and so it is for that night long ago when mary elizabeth and i stood by the tree and tried to think of something to say, that after all these years i have made the story of peter.
long years ago, when the world was just beginning to be, there was a kingdom which was not yet finished. of course when a world has just stopped being nothing and is beginning to be something, it takes a great while to set all the kingdoms going. and this one wasn’t done.
for example, in the palace garden where little peter used to play, the strangest things were to be met. for the mineral kingdom was just beginning to be vegetable, and the vegetable was just beginning to be animal, and the animal was just beginning to be man,—and man was just, just beginning to know about his living78 spirit. do you see what that means? while you looked at a mound of earth it became a bush—or a very little time afterward, as time in these things is reckoned. while you looked at a beast-shaped bush—all bushes at night are shaped like beasts—it became a living animal—or, again, a very little afterward. and men had by no means got over being apes, tigers, swine, and dogs, and sometimes you hardly knew which a man was, a real man or one of these animals. and spirits were growing in men as fast as this might be. everything, you see, lay in savage angles and wild lines.
little peter was playing one morning in the palace garden, and such playing as it was! he would be moulding little balls of loam and fashioning them with seeds, when suddenly they would break into life as buds and then as flowers, almost as one now sees twigs of wood break into life, or as quiet cocoons become living butterflies—for the world is not so different. or peter would be playing with a spongy-looking mass on a rock in the brook, when it would break from its rock and go gayly swimming about, and be a fish-thing. or he would push at a bit of ooze with a cat-tail, and a little79 flying life would mount abruptly and wing away. it was exciting playing in those days, and some of the things you can do in these days. only then it was all new, so peter could see just how wonderful it was.
now, that morning the king was walking in his palace garden. and he was troubled, for everywhere that he looked there were loose ends and rough edges, and shapeless things waiting to be fashioned, and it was so all over his kingdom. there was such a great lot to do that he could not possibly do it all alone—no king, however industrious, could have done it all. and he longed for the help of all his subjects. so when the king came on little peter, busily making living things where none had been before, he was mightily pleased, and he sat down with the little lad on a grassy platform in the midst of the garden.
“lo, now, little lad,” said the king, “what do you play?”
instead of playing at keeping store or keeping house or at acting or hunting or exploring, little peter was playing another game.
“i’m playing it’s creation, your majesty,” he answered, “and i’m playing help the king.”
80 “lo, now,” said the king, “i would that all my subjects would play as well as you.”
the king thought for a moment, looking out on all the savage angles and wild lines, while little peter watched a bit of leaf mould becoming a green plant.
“summon me my hundred heralds!” the king suddenly bade his servants.
so the servants summoned the hundred heralds, who hurried into their blue velvet and silver buckles and came marching, twenty abreast, across the grassy plateau, where the morning sun made patterns like wings, and among the wings they bowed themselves and asked the king his will.
“hundred heralds,” said the king, “be it only that you do this willingly, i would that you go out into my kingdom, into its highways and even to its loneliest outposts, and take my people my message. cry to them, until each one hears with his heart as well as his head: ‘the world is beginning. you must go and help the king.’”
now, little peter, when he heard the message, rose and stood beside the king, and in his breast something thrilled and trembled like a smitten chord. but as for the hundred heralds, they81 were troubled as one man—though he not yet wholly a man.
“o king,” they said, twenty at a time, “blue velvet and silver buckles are meet for the streets of cities and to call men to feasting and to honour the king. but as for the highways and the loneliest outposts—that is another matter.”
“but what of the message?” the king asked sadly, and this none of the heralds knew how to answer; and presently the king sent them away, for he would never have unwilling service in his palace or in his kingdom. and as they went, little peter looked after them, and he saw, and the king saw, that for all their blue velvet and silver buckles, the hundred heralds, marching away twenty abreast, were not yet all men, but partly they were apes in manner and swine at heart. and little peter wondered if he fashioned them as he did his bits of mould, whether they would burst from a sheath, all men, as burst his little plants.
“summon me my thousand trumpeters!” the king bade his servants next.
the thousand trumpeters hurried into their purple velvet and their lace collars and seized their silver trumpets, and came marching fifty82 abreast across the grassy plateau, where the noon sun made a blinding light, like the light of another sun; and they bowed themselves in the brightness and asked the king his will.
but when the king had told them his will and had repeated the message and asked them if they could go willingly, the thousand trumpeters were troubled as one man—and he not yet wholly a man.
“o king,” said they, in fifties and one hundreds, “lo, now, these silver trumpets. these are meet to sound up and down the streets of cities and to call men to feasting and to honour the king, and never are they meet to sound in the lonely outposts. pray thee, o king, keep us near thee.”
“but what of the message?” the king asked, and none of his trumpeters could help him there, and he would have no unwilling service in his palace or in his kingdom, so he sent them all away. and as they went, little peter looked after them, and he saw, and the king saw, that for all their purple velvet and lace collars, the thousand trumpeters, marching away fifty abreast, were not all men, but they were apes in manner and swine and hounds at heart. and83 little peter almost wished that he could fashion them as he did his bits of mould and see if they would not change into something better.
so then the king called a meeting of his high council, and his councillors hurried into their robes of state and appeared on the grassy plateau when the evening was lighting the place to be a glory.
“lo, now,” said the king, “i needs must send a message to all my people. let us devise or dream some way to take it.”
when they heard the message, the councillors nodded, with their hands over their mouths, looking at the ground.
then the king said—there, in the beginning of the world:—
“i have a thought about a wire which shall reach round the earth and oversea and undersea, on which a man may send a message. and a thought i have about a wire which shall stretch across the land, and upon that wire a voice may travel alone. and a thought about messages that shall pierce the air with no wire and no voice. but none of these things is now.”
(“nay,” said the council, murmuring among themselves, “or ever shall be.”)
84 “—and if they were,” said the king, “i would have one serve me even better than these, to reach the head and the heart of my people. how shall i do this thing? for i must have help in finishing my kingdom.”
the council, stepping about in the slanting light, disputed the matter, group by group, but there lay nowhere, it seemed, a conclusion.
“you yourselves,” the king cried at last, “who know well that the kingdom must be completed, you yourselves gather the people in multitudes together and tell them the message.”
but at this the high council twitched their robes of state and would have none of it.
“who would sit in the high places if we did that?” said they.
so the king sent them all away, and little peter, standing beside the king, looked after them. and he saw, and the king saw, how, under their robes of state, the high council had not entirely stopped being ape and swine and hound and tiger and, early in the world as it was, still there seemed no great excuse for that.
“oh, sire,” said little peter, “i wish i could play with them as i play with my bits of mould85 and loam and could turn them into something better and alive.”
“well said, little peter,” replied the king, smiling sadly.
and now the west, which had been like a vast, stained-glass window, streaming with warm light, fell into gray opaqueness, and the grassy plateau became a place of shadows in which night things were born gently. and the king looked away to the beast-shaped bushes and to all the striving land.
“oh, my kingdom, my kingdom!” he cried, grieving. “now, would that this little peter here could help you in the making.”
and then little peter stood upright in the faint light.
“may it please the king,” he said softly, “i will take the message to his people.”
the king stared down at him.
“you?” he said. “you, little man? and how, pray, would you take my message?”
“may it please the king,” said little peter, “i would tell everyone in the kingdom till all should have been told.”
“little man,” said the king, “you are no bigger than a trumpet.”
86 “ay,” said the little lad, “i think that is what i am. i would that i be not peter, but trumpeter. so send me forth.”
at this the king laughed, and for the laughter his heart was the lighter. he touched the boy’s brow.
“see, then, i touch your brow, little trumpeter,” he said. “go forth—and do you know my message?”
“you had first touched my heart, your majesty,” said the little boy, “and the message is there.”
you would think, perhaps, that peter would have waited till the morning, but he would not wait an hour. he made a little packet of linen and of food, and just as the folk within the palace were beginning their evening revelry, he stepped out on the highway and fared forth under the moon.
but fancy walking on such a highway as that! at first glance it looked like any other night road, stretching between mysterious green. but not anything there could be depended upon to stay as it was. a hillock, lying a little way ahead, became, as he reached it, a plumy shrub, trembling with amazement at its transformation87 from dead earth to living green. at a turn in the road, a low bush suddenly walked away into the wood, a four-footed animal. everything changed as he looked at it, as if nothing were meant to be merely what it was. the world was beginning!
at the foot of a hill, where the shadows were thick, peter met the first one to whom he could give his message. the man was twisted and ragged and a beggar, and he peered down in peter’s face horribly.
“sir,” said peter, courteously, “the world is beginning. you must go and help the king.”
“help the king!” cried the beggar, and his voice was uneven, like a bark or a whine that was turning into words. “i can’t help the king without my supper.”
“supper is only supper,” said little peter, who had never in his life been hungry. “one must help the king—that is more.”
the beggar struck the ground with his staff.
“i’m hungry,” he said like a bark. “i want some supper and some dinner and all the way back to breakfast before i help the king, world or no world!”
and suddenly little peter understood what it88 is to be hungry, and that, if folk were hungry, they must first find means of feeding themselves before they could listen. so he gave the beggar all that he had of food in his packet, which was the least that he could do, and sent him on his way, charging him with the message.
at the top of the hill, peter came on another man, sitting under a sycamore tree. the man was a youth, and very beautiful, and he was making a little song, which went like this:—
“open, world, your trembling petals slowly,
here one, there one, natal to its hour,
toward the time when, holden in a vessel holy,
you shall be a flower.”
though peter did not know what the song might mean, yet it fell sweetly upon the night, and he liked to listen. and when it was done, he went and stood before the youth.
“sir,” he said, “the world is beginning. you must go and help the king.”
“i know, i know, little lad,” said the youth, and his voice was clear, like bird-notes that were turning into words. “i, too, tell the message, making it in a song.”
and these words made peter glad, so that his89 strength was new, and he ran on with the poet’s gentle music in his ears.
i cannot tell you how far peter went, but he went very far, and to many a lonely outpost, and away and away on a drear frontier. it was long to go and hard to do, but that is the way the world is made; and little peter went on, now weary, now frightened, now blithe, now in good company, now alone and in the dark. i cannot tell you all the adventures he had and all the things he did—perhaps you will know these in some other way, sometime. and there were those to whom he told the message who listened, or set out in haste for the king’s palace; and some promised that they would go another day, and a few ran to tell others. but many and many were like the hundred heralds and the thousand trumpeters and the king’s high council, and found many a reason why they might not set out. and some there were who mocked peter, saying that the world indeed was doing very well without their help and would work itself out if only one would wait; and others would not even listen to the little lad.
at last, one morning when the whole world seemed glad that it was beginning and seemed to90 long to tell about it, little peter entered a city, decorated for a festival. everywhere were garlands of vines and of roses, bright rugs and fluttering pennons and gilded things, as if the world had been long enough begun so that already there were time to take holidays. the people were flooding the streets and crowding the windows, and through their holiday dress peter could see how some minced and mocked a little like apes, and others peered about like giraffes, and others ravened for food and joy, like the beggar or the bear or the tiger, and others kept the best, like swine, or skulked like curs, or plodded like horses, or prattled like parrots. animals ran about, dumb like the vegetables they had eaten. vegetables were heaped in the stalls, mysterious as the earth which they had lately been. the buildings were piled up to resemble the hills from whose substance they had been created, and their pillars were fashioned like trees. everywhere were the savage angles and wild lines of one thing turning into another. and peter longed to help to fashion them all, as he fashioned his little balls of mould and loam.
“there is so much yet to do,” thought little91 peter, “i wonder that they take so much time for holidays.”
so he ran quickly to a high, white place in the midst of the town, where they were making ready to erect the throne of the king of the carnival, and on that he stood and cried:—
“hear me—hear me! the world is beginning. you must go and help the king.”
now, if those about the carnival throne had only said: “what is that to us? go away!” peter would have been warned. but they only nodded, and they said kindly: “yes, so it is—and we mean to help presently. come and help us first!” and one of the revellers, seeing peter, how little he was, picked him up and held him at arm’s length and cried:—
“lo, now, this little lad. he is no bigger than a trumpet....”
(that was what the king had said, and it pleased peter to hear it said again.)
“... let us take him,” the revellers went on, “and have him for a trumpet. and take him with us in our great procession. what think ye?”
“and may i cry out what message i please?” little peter asked eagerly.
92 “surely,” answered all the revellers, gayly. “what is that to us, so that you come with us?”
they picked him up and tossed him on their shoulders—for he was of about a brazen trumpet’s weight, no more;—and peter clapped his hands for joy, for he was a boy and he loved to think that he would be a part of that gorgeous procession. and they took him away to the great tent on the city green where everyone was dressing for the carnival.
peter never had seen anything so strange and wonderful as what was within that tent. in it everything and everybody had just been or was just going to be something or somebody else. not only had the gay garments piled on the floor just been sheep’s and silkworm’s coats, not only had the colours laid upon them just been roots and stems and herb-leaves, not only had the staves been tree’s boughs and elephant’s tusks, but the very coal burning in the braziers and the oil in the torches had once been sunshine, and the very flames had been air, and before that water, and so on. but, most of all, the people showed what they had been, for in any merry-making the kinds of animals in folk cannot be covered up; and it was a regular menagerie.
93 they took little peter and dressed him like a trumpet. they thrust both his legs into one long cloth-of-gold stocking, and he held his arms tightly at his sides while they wound his little body in ruffles of gold-coloured silk, growing broader and broader into a full-gathered ruff from which his laughing face peeped out. and he was so slender and graceful that you could hardly have told him from a real, true, golden trumpet.
then the procession was ready to start, all lined up in the great tent. and the heralds and the music all burst out at once as the green curtain of the tent was drawn aside, and the long, glittering line began to move. little heralds, darting about for all the world like squirrels and chipmunks; a great elephant of a master of ceremonies, bellowing out the order of the day as if he had been presiding over the jungle; a group of men high in the town’s confidence, whose spots proclaimed them once to have been leopards, and other things; long, lithe harlequins descended from serpents; little, fat clowns still showing the magpie; prominent citizens, unable as yet to conceal the fox and the wolf in their faces; the mayor of the town, revealing94 the chameleon in his blood; little donkey men; and a fine old gentleman or two made like eagles—all of them getting done into men as quickly as possible. in the midst rode the king of the carnival, who had evidently not long since been a lion, and that no doubt was why they picked him out. he rode on a golden car from which sprays of green sprang out to reach from side to side of the broad street. and at his lips, held like a trumpet, he carried little peter, one hand on peter’s feet set to the kingly lips, and the other stretched out to peter’s breast.
then peter lifted up his shrill little voice and shouted loud his message:—
“the world is beginning! the world is beginning! the world is beginning! you must go and help the king. you must go-o-o and help the king!”
but just as he cried that, the carnival band struck into a merry march, and all the heralds were calling, and the people were shouting, and peter’s little voice did not reach very far.
“shout again!” bade the king of the carnival, who did not care in the least what peter said, so long only as he acted like a trumpet.
so peter shouted again—shouted his very95 best. he shouted as loudly as he did at play, as loudly as when he swam and raced in the water, as loudly as any boy could shout. but it seemed to him that his voice carried hardly farther than the little chipmunk-and-squirrel heralds before him, and that nobody heard him.
still, it was all such fun! the glitter of the procession, the eagerness of the people, the lilt and rhythm of the music. and fun over all was it to be carried by the carnival king himself, high above everyone and dressed like a golden trumpet. surely, surely no boy ever had more fun than that! surely, surely it was no great marvel that after a little time, so loud was the clamour and so fast the excitement, that peter stopped crying his message, and merely watched and laughed and delighted with the rest.
up and down through the thronged streets they went, that great, glittering procession, winding its mile or more of spangles and gilding and gay dress and animals richly caparisoned. everywhere the crowded walks and windows and balconies sent cheers into the air, everywhere flowers were thrown and messages tossed and melody flooded. and wherever that long line passed, everyone noted the king’s trumpet and96 pointed it out and clapped hands and tried to throw upon it garlands. and there was so much to see, and so much excitement there was in the hour, that at last little peter did not even think of his message, and only jested and made merry. for it was the most wonderful game that ever he had played.
“how now, my little trumpeter?” the king of the carnival would say sometimes, when he rested his arms and held peter at his side.
“oh, well, your majesty!” peter would cry, laughing up at him.
“this is all a fine game and nothing more,” the king of the carnival would tell him. “is this not so?”
then he would toss the boy on high again, away above the golden car, and peter would cry out with the delight of it. and though there were no wings and no great brightness in the air, yet the hour was golden and joy was abroad like a person.
presently, a band of mountebanks, dressed like ploughmen and harvesters, came tumbling and racing by the procession, and calling to everyone to come to a corn husking on the city green.
97 “husks! husks! a corn husking on the city green. husks—husks—husks!” they cried.
but there was such a tumult that no one could well hear what they said, and presently they appealed to the carnival king to tell the people.
“nay, o king, they hear us not for the noise of thy passing,” said they. “prithee tell the people what we would say.”
“tell the people, my little trumpeter!” cried the king, and lifted peter to his lips.
and peter shouted out with all his might.
“husks! husks! a corn husking on the city green. husks—husks—husks!”
“bravely done!” called the mountebanks, in delight, and ran alongside the car, leaping and tumbling and grotesquely showing their delight. “bravely done! tell the people—bid the people come!”
so peter called again, and yet again, at the full strength of his little voice. and it seemed to him that the people surely listened, and it was a delight and a flattery to be the one voice in the great procession, save only the music’s voice.
at last, for one moment it chanced that the98 bands ceased altogether their playing, so that there was an instant of almost silence.
“husks, husks, husks!” he cried, with all his might.
and as he did that, thin and clear through the silence, vexed somewhat by the voices of the people,—now barks, now whines, now bellows, now words,—peter caught a little wandering melody, as though a bird’s singing were turning into words:—
“open, world, your trembling petals slowly,
here one, there one, natal to its hour....”
and in the midst of that motley throng, peter, looking down, saw the poet whom he had left on the hill-top, now wandering alone and singing his message to his lute.
“oh, the king! oh, my king!” cried little peter, as if he had had a great wound.
“what now, my little trumpeter?” asked the carnival king.
“not you—not you!” cried peter. “oh, set me down,—set me down. oh, what have i done?”
“how now, little trumpet?” cried the carnival king. but peter, instead of stretching99 out his little body, slim and trumpet-graceful, turned and fell at the king’s feet in the car and slipped from his grasp and scrambled through the branching green and reached the street.
there, in the wonder and then the mockery of the people, he began struggling to free himself from the ruffles of cloth-of-gold about his body. some laughed, some ran from him as if he were mad, and some, wishing for themselves the golden ruffles, helped him to pull them off and to strip down the clinging golden stocking that bound his limbs. and then, being close to the city gates, little peter ran, all naked as he was, without the gates and on to the empty road. and he ran sobbing out his heart:—
“oh, my king! i would have told them that the world is beginning—but, instead i have told them only to get them husks!”
now the poet, who had seen it all—and who understood—ceased his song and made his way as quickly as might be for the press of the people, and ran after peter, and fared along the road beside him, trying to comfort him. but the little lad might not be comforted, and he only cried out again:—
100 “the king—the king! i would have given them his message—and i bade them only to get them husks!”
so the poet—who understood—said no word at all, but he shielded peter with his mantle; and then he took his lute and walked beside the little lad, singing.
they had gone but a short distance when they reached the top of a hill, where the sun shone with exceeding brightness, and the poet noted that the light fell almost like little wings. peter saw none of this, for his hands were still covering his face. but he heard the poet’s singing interrupted by a voice. the voice was uneven—like a bark or a whine that is turning into words—but yet its words were clear and unmistakable. and they were:—
“sirs, the world is beginning. you must go and help the king.”
peter looked up and he saw the man who had spoken, a man twisted and ragged, but who smiled down into the little boy’s face so gently that, for a moment, peter did not know him; and then he recognized that beggar to whom, on that night long ago, he had given food and the message.
101 “ay, friend!” the poet was answering him ringingly, “and we go!”
the beggar hurried on, and the poet touched peter’s hand.
“nay, now, little peter,” he said, “grieve not your heart too much. for you it was who told the beggar the message—from the top of the hill i heard—and i saw you give him food. can you tell any man without some good coming true of the tidings? then it may well be that there are those in the town to whom you told the king’s message who will remember, too. go we forth together to try again!”
peter looked down the long highway, stretching between the mysterious green, where shrubs changed to animals in so little a space; and then he looked away to the king’s kingdom and saw how it was not finished—because the world had just stopped being nothing and was beginning to be something—and he looked back towards the city where, as at the court, men had not yet done being animals. everything was changing, as if nothing were meant to be merely what it is. and everything was in savage angles and wild lines. the world was beginning. the people must be told to go and help the king.
102 “go we forth together to try again,” the poet repeated.
he touched his lute, and its melody slipped into the sunshine.
“toward the time when, holden in a vessel holy,
you shall be a flower.”
then peter stretched out his arms, and his whole slender little body became like one trumpet voice, and that voice strong and clear to reach round the world itself.
“i try once again!” he answered. “the world is beginning. i must go and help the king.”
