Mistress Masham's Repose Page 4

  First the gate in the lowest step was opened, and out of this the cattle came, each one led by a cowman holding a rope, for fear that they should bolt on seeing Maria. They were black cattle, like Friesians, and, curiously enough, they showed no sign of being afraid. Probably she was too big for them to notice. They took her for a tree, and left it at that. The sheep came next, all baaing, with their lambs bleating and frisking. When the lambs had a drink, their tails went round like propellors, and this could be distinctly seen. The cattle were about four inches high, the sheep about an inch and a half. There were some small sheep dogs, like something out of a Noah’s Ark, which ran round the sheep and yapped in squeaky voices, evidently enjoying the performance very much.

  When the farm animals had been promenaded round the green and driven back for safety in the step, there came a procession of fishermen from the same entrance. These marched round, peeping sideways at the Giantess, carrying paddles for the canoes, harpoons like the one with which she had been attacked, small gaffs, and minnow rods with horsehair lines complete. They had leather thigh boots, tanned from the skins of mice.

  While the fishermen had been making their parade, the population of the island had been coming from the doors in the five pillars, without being noticed. She turned round when the last fisherman had disappeared, and there they were on the top step of the temple, in hundreds. (She found out later that there were more than five hundred. This was a greater number than could be supported by the green, but they lived by fishing and hunting and also by using secret pastures on the mainland at night, as we shall see.) When she turned round, all the People said with one voice: “Ooo!”

  They were in rags.

  It was not exactly rags, when she looked closer, but poor working clothes made of knitted wool from the sheep, and from moleskins or mouse skins. Some of the women had sewn themselves capes, from the breast feathers of small birds.

  They all stood gazing at her with their mouths open, and the mothers held their children tightly by the hand, and the men stood rather in front, in case of emergency.

  Nobody knew what to do.

  Finally she remembered her instructions. She called out that she was going to stand up, so they must not be afraid. When she did stand, there was another “Ooo!” She told them to stay where they were, as she would be back in a minute, and then she rushed to the punt to fetch her package. When she got back, she warned the crowd to stand away from the middle of the pavement—some of the babies began to howl—and laid the package in the center, only staying to undo the string.

  She stood off gently, being careful to look behind her for fear of treading on somebody, and said: “See what it is.”

  The lawyer, or whatever he was, was the coolest person, for he had already passed his own fears, so he called up a team of fishermen, who pulled back the brown paper under his directions. Maria was interested to see that they did not tear the paper off, but treated it with care and admiration. Indeed, a piece of thick cardboard covering about half an acre seemed to them a useful article. When it was off, the People began to come forward slowly, hesitating between curiosity and suspicion, and the lawyer—he was the schoolmaster really—looked at her, to find out what was going to happen next. She pointed to him, to spread the presents out.

  It was the silk handkerchiefs which did the trick. When the women saw these, they came quickly to finger them, and to love the bright, smooth colors. There were six threepenny ones, from Woolworth’s, of artificial silk, the thinnest kind, for ladies, very gay.

  They did not pull them about. They spread them reverently on the step. They were the loveliest things they had ever seen, since their forebears had been carried off from mighty Lilliput, two hundred years before.

  Then there was the packet of needles. The men fingered these weapons, trying their temper and their points, with wagging heads and learned comment.

  Twopenny worth of nails were dragged aside by one party, evidently smiths, and these rang every bar of metal with a hammer, lifting separate nails and dropping them with the smallest clangs, pointing out their beauty in thoughtful tones.

  A packet of razor blades, the useful kind with only one edge, so that one does not cut one’s fingers when sharpening pencils, proved a puzzle to undo. But, when they had been undone, and their greasy paper stripped, there was a universal cry of admiration. For those two hundred years and more, there had been no metal for the People, except the rusty nails holding the laths inside the plaster dome: only these, and six cutlasses which had come with them from Lilliput, but which were now harpoons.

  The final glory was in a paper bag. Maria opened it herself, the People standing back in wonder, and laid the contents out in rows. It was a shilling’s worth of chocolate creams.

  She had gone through a tussle with the Professor about these. He, with his giant’s obsession about choosing small things for small people, had wanted to buy an old-fashioned sweet which was sometimes used on cakes, called Hundreds and Thousands. They were tiny pellets of hard sugar, colored pink or white or blue. Maria had insisted on full-sized chocolates. Which would you have preferred, then: a hard piece of sugar about the size of a toffee apple, or a chocolate cream the size of a pram?

  There was no doubt about the kind which the people of Lilliput admired. Half the chocolates were quickly cut into slices with one of the razor blades, and in a minute everybody was nodding his head, smiling at his neighbor, rubbing his waistcoat, and taking another bite.

  It was a pushover.

  But suddenly there was a movement of dismay. All the eaters stopped eating the slice in their hands, all the ladies dropped tears on the silk handkerchiefs, everybody went off into a corner of the pavement and began to argue with the Schoolmaster. Maria watched them with a worried eye.

  Presently the Schoolmaster came back.

  “The People, Ma’am,” he said awkwardly, “have call’d to Mind, that Transactions of this Complexion were carry’d out for Currency among the Nations of the civilized Globe. Four hundred Sprugs, Ma’am, Y’r Honor, Miss, were all the Treasure ever brought away from our unhappy Country, and these we have retain’d as old Mementoes of our former Greatness....”

  Maria knew about sprugs. She had been reading the famous Travels madly, ever since she had found the People, and she knew that these were the golden coins of ancient Lilliput—each about the size of a sequin or spangle.

  “Goodness me,” she said. “But this is a present. Nobody has to pay. I robbed my money box, and the Professor bought them, and when Miss Brown finds me out she will take my life. We bought them for you freely, with our love.”

  “A Present, Ma’am,” said the Schoolmaster with unexpected pathos, shedding a tear like the smallest dewdrop on a spider’s web into his right sleeve, “a Gift of such Magnificence, Ma’am,” he shed three more, “is, after all these Moons, is, Ma’am, Y’r Honor, Madam, Miss, is...”

  And the poor fellow dissolved completely. It was from having too many shocks in one day.

  Maria, very sensibly, turned round and left them to recover.

  CHAPTER VII

  MISS BROWN’S headaches sometimes lasted three days, one in getting them, one in treating them, and one in recovering from the treatment. Consequently our heroine was able to pay the island a third visit.

  It was a different affair from the others.

  She had scarcely tied at the larch, noticing that the brambles had been trained across her avenue, when the branches began to lift of their own accord. The passage had to be closed when she was away, for fear of other humans, but the People had secured a number of horsehair ropes to the trailers, and on these a picked gang of engineers was hauling lustily. In a minute, there was a clear road.

  She bowed to the engineers and proceeded toward the temple, only to stop dead as she reached the green.

  The People were drawn up on three sides of the pavement, perfectly silent. Some horsehair cables had been stretched from pillar to pillar, fluttering with little wisps of red and gre
en and yellow bunting. In the center the Union Flag was flown, which she was able to recognize as the standard of England, although the red stripes were missing on the diagonals. The real Union Jack did not come in until long after Hogarth’s time, although Maria did not know this fact. Under the old-fashioned flag, a band of music was arranged. It was a queer, eighteenth-century band, with flutes, violins, and drums. When they saw her, the fat bandmaster waved his arms excitedly, and the music struck up. They played “The British Grenadiers!”

  She stood still, while the whole tune was played twice—the tiny horsehairs sawing away at the mouse-gut, the reeds, and they were really rushes, twinkling gaily under ivory fingers, and the acorn drums rolling across the square. Then, at the last note, with an inspiration from the memory of the female Lilliputian whom she had first captured, Maria dropped a curtsy, with all the skill at her command. She remembered to do it slowly, and, as this was the first one which she had ever wanted to make, she did a beauty.

  When she lifted her head, there was a scene of wonder. All the little women had curtsied too, and were still down! All the little men had put forward their left feet, placing the other foot behind at right angles, and were bowing to her, or, rather, as they used to say in the old days, were “making a Leg.”

  Then, when they had recovered themselves with a gentle rustle, the bandmaster whirled his stick in several complicated parabolas, the drummers gave some terrible bangs, and the whole band countermarched to the tune of “A Right Little, Tight Little Island,” revealing the Surprise which had been laid out behind.

  It was a cask of wine with the top broached, about the size of a tumbler; a complete bullock roasted whole, or buccaneered, and placed on three green laurel leaves; six loaves of grass-seed bread, each one as large as a walnut; and one of her own chocolates kept on purpose, though they would have dearly loved to eat the rarity themselves.

  They had invited her to dinner.

  She was so charmed that she did not know what to say. So she curtsied again, a smaller one, mounted the steps in a stately manner, and knelt down to her repast.

  The wine was elderberry, better than the Professor’s; the bullock had nearly as much meat on it as a young partridge; the loaves were newly baked and were delicious. While she was eating, the People stood round in tense silence, not missing a thing, but remembering carefully not to say Ooo, and not to make Personal Remarks about the size of teeth, etc.

  She had scarcely finished, and was just wondering whether she ought to say grace or to stand up, when the Schoolmaster, who had been waiting officiously to see that everybody behaved, waved to her to keep kneeling. A party of ladies was trying to make its way from the back of the crowd with a heavy bundle, about the size of a ship’s sail. It was a ship’s sail, as we shall see. Maria remained where she was, and the bundle was laid before her knees. A dozen willing hands unrolled it.

  It was a handkerchief.

  The People had been as anxious to choose something coarse for her, as the Professor had been anxious to choose something small for them, so that this handkerchief was not so fine as an ordinary linen one would have been. It had more the texture of cheesecloth. But the charming thing about it was that a motto had been worked round the border, in cross-stitch, like a sampler, with the finest green and yellow wool.

  The motto said:

  A Humble PRESENT to Our FEMALE MOUNTAIN +

  From the CITIZENS and BOROUGH of LILLIPUT

  IN EXILE + With Hopes of Continued HEALTH

  AND PROSPERITY + GOD Save The KING +

  They must have been working all night to have finished it.

  Maria found that she was afflicted with the Schoolmaster’s weakness. She said: “Oh, what a lovely handkerchief! Is it to blow my nose?” And, without further ado, for fear that they would notice something like a tear, she put her nose in the middle of it and blew.

  It was a great success. Everybody clapped respectfully—they had never heard such a blow—and a little boy who began to howl was promptly smacked.

  “The final Motto,” explained the Schoolmaster, “has been preserv’d in our Archives, since the Days of Captain John Biddel. He taught our Ancestors to pronounce it, Ma’am, to entertain your Countrymen, and this particular Circumstance caused us to feel the Hope that it might prove acceptable.”

  “How kind of you,” said Maria, wiping her eye, “how kind to think of something which would prove acceptable to me.

  “And, of course,” she added, blowing her nose again, “the King will be delighted too.”

  When this tender scene was at an end, the Schoolmaster explained that he had been chosen to be her guide. He had leave to show her anything she wanted to see, or to explain anything she wanted to have explained, and he trusted that their simple Oeconomy would prove to be of Interest, however Rude. Maria replied that she would endeavor to merit their Confidence and Esteem—goodness, she thought, I have begun to talk in capitals too—and she repeated to the crowd that she would keep their secret. They looked hopeful but wistful when they heard this from her own mouth, not knowing Maria well enough, as yet, to be sure that her word was her bond. However, they were willing to make the best of it. To tell the truth, the thing which had impressed them most about her had been her curtsy. However small they were, they liked to be treated with respect, even by a Mountain, and the politeness of their new giant had created a favorable impression.

  The first thing was to show her the national treasures. These were few and simple, and were housed in the highest room inside the cupola. (Maria’s only regret about the wonders of the island was that she could never see the actual rooms in which the People lived. They had feared to build a town for themselves, because of the danger of discovery, and were compelled to exist in crowded conditions inside the shell of the temple. Her Schoolmaster told her later that she was missing little by not seeing the interior, for he said that it was like a tenement house, cold and dark and drafty, but it was the best that they could safely do. The three steps were hollowed out, so that they were like a squat, three-storied house, and there was a staircase leading up the inside of each pillar. There were 240 steps in each stair. Inside the dome itself, there were other rooms, and a flight of eighty steps led to the tiny platform on the summit, where the sentry stood. All these rooms and staircases were only lit by small air holes through the joints of the stone, or through the plaster of the dome, and the whole of the lowest step was kept for cowsheds, granaries, storehouses, and the communal kitchen. They used charcoal for cooking, and to warm the rooms in small pans, so that there would be no smoke to give them away. The charcoal was got by burning laurel bushes on the mainland, in a part of the grounds which was known to Maria as the Wilderness. The only decent room they had was the highest one of all, directly under the sentry post. It was circular, and was used for the Parliament room, or for dances, though the floor was slightly curved, and it was in this that the national treasures were preserved.)

  Six porters carried them down, one by one, and displayed them in front of Maria, like the assistants at an auction. The greatest was the ancient portrait of the Emperor of Blefuscu, full length, which is mentioned in Gulliver’s Travels. There was also a chest containing the two hundred sprugs of gold. Maria would have loved to own just one of these, but she did not like to ask—so that she was charmed when they did give her one of their own accord, on her next visit. To complete the humble list, there was a collection of the original clothes worn by the captives of Captain John Biddel, when he had been exhibiting them round England. They were threadbare, but not moth-eaten, any more than your clothes would ever get owl-eaten, and they consisted of a few skirted coats of blue silk, white pantaloons, white stockings, buckled shoes, three-cornered hats, and ladies’ dresses. Most of the musical instruments used by the band were also national treasures. They had been made to Captain Biddel’s instructions, and his prisoners had been forced to play upon them, to amuse the crowds.

  When these articles had been shown, the Schoolmaste
r told Maria the history of the People, since the days of Gulliver. The bystanders listened politely, being pleased to hear their own story, however often it had been told.

  “A Student of your Talents, Ma’am,” said the Schoolmaster, “and One who has become acquainted with the earlier Annals of our Race, besides mastering the Elements of our mother Tongue, will be aware that the Empire of Lilliput was visited by a Man Mountain nearabout three thousand Moons ago. The Occurrence took Place during a Period of Hostilities between that Empire and the neighboring Realm of Blefuscu, from which two Nations our People here is indiscriminately sprung.

  “Little may the Man Mountain have suspected, Ma’am, throughout the Course of his subsequent Travels, and indeed to his dying Day, what Calamities were brought upon our Ancestors by his Visit! For no sooner had he quitted the sister Island in his majestick Vessel, which, you will call to Mind, had fortunately been discover’d by him in a derelict Condition, floating with its Bottom up, than the Emperor of Lilliput was pleas’d to declare a War against his Cousin of Blefuscu, alleging the hostile Conduct of Blefuscu in allowing the Man Mountain to escape from those Realms, contrary to an Embassage particularly sent from Lilliput to restrain him, of which Island the said Mountain was a Subject, a Nardac, and a discover’d Traytor.

  “The Campaign, Ma’am, which follow’d the Declaration, was exasperated by the old Bitterness of the Big-Endian Heresy—a Topick of Dissension, which I am happy to say we have since resolved by a Determination to break such Eggs as we are able to find in the Middle—and, no Quarter being ask’d or given by either Schism, the War was signalized by Atrocities and Inhumanities hitherto unexampled in the Legends of our People.

  “Corn Fields were burn’d, Cattle were driven away or slaughter’d, the Cities were subjected to a Number of Sieges which reduced the Inhabitants to Starvation, and the Emperors of both Realms died by each other’s Hands, in single Combat outside the Walls of Mendendo. The Anarchy which subsequently prevail’d among the Leaders of the rival Factions, each of whom sought to draw the Power of Direction into his own Controul, reduced the Hopes of Reconciliation still further; and it was therefore upon a Civilization already tottering from its Foundations, Ma’am, that Captain John Biddel descended, after a Lapse of seventeen Moons, all of which had been devoted to Rapine and Destruction.