And all the time the sunset was spread out like flags behind them.
But darkness did come, so gradually that they were deceived into thinking it still was light, and lingered on the common. They collected flowers, and pieces of eggshell that hatching birds had scattered under the trees. However, there was a sudden difference between seeing, and not being able to see anything clearly, and it was with a shock that Kate realized how late it was before they had got into the wood.
“Come on, Thomas, we'd better hurry,” but he was tying the flowers into bundles with pieces of grass, which kept breaking. “Oh do come on,” and she knelt down to help, but was careless in her haste: his slow fingers accomplished more. At last he stood up and brushed grass and earth mold from his knees, precise and irritating. She grabbed his arm and ran him through the long grass towards the gate that led into the wood; they made a stumbling progress, punctuated by his bellows when from time to time he tripped and fell headlong. She noticed, as she pulled him to his feet, that when he fell he was quite hidden by the long grass.
People were not really supposed to go in these woods. They belonged to Sir Henry Plentipot; but as Kate was at Miss Bybegone's with his daughter she did come here with Thomas, though not often. Sir Henry's gates were padlocked and wire-netted, with an additional line of barbed wire along the top. She took off her jacket and spread it over the gate like a saddle, seized Thomas and sat him on it, mounted herself, slid over to the ground and pulled him down after her. Struggling into her coat, she hurried among the trees, and he stumbled after her, tired and bawling.
It was quite dark under the branches. There was no question of which way to take, for there was no path: the ground was thick with garlic and brambles. As long as they kept going downhill, they were bound to strike the cart track that led through another gate to Hurst Camber and the village. It was not far, but at every step they were scratched and snarled by brambles, and their trampling feet raised a strong odor of garlic. Far over them reared the trees and it was all cold and silent, as though they had burst into a cathedral in the middle of the night. Thomas stopped his noise, he was frightened; he gripped Kate's hand and the only comforting thing was their two palms pressed together, hot and damp.
It was a relief when he stopped howling, as though he had attracted the attention of the great trees when he should have tried to pass under them without being noticed. And then Kate was certain that she saw something looking out at her from behind a bush. It's that dog again, she thought in panic: I saw its black head, even in the darkness, I saw its two white eyes staring at us, I know I did. She held Thomas still, and listened. There was no sound, none at all. Woods were supposed to rustle, with birds and creatures in them scurrying and flapping. These did not: they might have been set up out of pasteboard for a film set, a frightening film with only two actors in it, Kate and Thomas. And dogs: there was another looking round a tree trunk -- or was it the same one? It had gone already but she was certain she had seen its staring eyes.
This is the wood in Father's picture, she thought, with the black things looking out. But he didn’t paint it like that: it's changed. He must come back, and put everything right, I must get him back; and she dragged Thomas on again, through the tearing, ensnaring undergrowth. How she longed to climb back, run over the common to comfortable Mrs. Beer! And she was sure that if they turned their backs and ran, the dogs in the wood would let them alone. But she had made a promise and she could not dishonor it just because she was frightened. She had Thomas gripped, and they went on.
If you could only hear them, she thought; if only they whined, or rustled, or even growled. It is dreadful when they just lurk, and stare, as if they want to spring but cannot, you wonder what they are then, are they really dogs at all? She had never known much fear, she was not a nervous child. When the girls at Miss Bybegone's admitted that they were scared of cows or riding or were sick with nerves before they took an examination, she thought them rather silly. Now she learned. And poor Thomas tripped over a bramble and fell on his face, and instead of scrambling up again he just lay in a small exhausted heap. Kate crouched beside him. “What is it, Thomas? Come along, we're nearly back, we really are; but we'll never get home unless you get up; do come along.” She tasted something warm and salty on her lips, her own tears. “Come on, get up, we can't stay here all night.” Still he did not move. There was nothing for it but to pick him up in her arms, and he was heavy. She staggered on down the hill, until at last she struck the cart track. Looking towards their house, she saw a lightening of the wood, the beginning of sky.
And there at the end of the track, in front of what must be the gate, she very distinctly saw two whites, like little moons. The dog guarded the way out.
She had a moment of panic when she almost turned and ran up the track further into the wood. If she had not been holding Thomas she would have done so. But his weight stopped the impulse; and next moment she walked on bravely, still carrying him. What was there to do against the crouching dog before the gate? She began to sing, from Pilgrim's Progress, a poem she had learned as a hymn years ago. “'He who would valiant be,"' she started up, her voice a thin, wobbly pipe in the hollow woods. They might have burst out laughing, those great black trees. But she sang all three verses and went on with Thomas in her arms, until she was near enough to see how large the dog was. It seemed to have no intention of moving. Her bare legs were scratched and stung, and the road was pitted with dried mud in mounds and trenches, it was as much as she could do to stumble along. She stared back at the dog, daring it to stop her, and thought: “It has Aunt Rhoda's eyes; they are exactly the same.” And then she must have blinked, and in that second it had gone. There was the gate, locked and wired; and the kind moon looked down upon her through the edge of the wood. As she got herself and Thomas over the gate somehow, she remembered that old Mrs. Cantrip had called her dog Moon Eyes. But this was not a hard, white moon: it was soft, golden and warm, benevolent. The air smelled of hay. She stood Thomas in the road.
As he stood on his feet, the whistling started from the wood, the curious noise on a single note that sounded more than anything like the little tin whistles they put in cheap crackers. They looked back, listening.
Aunt Rhoda was not about. They had milk and biscuits in the kitchen, and washed their torn legs and filthy hands and faces. Thomas was in his pajamas, and Kate was crossing the landing with him to his bedroom, when she heard the front door slam and next minute Aunt Rhoda came upstairs. She seemed in an evil temper, she did not speak or even look at them, but put her feet down hard on the stairs, and going into her room, slammed the door shut. Kate put Thomas in his cot, tucked him in and kissed him, and drew his curtains. Then she went to bed herself, happier than she had been for some time. She felt that this evening another round of the battle had been fought, and for the first time she had won.
This mood of satisfaction awoke her next morning. She pedaled to school in a happy daze, her bicycle was winged, not wheeled: lessons seemed easy, and Miss Bybegone friendly, almost intimate, as though she thought more of Kate after spending an evening at her house. Her homework was praised, not condemned for being carelessly arranged and badly written; she talked fluently with the other girls when often she could not think of much to say to them; she was on top of the world. And it was inspiring weather, golden and blue, with fat clouds gusting about. It was easy to forget that she had been badly frightened in the wood and, worse, that Thomas had given up altogether: she could only remember that she had won.
At the end of lessons she asked Miss Bybegone if she could borrow her dictionary of plants. It was in another room and her kind teacher went to get it, while she sat at the round table smoothing out upon its polished surface the crumpled leaf she had found in the drawing-room fender. Miss Bybegone returned with a large, leatherbound volume, and took the leaf in her thin hands that were mottled with brown.
“Aromatic,” she remarked, sniffing it. “Herbs, I should say: you could look up that se
ction, Kate.”
Kate turned the heavy pages covered with tiny print and beautiful, accurate diagrams. She pushed the book across the table to Miss Bybegone. She loved looking things up, already the tip of her long nose twitched in expectation.
“They usually have such small leaves,” she said, “such herbs as thyme -- now at Ostia Antica, which one day you may visit, there is a carpet of it, and with every step one takes the sprigs are bruised, giving out an exquisite scent.”
How often during the ordinary parts of these days, Kate was reminded of things that had happened in her secret life! Reminded, now, of the garlic that had smelled last night when she had stumbled through it with Thomas; reminded again by this book, with small print and exact diagrams, of another, slimmer book that she had read over her aunt's shoulder. There were countless little holes in the everyday life through which to peer in astonishment at those happenings she should have only read about in fairy stories.
“Did you ever hear about someone called Elizabeth Bennet?” she suddenly asked, but Miss Bybegone pounced.
“Here we are! Good old Mortimer & Luton, I thought you wouldn't let us down. Do you see? A perfect drawing of this leaf, and from this description you may learn, Kate my dear (let not ever an opportunity for learning pass you by, but pin down your facts and preserve them in amber like a Greek)” Kate was desperately sidetracked by trying to imagine a Greek preserved in amber “that it has white flowers. Hmm, hmm,” she read on avidly.
“What is it, though, please?”
“But look, child, but look! Why should I do your research for you?” Though there was certainly not room for them both at the book. “Myrrh, my dear-do you see? Compare this leaf with this, I am right, am I not?” Kate dutifully made the comparison: there was no doubt.
“Good old Mortimer & Luton!” cried Miss Bybegone, shutting the book with a triumphant smack. “And now, by the white knees of the gods! I must get tea for the mater.” She hurried from the room in an agitation of mauve artificial silk. In fact she was a devoted daughter, and nobly supported her mother, a rather short-tempered old lady who found her definitely ridiculous.
Kate collected her things slowly. She threw the leaf into the empty fireplace and put on her jacket and satchel. Why had Aunt Rhoda put myrrh to burn upon the fire?
She cycled home. At the top of the last hill she was surprised and rather disturbed to see Mrs. Beer outside the gate of her house, evidently waiting for her. She stopped in a small cloud of dust. Mrs. Beer did not give her time to dismount, but started as soon as she judged her within earshot.
“The time I've had ! How it's been I just can't tell you, Kate, but I can tell you this, I do not darken those doors again. Umberage I have taken, many times, and welcome; but this time things have gone too far.”
“Whatever's happened?”
“When knowing him, as I have done, from the cradle, and loving him as if he was my own; only yesterday he spent with me, as good as gold; but she's turned him today again like puddy in her hands; and if I were you I should be dubilous, dubilous for sure, about going oft to school, and leaving him alone with her!”
“But what else can I do? I can't just stop going to school, Father'd have a fit.”
“Ah, would he, then. What right has he got to have fits, I'd like to know?”
“Mrs. Beer!”
Her face was scarlet, but in honesty and indignation she would say it.
“He goes off and leaves the two of you, it's months now, as if you were none of his. You ought to get him back, you ought indeed. And you said you'd write to him, but still he hasn't come.”
“Well actually, I haven't written yet.”
“But you said you would.”
“Honestly, there just doesn't seem to have been time. I really will. I will today.”
“Certainly you will today, when you've seen what's going on down there.”
“But what is going on?”
“Only that I made him a lunch, liver that he likes, and first he wouldn't come for it. She was sitting all this time at the table in the dining room where she will eat, though kitchen's more suitable for a child, I shall always say, and cleaner; he could have his with me and all the better for that, but she won't allow it. So at last I got him into his chair, he was wriggling and kicking, I sat him down and put his napkin on and gave him his lunch. He banged his spoon up and down in it, you know how children will, and I said: ‘Don't do that, Thomas' -- I was standing by the door, thinking to leave them to it. She was looking at him, and he looked back at her, and then picked up his bowl, he did, and threw it at me! Not that I mind that, he didn't mean anything,” said she with tears in her eyes, “but there was gravy and that on the clean carpet. I don't mind telling you, Kate, I could have smacked him!”
“You should have,” said Kate hotly, seeing those tears. “Little beast!”
“It's not him you know that as well as I do it's her. She puts him up to it. She doesn't say anything, I know; I don't think she credits him with the sense to understand her if she did speak. She's making a monkey out of him; it isn't right, I say; and your father ought to know about it, and come home and stop it.”
“I'll write this afternoon and post it tonight.”
Mrs. Beer was twisting her hands in her apron, looking away over at the view. Kate had to call her back.
“I hate to ask you, but we are lost without you, don't stop coming just for this. You know he loves you, really; he'd miss you dreadfully if you didn't come, we both would.”
“I've taken enough, Kate. You can't expect me to go on coming in such a case.”
“I don't expect you to, I'd understand if you didn't, if you didn't want to see either of us again. But you know how we need you; it's bad now, but it would be far, far worse if you were not there.”
Mrs. Beer's heavy breathing was subsiding, and she let fall her creased apron. She had got a certain amount off her chest, and everyone likes to be indispensable.
“I'll post my letter to Father tonight,” Kate pleaded, “and he'll get it tomorrow, or anyway the next dry why, he may be home in three days! Just three more days, Mrs. Beer!”
“You give me your word that you really will write, and perhaps I'll think again.”
“Truly I will.”
“There's things in this life that didn't ought to be pusspooned.” She blew her nose hard into a colored hanky. “Of course, Jem may not let me.”
“I'm sure he will, if you insist on helping us.”
Mrs. Beer did not answer, but she gave Kate a bit of a smile, and went back into her house. Kate shot off down the hill: she, the avenger, was not going to stand any more of this! On wings of righteous indignation she sped; but it did occur to her, as she wheeled her bike up the garden path, that discretion being the better part of valor, it would be cunning to see what they were up to, both of them, and, if possible, catch them at it.
The house felt empty. She looked into most of the rooms, without daring to burst into Aunt Rhoda's bedroom (but deciding that she would, if she could not find them in the garden). She went out, and through the archway in the hedge: there was no one on the lawn. If they were here, then, they must be down by the pond. She crept behind the rhododendron bushes, and peered among their glossy leaves.
There was Aunt Rhoda, hard at work. She had cleared the pond completely, she was just pulling the last bundle of sticks and sodden leaves from the water. All around, the paving was hidden under a tangle of wet rubbish, but Thomas had found a dry patch up by the rockery, and was busily drawing on the stone with a sharp pebble. There was certainly nothing incriminating about the scene, but as Aunt Rhoda threw down the last mess, Kate decided to wait where she was for a few minutes, and see what she would do next.
And now she stood erect on the edge of the pond, and slowly raised her arms until she had stretched them right above her head, and stayed there like a dark pillar. Kate was uncomfortable, it was too solemn, she wanted to giggle, Aunt Rhoda looked so silly; or creep up behin
d her and push her into the pond. The thought of that really did make her giggle, and she crouched behind the rhododendron bushes, cramming her fists into her mouth, her stomach aching with the effort to restrain herself, her eyes watering: until through her mirth she saw something very frightening begin to happen.
Aunt Rhoda still stood like a column on the edge of the pond. But what was coming from the pond itself?
The limpid water reflected blue sky and the whisking clouds. Then another shape a dark shape began to appear.
Kate was no longer laughing. She watched, afraid to make the slightest movement.
A large black shape a dog shape in the water, a dim reflection that got clearer and clearer -- of a real shape.
And there on the opposite path, below the azaleas, began a dog, and she saw, with her own eyes, how his outline clarified, gained substance, until he really was a dog. It was rather like watching her father painting.
She glanced at Thomas. He had not seen anything. He drew on, his nose practically touching the pavement.
She had to stop it, send it away, before he saw it. There wasn't a moment to lose. She scrabbled in the earth under the bushes, and pulled up a big, dry clod. With all her strength, and praying that her aim would be right, she hurled it over the rhododendrons, down into the pond. It hit the water, smashed the reflection: she looked, the dog had gone.
Aunt Rhoda was beside herself. She glared about, could see no one but Thomas; for an awful moment Kate thought she would turn on him. But it was obvious that he had done nothing. She rushed across the garden, through the archway down the path, and the gate slammed as she ran out and up the road to the woods.
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