The Time Garden (16 page)

The four children seldom went near the thyme garden now, but one evening just at sunset Ann found herself there.

Ann was the one who missed the Natterjack most. As she said to the others, even if there weren't going to be any more wishes, it would be nice to see it and say hello once in a while, just for old times' sake.

So this evening she went to look for it, and it wasn't on the sundial; so she went through the opening in the box hedge, and it wasn't there, either, and yet once there she stayed, looking down on the cushiony billows that cascaded to the sea, and breathing the spicy air that was now, alas, but the fragrance of memory.

There weren't so many of the starry blossoms twinkling purple and white and pink and red as there had been in happy days gone by; in fact there were hardly any. Where the flowers had been, each plant wore a fluffy, grayish look. And bending closer, Ann saw that each stem bore a tiny coronet of seed. And some words she had heard in the past echoed in her ears like the sound of a last good-bye. Sadly she turned to go, and met Roger and Eliza, coming through the boxwood hedge.

"What are you doing out here?" said Eliza.

"I don't know. I just came," said Ann.

"So did we," said Roger.

"The thyme is ripe," Ann told them. "It's stopped blossoming. It's got seed."

"Then it would have been over today, anyway," said Roger.

"It makes it all seem more final, somehow," said Eliza. "I kept kind of hoping against hope."

"So did I," said Ann.

Somebody came through the opening in the hedge. It was Jack. He had had small time for the other three in the days that had followed the adventure with Queen Elizabeth. Now he seemed unusually friendly.

"I just thought," he said. "Today's the day the play opens."

"I've been thinking about it all day," said Roger.

"I forgot," said Ann.

"If we could only be there!" said Eliza.

"If we'd managed better, we would be," said Roger.

"It's all my fault!" said Eliza.

"Mine, too," said Jack. "Worse than you, 'cause I'm oldest."

"It's everybody's fault," said Roger. "We should have husbanded our harvest."

"It's like those awful fables," said Ann. "We were grasshoppers and we should have been ants."

There was a silence. In the silence a small figure hopped through the growing dusk and landed at their side.

"You!" said Ann. "I thought you were never coming back."

"I meant you to think so," said the Natterjack.

"How've you been?" said Jack, politely.

"Busy," said the Natterjack.

Everybody tried not to think envious thoughts about what it had been busy doing, or hopeful ones about what it might do next. The Natterjack waited a long time before it spoke again. It seemed to be enjoying keeping them in suspense.

"Well?" it said at last. "This is the great day, I believe?"

"Yes," said Roger.

"It would be nice to be there, wouldn't it?" said the Natterjack.

"Yes," said Ann.

"Well?" said the Natterjack again. "Why not?"

"But you said last time was the last time!" said Ann.

"I said
maybe
it would be," said the Natterjack. "Never underestimate the power of a magic to change its mind. What would be the good of its being magic in the first place if it couldn't do a simple trick like that? Besides, you did a good turn, didn't you?"

"We tried," said Ann. "But I guess Queen Elizabeth would have done all right without us."

"Modest as well as sensible," said the Natterjack. "You're the best of
this
lot, I always said so."

"I know who the worst is," said Eliza, with a sheepish grin.

"So," said the Natterjack, fixing her with a look, "do H'I Well? Is h'everybody ready?"

Everybody was.

"Then take your thyme," said the Natterjack.

"Which kind should we pick?" said Roger.

"H'it makes no difference," said the Natterjack. "At a time like this all thyme is the same."

Four hands reached out eagerly and broke off four leafy bits, scattering the tiny seeds to replenish the coming year. Four hands rubbed, four noses sniffed, and four hearts wished. Ann remembered to pick up the Natterjack.

The next instant they were standing in a crowded London street outside the theater they had seen before, and the instant after
that
they were swept into the lobby in the midst of the eager crowd. As they were propelled past the box office, Roger noticed a sign on it that said, "House Sold Out," and felt gratified.

No one spoke to the four children or seemed to see them, and they soon realized that they must be invisible, which, of all ways of going on a magic adventure, is perhaps the most satisfactory.

And it is a particularly convenient way to attend a theatrical performance, also, for one needs no tickets, and may stand wherever one likes without anyone's asking one to take off one's hat, or shouting, "Down in front!"

Furthermore Ann found (when a determined lady bumped into her and then went right on
through
) that not only were they invisible, but they had no weight or substance, either.

When she told her discovery to the others, it was but the work of a moment for the four children to pick out their favorite seats in the house (in the middle of the front row, of course) and sit in them, or rather, upon the laps of those who were there before them.

If you have ever been without weight or substance, you will know that even the boniest knees or the plumpest and most slippery laps are perfectly comfortable. Ann and Roger and Jack and Eliza sat back at their ease, and the people beneath seemed to notice nothing unusual.

But of course the four children could still see each other perfectly clearly, and Eliza had to giggle as she looked at Jack, balanced on the knee of a portly and bejeweled dowager.

And it seemed that, although those below saw nothing and felt nothing, yet in a way the moods of those who were sitting on them got through to them. For when Eliza giggled, the mild little man under her began to giggle, too, and couldn't say why, and was glared at and spoken to severely by his large wife for playing the fool.

And then the lights dimmed, and there was that

enchanted moment there always is before the curtain goes up, and then the curtain
did
go up, and all was utter rapt attention in the hearts of the four children. Ann put the Natterjack on her shoulder where it could see.

The first scene in the play was a short one, a sort of prologue, and it was a little slow in getting under way. Also, it was a hot night and the theater was stuffy. Some of the audience began to stir restlessly, and several people coughed. One of the nicest lines was said, and hardly anybody laughed. Ann and Roger and Jack began to feel worried.

Eliza felt worried, too, but then she began to think. Among the few people who had laughed at the funny line were she and Ann and Roger and Jack. That was only to be expected. That was only loyal. Besides, it was a funny line.

But the only
other
people who had laughed had been the four people sitting under them. And Eliza, always one for putting two and two together, remembered how the little man beneath her had giggled, before, when
she
had giggled. And she had an idea.

As soon as the first short scene was over, she told her idea to the other three.

"It's
us!
" she told them. "We're contagious! It's like spirit mediums. We little know the power we wield!" And the others saw the logic in her words.

In the brief pause before the curtain rose again they held council, and decided what to do. Then they separated. Ann took the front rows and Eliza took the back ones. Jack took the dress circle and Roger the gallery.

When the second scene began, they proceeded according to plan. Each one sat down upon the first person in the first row of his particular section, stayed there for a minute or two, thinking happy, enthusiastic, appreciative thoughts all the while, and then moved onto the lap of the person in the next seat, and so on, all across the row. When one of them finished a row, he started on the one behind. As Eliza said afterwards, it was like the collection plate in church.

And as the four emissaries of delight moved through the audience, the spirit of happy, enthusiastic appreciation moved through it, too, till the air rang with laughter and applause.

"A hit, a very palpable hit!" said a critic in the sixth row, as Ann abandoned her perch on his knee.

"Too, too delicious!" cried a lady in the dress circle, hitting the gentleman with her with her fan.

"Ow, 'Enry, 'ow lovely!" cried an old, old lady in a feather boa, in the gallery. "Ow, I
am
enjoying this!" And Roger wondered fleetingly if they had met before, years and years ago, in the Tower of London.

In the interval after the first act the four children haunted the lobby and eavesdropped, hearing none but the most ecstatic comments. Eliza kept looking for Ann and Roger's father, but he was nowhere to be seen.

"He'll be roaming the streets," said Roger, "and Mother'll be in her hotel room. They couldn't endure the suspense."

When the bell rang for act two, the children decided the audience needed no further warming up. Anyway, the play was so good that people couldn't help enjoying it, now they were in a mood to. So Ann and Roger and Jack and Eliza reassembled in the front row, and sat enthralled until the end. And at the end there were seventeen curtain calls and cheers for all the actors and cries of "Author! Author!" None shouted louder than Eliza.

At last the father of Roger and Ann appeared on the stage, looking rumpled and confused as if he'd just been dragged in from roaming the streets, which was probably true.

And he made a slightly mumbling but quite nice speech, and in the middle of it he looked down at the front row and sort of started and rubbed his eyes and lost the thread of his remarks but recovered it in time and finished his speech, and there were more cheers and the curtain kept going up and down until at last it stayed down and the applause died reluctantly away and people began fishing for their hats and coats.

And then, just as Roger was wondering how to find the stage door and go behind the scenes and look for his father and mother, everything sort of faded and merged and went up like fireworks, and the world turned black. And the next moment he and Ann and Jack and Eliza were sitting in the familiar time garden breathing the scent of the familiar thyme.

"Darn!" said Eliza. "I wanted to congratulate your father!"

"So did I," said Ann, in a small voice.

"So did I," said Roger. "But I guess," he added reflectively, "that would be eating our cake and having it, too."

"We never seem to be able to do that, somehow," said Ann. "Even with magic."

There was a pensive pause.

"I suppose that's the last adventure?" said Jack.

"H'absolutely the h'end!" said the Natterjack.

"Well," said Ann, "it's been just lovely."

"All things considered," said Eliza.

"Thanks a lot," said Jack.

"Good-bye," said Roger, feeling that this sounded inadequate and wondering if he should offer to shake the Natterjack's hand.

"Will we see you again?" asked the tenderhearted Ann, who hated all partings.

"H'I may nod in passing," considered the Natterjack. "But don't h'expect to waste my time in vain conversation and h'idle regrets. I've h'other things to do. Besides," it added, "you won't
be
'ere very much longer."

"That's so," said Eliza. "Vacation ends next month. I start Latin this year. They say it's awful. You decline nouns. All I can say is, who wouldn't?"

"That," said the Natterjack, "is not precisely what I 'ad in mind." And it hopped away before they could ask it anything more.

It was not until the next day that the four children learned what the Natterjack
did
have in mind, precisely. After breakfast (of a wonderful corn porridge called samp which was one of Mrs. Annable's specialties) old Mrs. Whiton told them that she had had a long cablegram from their parents and that the play was a success.

"Good," said Ann and Roger.

"I thought somehow it might be," said Eliza. And she made a sitting motion to the others, which the others loftily ignored.

And then old Mrs. Whiton went on to tell them a lot more news that had been in the cablegram. It seemed that the London theater people wanted Roger and Ann's father to stay on in England and write another play, a musical play this time, and so Ann and Roger were to go to school in London for a year. And they had talked it over with Uncle John and Aunt Katharine, and Jack and Eliza were to come, too. Jack would go to a boys' school with Roger, and Eliza to a girls' school with Ann.

"Coo Lummy!" cried Eliza, in what she believed to be British tones. "Now we'll
really
see London! That other was just practice."

"Still it may come in handy," said Ann. "I feel at home there already."

"Ahem," said Roger, with a meaningful glance in the direction of old Mrs. Whiton.