Much Ado About Something. C. E. Lawrence

was stirred from her inopportune reverie by the touch of the crown which Oberon, descending from his throne, placed upon her.

      A great shout went up.

      "June, June, June!"

      That was the moment of her triumph. It was the moment of her madness too.

      The touch of the mystic rim quickened her indefinite aspirations and sharpened her sadness. She would go! Not Oberon and all his fairies should prevent her. The crown--charged with mighty powers--gave her strange new determination and an influence more potent far than she had ever possessed before. That town-world might be hopeless, but she would not say so till she herself was convinced of it. She would go to London.

      Oberon, watching her face, was aware of this fleeting debate in her mind and the disobedient decision. He is the gentlest knight in Fairyland, and for June, who deserved so well of everyone, had an especial reverence and affection. That she should disobey his public command would be almost as hurtful to his pride as allowing a dragon, pent in its subterranean prison, to escape.

      "June," he said to her gently, "you will go back to your home in the Land of Wild Roses. A hundred of the fairest knights will guard you and the crown--your precious burden. You will go at once. The revels are ended."

      Daylight filled the sky. The moon was a pallid shadow of her former self; the stars had become invisible. The birds, self-centred, were flying hither and thither, bustling about for the wherewithal to live and to help live. One by one the flowers put out their ineffectual lamps.

      Ordinarily, the fairies would have decamped forthwith; the gnomes in weary, grumbling, clumsily-clambering pell-mell, every one of them with the fear at his elbow that he might be chosen for some fatigue duty--as our straight-backed friends of the scarlet tunic expressively call it. But on this occasion they stayed. Not an elf stirred. Everyone stared and wondered.

      "Was June in disgrace?" they asked of each other, "and if so, why?"

      The questions were answered by further questions. There was a jostling of inquiries without any progress made. Rumours rioted. It had been a night indeed!

      Again June made appeal.

      "Let me go just to see--for only one day and a night!"

      "Not for one hour can you go," the king obstinately replied. "Men through their meanness and worldliness have driven the fairies away. We went regretfully, unwillingly; but we went, at last, absolutely. There are innumerable homes of men-folk where the elves are believed in and are welcome. We carry our gifts to them. There the children have smiling eyes and happy faces: but in the narrow world of mean streets and mistaken people, over which that glare is a pall, the children fade, are shrunken, neglected, have some of them forgotten how to smile."

      "That is enough!" cried June, and she looked straight at Oberon. "Wherever the children are neglected the fairies ought to go. How can you blame the people for being mean and the places ugly if the elves are forbidden entrance there? Great king, I go!"

      In the most daring manner, she raised her wand, made profound obeisance, and was off, like light. Her wings shimmered in the shining of the rising sun.

      Fairies started forward to stop her; but she was away before they could do so.

      "I told you so!" said Titania, to nobody in particular.

      "Stay, all of you," loudly commanded the king. "June has gone wilfully, and must suffer. I would not use the smallest power in Fairyland to bring her back. She has gone disobediently. She can return when she will. I will not send for her. She has gone foolhardily, and must endure alone. We are all of us sorry. There will be no more elfin revels till June has come back again."

      "The crown! She has taken that!" said Titania.

      Oberon echoed the queen's words. "She has taken that. It cannot perish. June cannot keep it beyond the year. She will have to bring it back then, or earlier. Now, fairies, May-day has come. To your homes and the daytime labours. Away, away! The revels have ended indeed!"

      Then there was hurry on the part of the gnomes. Oberon and Titania and their sparkling company flew in a long procession on a winding aerial course, to the palace of the king, which is hidden from eyes of men on an Irish mountain.

      They were there in a twinkling. Wink thrice and a fairy's journey is ended, though it be over deserts and beyond seas. It is not so with the gnomes. They must labour and struggle along, like mice and men. But the winged lords and ladies of Elfdom are the happy fortunate. They can put Time in a thimble when they please, and play leap-frog with continents.

      In less than three and a half minutes, as measured by a well-behaved clock, the Violet Valley was deserted by all but the birds and Bim. Even the nymph of the lake was invisible. She had sunk to the depths of her pellucid palace the moment June made her bold decision.

      Bim waddled to the place where the throne had been. It was rank wild-growth again. No one not a fairy could have dreamed that such a sight had been there but a fragment of time before. He threw himself at full length--such a little full length--on the grass where June had been standing, and thought for a long while with his very best wits.

      He made a soliloquy.

      "King Oberon said we were not to go. He said that June was to come back alone. He said no one was to follow her. I shall be punished if I go. Pricks and pains and aches and beatings! Ugh! But would that be worse than Fairyland without June? No, it would not. Fairyland will not be Fairyland to me without June. I am going after her; Oberon can beat me till I'm blue." So declaring, he sprang to his feet.

      "Brave gnome!" said a voice behind him.

      Bim turned about in fright. The courage which had risen during his soliloquy went--pluff!--like an unset jelly.

      The nymph of the lake had spoken. She had returned, and stood again on her leaf in the middle of the pool. He was pleased to see she looked at him in the friendliest manner.

      "We are behaving very badly indeed in being so disobedient," she said; "but June is from the Land of Wild Roses. So are you and I. Go to her, gnome. She is alone, and even you from Falkland--I beg your pardon for putting it so--are better than nothing. I have no counsel to give you but keep a stout heart. You will need it. You don't know the way!"

      Here was the truth. Bim was an expert in ignorance.

      "You will find June in the wilderness of stone and evil. In the daytime it is covered by cloud and fog. In the night-time the red glare of lights reflected shines over it. That is what to follow and where to go. When you come back I will find a gift for you. Away with you. Go!"

      Bim went.

      CHAPTER III

      PARADISE COURT

      There are many Paradise Courts in London. The one which comes into this story is identifiable from the fact that a public-house is by its entrance.

      Probably this hostelry has given the court its name, for it was the nearest approach to anything of an Eden character which that blotted part of existence held.

      The public-house has been known at various times by different names--The Red Lion, The Green Man, The Blue Dragon, The Queen's Head. Possibly it is spoken of by another name now, for its management has always changed pretty frequently, and almost as frequently celebrated the occasion with a new title. It may perhaps be called "The Laughter of June"--who knows?--but digressions are sinful, when they anticipate. These facts are stated to help the reader to find the Paradise Court of the story--if he wants to.

      To describe Paradise Court is to tell the picture of one or other of more than a thousand of the mean ways of London. It was narrow and flagged, with cracked slabs of cold stone; was utterly dismal, dingy, dull. Its tenements were brown with years of smoked atmosphere; the windows stained, or stuffed with paper, or empty of glass; the doors, broken gates, giving entrance to inner realms of squalor and nakedness. There is no place on earth more thoroughly hopeless and ugly than was that dismal colony of condemned humanity. The makers of Hell would probably be ashamed to imitate this limbo, where the poorest of