replied the Princess, “nor must not say so to you.”

“Why then belike,” retorted the Queen, “you will report it to others.”

“Not so,” said the Princess. “I have borne and must bear the burden myself.”

The two sisters never met again, but the Princess’s courage in facing her fate was not in vain. Thenceforth she was eased of her imprisonment, and went to Ashridge in free custody, where she remained at her pleasure, until Queen Mary’s death.

_A Progress through London_

In 1558 the Queen died, and the Princess Elizabeth, justified of her patience and her courage, was proclaimed Queen of England. In the loyal enthusiasm of her subjects, who had long since acclaimed her in their hearts, the years of solitude and imprisonment were forgotten. To the Tower, which she had left a captive, she returned a monarch, and passed in triumph through her City of London to Westminster. Everywhere she was welcomed by pageants and loyal discourse, until she came to the famous Abbey where she was crowned, to the contentment of her loyal lieges and to the honour and glory of her realm.

Neil and Tintinnabulum

AN INTERLUDE FOR PARENTS

BY J. M. BARRIE

1. _Early Days_

In writing a story a safe plan must be to imitate your favourite author. Until he was nine, when he abandoned the calling, Neil was my favourite author, and I therefore decide to follow his method of dividing the story into short chapters so as to make it look longer.

When he was nine I took him to his preparatory, he prancing in the glories of the unknown until the hour came for me to go, “the hour between the dog and the wolf,” and then he was afraid. I said that in the holidays all would be just as it had been before, but the newly-wise one shook his head; and on my return home, when I wandered out unmanned to look at his tool-shed, I found these smashing words in his writing pinned to the door:

THIS ESTABLISHMENT IS NOW PERMANENTLY CLOSED.

I went white as I saw that Neil already understood life better than I did.

Soon again he was on the wing. Here is interesting autobiographical matter I culled years later from the fly-leaf of his _Cæsar_: “Aetat 12, height 4 ft. 11, biceps 8¼, kicks the beam at 6-2.”

The reference is to a great occasion when Neil stripped at his preparatory (clandestinely) for a Belt with the word “Bruiser” on it. I am reluctant to boast about him (this is untrue), yet must mention that he won the belt, with which (such are the ups and downs of life) he was that same evening gently belted by his preceptor.

It is but fair to Neil to add that he cut a glittering figure in those circles: captain of the footer, and twenty-six against Juddy’s.

“And even then,” his telegram to me said, “I was only bowled off my pads.”

A rural cricket match in buttercup time with boys at play, seen and heard through the trees; it is surely the loveliest scene in England and the most disarming sound. From the ranks of the unseen dead, for ever passing along our country lanes on their eternal journey, the Englishman falls out for a moment to look over the gate of the cricket field and smile. Let Neil’s 26 against Juddy’s, the first and perhaps the only time he is to meet the stars on equal terms, be our last sight of him as a child. He is walking back bat in hand to the pavilion, an old railway carriage. An unearthly glory has swept over the cricket ground. He tries to look unaware of it; you know the expression and the bursting heart. Our smiling Englishman who cannot open the gate waits to make sure that this boy raises his cap in the one right way (without quite touching it, you remember), and then rejoins his comrades. Neil gathers up the glory and tacks it over his bed. “The End,” as he used to say in his letters.

I never know him quite so well again. He seems henceforth to be running to me on a road that is moving still more rapidly in the opposite direction.

2. _The First Half_

The scene has changed. Stilled is the crow of Neil, for he is now but one of the lowliest at a great public school, where he reverberates but little. The scug Neil fearfully running errands for his fag-master is another melancholy reminder of the brevity of human greatness.

Lately a Colossus he was now infinitely less than nothing. What shook him was not the bump as he fell, but the general indifference to his having fallen. He lay there like a bird in the grass winded by a blunt-headed arrow, and was cold to his own touch. The Bruiser Belt and his score against Juddy’s had accompanied him to school on their own legs, one might say, so confident were they of a welcome from his mantelshelf, but after an hour he hid them beneath the carpet. Hidden by him all over that once alluring room, as in disgrace, were many other sweet trifles that went to the making of the flame that had been Neil; his laugh was secreted, say in the drawer of his desk; his pranks were stuffed into his hat-box, his fell ambitions were folded away between two pairs of trousers, and now and then a tear would mix with the soapy water as he washed his cheerless face.

In that dreadful month or more I am dug up by his needs and come again into prominence, gloating because he calls for me, sometimes unable to do more than stand afar off on the playing field, so that he may at least see me nigh though we cannot touch. The thrill of being the one needed, which I had never thought to know again. I have leant over a bridge, and enviously watching the gaiety of two attractive boys, now broken to the ways of school, have wished he was one of them, till I heard their language and wondered whether this was part of the necessary cost.

Leaden-footed Neil in the groves that were to become so joyous to him. He had to refashion himself on a harsher model, and he set his teeth and won, blaming me a little for not having broken to him the ugly world we can make it. One by one his hidden parts peeped out from their holes and ran to him, once more to make his wings; stronger wings than of yore, though some drops of dew had to be shaken off.

By that time my visits were being suffered rather than acclaimed. It was done with an exquisite politeness certainly, but before I was out of sight he had dived into some hilarious rumpus. Gladly for his sake I knew my place.

His first distinct success was as a gargler.

[Illustration: “WE GENERALLY GARGLE A SONG”]

“You remember how I used to hate gargling at home,” says an early letter, “and you forced me to do it. Jolly good thing you did force me.” His first “jolly” at that school. At once I began to count them.

“Everyone has to gargle just now,” he continues, “and we all do it at the same time, and it must sound awfully rum to people passing along the street. We generally gargle a song, and there was a competition in ‘Home, sweet Home’ among the scugs at m’ tutor’s, and the judge said I gargled it longest.”

Soon afterwards he had the exultation of being recognised as an entity by one of the masters.

“I was walking with Dolman mi.,” his letter says, “and we met a new beak called Tiverley and he pretended to fence with me and said ‘Whose incomparable little noodle are you?’” This, apparently, was all that happened, but Neil adds with obvious elation, “It was awfully decent of him.” (Hail to thee, Tiverley, may “a house” anon be thy portion for heartening a new boy in the dwindling belief that he exists.)

Dolman mi. evidently had no run on this occasion, but he is older and more famous than Neil (which makes the thing the more flattering). It is a school whither many royal scions are sent, and when camera men go down to photograph the new one, Dolman mi. usually takes his place. He has already been presented to newspaper readers as the heir to three thrones. Of course it is the older boys who select, scrape and colour him (if necessary) for this purpose, but they must see something in him that the smaller boys don’t see.

Neil’s next step was almost a bound forward; he got a tanning from the head of the house. This also he took in the proper spirit, boasting indeed of the vigour with which Beverley had laid on. (Thee, also, Beverley, I salute, as the Immensity who raised Neil from the ranks of the lowly, the untanned.)

Quite the amiable, sensible little schoolboy, readers may be saying, but that Neil was amiable or sensible I indignantly deny. He was merely waiting; that shapely but enquiring nose of his was only considering how best to strike once more for leadership. So when the time came he was ready; and he has been striking ever since, indeed, there is nothing that I think he so much resembles as a clock that has got out of hand.

All the other small boys in his house had the same opportunity, but they missed it. It was provided by some learned man (name already tossed to oblivion) who delivered unto them a lecture entitled _Help One Another_. The others behaved in the usual way, cheered the lecturer heartily when he took a drink of water, said “Silly old owl!” as they went out and at once forgot his Message. Not so Neil. With the clearness of vision that always comes to him when anything to his own advantage is toward, he saw that the time and the place and the loved one (himself) had arrived together. Portents in the sky revealed to him that his _métier_ at school was to Help Others. There would be something sublime about it had he not also seen with the same vividness that he must make a pecuniary charge of threepence. He decided astutely to begin with W. W. Daly.

As we write these words an extraordinary change comes over our narrative. In the dead silence that follows this announcement to our readers you may hear, if you listen intently, a scurrying of feet, which is nothing less than Neil being chased out of the story. The situation is one probably unparalleled in fiction.

3. _Tintinnabulum_

Elated by your curiosity we now leave Neil for a moment (say, searching with his foot for a clean shirt among a pile of clothing on the floor), mount to the next landing and enter the second room on the left, the tenant of which immediately dives beneath his table under the impression that we are a fag-master shouting “Boy.” We drag him out and present him to you as W. W. Daly. He is five feet one, biceps 7¾, and would probably kick the beam at about 6½ stone. He is not yet celebrated for anything except for being able to stick pins into his arm up to the head; otherwise a creature of small account who, but for Neil’s patronage, would never have risen to the distinction of being written about, except perhaps by his mother.

W. W.’s first contact with school was made dark by a strange infirmity, an incapacity to remember the Latin equivalent for the word “bell.” Many Latin words were as familiar to him as his socks (perhaps even more so, for he often wears the socks of others), and those words he would give you on demand with the brightness of a boy eager to oblige; but daily did his tutor insist (like one who will have nothing for breakfast but eggs and bacon) on having “bell” alone. Daily was W. W. floored.

It is now that Neil appears with his sunny offer of Help. He took up the case so warmly that he entirely neglected his own studies, which is one of his failings. True he charged threepence (which we shall henceforth write as 3_d._, as it is so sure to come often into these chronicles), but this detracts little from his grandeur, for the mere apparatus required cost him what he calls a bob.

His first procedure was to affix to the bell-pull a card bearing in bold letters the device “Tintinnabulum.” This seems simple but was complicated by there being no bell in W. W.’s room. Neil bought a bell (W. W. being “stony”), and round the walls he constructed a gigantic contrivance of wire and empty ginger-beer bottles, culminating at one end in the bell and at the other end in W. W.’s foot as he lay abed. The calculation, a well-founded one, was that if the sleeper tossed restlessly the bell would ring and he would awake. He was then, as instructed by Neil, first, to lie still but as alert as if visited by a ghost, and to think hard for the word. If, however, it still eluded him he was to turn upon it the electric torch, kept beneath his pillow for this purpose and borrowed at 1_d._ per week from Dolman mi., spot the tricky “Tintinnabulum” in its lair and say the word over to himself a number of times before returning to his slumbers, something attempted, something done to earn a night’s repose.

All this did W. W. conscientiously do, and if there was delay in bringing Tintinnabulum to heel the fault was not that of Neil, but of inferior youths who used to substitute cards inscribed “Honorificabilitudinitatibus,” “Porringer,” “Xylobalsamum,” “Beelzebobulus,” and other likely words.

Eventually he achieved; a hard-won ribbon for his benefactor whom we are about to call Neil for the last time.

There was a feeling among those who had betted on the result that it should be celebrated in no uncertain manner, and a dinner with speeches not being feasible (though undoubtedly he would have liked it), he was re-christened Tintinnabulum, and the name stuck.

So Tintinnabulum let it be henceforth in these wandering pages. Neil the disinherited may be pictured pattering back to me on his naked soles and knocking me up in the night.

“Neil,” I cry (in dressing gown and a candle), “what has happened? Have you run away from school?”

“Rather not,” says the plaintive ghost, shivering closer to the fire, “I was kicked out.”

“By your tutor?” I ask blanching.

“No, by Tintinnabulum. He is becoming such a swell among the juniors that he despises me and the old times. And now he has kicked me out.”

“Drink this hot milk, Neil, and tell me more. What are those articles you are hugging beneath your pyjamas?”

“They are the Bruiser Belt and the score against Juddy’s. He threw them out after me.”

“Don’t take it so much to heart, Neil. I’ll find an honoured place for them here, and you and I will have many a cosy talk by the fire about Tintinnabulum.”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” he says, his hands so cold that he spills the milk, “I would rather talk about the days before there was him.”

Well, perhaps that was what I meant.

Cruel Tintinnabulum.

4. _The Best Parlour Game_

Soon after the events described in our last chapter I knew from Tintinnabulum’s letters that he was again Helping. They were nevertheless communications so guarded as to be wrapped in mystery.

His letters from school tend at all times to be more full of instruction for my guidance than of information about where he stands in his form. I notice that he worries less than did an older generation about how I am to dress when I visit him, but he is as pressing as ever that the postal order should be despatched at once, and firmly refuses to write at all unless I enclose stamped envelopes. On important occasions he even writes my letters for me, requesting me to copy them carefully and not to put in any words of my own, as when for some reason they have to be shown to his tutor. He then writes, “Begin ‘Dear T.’ (not ‘Dearest T.’), and end ‘Yours affec.’ (not ‘Yours affectionately’).”

The mysterious letters that preceded the holidays were concerned with W. W. Daly, whom I was bidden (almost ordered) to invite to our home for that lengthy period, “as his mother is to be away at that time on frightfully important business in which I have a hand.”

I was instructed to write “Dear Mrs. Daly (not “dearest”), I understand that you are to be away on important business during the holidays, and so I have the pleasure to ask you to allow your son to spend the holidays with me and my boy who is a general favourite and very diligent. Come, come, I will take no refusal, and I am, Yours affec.”

I did as I was told, but as I now heard of the lady for the first time I thought it wisest not to sign my letter to her “Yours affec.” Thus did I fall a victim to Tintinnabulum’s wiles.

What could this frightfully important business of Mrs. Daly’s be in which he “had a hand”?

[Illustration: “ON IMPORTANT OCCASIONS HE EVEN WRITES MY LETTERS FOR ME.”]