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_The Magic Jacket_ was written by Walter de la Mare
(1873-1956), and was included in his _Collected Stories for Children_ (1947).

Title: Collected Stories for Children -- The Magic Jacket
Date of first publication: 1947
Author: Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
Date first posted: 31 December 2007
Date last updated: 31 December 2007
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #52

This ebook was produced by: David T. Jones, Beth Trapaga, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net





                           The Magic Jacket

by Walter de la Mare (from his _Collected Stories for Children_) [1947]

When, that May Day morning, Admiral Rumbold stepped out of his
four-wheeled cab at the corner of Pall Mall, he was carrying a small
brown-paper parcel. Why he had not told his cabman who--hunched up on
his box--looked older even than his horse, to take him on to exactly
where he wanted to go, he hardly knew. He paid the old man his fare;
and he added an extra sixpence.

'Thank'ee,' he said with a curt nod, then turned to continue on his
way. Admiral Rumbold was not exactly a stout man, but in his navy-blue
clothes, his neat boots, and brown billycock hat, he looked rather
tightly packed. His broad face shone almost as red as a tomato above
his white linen collar and blue-and-white spotted silk sailor's knot.
He clasped his neat little brown-paper parcel closely under his elbow,
and at a good round pace proceeded along Pall Mall.

He glanced neither to right nor left of him, but kept his sea-bleached
blue eyes fixed steadily ahead. Nor did he show the least sign of
recognition when he caught sight of an old friend brandishing a
silver-headed cane in his direction from under the hood of a
hansom-cab. On this particular morning--and the houses and shops looked
sparklingly gay in the spring sunshine--Admiral Rumbold wished to be
alone. He marched straight on, his eyes fixed, his mouth tight-shut,
almost as if he were walking in his sleep.

He turned sharply up St. James's Street, past the saddler's with the
jockey caps and jackets behind the glass, past the little bow-windowed
snuff-and-tobacco shop, and so into King Street. From King Street he
turned off into Duke Street, and then on into Great St. Ann's. After
the bustle and traffic now behind him, the quiet sunshine and shadow of
Little St. Ann's beyond it was like port after stormy seas.

Now a few paces past the hatter's shop that stood at the corner of
Little St. Ann's lay a wide smooth stretch of flat paving-stones under
a high old brick wall. It was here that a screever or pavement artist
had made his pitch; and here in the sunshine Admiral Rumbold came to a
halt and looked about him.

The street was still, and, at this early hour of the morning, almost
deserted. For a while, firm as a rock, he continued so to stand. But
having failed to catch a glimpse of what he was after, he began to
survey a little vacantly the pictures chalked on the stones at his
feet.

The first of them was of a ship with bare masts and lanky spars,
tossing on an indigo sea, its waves yeastily crested with spray. Next
to this there was a windmill in a gaudy country green, the miller
himself standing up like Shem, Ham, and Japhet at the little rounded
door above the wide wooden ladder. Next, there was a gaping brace of
rainbow-coloured, rather flabby-looking mackerel. Next, a loaf of
bread, a cut cheese, and a neat little long-tailed mouse at her supper.
And last--and best of all to some tastes--there stood a lonely country
mansion among its wintry trees, a wild full moon gleaming down on its
walls. Scrawled beneath this picture, in a flowery lettering, was the
one word, 'HORNTED'.

Admiral Rumbold had taken a good long look at these pictures only the
evening before. They showed a little livelier in the morning sunshine.
Still, he had come back not to have another look at them, but to have a
word with the young artist. Few street chalkers, the Admiral had
noticed in his walks abroad, are much less than forty. The one he now
had in mind could not be more than fourteen. The Admiral had taken a
liking to him at first sight, had often watched him at his work, and
had dropped many a tuppence into the old cloth cap that usually lay (as
if with its mouth wide open) beside the pictures. Now he wished to
speak to him.

To an old gentleman with a temper as peppery as the Admiral's it was
therefore an unpleasant jar to find that when he wanted the boy he was
nowhere to be seen. Besides, he was anxious to get rid of the
brown-paper parcel under his arm. He had a dislike to carrying anything
at all--even an umbrella so massive that it looked more like a
war-club. On the other hand he was a man who, having once made up his
mind, kept it made up.

He crossed the street, and spent the next few minutes pacing solemnly
up and down, glancing ever and again as he did so down the area
railings or up at the upper windows of the houses on that side of it,
in order to pretend to himself that he was not being kept waiting. And
every time he turned smartly on his heel, he glared first up the
street, then down the street, and then into the deep-blue empty sky.

At last he had his reward. Shuffling along close to the railings from
out of a neighbouring alley, in shoes that even at this distance looked
a good deal more roomy than comfortable, appeared the boy the Admiral
was in wait for. A coat that was at least two sizes too large for its
present wearer hung down from his bony shoulders. But he had turned the
cuffs up over the sleeves, so that his claw-like hands came out free
from beneath them.

His odd, almost ugly face was pale and not too clean. His brown hair
was lank and tousled. But as the Admiral had noticed before, the skull
beneath the hair was nut-shaped and compact, clear over the forehead
and wide towards the back. It looked as if it closely fitted something
valuable inside it. Besides which, the boy had a pair of eyes in the
pinched face looking out from under that skull, which once seen were
not easily forgotten.

Admiral Rumbold, at sight of him, had slipped in under the carved
shell-shaped porch of one of the neighbouring houses. From here he
could see without being seen.

First, the boy glanced into his cap, then took it up, turned it upside
down, shook it, and replaced it on the pavement. He then drew a large
dingy rag out of his pocket, that might once have been the flap of a
man's shirt or a woman's petticoat. With both hands he waved this to
and fro above his pictures to waft away the dust and straw and
soot-smuts. He then pushed the rag into his pocket again, and had a
steady look at the pictures, as if he had never seen them before and
could not make up his mind whether or not to give himself a penny. He
then sighed--a sigh that in the morning quietness was clearly audible.
At this Admiral Rumbold stepped out of his hiding-place, crossed the
road, and accosted him.

'Good morning, my boy,' was his greeting. 'How's business?'

The boy looked up into the round red face of the old gentleman, with
its small beak-like nose and sky-blue eyes, and a timid smile passed
over his own as he shook his head.

'So, so!' said Admiral Rumbold bluffly. 'Nothing much, eh? There's a
bit of east in the wind this morning, and perhaps that keeps folk
moving. Or perhaps.... Well, there we are! Had any breakfast? No? Good!
I want a word with 'ee. Is there a place handy where we can sit and
talk?'

The boy coloured, glanced swiftly from right to left, and told the
Admiral of a coffee-shop near at hand where he sometimes went himself.
Then he looked up at the old Admiral again, became redder than ever,
and broke off.

'Full steam ahead, then,' said his friend. 'And do you lead the way.'

The boy buttoned his coat: away they went together; and in a minute or
two the pair of them were sitting face to face on two benches between
wooden partitions--like the high pews in old churches--and on either
side of a table in an eating-house half-way up the neighbouring alley.
The Admiral asked the boy what he would take. He said a mug of thick.

At this the Admiral cocked one of his bright blue eyes, and enquired if
he would like anything to eat with it. The boy hesitated, and suggested
a doorstep.

'H'm!' said the Admiral, 'and anything for a sweet tooth to follow?'

The boy said he would like a cat's-eye. Whereupon Admiral Rumbold
rapped smartly on the table. A man with greasy black hair, of a dark
face, and wearing a rather dingy apron, appeared from his den behind
the shop.

'Good morning,' said the Admiral. 'Two mugs of thick, a door-step, and
a cat's-eye.' And he said the words as if he had been used to them all
his life and knew exactly what they meant.

The mugs of thick proved to be cocoa; the door-step a slab of bread
with a scrimp of butter; and the cat's-eye was a large yellow bun with
a burnt raisin stuck in its crown. And while the two of them sipped
their thick, and the boy from nibbling went on to munching at his
door-step, Admiral Rumbold explained what he was after.

But first he asked him a little about himself and his work. He learned
that the boy was pretty well alone in the world. His father, who had
been a carriage painter, had died when he was six. His own business was
fair in fine weather, but it was hard to find a pitch where there were
neither too many passers-by nor too few. 'And then there's the
bobbies,' said the boy. Summer was better than winter, but up to the
last week or two there had been too much rain for any business at all.

'Ay, ay,' said the Admiral, looking at him over the thick brim of his
mug as he took another sip of cocoa, 'a fine-weather trade, I take it.'
And he asked him what his name was. It was Mike.

'Well now, Mike,' said Admiral Rumbold at last, 'I've been keeping an
eye on you for some little time. I've been _wanting_ to keep an eye on
someone of your age and looks for a good deal longer. I like your
pictures; in fact, I _admire_ them. If _I_ were to sit down under that
wall with every scrap of chalk you've got and do my level best with
them, rain or no rain, I warrant my takings wouldn't be fourpence a
month. It's the knack you want. And it's the knack, my lad, you have.

'Not, mind you,' he went on, 'that I know any more about pictures than
what I _like_. I leave the rest to them that do. But I've lived a good
many years in the world now, and my belief is that every walk in life
begins with a steepish bit of hill. When I was a boy--and we're not
concerned just now with where _my_ walk's led _me_--I had to face mine.
And in this parcel here is--well, what helped me in the climbing of it.

'_Here_,' repeated the Admiral and said no more for the moment. For he
had brought his square solid hand down on the parcel beside his mug
with such a thump that the man in the apron came hurrying up to see
what more was wanted.

'I'll have,' said the Admiral promptly, 'another mug of thick and
another couple of door-steps. And this time put in a slice or two more
of beef and bacon by way of cement.'

The sandwiches that followed were almost as much meat as bread, and
Mike's eyes fairly watered as they were handed over to him.

'In this parcel, as I was saying,' continued the Admiral, 'is the
_story_ of what I've been telling you. A yarn, you'll understand. Tell
me, can you _read_?' Mike nodded violently; his mouth was full.

'Good!' said the Admiral. 'All I want you to do is to read it--it's
about a _jacket_--what might be called a slice out of my early days,
just as that bacon there maybe a slice out of the early days of the pig
it came from. There's no hurry--' he glanced at the clock and then at
his gold repeater--'it's seventeen and a half minutes past ten. Sit
here quietly and read as much of it as you can. When you have finished,
come along to me. At eleven sharp I'll be waiting near the pitch.

'Mind ye,' he ended as he rose to his feet, 'there's no shadow of
_must_ in that package whatsoever. Nor do I vouch for anything beyond
what's written--and I've had it printed out on one of those new-fangled
machines so that it can be read plain and easy. Take it quietly; ask
for anything you want while I'm away; and in half an hour we meet
again.'

He put down half-a-crown on the table for the door-steps, _etc._, laid
his hand an instant on Mike's shoulder, and looked him hard but
friendly in the eye. Then he instantly flung open the swing-door of the
coffee-shop and went out into the street.

To judge from his face, the old gentleman was very well pleased with
himself at this moment. He returned to the pictures, and spent the next
half-hour, as cautiously as before, in pacing to and fro along the
street. Whenever he passed them he paused to look at them, dropped a
copper or two into the cap, and went on. At this, some curious
passer-by would also stop and glance over Mike's gallery. And, maybe,
he too would fling in a penny to join the Admiral's--and, maybe, not.

Meanwhile, Mike, left to himself and now the only customer in the
coffee-shop, took a good long swig of his mug of cocoa and a munch at
his sandwich before setting to work on the Admiral's story. And this
was what he read:--

    'Coming down to facts at once, I was born all but seventy years
    ago, in a town in Shropshire of the name of P----. My father was a
    grocer--retail. His shop wasn't much to look at from outside, but
    there was little that his customers wanted in the way of groceries
    that couldn't be found even then on his shelves.

    'My father was a man of about forty when I came into the world. My
    mother was a good deal younger; and mightily pleased they were to
    have me. No doubt about that. They christened me Andrew and called
    me Sandy, there being Scotch blood on my father's side. And if hard
    work and steady is a short cut to success, that was my father's
    way.

    'At first, my father and mother were content to live over the
    shop--three rooms in all, not including one not much bigger than a
    bandbox, which was called the nursery. When I was six, things were
    going so well with the business that they decided to let the rooms
    above the shop, and to move into a small but comfortable, high and
    (what they call) semi-detached house, half a mile or so out of the
    town. We had a good strip of garden there--a few apple and plum
    trees, some currant and gooseberry bushes, and old country flowers.

    'My mother loved that garden, and spent all the time she could
    spare from the house in it, with me beside her, or digging away at
    a patch of soil, three yards by one, with scallop shells round the
    border, which she let me have to do what I pleased with. That was
    _my_ garden. _Sandy-land_, she called it. Candytuft, Virginia
    stock, and Sweet Williams were my own particular crops.

    'My mother, I remember, bless her soul, was a great talker. I don't
    mean by this that she talked too much, or talked to everybody, or
    never listened. I mean she was a great talker to me, though not so
    much to my father. What she and I chattered about when we went out
    shopping in the morning together, or when I used to help her make
    the beds, would fill a book. Everything under the sun, not to
    mention the other side of it.

    'I don't know what there was about my mother--brown eyes, brown
    hair, and so on. But hanging up over the pianoforte in what was
    called our drawing-room was a portrait of her as a girl of eighteen
    or thereabouts which if I had been any kind of young man with an
    eye in his head I should have fallen in love with at first sight.
    But it wasn't her looks; it was her ways. How to put it I don't
    know, but she always seemed to be talking as if to somebody over
    her shoulder as well as to me myself.

    'Never--and mine's a pretty long life now--never have I come across
    anyone with such a loving delight in birds, flowers, trees, clouds,
    stars, moss, butterflies, and all that. She knew them by heart. You
    might have thought she'd had a hand in their making. Words aren't
    my tools, and I must just get things down as straight as I _can_.
    But that was the way of it. To see her look at a toadstool, with
    some bright colour to its gills, or peep into a wren's or
    chaffinch's nest, or stand watching a bevy of long-tailed tits
    gossiping together for a minute or two in one of our tufted old
    apple-trees on their way to somebody else's, was like--well, I
    don't know what it wasn't like, except that it was like nothing on
    earth but my mother. She wasn't any _age_ at all. We might have
    been a couple of brothers or sisters--old cronies, as you might
    say. We could hardly tell each other apart--except when my father
    was by.

    'Now, I'm not going to say anything against _him_. He died when I
    was not much more than a quarter of the way up the ladder I was
    afterwards to set myself to climb. He did his best by me; and if it
    hadn't been for my own stubborn interference, he might have done
    better for me than I've done for myself. Can't say; don't _know_.
    What I wanted was to go my own way, as at last I went. And your own
    way is nobody else's way. It's a man's self--his _innards_, to
    speak abruptly--that counts. Not the stripes on his arm, or the cut
    of his jib, or the cash in his bank, or even what he's _done_.

    'But enough of that. The truth is perhaps that being so much alone
    with my mother, and as contented in her company, at least in those
    first few years, as a butterfly with a flower, I became a bit of an
    apron-string child. She did not much care for going out, and she
    had a mighty small opinion of any young Two-Legs in the street
    except the one she herself had brought into the world, so I was
    only allowed to play with any small Tom, Dick, or Harry belonging
    to our neighbours provided I never went beyond view of her bedroom
    window. And that's not much of a playground for a healthy young
    sprat that ought to be learning what the sea looks like.

    'Alone with her, and at peace, I wanted nothing else and could
    chatter away like a grasshopper. Away from her, I was usually
    little better than a tongue-tied numskull, flushing up to the
    eyebrows at a word from a stranger, and looked too shy and timid to
    say Boh to a goose--even to the goose in my own looking-glass!
    Well, numskull is as numskull does; and as the old wooden-legged
    sailor said,

        _When all you've got is a couple of stump_,
        _There's nowt to do but go_ clump--clump--clump!

    'My father could not see it that way. He began to think I was
    stupid on purpose. There was not a sharper tradesman in the county,
    nor a more honest tradesman either, in spite of the "sharp". All
    his wits were at his finger-tips. He had a memory like a
    dictionary. He knew where everything was or ought to be. He could
    tell a bargain at first wag of its tail and a good customer before
    he opened his mouth. He lived long enough to make three fine shops
    of his poky first one--plate-glass windows, plenty of gold paint,
    three smart vans and about a dozen glossy-haired assistants in
    clean white aprons. And he stowed a handsomer show of tea-chests,
    sugar loaves, jam-jars and piccalilli pots behind those windows
    than any other grocer in the town. I owe him unspeakably more than
    the little fortune he left me.

    'But being what he was, he was impatient with anything else, and
    particularly with me, his own son. _Now_, I understand it. _Then_,
    the moment I saw his black hat above the hedge, or heard his key in
    the lock, I would scuttle away like a frightened rabbit. If we were
    left alone together, I would sit as glum as a cold plum-duff
    pudding--without any plums in it! If he asked me a question, every
    word would fly out of my head, like rooks at a rattle. The mere
    look of me at such times--fumbling and stammering--made him angry.
    The more angry he grew the more tongue-tied and lumpish grew I, and
    that would set my poor mother weeping. And I have never yet met a
    father who enjoyed being told that he could not understand his own
    son. Not that he loved me a penny the less; far from it. But love,
    my boy, is like coal. You can burn it, and warm and comfort
    yourself with its light and heat. Or you can keep it in a cellar.
    My father kept his in a cellar--and it was I who helped him stack
    it up!

    'With my mother, as I have said already, everything was different.
    We would gossip away together for hours. And when she wasn't with
    me I would talk to myself. I had plenty of books in my bedroom
    under the roof--books that had belonged to my mother's younger
    brother who died at sea. And I read like a limpet. When in those
    days I opened a book that seemed meant for me--travels, voyages,
    that kind of thing--it was like exploring another world. Fancy
    tales I never took to--except journeys to the moon, or the middle
    of the earth, and suchlike--nor could even my mother win me to
    rhymes.

    'Maybe it was all this book-stuff and solitude and having nobody to
    play with that began this odd habit in me of talking to myself when
    I was alone. And it was this talking to myself that led on to the
    great discovery. One evening, I remember, I was reading about the
    supper to which Sir Francis Drake invited the officer on his ship
    who had been stirring up mutiny against him, and whom he hanged
    next morning. And as I was listening to myself talking like the
    officer and putting up as stiff a lip as I could at the prospect of
    so harsh a breakfast, I suddenly discovered that there was not
    _one_ of me, so to say, but two. I discovered what's called a
    second self--though of course he must have been there all the time.
    To make things plain and ship-shape, let us call the first of these
    two selves, Sandy One; and the second of these two selves, Sandy
    Two.

    'There was first the Sandy One that was my father's son, and stayed
    at home with his mother in the high, oblong box of a house,
    standing up high on the hill with its neighbours, all in a row.
    This was the nervous, timid, stuttering Sandy, the Sandy who did
    not know where he kept his own tongue, the skulker, the dunderhead
    whom my father could not make head or tail of. There was next the
    Sandy who when alone did more or less what he liked and went where
    he pleased--desert islands, Red Indians, lions and tigers,
    castaways, cannibals, _bonum omens_--all that kind of thing. Ay,
    and the whole world over. _He_ pined for freedom. He wanted to do
    and dare things. He wanted to eat his cake and chance the stale
    crusts afterwards. This happy-go-lucky, scatter-brained, dare-devil
    creature boxed up inside me was Sandy Two. We'll call him, as I
    say, Sandy Two: and, Here's good luck to him!--for he needed it!

    'Now, do you see, my mother knew something of both Sandies, though
    more of One than Two. My father never so much as dreamt of Two and
    saw not much more of One than his worst. And Sandy Two, at his
    darndest and daringest, was at present inside my head and kept for
    myself and my books alone.

    'Now Schooling....'

                     *      *      *      *      *

Mike took a long slow look at this word before going any further. He
was already a little tired of reading. He wanted to get to the jacket.
Still, he had promised the old gentleman, who seemed to be an old
gentleman who expected his promises to be kept, that he would do his
best, and he had had an _uncommonly_ good breakfast. So he swallowed
another gulp of his tepid cocoa, took another huge bite of his
door-step, and plodded on.

                     *      *      *      *      *

    'Now Schooling. Well, I went to school like most boys of my age. It
    was what is called a Private School, and the headmaster's name was
    Smiles; and his name was not only where his smiles began but also
    ended. From the instant my father led me into his stuffy back-room,
    this Mr. Smiles took me for a Dunce. One glance at my sheepish
    mottled face--Sandy One's--was enough for that. And as dunce he
    treated me almost until we parted. Dunce was his chief dish with
    me, from beginning to end--and plenty of cane sauce.

    'I hated school. I hated learning. And as I was told to go straight
    home the moment my lessons were over, I was never much of a
    favourite with the other boys. They took me for a molly-coddle, and
    called me Tallow-candy. Which was true of course of Sandy One. And
    for some little time they never caught sight of Sandy Two. That
    came later. Still, whenever Sandy One warmed up so much in a scrap
    as to bring Sandy Two into it, it wasn't the other fellow that left
    off last!

    'Well now, to make a long story short, my father's heart, as I have
    been saying, was in groceries. And you can take my word for it that
    there is one thing at least worse than a quick profit on pickles,
    and that is a dead loss on 'em. His business was growing; he pulled
    his weight wherever he went; he was soon to be Mayor; and having
    only one son, he hoped and meant that that son should go into
    groceries too, and perhaps some day _double_ his fortune, keep a
    carriage, and become _Lord_ Mayor. He wanted his son to "get on",
    and what father doesn't?

    'So in the old days, just to polish my wits, he would ask me such
    questions as what raisins are, or where currants come from, or why
    peel is called candied; and then--with a flicker of his
    eyelids--who discovered the Macaroni Tree, or how much fresh there
    is to a pound of salt butter, or where the natives dig up nutmegs,
    or what is the temperature of Cayenne pepper, or what is the cost
    of a hogs-head of treacle at 2-3/4_d._ an ounce. The point is, I
    never even _wanted_ to know such things. And worse, I couldn't even
    laugh at them!

    'If my father had asked me what kind of birds you'd be likely to
    see flitting about in the craters of the moon; or what the
    war-whoop and scalping habits of the Objibwas or the Cherokees
    were; or how many brothers riding on white asses Abimelech had; I
    believe Sandy Two would have consented to answer. But Sandy Two
    (apart from toffee) had no interest whatever in Demerara or
    Barbados sugar; and Sandy One was no better than a block-head at
    any questions whatsoever, except when his mother asked them, or
    when he was alone.

    'One Sunday morning, after I had first said I couldn't answer, and
    then refused to try to answer, some such questions as these, I
    looked up and told my father that I hated grocery shops. I said of
    all shops I hated grocery shops the most. I said I detested school,
    and that the only thing in the world I wanted was to run away to
    sea. Then I burst out crying. At this moment my mother came in, so
    I never got the thrashing I richly deserved.

    'But my father must have thought things over; for after that, Dr.
    Smiles paid very particular attention to the _grocery_ side of
    history, geography, arithmetic and dictation. Even of French: "Has
    your neighbour's gardener the oranges from Jaffa, the tapioca from
    Brazil, and the chicory for the coffee of his aunt?"--that kind of
    thing.

    'Then one night I overheard my mother and father talking. Sandy Two
    had come stealing downstairs about half-past nine to see what he
    could find in the larder. The door of the drawing-room was ajar,
    and I heard my father say: "He is not only half-witted, but as
    limp and flabby as a rag doll--and what's more, here's that
    bladder-of-lard, schoolmaster Smiles, saying exactly the same
    thing. And yet _you_...." At these words Sandy One at once fled
    back to bed--taking Sandy Two with him. And I awoke next morning
    remembering what my father had said as distinctly as if it had been
    tattooed into my skin. For days together after that Sandy Two never
    so much as showed the tip of his nose in the house.

    'Then, one afternoon, on my way home from school, I ventured down a
    shabby side-street, because at the far end of it I had caught the
    noise of a Punch-and-Judy Show. I could hear the children roaring
    with laughter, and the squeaking and the thumping and
    cockadoodle-ing of Mr. Punch. Sandy Two told Sandy One he would
    like to go and see it. So he went.

    'Coming back, we passed a dingy little shop I had never noticed
    there before, and we stopped to look in at the window. _Marine
    Store_ was printed up in white letters over the green front. There
    was some queer junk behind that window: old shoes and shawls and
    old hats, a ship in a bottle, a green glass rolling-pin, a
    telescope that must have belonged to Noah, a ship's compass, a
    brass cannon, a bed-warmer, a picture made of hummingbirds'
    feathers--such old curios as they call 'em as that. They looked as
    if they had been there for centuries--verdigris, mould, fluff,
    dust. Most of these articles had their prices marked on scraps of
    paper: "_Grate Bargin, 3s. 6d._" and so on.

    'And hanging up on a nail in a corner of the window and almost out
    of sight, was a kind of garment I couldn't quite put name to. But a
    piece of paper was pinned to it, and on that was scrawled the
    words: _Majick Jacket_. Just that and nothing more. But it was
    enough. I had already gloated on the telescope and the ship and the
    brass cannon. But those two words, _Majick Jacket_, fairly took my
    breath away. They stirred me up as if with a ladle--me myself,
    Sandy Two, and even Sandy One. At last I could bear the strain no
    longer.

    'I pushed open the crack-paint little door--I can hear even now the
    jingle of its rusty bell--and in I went. The place smelt like an
    old cellar. It was as soundless as a vault. For what seemed hours
    nothing happened, except that I heard a far-away canary singing;
    then Sandy One began to be alarmed, and I tiptoed off towards the
    door.

    'Just as I was about to whip it open and bolt out into the street
    again, an old man, with thick magnifying spectacles on his nose and
    a beard like a goat, came shuffling out of the back parts of the
    shop, and asked me what I wanted.

    'I said would he please tell me the price of the brass
    cannon--though I knew it already. Then I asked to see the ship in
    the bottle. And then, at last, with hardly any breath left in my
    body, I managed to point to the jacket.

    '"That," he said, looking first at it and then at me, "that's ten
    shillin'."

    'I got as red as a turkey-cock, coughed, turned about, and opened
    the door.

    '"I say! I say, Mister!" he called after me. "What are you running
    away for? Come back and _see_ it. Come back and look at it--_feel_
    it. No harm in that!" He was already climbing up on to a stool.
    Then he thrust his head in among the rags and drabs in the window,
    brought down the jacket, and laid it on the counter. And close-to,
    like this, it was nothing much, I must say, to look at.

    'It was made of some kind of foreign dark Chinese-looking stuff,
    with a faint wavy pattern on it, and it had flat stone buttons with
    green crocodiles curled round on them. The braid was frayed at the
    neck and cuffs. I looked hard at it on the counter, but didn't
    touch it. Then I blurted out: "Who made it?"

    '"Made it?" snapped the old man, "that's a _magic_ jacket. That's
    come from Pekin and Madagascar and Seringapatam and I don't know
    what, and if once you get inside of it you'll never want to get out
    again."

    'I swallowed. "Have _you_ ever put it on?" I enquired.

    '"Me?" he almost bellowed at me. "Me! with all these old slops
    hanging round! Where should I be if I put 'em all on? Where's the
    _sale_?"

    'Now I wanted that jacket with the crocodiles on the buttons more
    than anything else past, present or future in the whole wide world.
    But I had only two-and-ninepence in my pocket--and that was riches
    for _me_. To be on the safe side, I told the old man this. He
    stared at me through his rusting spectacles.

    '"See here!" he said, as if in a violent temper, and whisking out a
    piece of newspaper from under the counter: "See here now, snap it!"
    And he wrapped up the jacket in a flash. "Give me all you've got,
    and come back with the rest. There's a summat in your eye, young
    man, that never went with a cheat."

    'Then I knew that the old man was charging me at least double what
    he had meant to ask for the jacket. But I gave him my
    two-and-ninepence all the same, and went out of the shop. Before
    his door bell had stopped clanging I had pushed the parcel up under
    my waistcoat, and walked off, keeping my stomach in, because I
    didn't want anybody to ask questions.

    'Once safely home, I crept upstairs and slipped the parcel in at
    the back of a drawer, and for that night there it stayed. I didn't
    dare to meddle with it, partly for fear of what might happen, but
    mostly of what might _not_!

    'All the next morning I was in torture. I was afraid my mother
    might find the jacket--and give it away to some tramp for a fern or
    a pot of geraniums. Every time I thought of it I could scarcely
    breathe, and that didn't help much in my school-work. I was kept
    in. And when I came home I told my mother I had a headache--which
    was true--but persuaded her at last to go out and leave me to
    myself. Then I stole up to my bedroom, shut the door, opened the
    drawer, and with my heart in my mouth, felt for the parcel. All
    safe! All _safe_! I took it out, undid the string, opened the
    paper, and there was the jacket--wavy pattern, crocodile buttons,
    frayed braid and all.

    'With a last wild look towards the window I took off my own coat
    and put it on. I put it on. And nothing happened. Nothing whatever.
    At first blush, I mean. Except that I suddenly noticed that the
    room was full of sunshine and that a thrush was singing in a pear
    tree at the bottom of the garden. I noticed it because he sang so
    clear and shrill, and as though straight at _me_. If you could put
    sound for sight, it was as if I were listening to him through a
    telescope. I could see him, too, the speckles on his breast, and
    his bill opening and shutting--singing like an angel.

    'And as I listened I noticed in the sunlight through the window the
    colours of my faded rose-patterned carpet and an old boot. It
    sounds silly, but I had never before seen an old boot look like
    that. I don't want to mince words, and maybe I didn't realise it
    then, but the fact of the matter is that that old boot on the
    carpet looked astonishingly _beautiful_--the light on the old
    leather, the tongue coming out, and the gleam of the metal eyelets.
    A landshark's word that--_beautiful_--but there you are.

    'Well, I was soon a little impatient with all this--a new life
    seemed to have edged into things, or at least into me. Very
    peculiar. So, to get back to common sense again, I began Sandy
    One's _Physical Exercises_. Exercises! Why, it was as though all
    of a sudden I had become nothing but a twist of wire and catgut.
    I skipped through those jimminasticals as if I were half out of
    my senses. Then I tried tricks never so much as dreamt of
    before--hopping along my bedrail; standing on my head, first on the
    bedpost, then on my water-jug; balancing myself--two hands, then
    one hand--on the back of a chair. Whatever, within the bounds of
    reason, or thereabouts, I gave myself to do, I _did_--and with
    ease. Like the thrush singing. Nothing very much perhaps, but new
    to _me_! Mind you, I had never been quite the mollie my father
    thought me. And Sandy Two hadn't been idle, body or wits. But a
    little confidence, though not too much, is what you want. After a
    while I began to be a little bit alarmed at the effects of the
    jacket. I began, so to speak, to suspect my own company!

    'So, hot and breathless, I sat down at the table where I always did
    (or didn't do) my homework, and began my "composition". The subject
    was the Battle of Trafalgar. Before I had finished I had written
    about fourteen pages on the Battle of Trafalgar! I had described
    how the _Victory_ went to sea, and what Lord Nelson felt like--that
    last day coming, and why he kept his medals on, and all about
    Captain Hardy. And I put the weather in, and didn't forget old
    Froggy Villeneuve either--a gallant sailor and a bad end. When I
    looked up from page fourteen I could hardly see. It was as if I had
    come out of the heavenly Jerusalem! And then, almost at that
    moment, I heard my mother come in down below, and the front door
    shut.

    'I felt like a keg of quicksilver, and yet dead beat. I undressed
    in less time than a lizard takes to slough its tail, and tumbled
    into bed, slipping my Chinese jacket in under the bedclothes.

    'And no doubt I looked headachy enough when my mother came up to
    say good-night. She felt my forehead; it was burning hot. And she
    murmured faintly in a very small voice something about castor oil.
    Even Sandy One could put his foot down when it came to castor oil!
    But this time I didn't make the least fuss about it. I said, "Right
    you are. Warm the glass, mother, and put plenty of lemon juice in".
    I swigged it down, and even smacked my lips over it. Then I began
    to talk--so fast, and with such nonsense mixed up with the sense,
    that my mother was on the point of calling in the doctor. At that I
    sobered down again.

    'The next day all was well, but I didn't go to school. The next day
    after that saw me back in my place again, though not in the magic
    jacket! But I had cut off one of the pale-green crocodile buttons
    to carry about in my waistcoat pocket for a kind of charm or
    amulet. I got a caning for the French I hadn't done, and another
    caning for the arithmetic which I had. Mr. Schoolmaster Smiles
    himself read my _Essay on the Battel of Trafalger_ then and there.
    He hauled me out again before the class, and asked me what help I
    had had. I said none. He glared at me: "Are you positively sure,
    sir? Not even in the spelling?"

    'I said, "No, sir; none, sir." What was queer, he believed me.

    'Still, he had talked to me once or twice about the sea and the
    Navy. And I too had asked him questions, because while I was
    wrapped up in the thought of them, I wasn't so frightened of him.
    Besides, on looking back, I don't believe he really cottoned to
    groceries much more than I did. Anyhow, he gave me full marks and a
    bit over for my Trafalgar, but warned me another time I mustn't
    "spread" myself out like that.

    'I went home feeling like a turkey-cock, marched straight upstairs,
    sat down at my open window, and--put on the jacket again. But I had
    hardly got my arms into the sleeves when I heard my mother calling
    me. I hustled on my own jacket over the top of the other--which was
    not difficult, because my Chinese one was a very tight fit,
    especially at the armpits--and met her on the landing. She was as
    white as a sheet and could scarcely speak. She said my father
    wanted to see me at once, and that he had a friend with him, a Mr.
    Turner.

    '"And, oh, my dear," she implored me, "do try and answer your
    father's questions. Just _listen_, Sandy. Then perhaps you'll hear.
    And speak up to Mr. Turner, too, if he speaks to you. Think it's
    _me_. Don't be frightened; don't be _sulky_. Nobody can eat you.
    Fancy it's only just you and me talking. For my sake, Sandy."

    'I said, "Right, mother!" and slid from top to bottom down the
    banisters of the three flights of stairs almost before she had
    stirred foot to follow me. At the dining-room door I pulled myself
    together, and went in.

    'My father was sitting on the other side of the fireless hearth,
    talking to a stranger. I liked the look of this stranger. He was
    short and broad; his face was burnt with the sun; he had a fringe
    of reddish hair round his head, and wore thick-soled shoes. "Here
    he is," said my father to the stranger, then turned to me. "This
    gentleman is Mr. Turner, Andrew. If you want to know anything about
    the sea, he'll tell you." I put out my hand.

    '"I hear you've no stomach for dry goods," said Mr. Turner, staring
    at me, but in a friendly fashion. "Have a hankering after salt
    water, eh?"

    '"Yes," I said, "the Navy." Out of the corner of my eye I saw my
    father start at this. He had never before heard me answer so direct
    a question without stammering or flushing or just goggling like a
    red herring with its mouth open.

    '"And what do you know about the sea?" said Mr. Turner, looking at
    me steadily. "It's pretty deep!"

    'I looked back at him no less steadily. I liked him more and more,
    and thought I would try him with a few tit-bits out of my fourteen
    pages on the Battle of Trafalgar. There was a queer silence when I
    had finished. And I realised that my mother had at that moment
    stolen away after listening at the door. As for my father, he sat
    in his chair dumb with amazement. He shut his eyes for an instant
    and then began to explain that I was not perhaps so backward in
    some things as in others. But, apart from mere book-learning, did
    Mr. Turner think that I had the framework, the grit, the _health_
    for a life in the open? "You see, his mother...."

    '"He looks a bit pasty," said Mr. Turner, still quietly grinning at
    me. "But you can't always tell by the skin. What about those
    biceps, young man?"

    'I put out my arm, and he gripped it hard above the elbow, not
    noticing, perhaps, that I had two jackets on. And he said, "Pretty
    good. Do they drill you much at school? Or is it nothing but
    book-learning?" I nodded, and said, "Yes; and things at home, too."

    '"What do you do at home?" says he.

    'Now all this time I had been feeling like a bottle of ginger-beer
    before the cork pops out. So when he gave the word, so to speak, I
    upped with my heels and pretty nearly _trotted_ across the room on
    the palms of my hands.

    '"Bravo," said Mr. Turner. "Try that on the table."

    'It was a circular solid old-fashioned mahogany table, made when
    Queen Victoria was a girl, and I circumnavigated it on my fingers
    and thumbs as nimbly as a cat. But now my blood was up. To give me
    room, a couple of tumblers, a bottle of water, and a decanter of
    whisky had been pushed into the middle of the table. Balancing
    myself on one hand, I poured out with the other a noggin of the
    water--for I couldn't quite venture on the whisky--into one of the
    tumblers, and singing out, "_Nelson, for ever!_" drank it off.
    Then, spluttering and half-choking, I got down from the table, and
    at last looked at my father.

    'He was so pale as to be all but green. He looked as if he was
    sea-sick. He said, "Has your mother ever seen you do such things as
    that?" I shook my head. But Mr. Turner was laughing. What's more,
    he hadn't finished with me yet.

    '"Have you got such a thing as a stout piece of rope, William--say
    a dozen fathom?" he asked my father. There were few things my
    father was _not_ possessor of. We went out into the garden, and as
    neat as ninepence Mr. Turner flung a bight of the rope over one of
    the upper branches of a fine shady sycamore that grew so close to
    the house that its leaves in summer actually brushed against its
    windows.

    '"Try that, young man," said my father's friend, Mr. Turner, when
    he had made it fast.

    'Well, whether it was due to the devil in Sandy Two or only to the
    workings of the magic jacket, I don't know, but I shinned up that
    unknotted rope like a monkey up a palm tree. And when I reached the
    top, I edged along on my stomach till I was almost at the end of
    the bough. Then at arms' length I began to dandle on it--up and
    down, up and down, like a monkey on elastic. When it had given me
    enough swing and impetus--what's called _momentum_--I let go--and
    landed as pat as a pea-shooter through the open window on to the
    landing, the sill of which was some twelve feet from the ground.

    'When I came down into the garden again, my father and Mr. Turner
    were having a close, earnest talk together, under the sycamore. My
    father looked at me as if I had just come back from the Andaman
    Islands.

    'I said, "Was that all right, daddy?"

    'But he made no answer; only patted me on the shoulder, turning his
    head away. And from that moment, and for ever after, we were the
    best of friends, my father and I; though he never had the ghost of
    a notion of what had caused Sandy Two--whom, mind you, he had never
    noticed before--to sprout like that!

    'But then, that's how things go. And--to cut a long story short--by
    hook and by crook, by twisting and turning--chiefly my
    father's--which would take too long to put down in black and white,
    I won free of groceries at last for good and all. And the next
    spring I went to sea for a trial voyage. And after _that_, though
    it was pretty hard going--well, I got into the Navy.

    'And now, here I am, for good and all on land again. Not much short
    of being an old man, but still, thank God, hale and hearty, and
    able and willing, I hope, to do a fellow creature a good turn at
    need. And this, my lad, is where _you_ come in.

    'The fact of the matter is, I had watched you scrabbling away with
    your chalks at your pitch in Little St. Ann's a good many days
    before you knew it. And I came to two conclusions. First, that your
    pictures are proof that you can do good work. And second, that you
    could do much better. What I feel is you keep _yourself_ back, do
    you see? It's the old story of Sandy One and Sandy Two. You haven't
    the confidence, the go, the guts (in a word), to forge clean ahead,
    _your_ way.

    'That's what I say. I see you setting to work in the morning like a
    young cockatrice, but presently you begin to waver, you become
    slack and dispirited. The least little mishap--a broken chalk, some
    oaf _walking_ over the pictures, even a cloud floating up over the
    sun--shakes your nerve. At such times you don't seem to be sure
    even of what you want to do, let alone how to do it. You niggle at
    a picture first one way, then another, and at the end give it up in
    despair, the zest gone, and the fancy gone, and the spirit--what I
    call the innards--gone too. And when any stranger speaks to you, or
    drops a copper in your cap, you flush up, droop, go limp and dumb,
    and look as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth.

    'Now first, my boy, don't mind what I am saying. It is for your
    _sake_. I wouldn't be taking the trouble except only and solely in
    the hope and wish of doing you a small service. And remember this,
    I've been through it all before you--and may, when the end comes,
    again. I've known what it is to feel my bones melt in my body, to
    tremble like a jelly, my face like a plaster mask and my skull as
    empty as a hulk on a sandbank. In two words, I know of old what
    it's like to be _Sandy One_. So, you see, it's because I'm morally
    certain there's a Sandy _Two_ in _you_--and maybe one beyond
    anything I can conjecture--that I'm writing this now.

    'I like the cut of your jib, and the way you stick to things in
    spite of all dispiritment and the dumps. I had my eye on him when
    you marked the mug (for good, I hope) of that suety butcher's boy
    the other day who spat on your Old Boney. I want to give you a hand
    _in your own line_, and see no better way of doing it than by just
    lending you my old Pekin jacket for a bit. Now what do you think
    about that?

    'Maybe it won't work. Maybe its magic's gone. Maybe I imagine as
    much as I remember about it. But I can say _this_--the last time I
    squeezed into it before the toughest engagement I ever came out of
    alive I reckon it blew up the enemy's ship at least two hours
    before she'd have gone to the bottom in the usual way. Mind you, I
    haven't _often_ used it. When I was your age, an hour or two of it
    tired me out for half the next week. A day or two of it might take
    a complete month to recover from. Besides, if you look at the
    matter by and large, and fair and square, you can see it wouldn't
    do. In the long run we have to trust to what we have in us that's
    constant and natural, so to speak, and work like a nigger at that.
    It's only in tight corners we need a little extra fire and frenzy.
    _Then_ maybe Dame Fortune will see fit to lend a helping hand.

    'So all I say is, give the jacket a trial. There is almost room for
    two of you in it--so if you don't want it to be noticeable, put it
    on under your own coat, and see how things go. And last, remember
    this, my boy; whatever happens, I shall still be keeping an eye on
    you. As my dear mother used to say, "There may be more than one way
    home, Sandy--but it's trudging does it." And here's good luck; God
    bless you; and _Finis_.'

                     *      *      *      *      *

It was the last page of Admiral Rumbold's 'yarn'. Mike turned it over,
looked at the back, coughed, and drank down what was left of his cold
cocoa. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked up as
he did so at the round yellow face of the clock that hung on the wall
at the further end of the shop. At that very moment, it seemed, it had
begun to tick. The long hand stood at two minutes before the hour. The
old gentleman must be expecting him now--this very minute! Had he meant
him to open the parcel and put on the jacket inside it there and then?
His face flushed, then paled--he couldn't make up his mind. His head
was in a whirl; his heart thumping under his ribs; he broke out hot and
damp all over.

While he was still debating what he should do, he noticed that the man
who had brought him the food--with his long tallow-coloured face and
pale grey eyes--was steadily though vacantly watching him. Mike got up
in haste, pushed the remnants of his last door-step of beef and bacon
into his pocket, hastily snatched up the Admiral's manuscript and
brown-paper parcel, and left the eating-house.

Before actually turning the corner which would bring him in sight of
his pitch, he peeped round to see if the old gentleman was anywhere to
be seen. He certainly was. At this actual moment he was walking away
from Mike--square compact shoulders, brown billycock hat, and firm
rolling tread. When once more he returned to the pictures he paused,
looked them over one by one, dropped something into the cap, and
continued on his way. In less than a minute or so he was back again,
had taken another look, and once more paid his fee.

It appeared as if Admiral Rumbold had been so engaged ever since he had
left Mike in the coffee-shop; and there could be no doubt he had by
this means attracted passers-by to follow his example and look at the
pictures. Many, it is true, just glanced and passed on; but a few paid
their coppers. The old gentleman was now approaching the street corner
where Mike was in hiding, so Mike stepped out a little shamefacedly,
and met him there and then.

'Aha!' cried Admiral Rumbold. 'So there you are! Good! And sharp to
time. Did you finish it? Good! Have you got it on?'

Mike went red, then white. He said: 'I have read it, every page, sir,
but the jacket's still in the paper, because----'

'Be dashed to "Because"!' cried the Admiral. 'Come a pace or two down
that alley yonder. We'll soon put that right.'

So they went off together into the shelter of an alley near by, above
which the green leaves of a plane tree showed over the glass-bottled
wall; and Mike, having taken off his own old loose long coat, slipped
into the Chinese jacket as easily as an eel, and then back into his own
again on top of it. Admiral Rumbold, having crushed up the brown paper
into a ball, tied the string round it, and lightly flung it over the
wall. 'Good luck to it!' said he.

'Now,' he added, and looked at Mike--then paused. The boy stood
motionless, as though he were frozen, yet he was trembling. His lips
were moving. He seemed to be trying to say something for which he could
not find the words. When at last he lifted his face and looked up, the
old Admiral was astonished at the black-blue of his eyes in his pale
face. It was the dark dazzling blue of deep seas. The Admiral could not
for the life of him remember where he had seen eyes resembling them.
They were unlike the eyes of boy or man or child or woman, and yet
_somewhere_ he had seen their like. Mike was smiling.

'The green crocodiles, sir,' he said, fingering one of the buttons.
'Most of them are not much bigger than ha'pennies, but you can feel all
the horny parts, and even the eyes stickin' out of their heads.'

'Ay, ay,' said the Admiral. 'That's Chinese work. That's how _they_
work--at least in times gone by. But how do you feel, how do you
_feel_, my lad?'

Mike gazed up an instant at his old friend; then his glance roved on
and upward towards the pale-green pentagonal plane leaves above his
head and the patch of blue and sunny sky beyond. A smart north-west
breeze was blowing, and a mountainous cloud was moving up into the
heights of noonday.

'I'd like,' he answered huskily, 'to get back to the pitchers, sir.'

'Ay, ay!' cried the Admiral. And again, 'Ay, ay! Back we go.' So the
two of them set off together.

And though to all outward appearance the old gentleman, whose face was
all but as red as a pimento, was as cool as a cucumber when he came
stumping along beside his young acquaintance, his excitement was
intense. It was Mike who had now taken the lead. The Admiral was merely
following in his wake. The boy seemed utterly changed, made over again.
There was a look to him even as he walked that was as lively as a peal
of bells. It was as if _his_ bright and burning sun had suddenly shone
out between clouds as cold as granite, lighting up the heavens. What
was to happen next?

First, Mike took up his cap, and with not even a glance at what was
inside it, emptied its contents into his coat pocket. He then paced
slowly on from one picture to the next, until he had scrutinised the
complete seven. From the pocket with the remains of the 'door-step' in
it he then drew out his capacious strip of rag and hurried off to a
dribbling water standard with a leopard's head on the spout about
twenty-five yards away. There he wetted his rag through and through. He
came back to his pictures, and in a few moments had completely rubbed
every one of them out. No more than the faintest blur of pink and
yellow was left to show that the paving-stones had ever lost their
usual grey and in three minutes that was dowsed out too.

When he had finished this destruction, and the warm morning air had
dried the stones again, he knelt down and set to work. He seemed to
have forgotten the old Admiral, the Chinese jacket, everything that
had happened that morning. He seemed to be wholly unaware of the
passers-by, the dappling sunbeams, the clatter and stir of the street,
and even who and where and what he was. Skinny and engrossed, he
squatted on his hams there, huddled up under the wall, and _worked_.

Admiral Rumbold, as he watched him, became almost alarmed at the
rapidity with which things were taking shape on the blank
paving-stones. As if by magic and before his very eyes there had loomed
into view a full-rigged ship, swimming buoyant as a swan on the blue of
its waters, its masts tapering up into the heavens, its sails bellying
like drifts of snow; while from its portholes pushed the metal mouths
of such dogs as he himself had often heard bark, and seldom to no
purpose.

It was not so much the resemblance of this picture to a real ship on a
real sea under a real sky that drew out of his mouth a grunted, 'Begad,
begad!' but something in the look of the thing, some spirit living and
lovely and everlasting behind it all, to which he could not have given
name, but which reminded him of the eyes that had looked up at him a
few minutes before under the plane leaves in the alley after their
first intense glance at the crocodile buttons. Yes, and reminded him
too of an evening long ago when he had made the circuit of his mother's
mahogany dining-table on little more of his anatomy than his thumbs.

By this time a few other wayfarers had begun to collect and to watch
the young street artist at his work. It did not seem to matter that he
had forgotten to put back his cap in its customary place, that in fact
it was on his head, for, oddly enough, when these idlers turned away,
though every single one of them seemed to marvel at the quickness and
skill of the boy, yet they all seemed _anxious_ to be gone, and nobody
gave him a ha'penny.

Admiral Rumbold could stand the strain no longer. He firmly placed a
half-crown beside the little heap of coloured chalks, coughed loudly,
paused an instant, and then, seeing that Mike had not noticed him,
stole off and left him to his work.

The worst of the Admiral's anxieties were over. There could be no doubt
in the world that the magic jacket had lost not one whit of its powers
since first he had slipped into it himself all but sixty years ago. The
only thing that troubled him was that not a single farthing had been
bestowed on the young artist in the last quarter of an hour.
Nevertheless, he thought he knew why.

'They're scared!' he muttered to himself. 'They don't know what to make
of it. They see it's a marvel and a miracle--and beyond 'em. They don't
like the smell of it. They think it's dangerous. They just watch and
wonder and sneak away. Well, my dear Rumbold, why _not_? Have patience.
Never mind that. Wait and see!'

He loaded himself up with coppers the next morning, and returned very
early to the narrow terrace behind Great St. Ann's. The night before
had been rainless; only the lightest of dews had fallen. It had been
windless, too, and there was a moon; so that the row of pictures which
Mike had left unfinished on the pavement must have faintly bloomed
under her beams that whole night long, and now were as fresh as they
were at the first making of them. Admiral Rumbold had sallied out at
this unusual hour to steal a glance at them alone; but Mike had been up
before him.

There he was--on his knees once more--deaf and blind it seemed to
everything in the world outside him, and intent only on his pictures.
His old friend didn't interrupt him, but left him to himself, and went
off to get some breakfast at his club. When he returned the boy had
vanished for the time being. Five pictures out of the customary seven
were now complete.

The Admiral stared and stared at them, part in astonishment, part in
inexpressible delight, and part in the utmost dismay. Two of them--the
ship, 'The Old Victery' and the new 'Hornted'--were more vivid and
astonishing things than (with French chalks and paving-stones) he had
thought even possible. The rest he felt uneasily were beyond his
comprehension. He could hardly make head or tail of them.

One was called 'Peepul at Sunset'. It reminded him of Shadrach,
Meshech, and Abednego walking in the midst of the burning fiery
furnace. Another was called 'The Blind Man'; it showed a chair, a table
with a bowl of flowers, and a dish of fruit on it. There was an open
window, too. It seemed to shimmer and glow and blaze like precious
stones. But to the Admiral's eye the chair was all clumped and crooked,
and the flowers looked queer--half human. He had never in all his born
days seen a picture of a chair like that. Besides, there was not even a
sign of a human being, let alone a blind man, to be seen! He stirred,
coughed softly. He sighed; and glanced into the ragged cap. It was now
a quarter to ten; the cap contained a French penny, a British ha'penny,
and a three-penny bit with a hole in it. The Admiral lugged out of his
pocket a handful of coppers, and added them to what was there. Off and
on throughout the day he kept an eye on the young street artist. Of two
things he was at last certain: first, that Mike was still wearing the
jacket; and next, that he had made (apart from his own donations)
practically no profit. For you cannot pick up coloured chalks in the
gutter, or patch the knees of your old breeches with the empty air! The
boy could hardly have taken an independent sixpence.

Admiral Rumbold began to be a little anxious as he thought this dark
fact over, but decided not to interfere. Next day he knocked fairly
early at the door of a lodging-house nearly opposite Mike's pitch.

'Good morning,' he said, as soon as it was opened. 'I'd like, if you
please, to have the window again. Is it free?'

'Certainly, sir,' said the woman who had answered his knock. 'I'm glad
you enjoy the view, sir. It's a pity there's so much wall.'

'It's not the bricks, ma'am, but the people,' replied the Admiral, as
he followed her up a flight of stairs into a room which immediately
overlooked the street.

There--behind the Brussels curtains at the window, and seated on a
rather lumpy armchair--the Admiral spent most of his morning, watching
all that went on in the street below, but especially the boy. And once
more he came to two conclusions: first, that Mike was _not_ now wearing
the jacket, and next that he was making less money even than the day
before. _Life_ seemed to be gone out of him. He sat hunched up beside
his chalks and his empty cap--his bony face as grey as ashes. He hardly
dared even raise his eyes when anybody paused to examine his pictures.
Now and again, however, he would glance anxiously up and down the
street as if in search of somebody.

'He's looking for me,' muttered the Admiral to himself. 'He wants to
return the jacket. God bless _me_! Still, steady does it; steady does
it.'

He returned to his window in the early afternoon. The boy looked even
more miserable and dejected than ever, but none the less he had begun
to tinker a bit at his picture, 'The Old Victery'. On this occasion the
Admiral had brought field-glasses with him. With these he could now
watch his young friend at work so closely as almost to fancy he could
hear him breathe. Indeed, he could see even a round-headed ant making
its way along the crack between two paving-stones; and the tiny bits of
chalk resembled coloured rocks.

Mike laboured on, now rubbing out, now chalking in, and the Admiral
could follow every tint and line and stroke. At last--though by no
means as if he were satisfied--the boy stood up and examined what he
had done. At sight of it he seemed to droop and shrink. And no wonder.
The Admiral almost wept aloud. The thing was ruined. There was the
ship, there the sea, and there the sky; but where the lovely light and
airiness, the romance, the wonder? Where the _picture_?

Admiral Rumbold was at his wits' end. The day was drawing on. He began
to think that his intended kindness had ruined the boy for good and
all. He sat back in his chair absolutely at a loss what to do next. One
thing was certain. He must go soon and have a word with the
boy--hearten and liven him up. He must give him a good square meal, put
some 'beef into him, and--perhaps--take the jacket back. It had been
little but a deceit and a failure. He must take the jacket back, then
think things over.

He leant forward to rise from his chair, and as he did so cast a last
desperate glance at the opposite side of the street. Then he paused.
Fine weather was still in the heavens. The first colours of evening
were beginning to stretch across London's skies--shafts of primrose,
melted gold, and faint crimson lighting up the walls of the houses,
flooding the streets with light. And Mike was no longer alone. He was
still squatting tailor-fashion under his wall and as motionless as if
he had been carved out of ebony, but a pace or so away stood an
odd-looking old gentleman in a sort of long curry-coloured ulster. This
old gentleman had a beard and wore a high conical black felt hat with a
wide rim to it. An umbrella, less neat but more formidable in
appearance even than the Admiral's, was tucked under his arm.

He was not merely looking at, he was intent on, 'lost' in the pictures.
He stooped over them each in turn, spending at least two or three
minutes over every one, except 'The Old Victery', at which he just
glanced and went on.

When he found himself at the end of the row, he turned back and
examined them all over again. Admiral Rumbold watched these proceedings
with bated breath. The old man in the ulster had now turned to Mike,
who at once scrambled to his feet, leaving his chalks, his cap, and a
small newspaper parcel on the pavement. The two of them in the
clear-coloured evening light were soon talking together almost as if
they were father and son. They were talking about the pictures, too;
for every now and again Mike's new acquaintance, bent almost double,
would point with the stump of his umbrella at one of them, tracing out
a line, or hovering over a patch of colour. At the same time, his beard
turned over his shoulder towards Mike, he would seem to be praising, or
criticising, or explaining, or asking questions. Once, indeed, he
stooped, caught up a piece of chalk, and himself drew a few lines on
the pavement as if to show the boy exactly what he meant. 'So!' the
Admiral heard him end, brushing his fingers.

There could be no doubt this eccentric old gentleman in the wide black
hat was interested not only in the pictures but also in Mike. He looked
as if in his excitement he might go on talking till midnight. But no;
at this very moment he seemed to be making some kind of proposal to the
boy. He had put his hand on his shoulder as if in encouragement. Mike
hesitated; then cast a long look into the sky, as if to consult the
weather. After that his mind seemed to be made up. He hastily took up
his cap, his chalks, and his parcel, and the two of them set off down
Little St. Ann's together.

At this Admiral Rumbold paused no longer. He seized his hard billycock
hat, his field-glasses and his malacca cane, and clattered down the
stairs out into the street. Keeping well behind them, he followed Mike
and the old gentleman out of Little St. Ann's into Ashley Court, and so
across into Jermyn Street. At this corner, so intent was he in his
pursuit, that he barely escaped being run over by a two-horse grocery
van.

Mike and the old gentleman were now so clearly in sight that the
Admiral had time to pause and address a policeman.

'Good evening, constable,' he said. 'I want you to tell me if by any
chance you happen to know the _name_ of that old gentleman in the hat
yonder, walking with that lad there?'

The policeman fixed his eyes on the pair.

'Well, sir, to tell you the truth, sir,' he said at last, 'I've _seen_
him somewhere though I couldn't say rightly just where. I've even been
told who he _is_. But bless me, if I can lay tongue to the name of him.
I wish I could, sir. He looks as if it might be worth while.' Admiral
Rumbold thanked the policeman and hastened on.

At the moment when he once more came within sight of the two of them a
long-haired youngish young man in a dark, loose cape or cloak had but
just met and passed them by. This young man was also wearing a black
wide-brimmed hat. As soon as politeness permitted, he not only stopped
dead, but stood intently watching the pair until Admiral Rumbold
himself had come up with him. The Admiral glanced him over.

'You will excuse me, sir,' he said, 'but if I am not mistaken, you are
as much interested in that old gentleman yonder as I am myself. A most
impressive figure! Could you oblige me with his _name_?'

'His _name_, sir!' exclaimed the young man. 'Gracious heavens! why,
that's old B----. That's "old B. in a Bonnet"!--the crankiest, craziest
old creature in the British Isles. But make no mistake, sir. What that
old boy doesn't know about pictures and painting isn't worth a tallow
candle. He's a Master. Wait till he's dead, that's all. Then the whole
world will be wagging with him.'

'You don't say _so_!' shouted the Admiral. 'A _Master_! _Painting!_--eh?
I am very greatly obliged to 'ee--very greatly obliged. And you think
if he's taken a fancy to that lad there--_sees_ promise in him, I
mean--well--that the lad's in luck's way?'

'"Think?"' replied the young man. 'Bless your heart, sir, I _know_.'

The Admiral detained him no longer. He saluted him and passed on. He
could say no more. He was satisfied. All was well. The magic jacket,
then, had _not_ played him false; Mike's 'steepish bit of hill' was
well begun. He found himself at the further end of Jermyn Street, and
in the traffic of the Haymarket. The old man in the ulster had
disappeared. But no, there he was--old B.--some little distance down on
the opposite side of the street, and at the window of a print-seller's
shop. He was talking to the boy at his side--pointing, gesticulating,
his bushy beard wagging. And Mike was listening, gazing in, entranced.
Admiral Rumbold turned on his heel. He had never professed to know much
about pictures. Then why should he now suddenly feel downcast and
depressed? He was tired, too, and extremely thirsty. It was almost as
if he missed his jacket.

[End of _The Magic Jacket_ by Walter de la Mare]
