THE SECRET DRAWER
IT must surely have served as a boudoir for the ladies of old
time, this little used, rarely entered chamber where the
neglected old bureau stood. There was something very feminine in
the faint hues of its faded brocades, in the rose and blue of
such bits of china as yet remained, and in the delicate old-world
fragrance of pot-pourri from the great bowl--blue and white, with
funny holes in its cover--that stood on the bureau's flat top.
Modern aunts disdained this out-of-the-way, back-water, upstairs
room, preferring to do their accounts and grapple with their
correspondence in some central position more in the whirl of
things, whence one eye could be kept on the carriage drive, while
the other was alert for malingering servants and marauding
children. Those aunts of a former generation--I sometimes felt--
would have suited our habits better. But even by us children, to
whom few places were private or reserved, the room was
visited but rarely. To be sure, there was nothing particular in
it that we coveted or required,--only a few spindle-legged gilt-
backed chairs; an old harp, on which, so the legend ran, Aunt
Eliza herself used once to play, in years remote, unchronicled; a
corner-cupboard with a few pieces of china; and the old bureau.
But one other thing the room possessed, peculiar to itself; a
certain sense of privacy,--a power of making the intruder feel
that he WAS intruding,--perhaps even a faculty of hinting that
some one might have been sitting on those chairs, writing at the
bureau, or fingering the china, just a second before one entered.
No such violent word as "haunted" could possibly apply to this
pleasant old-fashioned chamber, which indeed we all rather liked;
but there was no doubt it was reserved and stand-offish, keeping
itself to itself.
Uncle Thomas was the first to draw my attention to the
possibilities of the old bureau. He was pottering about the
house one afternoon, having ordered me to keep at his heels for
company,--he was a man who hated to be left one minute alone,--
when his eye fell on it. H'm! Sheraton!" he remarked. (He had
a smattering of most things, this uncle, especially the
vocabularies.) Then he let down the flap, and examined the empty
pigeon-holes and dusty panelling. "Fine bit of inlay," he went
on: "good work, all of it. I know the sort. There's a secret
drawer in there somewhere." Then, as I breathlessly drew near,
he suddenly exclaimed: "By Jove, I do want to smoke!" and
wheeling round he abruptly fled for the garden, leaving me with
the cup dashed from my lips. What a strange thing, I mused, was
this smoking, that takes a man suddenly, be he in the court, the
camp, or the grove, grips him like an Afreet, and whirls him off
to do its imperious behests! Would it be even so with myself, I
wondered, in those unknown grown-up years to come?
But I had no time to waste in vain speculations. My whole being
was still vibrating to those magic syllables, "secret drawer;"
and that particular chord had been touched that never fails to
thrill responsive to such words as CAVE, TRAP-DOOR, SLIDING-
PANEL, BULLION, INGOTS, or SPANISH DOLLARS. For, besides its
own special bliss, who ever heard of a secret drawer with nothing
in it? And oh, I did want money so badly! I mentally ran
over the list of demands which were pressing me the most
imperiously.
First, there was the pipe I wanted to give George Jannaway.
George, who was Martha's young man, was a shepherd, and a great
ally of mine; and the last fair he was at, when he bought his
sweetheart fairings, as a right-minded shepherd should, he had
purchased a lovely snake expressly for me; one of the wooden
sort, with joints, waggling deliciously in the hand; with yellow
spots on a green ground, sticky and strong-smelling, as a fresh-
painted snake ought to be; and with a red-flannel tongue, pasted
cunningly into its jaws. I loved it much, and took it to bed
with me every night, till what time its spinal cord was loosed
and it fell apart, and went the way of all mortal joys. I
thought it so nice of George to think of me at the fair, and
that's why I wanted to give him a pipe. When the young year was
chill and lambing-time was on, George inhabited a little wooden
house on wheels, far out on the wintry downs, and saw no faces
but such as were sheepish and woolly and mute; ant when he and
Martha were married, she was going to carry his dinner out
to him every day, two miles; and after it, perhaps he would smoke
my pipe. It seemed an idyllic sort of existence, for both the
parties concerned; but a pipe of quality, a pipe fitted to be
part of a life such as this, could not be procured (so Martha
informed me) for a less sum than eighteen pence. And meantime--!
Then there was the fourpence I owed Edward; not that he was
bothering me for it, but I knew he was in need of it himself, to
pay back Selina, who wanted it to make up a sum of two shillings,
to buy Harold an ironclad for his approaching birthday,--H. M. S.
Majestic, now lying uselessly careened in the toyshop window,
just when her country had such sore need of her.
And then there was that boy in the village who had caught a young
squirrel, and I had never yet possessed one, and he wanted a
shilling for it, but I knew that for ninepence in cash--but what
was the good of these sorry, threadbare reflections? I had wants
enough to exhaust any possible find of bullion, even if it
amounted to half a sovereign. My only hope now lay in the magic
drawer, and here I was standing and letting the precious
minutes slip by. Whether "findings" of this sort could, morally
speaking, be considered "keepings," was a point that did not
occur to me.
The room was very still as I approached the bureau,--possessed,
it seemed to be, by a sort of hush of expectation. The faint
odour of orris-root that floated forth as I let down the flap,
seemed to identify itself with the yellows and browns of the old
wood, till hue and scent were of one quality and interchangeable.
Even so, ere this, the pot-pourri had mixed itself with the tints
of the old brocade, and brocade and pot-pourri had long been one.
With expectant fingers I explored the empty pigeon-holes and
sounded the depths of the softly-sliding drawers. No books that
I knew of gave any general recipe for a quest like this; but the
glory, should I succeed unaided, would be all the greater.
To him who is destined to arrive, the fates never fail to afford,
on the way, their small encouragements; in less than two minutes,
I had come across a rusty button-hook. This was truly
magnificent. In the nursery there existed, indeed, a general
button-hook, common to either sex; but none of us possessed
a private and special button-hook, to lend or refuse as suited
the high humour of the moment. I pocketed the treasure carefully
and proceeded. At the back of another drawer, three old foreign
stamps told me I was surely on the highroad to fortune.
Following on these bracing incentives, came a dull blank period
of unrewarded search. In vain I removed all the drawers and felt
over every inch of the smooth surfaces, from front to back.
Never a knob, spring or projection met the thrilling finger-tips;
unyielding the old bureau stood, stoutly guarding its secret, if
secret it really had. I began to grow weary and disheartened.
This was not the first time that Uncle Thomas had proved shallow,
uninformed, a guide into blind alleys where the echoes mocked
you. Was it any good persisting longer? Was anything any good
whatever? In my mind I began to review past disappointments, and
life seemed one long record of failure and of non-arriral.
Disillusioned and depressed, I left my work and went to the
window. The light was ebbing from the room, and outside seemed
to be collecting itself on the horizon for its concentrated
effort of sunset. Far down the garden, Uncle Thomas was holding
Edward in the air reversed, and smacking him. Edward, gurgling
hysterically, was striking blind fists in the direction where he
judged his uncle's stomach should rightly be; the contents of his
pockets--a motley show--were strewing the lawn. Somehow, though
I had been put through a similar performance an hour or two ago,
myself, it all seemed very far away and cut off from me.
Westwards the clouds were massing themselves in a low violet
bank; below them, to north and south, as far round as eye could
reach, a narrow streak of gold ran out and stretched away,
straight along the horizon. Somewhere very far off, a horn was
being blown, clear and thin; it sounded like the golden streak
grown audible, while the gold seemed the visible sound. It
pricked my ebbing courage, this blended strain of music and
colour, and I turned for a last effort; and Fortune thereupon, as
if half-ashamed of the unworthy game she had been playing with
me, relented, opening her clenched fist. Hardly had I put my
hand once more to the obdurate wood, when with a sort of
small sigh, almost a sob--as it were--of relief, the secret
drawer sprang open.
I drew it out and carried it to the window, to examine it in the
failing light. Too hopeless had I gradually grown, in my
dispiriting search, to expect very much; and yet at a glance I
saw that my basket of glass lay in fragments at my feet. No
ingots or dollars were here, to crown me the little Monte Cristo
of a week. Outside, the distant horn had ceased its gnat-song,
the gold was paling to primrose, and everything was lonely and
still. Within, my confident little castles were tumbling down
like card-houses, leaving me stripped of estate, both real and
personal, and dominated by the depressing reaction.
And yet,--as I looked again at the small collection that lay
within that drawer of disillusions, some warmth crept back to my
heart as I recognised that a kindred spirit to my own had been at
the making of it. Two tarnished gilt buttons,--naval,
apparently,--a portrait of a monarch unknown to me, cut from some
antique print and deftly coloured by hand in just my own bold
style of brush-work,--some foreign copper coins, thicker and
clumsier of make than those I hoarded myself,--and a list of
birds' eggs, with names of the places where they had been found.
Also, a ferret's muzzle, and a twist of tarry string, still
faintly aromatic. It was a real boy's hoard, then, that I had
happened upon. He too had found out the secret drawer, this
happy starred young person; and here he had stowed away his
treasures, one by one, and had cherished them secretly awhile;
and then--what? Well, one would never know now the reason why
these priceless possessions still lay here unreclaimed; but
across the void stretch of years I seemed to touch hands a moment
with my little comrade of seasons long since dead.
I restored the drawer, with its contents, to the trusty bureau,
and heard the spring click with a certain satisfaction. Some
other boy, perhaps, would some day release that spring again. I
trusted he would be equally appreciative. As I opened the door
to go, I could hear from the nursery at the end of the passage
shouts and yells, telling that the hunt was up. Bears,
apparently, or bandits, were on the evening bill of fare, judging
by the character of the noises. In another minute I would be in
the thick of it, in all the warmth and light and laughter.
And yet--what a long way off it all seemed, both in space and
time, to me yet lingering on the threshold of that old-world
chamber!
