CHAPTER I THE BEGINNING OF THE ADVENTURE

Leaning back against the leather cushion of the railway-carriage, Griffith Weston was conscious of an endless panorama of fields and meadows, of green hedges and white hawthorn, and blazing, yellow furze. The whole landscape was bathed in a crude glare of June sunlight, and the heat, and the vivid glittering light, and the rushing train, made his head ache.

He wore a light, loose, flannel suit, without a waistcoat, and his wide short trousers left his knees bare. A dark olive-green silk tie brought out unnecessarily the sallowness of his complexion; his straw hat lay on the seat beside him. He was not in the least a handsome boy, but his expression was pleasing. He looked quiet rather than shy; he looked[2] intelligent, sensitive, and sweet-tempered. His eyes, beneath their drooping lids, had something of that sleepy gentleness which characterizes the angels and youths of Perugino, but the wide space between them gave the whole countenance, with its beautiful forehead, a kind of grave nobility and innocence.

A more brilliant colour glowed clearly enough in the fresh, ruddy cheeks of the sisters and brother who sat opposite him—Barbara, Ann, and Jim. Miss Johnson also sat on that side of the carriage, and Pouncer was at present invisible, somewhere under the seat.

The little boy’s position, in its comparative isolation, was characteristic; also the attitude of a watchful, listening silence he maintained amid the chatter of the others. His tutor had left a day or two ago, and he was now more or less independent, travelling by the same train as Miss Johnson and her pupils, but distinctly not of their party.

The eldest of these pupils, Barbara, dressed in white muslin, with slim, black, neatly-stockinged legs, and folded hands, looked demure and slightly priggish. Ann, who was fat, and had reddish hair and freckles, looked only very simple and plain. Her mouth was, as usual, slightly open, her hot little hands were not folded, and in no way did she present[3] so lady-like an appearance as Barbara. One cannot be lady-like and breathe through one’s mouth, Miss Johnson had told her that very day, and poor Ann had felt at once that she was doomed. Jim, in his white sailor-suit, was fidgety and vivacious, hovering perilously on the obscure borderline which, in Miss Johnson’s opinion, separated the lively from the naughty.

It was not till the train drew in at a station that Pouncer made an appearance. He did so suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box, and rushed to the window to look out, breathing noisily on the glass, and pushing aside Ann, who got in his way. There he remained, a ridiculous leather muzzle dangling under one ear, till the guard arrived with a basin of water. Pouncer lapped up the water with a big splashing red tongue, stopping every now and then to roll his round eyes and give a wag of his tail. With the amazing popularity of all bulldogs, he had managed in the space of some two minutes to attract the charmed attention of quite a group of persons. The group included the stationmaster, several boys, a postman, one or two porters, a sporting gentleman, and a lady who played the mandoline. Intending travellers, however, passed on in search of another compartment....

[4]

Again they tore through the glare and the heat. Jim’s black head was nodding now against Miss Johnson’s very angular elbow, and Grif, too, began to grow drowsy. He wondered what it would be like at grandpapa’s. Only Edward—who was to come on later from school—and Barbara had been there before. Edward and Barbara had given innumerable accounts of their previous visit, entering into all details, but things for Grif often had a mysterious way of turning out to be quite different from other people’s descriptions of them. His things were rarely their things; and it came into his sleepy head that everybody’s things must be unlike everybody else’s. His trees, for instance, were not Jim’s or Barbara’s, or Ann’s or Edward’s. They were just his—or were they his? Was he not rather theirs? Why, if he was not, did they stoop down with long green arms to catch him? and why was there such a roaring in their branches as he had never heard before? He tried to escape, to run away, but they closed him in on every side; they clutched him, and

he tore at their green, shadowy embrace, scattering the leaves in showers....

“By Jove, I’ve been asleep!” he thought, as the crash of another train whizzing by awoke him with a start. He smiled at Miss Johnson, whose glittering pince-nez was fixed upon him[5] with an expression at once severe and anxious.

His smile was intended to be reassuring, but he knew from past experience that Miss Johnson would not be reassured. If she took nothing to do with his education, she had, since his father and mother were started on their travels in the East, taken a great deal to do with him in other ways. It was rather a bore, of course, but then it would soon be over, for in the autumn he was going to school—to the same school as Edward. Miss Johnson had remarked that it would remove a load from her mind when he actually went, and he knew he should have gone a year ago had his people only been able to convince themselves that he was strong enough. This, in fact—this question of his strength—was just the mental load Miss Johnson had alluded to. For that matter, he couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t there for some one—a thing to be discussed and described—discussed even with Grif himself. If they would only let him alone, he thought, he would be all right. But they never would. Miss Johnson, indeed, made more fuss than anybody else ever had. She did nothing

but fuss. She was fussing now because he had fallen asleep, just as she had fussed at other times because he had remained awake. You would think from what she said that he could[6] help being liable to catch colds which passed almost immediately into high fevers; could help a nocturnal restlessness which led him fine dances in dreamland, and sometimes, though not lately, had even led him from the safety of bed. Then, out of blind wanderings, he had awakened, bewildered and cold, recognizing nothing about him in the darkness except that he was not where he ought to be, tucked up, snugly and warmly, between his blankets....

The engine whistled and began to slow down. Miss Johnson removed her glasses and began to polish them. Pouncer again appeared.

“Here we are, children! Get everything ready. Ann, don’t forget your parcels!”

There was haste, excitement, and some unnecessary zeal, to which Pouncer contributed. Overcoats and bundles were pulled down from the racks on to the seats, and also on to the floor. Miss Johnson dropped first her umbrella and then her bag, and Pouncer found them both.

“There’s Aunt Caroline!” screamed Ann from the window, pushing back Jim and Barbara with a vigorous elbow. “Stop! Oh, don’t crush so!”

Pouncer was making frantic efforts to oust Ann from her position, while Grif fumbled with the leash. Aunt Caroline, tall and fair and smiling, stood on the platform. A porter swung[7] open the door and Pouncer was first out after all, though his victory caused the overturning of Ann, who had become amazingly entangled with the leash.

“Oh, Bouncer, you’re awful!” poor Ann breathed plaintively, as she sat enmeshed on the floor of the railway-carriage. She arose, to be scolded by Miss Johnson for having dirtied her muslin.

Aunt Caroline was talking.

“Well, chicks, you’re not roasted alive, are you? How do you do, Miss Johnson? Ann, dear, you look positively boiling! Don’t bother about your gloves: nobody wears gloves here.”

Ann stuffed them back into her pocket with a sigh of relief.

“We must go and help Miss Johnson to see about the luggage. There’s a man waiting for it with a cart. There’s the trap, too, but it won’t hold us all I’m afraid. Somebody will have to walk and keep me company.”

[8]

CHAPTER II IN THE LANE

Ann decided to walk also, and followed Grif and Aunt Caroline out of the station. From the first she made the mistake of adapting her pace to that of Pouncer, instead of stimulating him to greater efforts. But it seemed to her that Aunt Caroline simply floated over the ground, and that it was useless to try to emulate such speed. She was like a tall white yacht on a green sea, and Grif was a little boat she had in tow. Ann and Pouncer dropped farther and farther behind.

[9]

They passed along a crooked, hilly street—the main street of the town—and on to the high road. A duck waddled by, quacking discontentedly of family matters. Grave, mild-eyed cows, black and brown and white, looked at them solemnly, and a boy stood rattling a pail against a wooden trough. He smiled at Ann.

Ann was interested in the boy, and Pouncer in the cows, but both were obliged to hurry after Aunt Caroline and Grif, who were now fifty yards ahead. They turned to the right, down a green beechen lane, and Ann and Pouncer straggled behind. There were cool green places under the hedges, with thick long grass for resting on; there were cool bluish shadows under the dark, pink-flowered chestnut-trees; but Grif and Aunt Caroline passed them by. And one of Ann’s bootlaces was draggling on the ground, and Pouncer’s tongue was lolling out.

It seemed to Ann that Aunt Caroline was simply flying. Grif was big and could keep up with her, but Ann felt that she was getting hotter and hotter and would soon have to stop. The difficulty was that Aunt Caroline never looked behind. Grif, who was usually so quiet, was talking to her just as if he were trying to make up for all his past silences. Ann might have attracted their attention by a vocal appeal,[10] but for a long time she could not summon up courage to make the attempt. “Grif!” she at last piped plaintively in a very small voice, smaller even than usual, and Grif did not hear.

The corners of Ann’s mouth drooped. Her other lace had become untied. Her fat legs dragged with increasing slowness. Pouncer, suddenly forgetting his own fatigue, began to worry her laces, to get in her way, to pretend her laces were rats; and Ann’s tears were welling dangerously near the surface when Aunt Caroline turned round.

She stopped at once. “Good gracious, child, whatever’s the matter?”

“I’m so hot!” Ann quavered.

Aunt Caroline laughed, but it was a comfortable, pleasant laugh, and Ann, who never counted much on sympathy, didn’t mind it.

“We can rest here, if you like,” Aunt Caroline said, sitting down under the thick hedge. “And we’ve only a very little farther to go now.”

“You would walk,” cried Grif. “You always will do things.”

“I wanted to walk,” Ann replied. “Why shouldn’t I walk as well as you?”

“But you see you can’t.”

“I can.”

Her plaintive note had slipped already into the firmer tone of argument. Grif shrugged[11] his shoulders. He knelt down and tied her laces for her, while Pouncer, seeing how things were going, dropped into a doze.

The air was a floating haze of dusty gold, which turned to green among the trees. The bees boomed in the dog-roses: the sky was cloudless. The tree-trunks showed almost black in the hot light, and the leaves, pale and semi-transparent, quivered, altered, taking strange forms, so that what Grif saw was now a tree, now a spirit. In the green grass the shadows made islands of a deeper green.

Presently, coming along the road in the direction of the town, they saw an odd-looking person dressed in black, with very tight trousers and a large black cravat. He walked quickly, with a curious, springy, almost dancing step, while he swung a gold-headed ebony stick. His clothes were shiny and worn, yet he presented the figure of a dandy; and as he raised his broad-brimmed hat with a fine flourish, and bowed to Aunt Caroline, he revealed a soft profusion of silky white hair, unexpected, because nothing else about him suggested age. His face was smooth, his complexion fresh and clear, his eyes extremely bright, and rather restless. His features were unusually refined, yet with a great boldness in the well-arched, predatory nose.

[12]

Aunt Caroline introduced him to Grif and Ann as Mr. Clement Bradley, and Mr. Bradley acknowledged the introduction with high formality. “On my way to the post-office, Miss Annesley. Can I do anything for you in the town?... The fact is, I’m expecting important letters. I should be sorry to think that the postmistress had kept them back on purpose, but it is odd, very odd, that they have not reached me before this.” He spoke in a soft, clear voice, a little slowly, and with a somewhat pedantic nicety of enunciation. He had strange, sly eyes, Grif thought, and as he talked of his letters having been kept back they suddenly altered in expression, and became clear and shining like the eyes of a cat.

When presently he stepped daintily on down the lane the others gazed after him, the children doubtfully, Aunt Caroline thoughtfully, Pouncer with unwonted hostility. “How funny he looks!” Ann declared. “And did you hear Bouncer growl?”

Aunt Caroline still watched the retreating figure. “Bouncer was very naughty,” she murmured absently.

“It’s not Bouncer, Aunt Caroline. It’s Pouncer. Ann can’t say words beginning with ‘p.’”

“Who is he?” Ann questioned, with a[13] curiosity that seldom failed her. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“Yes. He’s grandpapa’s organist. I don’t know that he’s a very great friend exactly, but he’s been here for a good many years.”

“I think he must be rather eccentric,” Ann decided, after some pondering.

“I quite agree with you,” Aunt Caroline laughed. “You’ll hear him playing in church on Sunday. His playing is rather eccentric too.”

“Why? Does he makes mistakes?”

“Oh, no, it’s not that. It’s only that he occasionally makes a good deal of noise. And then, he likes to practise at all kinds of queer hours—sometimes in the middle of the night.”

There was a pause, and Ann said, “I’m not tired any longer.”

“We might take a short-cut across the fields,” Aunt Caroline suggested.

She moved on, this time quite slowly, and with Ann’s hot hand firmly clasped in her cool one.

“Look at Bouncer! Isn’t he a silly old thing!” cried Ann.

The bulldog, who had seen a fox-terrier running on three legs, with the fourth tucked up, was at that moment making clumsy and unsuccessful experiments in this novel style of[14] locomotion. In the sunshine brilliantly orange and white, with his black nose and kinky tail, he looked so bright and coloured that a wandering butterfly hovered about him, as if mistaking him for a gigantic bunch of flowers.

“Does grandpapa like having us?” Ann inquired, but only with a view to making conversation. “Grandpapa’s a clergyman,” she presently observed. “And father’s a doctor—a specialist—eyes and ears.... Why hasn’t he many patients?”

Aunt Caroline laughed. “I suppose because he goes away so much. He’s really a traveller more than a doctor.”

“Does he go away because he hasn’t patients, or does he not have patients because he goes away?”

“It sounds like a riddle,” Aunt Caroline, replied; “and if it is, I give it up.”

“It’s not a riddle,” Ann assured her. “It’s just an ordinary question. Shall we see grandpapa as soon as we arrive?”

“I don’t know. He was very busy when I left.”

“Father’s always busy too. So is mother.... What’s grandpapa busy about?”

“He’s writing a book.”

“What sort of book?”

“A book about fairies.”

[15]

Ann seemed doubtful. “Mother didn’t call it that,” she said reflectively, and was immediately reproved by Grif.

“What did mother call it? Folk-lore perhaps?” Aunt Caroline suggested.

“Does he tell the stories to you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Will he tell them to us?”

“I dare say.... And this is the side gate. Our journey is over. By the way, what time do you all go to bed?”

“Jim and me at half-past eight: Grif and Barbara at nine.”

“I don’t go at nine when I’m on a visit,” said Grif.

As they emerged from the shrubbery the glebe house stood low and square before them. It was half covered with ivy, the young leaves just now of a pale and tender green. In front of the house was a croquet-lawn, sheltered on the farther side by trees, and beyond that the ground sloped gradually down to the road. There were few flowers and no flower-garden.

Behind the house and the stables was a low stone wall, on the other side of which was a wood. The grounds had evidently once formed part of this wood, which pressed up so close to the wall that the trees leaning over seemed trying to force an entrance. With the exception[16] of the levelling of the croquet-court, and the cutting down of a certain quantity of timber, nothing in the way of alteration or of laying out had been attempted.

“Where are the others?” Aunt Caroline inquired as they came into the hall, where Bridget and Hannah, the two servants, stood wreathed in smiles.

“The children’s round in the stables, Miss Caroline.”

Just then Miss Johnson appeared, and instantly, like a genni in the Arabian Nights, pounced upon Ann, who it seemed was disgracefully untidy.

“I can’t help it. I’m so hot!” Ann sighed.

Aunt Caroline took charge of Grif, while Pouncer followed at their heels.

They climbed two wide flights of stairs. “This is where I am going to put you and Edward and Jim,” Aunt Caroline said, opening the door of a large bedroom, whose three windows overlooked the croquet-lawn.

Grif surveyed it quietly. Already it showed abundant signs of occupation. Jim, in a moment of enthusiasm, must have begun to unpack, for his own and Grif’s things were scattered broadcast on the beds and the chairs and the floor.

“May I look at the other rooms too, Aunt[17] Caroline?” he asked politely, after a moment’s pause.

Aunt Caroline seemed rather puzzled. “Don’t you like it? I thought you’d rather not be separated, and this is the biggest room in the house.”

“Oh yes, I like it very much. It’s not that.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s just that I love looking round. Are any of the rooms near the wood?”

She led him along a passage, through a swing-door, up a flight of three stairs, and then along another passage at the end of which she opened a door.

Grif walked straight to the window. As he leaned out he could see the wood. It was quite close to him indeed, and he could hear the faint murmur it made, as of many whispering voices. He stood there dumb, and Aunt Caroline guessed that she had made a mistake. She watched him struggle against a desire to tell her that he preferred this room, but his natural politeness conquered. “Thank you very much,” he said, turning to go out.

“Would you like to sleep here?” she asked, half laughing.

He looked up quickly. “With Pouncer? Would you let me?”

“But surely Pouncer sleeps outside?”

[18]

“Yes.... Would you allow him to sleep here with me?”

There was no importunity in his words, but she knew he was hanging eagerly on what she should say. “You’re the queerest little fish! Of course you can please yourself. It doesn’t matter in the least what room you choose. Only, you will be all alone here: no one else is on this side of the house.”

“I like the trees,” he apologized, “and I shall be able to watch them in the mornings.”

Aunt Caroline too came to the window. “The trees are just what I don’t like,” she said. “Sometimes, in the autumn and the winter, when it’s really stormy, they make a tremendous noise, and it sounds so dismal at night. However, I don’t suppose we shall have much wind during the summer, and of course if you find you are being kept awake you can always change your quarters.”

[19]

CHAPTER III NEW ARRIVALS