Two Little Pilgrims' Progress

And so they were, and it was not a little thing.

Their afternoon was a thing of which they could never have dreamed and for which they could never have hoped. Before it was half over they began to feel that not only John Holt was a prince, but that by some magic metamorphosis they had become princes themselves. It seemed that nothing in that City Beautiful was to be closed to them. It was John Holt’s habit to do things in a thorough, business-like way, and he did this thing in a manner which was a credit to his wit and good sense.

Ben, who had never been taken care of in his life, was taken about in a chair, and looked after in a way that made him wonder if he were not dreaming, and if he should not be wakened presently by the sound of his father’s drunken voice.

Robin found himself more than once rubbing his forehead in a puzzled fashion.

Meg felt rather as if she had become a princess. Somehow, she and John Holt seemed to have known each other a long time. He seemed to like to keep her near him, and always kept his eye on her, to see if she was enjoying herself, and was comfortable, or tired. She found herself being wheeled by Ben, when John Holt decided it was time for her to rest. He walked by her and talked to her, answering all her questions. More than once it flashed into her mind that it would be very awful when all this joy was over, and they parted, as they would. But they were going to see him to-morrow, he had said.

It seemed as if they marched from one climax of new experience to another.

“You’re going to dine with me,” he announced. “You’ve had enough hard-boiled eggs. And we’ll see the illuminations afterwards.”

He took them to what seemed to them a dining-place for creatures of another world, it was so brilliant with light, so decorated, so gorgeous. Servants moved to and fro, electric globes gleamed, palms and flowers added to the splendor of color and brightness. John Holt gave them an excellent dinner; they thought it was a banquet. Ben kept his eyes on John Holt’s face at every mouthful – he felt as if he might vanish away. He looked as if he had done this every day of his life. He called the waiters as if he knew no awe of any human being, and the waiters flew to obey him.

In the evening he took them to see the City Beautiful as it looked at night. It was set, it seemed to them, with myriads of diamonds, all alight. Endless chains of jewels seemed strung and wound about it. The Palace of the Flowers held up a great crystal of light glowing against the dark blue of the sky, towers and domes were crowned and diademed, thousands of jewels hung among the masses of leaves, or reflected themselves, sparkling, in the darkness of the lagoons, fountains of molten jewels sprung up, and flamed and changed. The City Beautiful stood out whiter and more spirit-like than ever, in the pure radiance of these garlands of clearest flame.

When first they came out upon it Robin involuntarily pressed close to Meg, and their twin hands clasped each other.

“Oh, Meg!” cried Robin.

“Oh, Robin!” breathed Meg, and she turned to John Holt and caught his hand too.

“Oh, John Holt!” she said; “John Holt!”

Very primitive and brief exclamations of joy, but somehow human beings have uttered them just as simply in all great moments through centuries.

John Holt knew just the degree of rapturous feeling they expressed, and he held Meg’s hand close and with a warm grasp.

They saw the marvellous fairy spectacle from all points and from all sides. Led by John Holt, they lost no view and no beauty. They feasted full of all the delight of it; and at last he took them to a quiet corner, where, through the trees, sparkled lights and dancing water, and let them talk it out.

The day had been such an incredible one, with its succession of excitements and almost unreal pleasures, that they had actually forgotten that the night must come. They were young enough for that indiscretion, and when they sat down and began to realize how tired they were, they also began to realize a number of other things.

A little silence fell upon them. Ben’s head began to droop slightly upon his shoulder, and John Holt’s quick eye saw it.

“Have you had a good day?” he asked.

“Rob,” said Meg, “when we sat in the Straw Parlor and talked about the City Beautiful, and the people who would come to it – when we thought we could never see it ourselves – did we ever dream that anybody – even if they were kings and queens – could have such a day?”

“Never,” answered Robin; “never! We didn’t know such a day was in the world.”

“That’s right,” said John Holt. “I’m glad it’s seemed as good as that. Now, where did you think of spending the night?”

Meg and Rob looked at each other. Since Rob had suggested to her in the morning a bold thought, they had had no time to discuss the matter, but now each one remembered the bold idea. Rob got up and came close to John Holt.

“This morning I thought of something,” he said, “and once again this afternoon I thought of it. I don’t know whether we could do it, but you could tell us. Do you think – this is such a big place and there are so many corners we could creep into, and it’s such a fine night – do you think we could wait until all the people are gone and then find a place to sleep without going out of the grounds? It would save us buying the tickets in the morning, and Ben could stay with us – I told his mother that perhaps he might not come home – and he could have another day.”

John Holt laughed his short laugh.

“Were you thinking of doing that?” he said. “Well, you have plenty of sand, anyway.”

“Do you think we could do it?” asked Meg. “Would they find us and drive us out?”

John Holt laughed again.

“Great Cæsar!” he said, “no; I don’t think they’d find you two. Luck would be with you. But I know a plan worth two of that. I’m going to take you all three to my hotel.”

“A hotel?” said Meg.

Ben lifted his sleepy head from his shoulder.

“Yes,” said John Holt. “I can make them find corners for you, though they’re pretty crowded. I’m not going to lose sight of you. This has begun to be my tea-party.”

Meg looked at him with large and solemn eyes.

“Well,” she said, “it’s a fairy story, and it’s getting fairyer and fairyer every minute.”

She leaned forward, with her heart quite throbbing. Because it was he who did this splendid thing – he to whom all things seemed possible – it actually seemed a thing to be accepted as if a magician had done it.

“Oh, how good you are to us!” she said. “How good, and how good! And what is the use of saying only ‘Thank you?’ I should not be surprised,” with a touch of awe, “if you took us to a hotel built of gold.”

How heartily John Holt laughed then.

“Well, some of them ought to be, by the time this thing’s over,” he said. “But the lights will soon be out; the people are going, and Ben’s nearly dead. Let’s go and find a carriage.”

XVIII

Yes, they went home in a carriage! John Holt put them into it, and settled back into it himself, as if comfortable cushions were only what belonged to tired people. And he took them to one of the hotels whose brilliantly-lighted fronts they had trudged wearily by the night before. And they had a good supper and warm baths and delicious beds, and Meg went to sleep with actual tears of wonder and gratitude on her lashes, and they all three slept the sleep of Eden and dreamed the dreams of Paradise. And in the morning they had breakfast with John Holt, in the hotel dining-room, and a breakfast as good as the princely dinner he had given them; and after it they all went back with him to the City Beautiful, and the fairy story began again. For near the entrance where they went in they actually found Ben’s mother, in a state of wonder beyond words; for, by the use of some magic messenger, that wonderful John Holt had sent word to her that Ben was in safe hands, and that she must come and join him, and the money to make this possible had been in the letter.

Poor, tired, discouraged, down-trodden woman, how she lost her breath when Ben threw himself upon her and poured forth his story! And what a face she wore through all that followed! How Ben led her from triumph to triumph, with the exultant air of one to whom the City Beautiful almost belonged, and who, consequently, had it to bestow as a rich gift on those who did not know it as he did. What wondering glances his mother kept casting on his face, which had grown younger with each hour! She had never seen him look like this before. And what glances she cast aside at John Holt! This was one of the rich men poor people heard of. She had never been near one of them. She had, often, rather hated them.

Before the day was over Robin and Meg realized that this wonder was to go on as long as there was anything of the City Beautiful they had not seen. They were to drink deep draughts of delight as long as they were thirsty for more. John Holt made this plain to them in his blunt, humorous way. He was going to show them everything and share all their pleasures, and they were to stay at the golden hotel every night.

And John Holt was getting almost as much out of it as they were. He wandered about alone no more; he did not feel as if he were only a ghost, with nothing in common with the human beings passing by. In the interest and excitement of generalship and management, and the amusement of seeing this unspoiled freshness of his charges’ delight in all things, the gloomy look faded out of his face, and he looked like a different man. Once they came upon two men who seemed to know him, and the first one who spoke to him glanced at the children in some surprise.

“Hallo, John!” he said, “set up a family?”

“Just what I’ve done,” answered John Holt. “Set up a family. A man’s no right to be going around a place like this without one.”

“How do you get on with it?” asked the other. “Find it pay?”

“Pay!” said John Holt, with a big laugh. “Great Scott! I should say so! It’s worth twice the price of admission!”

“Glad of it,” said his friend, giving him a curious look.

And as he went away Meg heard him say to his companion,

“It was time he found something that paid – John Holt. He was in a pretty bad way – a pretty bad way.”

As they became more and more intimate, and spoke more to each other, Meg understood how bad a “way” he had been in. She was an observing, old-fashioned child, and she saw many things a less sympathetic creature might have passed by; and when John Holt discovered this – which he was quite shrewd enough to do rather soon – he gradually began to say things to her he would not have said to other people. She understood, somehow, that, though the black look passed away from his face, and he laughed and made them laugh, there was a thing that was never quite out of his mind. She saw that pictures brought it back to him, that strains of music did, that pretty mothers with children hurt him when they passed, and that every now and then he would cast a broad glance over all the whiteness and blueness and beauty and grace, and draw a long, quick sigh – as if he were homesick for something.

“You know,” he said once, when he did this and looked round, and found Meg’s eyes resting yearningly upon him, “you know She was coming with me! We planned it all. Lord! how She liked to talk of it! She said it would be an Enchanted City – just as you did, Meg. That was one of the first things that made me stop to listen – when I heard you say that. An Enchanted City!” he repeated, pondering. “Lord, Lord!”

“Well,” said Meg, with a little catch in her breath, “well, you know, John Holt, she’s got to an Enchanted City that won’t vanish away, hasn’t she?”

She did not say it with any sanctified little air. Out of their own loneliness, and the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and her ardent fancies, the place she and Robin had built to take refuge in was a very real thing. It had many modern improvements upon the vagueness of harps and crowns. There were good souls who might have been astounded and rather shocked by it, but the children believed in it very implicitly, and found great comfort in their confidence in its joyfulness. They thought of themselves as walking about its streets exactly as rapturously as they walked about this earthly City Beautiful. And because it was so real there was a note in Meg’s voice which gave John Holt a sudden touch of new feeling, as he looked back at her.

“Do you suppose she is?” he said. “You believe in that, don’t you – you believe in it?”

Meg looked a little troubled for a moment.

“Why,” she said, “Rob and I talk to each other and invent things about it, just as we talked about this. We just have to, you see. Perhaps we say things that would seem very funny to religious people – I don’t think we’re religious but – but we do like it.”

“Do you?” said John Holt. “Perhaps I should, too. You shall tell me some stories about it, and you shall put Her there. If I could feel as if she were somewhere!”

“Oh,” said Meg, “she must be somewhere, you know. She couldn’t go out, John Holt.”

He cast his broad glance all around, and caught his breath, as if remembering.

“Lord, Lord!” he said. “No! She couldn’t go out!”

Meg knew afterwards why he said this with such force. “She” had been a creature who was so full of life, and of the joy of living. She had been gay, and full of laughter and humor. She had had a wonderful, vivid mind, which found color and feeling and story in the commonest things. She had been so clever and so witty, and such a bright and warm thing in her house. When she had gone away from earth so suddenly, people had said, with wonder, “But it seemed as if she could not die!” But she had died, and her child had died too, scarcely an hour after it was born, and John Holt had been left stunned and aghast, and almost stricken into gloomy madness. And in some way Meg was like her, with her vivid little face and her black-lashed eyes, her City Beautiful and her dreams and stories, which made the realities of her life. It was a strange chance, a marvellously kind chance, which had thrown them together; these two, who were of such different worlds, and yet, who needed each other so much.

During the afternoon, seeing that Meg looked a little tired, and also realizing, in his practical fashion, that Ben’s mother would be more at ease in the society she was used to, John Holt sent her to ramble about with her boy, and Robin went with them; and Meg and John went to rest with the thousands of roses among the bowers of the fairy island, and there they said a good deal to each other. John Holt seemed to get a kind of comfort in finding words for some of the thoughts he had been silent about in the past.

“It’s a queer thing,” he said, “but when I talk to you about her I feel as if she were somewhere near.”

“Perhaps she is,” said Meg, in her matter-of-fact little way. “We don’t know what they are doing. But if you had gone into another world, and she had stayed here, you know you would have come to take care of her.”

“That’s true,” said John Holt. “I took care of her when she was here, the Lord knows. There wasn’t anything on earth she liked that I wouldn’t have broken my neck to get at. When I built that house for her – I built a big house to take her to when we were married – she said I hadn’t left out a thing she cared for. And she knew what things ought to be. She wasn’t like me, Meg. I’d spent my life trying to make a fortune. I began when I was a boy, and I worked hard. She belonged to people with money, and she’d read books and travelled and seen things. She knew it all. I didn’t, when first I knew her, but I learned fast enough afterwards. I couldn’t help it while I was with her. We planned the house together. It was one of the best in the country – architecture, furniture, pictures, and all the rest. The first evening we spent there – ” He stopped and cleared his throat, and was silent a few seconds. Then he added, in a rather unsteady voice, “We were pretty happy people that evening.”

Later he showed Meg her miniature. He carried it in an oval case in his inside pocket. It was the picture of a young woman with a brilliant face, lovely laughing eyes, and a bright, curving red mouth.

“No,” he said, as he looked at it, “She couldn’t go out. She’s somewhere.”

Then he told Meg about the rooms they had made ready for “John Holt, Junior,” as they had called the little child who died so quickly.

“It was her idea,” he said. “There was a nursery, with picture paper on the walls. There was a bathroom, with tiles that told stories about little mermen and mermaids, that she had made up herself. There was a bedroom, with a swinging cot, frilled with lace and tied with ribbons. And there were picture-books and toys. The doors never were opened. John Holt, Junior, never slept in his cot. He slept with his mother.”

There he broke off a moment again.

“She used to be sorry he wouldn’t be old enough to appreciate all this,” he said next. “She used to laugh about him, and say, he was going to be cheated out of it. But she said he should come with us, so that he could say he had been. She said he had to see it, if he only stared at it and said ‘goo.’”

“Perhaps he does see it,” said Meg. “I should think those who have got away from here, and know more what being alive really means, would want to see what earth people are trying to do – though they know so little.”

“That sounds pretty good,” said John Holt; “I like that.”

They had been seated long enough to feel rested, and they rose and went on their way, to begin their pilgrimage again. Just as they were crossing the bridge they saw Robin coming tearing towards them. He evidently had left Ben and his mother somewhere. He was alone. His hat was on the back of his head, and he was hot with running.

“Something has happened,” said Meg, “and I believe I know – ”

But Robin had reached them.

“Meg,” he said, panting for breath, “Aunt Matilda’s here! She didn’t see me, but I saw her. She’s in the Agricultural Building, standing before a new steam plough, and she’s chewing a sample of wheat.”

XIX

The two children did not know exactly whether they were frightened or not. If it had not seemed impossible that anything should go entirely wrong while John Holt was near them, they would have felt rather queer. But John Holt was evidently not the least alarmed.

“Look here,” he said, “I’m glad of it. I want to see that woman.”

“Do you?” exclaimed Robin and Meg together.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “Come along, and let’s go and find her.” And he strode out towards the Agricultural Building as if he were going towards something interesting.

It is true that the Agricultural Building had been too nearly connected with Aunt Matilda’s world to hold the greatest attractions for the little Pilgrims. It had, indeed, gone rather hard with them to find a name for it with a beautiful sound.

“But it is something,” Meg had said, “and it’s a great, huge thing, whether we care for it or not. That it isn’t the thing we care for doesn’t make it any less. We should be fools if we thought that, of course. And you know we’re not fools, Rob.”

“No,” Rob had said, standing gazing at rakes and harrows with his brows knit and his legs pretty wide apart. “And if there’s one thing that shows human beings can do what they set their minds to, it’s this place. Why, they used to thresh wheat with flails – two pieces of wood hooked together. They banged the wheat on the barn floor with things like that! I’ll tell you what, as soon as a man gets any sense, he begins to make machines. He bangs at things with his brain, instead of with his arms and legs.”

And in the end they had called it the Palace of the Genius of the Garth, and the Seasons, and the Sun. They walked manfully by John Holt through the place, Robin leading the way, until they came to the particular exhibit where he had caught sight of Aunt Matilda. Being a business-like and thorough person, she was still there, though she had left the steam plough and directed her attention to a side-delivery hay rake, which she seemed to find very well worth study.

If the children and John Holt had not walked up and planted themselves immediately in her path, she would not have seen them. It gave Meg a little shudder to see how like her world she looked, with her hard, strong-featured face, her straight skirt, and her square shoulders. They waited until she moved, and then she looked up and saw them. She did not start or look nervous in the least. She stared at them.

“Well,” she said. “So this was the place you came to.”

“Yes, Aunt Matilda,” said Robin. “We couldn’t let it go by us – and we took our own money.”

“And we knew you wouldn’t be anxious about us,” said Meg, looking up at her with a shade of curiosity.

Aunt Matilda gave a dry laugh.

“No,” she said, “I’ve no time to be anxious about children. I took care of myself when I was your age; and I had a sort of notion you’d come here. Who are you with?”

John Holt lifted his hat, but without too much ceremony. He knew Mrs. Matilda Jennings’s principles were opposed to the ceremonious.

“I’m a sort of neighbor of yours, Mrs. Jennings,” he explained. “I have some land near your farm, though I don’t live on the place. My name is John Holt.”

Aunt Matilda glanced from him to Robin.

She knew all about John Holt, and was quite sufficiently business-like to realize that it would be considered good luck to have him for a friend.

“Well,” she said to them, “you’ve got into good hands.”

John Holt laughed.

“By this time we all three think we’ve got into good hands,” he said; “and we’re going to see this thing through.”

“They haven’t money enough to see much of it,” said Mrs. Jennings.

“No,” said John Holt, “but I have, and it’s to be my treat.”

“Well,” said Aunt Matilda, “I suppose you can afford it. I couldn’t. I’ve come here on business.”

“You’d better let us help you to combine a little pleasure with it,” said John Holt. “This won’t happen twice in your life or mine.”

“There’s been a lot of money wasted in decorations,” said Mrs. Jennings. “I don’t believe it will pay them.”

“Oh, yes; it will pay them,” said John Holt. “It would pay them if they didn’t make a cent out of it. It would have paid me, if I’d done it, and lost money.”

“Now, see here,” said Mrs. Matilda Jennings, with a shrewd air, “the people that built this didn’t do it for their health – they did it for what they’d make out of it.”

“Perhaps they did,” said John Holt, “and perhaps all of them didn’t. And even those that did have made a bigger thing than they knew, by Jupiter!”

They were all sauntering along together, as they spoke. Meg and Robin wondered what John Holt was going to do. It looked rather as if he wanted to see more of Aunt Matilda. And it proved that he did. He had a reason of his own, and, combined with this, a certain keen sense of humor made her entertaining to him. He wanted to see how the place affected her, as he had wanted to look on at its effect on Meg and Robin. But he knew that Aunt Matilda had come to accumulate new ideas on agriculture, and that she must be first allowed to satisfy herself on that point; and he knew the children were not specially happy in the society of ploughs and threshing-machines, and he did not think Aunt Matilda’s presence would add to their pleasure in the Palace of the Earth, the Seasons, and the Sun. Besides, he wanted to talk to Mrs. Jennings a little alone.

“You know where Ben and his mother are?” he said to Robin, after a few minutes.

“Yes,” Robin answered.

“Then take Meg and go to them for a while. Mrs. Jennings wants to stay here about an hour more, and I want to walk round with her. In an hour come back to the entrance here and I will meet you.”

Meg and Robin went away as he told them. It was in one sense rather a relief.

“I wonder what she’ll say to him,” said Meg.

“There’s no knowing,” Robin answered. “But whatever it is, he will make it all right. He’s one of those who have found out human beings can do things if they try hard enough. He was as lonely and poor as we are when he was twelve. He told me so.”

What Aunt Matilda said was very matter-of-fact.

“I must say,” she said, as the children walked off, “you seem to have been pretty good to them.”