by B. B.
‘Goodnight, Sergeant.’
He went away down the drive and Aunt Ellen stood at the door and watched the gentle summer dusk swallow up his massive broad back. How dark it seemed after the lighted library! Where could the boys be now? Sleeping out under some haystack like tramps perhaps! Why had she ever consented to take responsibility for someone else’s children? She turned back into the library with a sigh.
The matter was now out of her hands, she thought; she had done all she could, things must take their course and she must wait developments. In the meantime, however, a little discreet questioning of Harold was suggested. He was already feeling better and the doctor had pronounced that he was on the mend. The rash had come out and there seemed no danger of complications.
But she found that young gentleman on his guard. He asked her naively whether his brothers had returned to school, and when told they had not, he asked what they were doing and when they would be allowed to come and see him. Aunt Ellen soon found that it was she who was being cross-questioned; he seemed to be cautiously pumping her for information. But he did it so cleverly she could not make up her mind whether he knew anything about the escapade. She eyed him suspiciously through her pince-nez but his face was inscrutable.
He asked, for instance, whether his brothers were ‘having to do lessons?’
Aunt Ellen countered this with, ‘I am arranging with the vicar to tutor them.’
‘When are they going to start?’ he asked.
‘I don’t quite know yet,’ said Aunt Ellen crossly, ‘I’ve had so much to think about.’ She had an inward battle with herself as to the wisdom of telling him what had happened.
But Harold had other means of finding out. Hannah – who had had measles – was allowed to take him his meals. When she brought him his breakfast tray next morning he asked her point-blank where his brothers were. Hannah, who had been told that she must on no account tell him anything, was taken aback. She was a simple girl, unused to subterfuge. She stammered and looked confused and then told Harold to get on with his breakfast and not be inquisitive. This gave the game away; he knew then they had really gone, without a shadow of doubt they had gone, and he felt acutely miserable that by a stroke of ill fortune he was not now with them away in the greenwood. And yet, if he had not had measles they would all have gone back to Banchester. Fate was against him either way; he always missed the fun.
Hannah told Aunt Ellen that she had been cross-questioned and asked for guidance. And then and there Aunt Ellen had to make up her mind whether to tell Harold or not.
She thought out the matter carefully; she consulted Miss Holcome, and finally the vicar, and it was eventually decided that he should not be told. As the vicar wisely said, ‘If Harold knows all about it you may depend upon it he had planned to go too; only the measles prevented him from accompanying his brothers.’
If he did not know, nothing would be gained by telling him. He was a sensitive child and in his present weak state it might worry him.
So when Harold asked his aunt once more when his brothers would be allowed to visit him, Aunt Ellen took the plunge.
Robin and John had gone away until he was better. She didn’t want them catching measles. In a short time they would go back to school, she said, when the period of incubation was past. In the meanwhile, he was not to ask her any more questions, she had enough worry as it was. Harold could see his aunt was ‘fabricating’.
The days passed. To poor Harold, still imprisoned in his room, the outside world seemed unusually attractive. The weather was fine and warm, the trees and bushes in the garden were in full green leaf. The Dower House seemed strangely quiet, the grown-ups broody and uncommunicative.
The glory of the young summer weather seemed to lap the Dower House round and Harold fretted at his forced imprisonment. He was allowed now to sit up in his bedroom, wrapped in a rug in an old nursery chair by the window. From this vantage point he could observe the summer world without.
A week after the disappearance of his brothers he was sitting at the window. The remains of his tea, dreggy cup and crumby plate, were on a tray close by and his favourite book, Tom Sawyer, lay face downwards on the floor. It was too glorious an evening to read; he longed to be out in the sunny garden where the shadows from the trees were already stealing across the lawn. White-rumped house martins dived and floated by, twittering happily as though they were riding the waves of an invisible ocean, and through the open window came the faint call of a cuckoo.
His aunt was downstairs writing in the morning room, Miss Holcome had gone out for a walk and Harold felt dreadfully alone. There was nothing to do but watch the garden and wish he was up and out.
He knew that his brothers had not returned; their continued absence only served to aggravate his unsettled state of mind. What a time they must be having away over there beyond the evening hills, deep in the greenwood, leading a Tom Sawyer-like existence unhampered by Aunts and fussy females!
Why had Fortune singled him out for punishment? It was just his rotten luck. If only he could get well and strong again he would go after them, he reflected. Then came a small cold fear. Would he? Would he have the courage to go alone all that way? Had he the courage to slip off at dead of night as his brothers had surely done and how would he ever find them?
In his heart of hearts he doubted it. And this made him all the more unhappy. Harold by nature was less self-reliant than his brothers. By virtue of being the youngest he had always laboured under an inferiority complex.
Out on the sunny lawn a wagtail was running up and down catching flies, moving so fast its legs were invisible. It seemed to glide over the mown turf – Rumbold had been mowing all the morning and the sleepy summery whirr of the machine had been yet another torture … The smell of the newly cut grass came in at the open window in gentle puffs, bringing with it the scent of gilly flowers and the faint sickly perfume of wisteria bloom.
Round the church tower he could see the swifts wheeling; they had arrived only a week before. Now and again he could hear their threadlike screeches like a finger rubbed on a pane of glass. A fly buzzed fretfully under the blind. Poor fly, it wanted so badly to be out in the summer world, it had not the sense to crawl over the white wood of the upper window frame and buzz away. He was like the fly, he reflected miserably.
Then came Tilly the spaniel. She walked disconsolately from behind the trees and flopped wearily in the sun, stretching herself out. The little dog had been miserable since the boys’ departure. She lay listening to all the sounds going on in the house. Like all spaniels, house sounds absorbed all her boring moments. Harold could see her pretending to be asleep, now and again snapping at a teasing fly and chasing imaginary fleas. But all the time she was listening; listening to the clink of pans and the hum of servants’ talk from the kitchen, listening to the squeak of the pump at the top of the kitchen garden where Rumbold was filling a watering can. She was a sociable little dog; even hunting rabbits under the rhododendrons down by the Willow Pool did not lure her without human company. So she lay in the sun and listened.
Harold whistled the peculiar whistle by which they always called her. Tilly, who was pretending to find a flea above her tail – her nose snubbed up, little hissing sounds coming from her muzzle – stopped biting. She still kept her nose snubbed but she was holding her breath, listening. Harold laughed and whistled again.
She sat up suddenly with her long floppy ears fanned, looking towards the house. Harold waved his hand but she did not raise her eyes to the window. Then she went on catching fleas. Harold picked up Tom Sawyer again and read on:
‘After dinner all the gang turned out to hunt for turtles’ eggs on the bar. They went about poking sticks into the sand and when they found a soft place they went down on the sand and dug with their hands.’
It was no use, it only made him feel more miserable. Hullo, what was that? Tilly barking! He looked up. The spaniel was running on her fat legs across the lawn towards the front gate, fleas and boredom forgotten. She
was barking lustily.
A man was coming in at the gate, a young man dressed in grey flannel trousers and a tweed coat, hatless and with what looked like a leather box slung on his back by a strap. Who could he be? What did he want? Harold saw him carefully shut the white swing gate behind him and then stop to speak to Tilly who, reassured, followed him closely up the drive smelling at his trouser legs.
Was he a traveller, one of those mysterious persons who, from time to time, appeared in sleepy Cherry Walden; beings from another world, with strange and sometimes fascinating merchandise?
He came up the gravel drive, but unlike the usual commercial traveller – he did not look like one, Harold decided – he did not go up the branching back drive but came boldly up to the front door below Harold’s window, where the rough grey tangle of the wisteria branches hid him from view. There was a second’s suspense – in which Harold pictured him pulling out the bright brass knob of the doorbell. It was like waiting for an explosion. It came – the rich alarming tones, pealing, pealing, through the panelled house. It was no timid ring, but bold and echoing, it brooked no delaying, an urgent summons to chattering serving maids.
Harold could imagine the sudden quiet confusion in the morning room where Aunt Ellen was writing – she seemed to be writing a lot lately – and then he heard Emma’s steps clumping down the stone-flagged passage from the kitchen quarters. ‘Clump, clump, clump, clump,’ then silence as Emma passed over the turkey carpet by the front hall, then ‘clump, clump, clump’ again as she crossed the hall. After a pause he heard the front door slam. He flattened his nose against the pane but no figure reappeared. The stranger had been admitted. Was it a detective? Was it something to do with Robin Hood and Big John?
Tilly wandered back into the middle of the lawn – Aunt Ellen did not allow dogs in the house – and there she sat with cocked ears watching the morning-room window.
Who could he be? What did he want?
5. ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat.
Come hither, come hither, come hither,
Here shall we see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live i’ the sun
Seeking the food he eats
And pleased with what he gets –
Come hither, come hither, come hither,
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Robin opened his eyes and stirred. Like a lazy shepherd he lay collecting his thoughts, which wandered between dreamworld and this.
In his drowsy ears there sounded heavenly music, the chanting of birds.
Now some say a forest is silent, that its birds are few and none sing save for the nightingales and pigeons. These people have never fallen asleep in an English forest in May, to awake at first light. As Robin lay on his bracken couch in the dim interior of the tree it seemed as if every bird in the eleven thousand acres of Brendon Chase was singing. Song thrushes, blackbirds, nightingales, wrens, tits, pigeons, blackcaps, whitethroats and finches, all singing as if their throats would burst.
He saw the dark walls of rotten wood framing the doorway and outside was a silvery green scene like the painted backcloth to a stage setting.
He could see the marks of their dead fire on the short grass, the strong new bracken fronds – like miniature tropical palm trees – and the motionless leaves on the bushes and distant oaks.
On the other side of the root lay Big John, fast asleep. He was curled round with his knees drawn up, his head pillowed on his crooked right arm in the way he always slept. He was breathing regularly and quietly in deep slumber.
Robin turned over on his right side and shivered. It was surprisingly chilly. The dew must have come in at the open door; his clothes and the bracken felt quite damp. He was aware of a strange depression which he could not analyse, a vague sense of uneasiness. As he lay there he tried to think out the cause. Suddenly he knew. He saw in his mind the white cloth on the long breakfast table, the silver dome of the bacon dish which was fluted in ribs and which, when closed, looked like a big silver Easter egg. He saw in his mind the crisp bacon rashers, the fried eggs sitting like half apricots surrounded by a flap of white which had uneven edges, a little crisp and brown in places. He saw the white steaming porridge in plates adorned with sprigs of blue lavender, the brown sugar and creamy milk, he smelt the coffee and the general breakfast atmosphere of the dining room at Cherry Walden.
Platoons of toast, crisp, brown and still hot, in rows on the silver rack – which had an ivory handle – golden marmalade, heaped and distorted through the glass globe of the jam dish. And he heard Rumbold ‘pumping up’ in the kitchen. The ‘tunk-tunk’ of the scullery pump was one of the morning sounds of the Dower House … All these things passed in procession through his mind and the disquiet within him was intensified. He found himself almost longing for Cherry Walden.
A week had passed since they had first come to the Chase, seven days … it seemed years. They had shot more rabbits, a pigeon or two, they had made two attempts to find the Blind Pool without success and in all that time they had seen no trace of man; their only companions had been the birds and rabbits. They had not even seen a fox, or a deer, and both boys were suffering from homesickness. Those days were the only vaguely unhappy ones they had in the forest. They had not reckoned on homesickness; their bodies had not yet become accustomed to the change of life and the novelty of the adventure had worn off. It says much for the character of both outlaws that neither even gave the smallest hint that they were homesick. Were it not for one another’s company there is no doubt they would have gone back, back to the security and the comfort of the Dower House, even at the expense of loss of liberty, unknown punishments from Aunt Ellen and lessons with the Whiting.
But Robin and Big John had bags of pluck; they were adventurous, self-reliant and very imaginative.
It is a good thing that this was so. Up to now, life in the forest had been a little tame, adventure was lacking, probably because they had not had the heart to seek it.
Robin got up out of the bracken and crawled through the door. He stretched himself, for his limbs were cramped. Then he set to work to make the fire. For breakfast they had rabbit legs and livers, stewed, and a little porridge. This had been their breakfast for the last seven days, and though Robin was hungry, the monotony of the diet had begun to pall. Above all things the boys craved something sweet – that, and bread. Robin felt he could have eaten a whole loaf at a sitting. These cravings were shown in the way the boys talked. At night, as they sat around their camp fire, they talked of nothing else but the sweets they used to buy in the post office, the peppermints, like little striped pillows, the chocolate marshmallows, the smell of the baker’s shop in the main street.
Rabbit for breakfast, rabbit for supper, sometimes a pigeon or a blackbird or two, meat, meat, meat, everlasting meat. There were no fruits yet to be gathered in the forest; it was still far too early for blackberries, though later there would be millions, for blackberry bushes were everywhere. But even the blossom was not yet out.
On the third day Big John had had the brilliant idea of pigeon’s eggs, and the eggs of the various songbirds – blackbirds, thrushes and even jay’s eggs were eaten. These they boiled and found delicious, though the whites of the songbirds’ eggs when cooked assumed a strange jelly-like appearance which was far from appetizing. But the yolks were as good as hen’s eggs.
Another thing they craved was fat. Some of the pigeons were fat – they had yellow rolls of it just under the skin – but there was not enough of it. All their meat had to be stewed.
Now it is just possible that had this state of things continued for very much longer they would have been compelled to return to civilization and Aunt Ellen. T
he human stomach has a powerful influence over the higher spirit. And then, in a most miraculous way, their life suddenly took on the true adventurous quality of the wild.
Robin’s first act after lighting the fire and putting some water on to boil for the porridge was to go and search under the hazel bushes where they buried their refuse, the bones and odd entrails and other rubbish from the camp.
Sure enough, he found, as he expected, that some creature had been prowling about the camp during the dark hours and had dug them up. For the last three nights this mysterious scavenger had been visiting them. Every morning now they found the same phenomenon: the ground scratched out, large hollows routed under the bushes and the bones and refuse gone.
This unknown nocturnal visitor was never seen. Once Big John had awakened in the middle of the night and heard strange noises coming from under the hazels; muffled grunts, scufflings and sounds of loud mastication. But nothing was visible. He had awakened Robin and together they had crawled to the cave mouth, listening and peering, but the moon was not yet able to give much light and the night sky was overcast.
It was also very creepy to hear those sounds. They even barricaded the mouth of the cave at nightfall with a large log. The puzzling thing was that the beast – or beasts – did not move furtively, but made considerable noise, and fed heartily with many muffled grunts and lip smackings.
‘I can’t make it out,’ said Robin, when Big John at last joined him by the growing fire, ‘that beast has been here again in the night. Whatever can it be?’
‘Badger I expect,’ said Big John. ‘Badgers grunt like anything and they’re big beasts.’
‘Of course it might be a fox,’ said Robin, stirring the porridge, ‘though it makes too much noise for a fox. Perhaps it’s a deer or a dog.’
‘There wouldn’t be dogs here.’
‘I dunno. The old charcoal burner chap who lives somewhere in the Chase may have one. I wish we could pal up with the old boy, he’d maybe help us no end.’
