by John Buchan
There beside him was Catsbane. The little dog was furiously busy, trying to force his way into a hole below a big stone. Bill could not see him properly because of the darkness and the snow. But he could hear him panting, and, feeling for him, he discovered the stump of his tail. Bill caught the tail and pulled out an excessively dirty and protesting terrier.
“You dirty little beast,” he said. “You’re for it, you know. You’ll have to be washed, and you hate that.”
Catsbane barked furiously.
“I don’t blame you,” said Bill, relenting. “You’re after a fox, and you can’t hunt foxes at home.”
So he seized Catsbane by the scruff and twirled the stick, and the two found themselves back beside the pond in the garden.
It was a still, dry night and mild, very different from the tempest of Glenmore. Catsbane shook himself vigorously, and as they came into the light below the library window Bill saw that he was black with soil and as wet as a bath sponge.
“I’ve found your dog,” he told Barbara as he entered the hall.
The much-relieved owner seized upon the grimy fragment of terrier and clasped it to her breast; but she dropped it hastily. “Catsbane, where on earth have you been?” she cried. “You’ve been on Alemoor and you’ve been down a rabbit-hole, and I believe you’ve been fighting, for your ear’s cut. Oh, Daddy!” she added, as her father appeared, “did you ever see such a disreputable little dog?”
Catsbane had shaken himself again and was now standing shivering in the glow of the hall fire. Bill’s father took him up and looked at him curiously.
“This is the second miracle that has happened to-day,” he said. “First you boys find bog myrtle, and now Catsbane has discovered peat. He’s been rolling in it, and there isn’t any peat within fifty miles!”
CHAPTER VI. “BEAUTY” AND “BANDS”
THREE days later at breakfast Bill’s father looked up from his letters.
“Glenmore seems to have become demented,” he said. “First I had a wire from Mrs. Macrae.” He fumbled in his pocket and produced a pink slip.
‘“Is the bairns alright. Macrae.’ The honest woman does not waste words. I could make nothing of it, and thought it might be a new kind of Christmas greeting. But here’s the explanation in her letter. It seems that Glenmore is haunted, and by such fearsome spectres as Bill and Peter. They were seen three nights ago in Mrs. Macrae’s best room by Mrs. Macrae herself, and afterwards in the garden by Angus as well. She says that Angus was not a yard off when they disappeared, and that he saw their faces quite clear and could describe what they were wearing. It seems that the whole glen is solemnised. I wired at once that the boys were perfectly well, but Mrs. Macrae is not satisfied. She thinks it may be a fore-warning of coming disaster, and she implores me never to take my eyes off them till Hogmanay is past.”
Bill’s mother looked anxious. “What an extraordinary thing! I always thought Mrs. Macrae a pillar of common sense. She hasn’t second sight, has she?”
“If she has, I don’t suppose Angus has it, and they both saw the ghosts. They were solid enough ghosts, for they knocked a stone off the wall and broke the branch of a pear tree. A couple of Abercailly boys on the loose! Bill, did you know that you had a double in Abercailly?”
Bill grinned sheepishly and said nothing. He had begun to realise that in this business of the magic staff he must walk delicately and provoke no questions. Any future enterprise must be carefully thought out in all its bearings. He had already passed a self-denying ordinance, and had made no experiment since the rescue of Catsbane.
“Does she say anything about Mrs. Cameron?” he heard his mother ask.
“Yes. She is not out of danger, but the reports are good. Apparently they got her to Abercailly and operated in the nick of time. That evening they saw the ghosts, and naturally Mrs. Macrae’s mind was keyed up for marvels. You had better write to her, Jean, and say the boys are all right. She will believe you sooner than me.”
Then Barbara, to Bill’s disquiet, put in an unwanted oar. “That was the evening that Catsbane was lost and came back covered with peat. You remember, Daddy? And the boys found bog myrtle!”
After tea Bill was allowed for a treat to sit in the library and study the pictures in the big bird book. His father sat in an armchair with an old calf-bound folio on his knee, from which he appeared to be taking notes. From time to time he made ejaculations of interest or surprise, and once he said, “Bless my soul, what a queer story!”
Several times he got up to refer to other books among the thousands which lined the great room. Then at last he startled Bill out of his contemplation of a coloured plate of the red-necked phalarope by dropping the folio on the floor. He stood up on the hearth-rug, filled his pipe from a box on the mantelpiece, and looked down at Bill.
“I have just come across a very good story,” he said. “Would you like to hear it?”
He took down from a shelf a slim black volume and found a passage. “Read that,” he said.
Bill read:
“Et assumpsi mihi duas virgas, unam vocavi Decorem, et alteram vocavi Funiculum; et pavi gregem.”
“Now have a shot at construing it.”
Bill had a shot, but he did not succeed. Latin was not his strong suit, and half the words were unfamiliar.
His father handed him a Bible. “Look up the seventh verse of the eleventh chapter of Zechariah and read.”
Bill read:
“And I took unto me two staves, the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock.”
“You understand that?” his father said. “The prophet had two staves, one called Decor and the other Funiculus; that is ‘Beauty’ and ‘Bands.’ One was for comfort and the other for discipline — you might say one was a walking-stick and the other a schoolmaster’s cane. Now the book I have been reading — it is a volume of Acta Sanctorum, the ‘Doings of the Saints,’ and it was written in Germany in the twelfth century — says that these staves were real sticks and that they had magical power. They lay in the treasury in the Temple of Jerusalem until the Emperor Titus sacked it and carried them off. After that they seem to have roamed for centuries about Europe. Charlemagne — you have heard of Charlemagne? — had one, and the Emperor Justinian had one; but they were never long in one place. Sometimes a Pope got hold of them, and sometimes a Bishop, and sometimes a King, and sometimes a peasant, but they disappeared as soon as they were misused. The point about them was that they were magic sticks and would carry their possessor anywhere in the world he wanted to go to. But the trouble was that you could not be certain what was their particular magic. They were as alike as two peas, but one was Decor and the other Funiculus, and if you treated Decor like Funiculus it took the huff and disappeared. If it was Decor it would take you gallivanting about the earth for your amusement and never complain. But if you used it for some big serious job, it was apt to leave you in the lurch. Funiculus was just the opposite. It was all right in things like battles and rescues and escapes, but if you took it on a pleasure trip it would let you down.”
Bill listened with breathless interest. “What happened to the sticks?” he asked.
“My books says that in its time, that is the twelfth century, Funiculus had gone over the horizon, but Decor was believed to be in the possession of the Emperor Frederick.... It’s a good story, isn’t it? I daresay it is the origin of all the old witches’ broomsticks in the fairy tales. But these were broomsticks with wills of their own.... Hullo! hullo! it’s six o’clock. I must see Thomas about to-morrow’s covert shoot.”
When his father had left, Bill sat for a long time in meditation. Clearly he had got one of the two staves which had come down from the old prophet in the Bible and had drifted for two thousand years through the hands of Popes and Kings. The question was, which one? Was it Beauty or Bands?
Bill was a conscientious thinker, and set himself to analyse his experiences. The adventures of Alemoor and the Solomon Islands had been more
or less undertaken for his own amusement, and so had the first visit to Glenmore. On the other hand, the rescue of Catsbane and the summoning of the doctor to Mrs. Cameron had had a distinct flavour of duty. As yet there was not enough evidence to decide which staff he had got. It would have been an awful business if he had used it wrongly and it had objected; Bill shuddered when he remembered the faces of the South Sea Islanders. Perhaps he was being allowed a trial trip to test him. On the whole he decided that this was the likeliest explanation. But the time of probation was probably now over, since he knew about the staff’s peculiarities. He had an eerie feeling that some fate had led his father to discover that story in the funny old book.
Bill found the page in it which his father had marked, but he could make nothing of the close black type and the queer Latin. Then he read again the passage in Zechariah. For a long time he thought hard, till Groves came in to make up the fire and to warn him that his supper was ready. He had reached the conclusion that the next experiment must combine somehow the partialities of both Beauty and Bands, for he could not afford to make a mistake.
Next morning he overheard a conversation between his father and his mother. His father seemed to be very angry.
“It is getting simply intolerable. Those disgusting Benisons have been at their monkey tricks again. It appears that there was a biggish party at Yardley last week-end, to meet the Viceroy, who was at school with the General. What did the bright young Benisons do but make a raid in the middle of the Saturday night! They managed to burgle the back premises, and flung every scrap of food in the house into the moat, leaving an idiotic doggerel poem in the butler’s pantry. Yardley is ten miles from a town, so you may imagine the trouble about the commissariat on the Sunday. The General went raving mad, and started out for Wildash with a horsewhip; but he thought better of it and turned back. What could he do? They would only laugh at the old fellow. He talks about prosecuting; but it won’t be easy to bring the charge home, for the brutes are pretty clever. I wish to heaven somebody would retaliate in kind and give those jokers a taste of their own medicine.”
Bill pricked up his ears. He knew all about the Benisons, who five years before had bought Wildash from a long-descended bankrupt squire. They were his father’s nearest neighbours, but there was no commerce between the two houses. The elder Benison had made a great deal of money in the City during the War, and had brought his flock of glossy sons and over-decorated daughters to an old-fashioned place which was not glossy or decorated. They were only at Wildash for a few weeks in the winter, but they contrived to crowd these weeks with scandals. They had enormous raffish house parties, and their chief amusement consisted in playing practical jokes on inoffensive neighbours. The countryside detested them, for they spent nothing in the village, which was badly neglected, and gave not a penny to local purposes.
At first the sons and daughters had gone out hunting on expensive horses, but their manners were so vile that the Master, in a moment of expansion had told them that they were only fit to hunt jackals on jackasses round the walls of Jerusalem.
But they kept the neighbourhood from boredom, for they were the theme of endless gossip. Bill had heard all about “them Ben’sons” and their doings from his village friends, who were at once horrified and exhilarated by beings unlike any gentry they had ever known. That very morning old Noggin, the blacksmith, had been recounting the wonders of a dance to be held at Wildash on Christmas Eve.
“They do say, Maaster Bill,” Noggin had declared, “as how the young gen’men is going to dress themsel’s up as devils with trails. There can’t be no blessing on them belltinkerings.”
Noggin was a Primitive Methodist, much given to the use of Scripture phrases, but he did not know that the word “ belltinkering” came straight down from the Baal-worship of the hoariest antiquity.
Bill fell into a happy muse. Here might be the chance of an adventure which Beauty would welcome, and of which Bands would not disapprove.
CHAPTER VII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHRISTMAS PARTY — I.
THAT afternoon Bill went for a walk through the fields to Wildash, which lay two miles off in the valley. The Hall, a massive early Georgian building, had a park on three sides of it, but on the fourth it snuggled up to the village; indeed, its stables and outhouses abutted on the village street. In that street lived, with his mother, a friend of Bill’s, ‘Erb by name, with whom he had often gone fishing and bird-nesting. ‘Erb was pantry boy at the big house, but only when the Benisons were in residence, for at other times he was learning to be a carpenter. He slept at the Hall, but Bill knew that it was his custom to resort to his mother’s cottage for tea.
Bill had tea with ‘Erb and sounded him about the Benisons’ Christmas festivities, on which his friend expanded with round eyes. The family were expected at the Hall next day, which was December 24th, and they were bringing with them enough guests to fill every bedroom. Mr. Blett, the butler, was in London that day with Roberts, the first footman, supervising the preparations. On Christmas Eve the party was not to dine until ten o’clock, and the revels were to be kept up all night, supper being at the hour at which ordinary people breakfasted. ‘Erb was full of marvellous details about the costumes to be worn, and the escapades which might be expected. The dining room was to be transformed into the similitude of a dungeon, with blue lights burning, and — said ‘Erb in awed tones — they were going to drink the wine out of skulls.
Bill asked about the servants’ meal. That wasn’t to be forgotten, said ‘Erb. The upper servants were to dine in the housekeeper’s room, and the lower in the servants’ hall, three-quarters of an hour before the main dinner. The Benisons, it appeared, did not, on such occasions, rely much on their own cookery, and the chief dishes were coming down from London.
“Most of ‘em cold,” said ‘Erb. “They don’t fancy a nice bit of ‘ot meat, like me. It ain’t food they cares for so much as the pop.”
“What’s that?” Bill asked.
“Wine,” said ‘Erb, darkly. “That’s what Mr. Blett’s looking after. He’s bringing down loads of it. That’s what they drinks mostly. ‘A bottle of pop,’ says Mr. Lionel when he feels nohow. Mr. Reggie he sticks to brandy.”
Bill accompanied ‘Erb in his walk up to the Hall in the frosty twilight, and, since the family was not at home and Mr. Blett was absent, he was allowed indoors. ‘Erb was a little nervous about his visitor, until he discovered that the kitchen staff were entertaining guests on their own account, and that the second footman had gone off on his bicycle to see his sweetheart.
The two boys roamed about the cavernous servants’ quarters, which had been built in the day when each squire of Wildash sat in Parliament for the county, and generously entertained his constituents. He was shown ‘Erb’s cubby-hole behind the main butler’s pantry, and was permitted to glance inside the great wine-cellars. They seemed ill-stocked, and ‘Erb explained the reason. “The family don’t care for wine — port and them kinds — what Mr. Blett says is ‘wine indeed’ — only for that there pop. And Mr. Blett says they don’t keep much of it ‘ere, for the cellars ain’t dry enough. That’s why he’s gone to London.” But some of the pop was already there, stacked on the pantry floor in wooden boxes with odd marks on them.
Bill made a careful inspection on his own account of the back premises of the Hall. He noticed that all the windows were heavily barred, so that it would be impossible to climb in or out. He observed, too, with satisfaction, that there were keys on all the inner doors and that these keys were on the outside.
He begged to be allowed a glimpse of the rest of the house, and ‘Erb rather uneasily complied. The passage which led to it did not terminate in an ordinary green-baize door as in Bill’s own home, but in a solid wooden affair which was equipped with lock and key. Beyond this was a small alcove with a hatch opening into the dining-room. Clearly, if this door were once barred, all communication would be cut off between the back premises and the main apartments.
There was
not much to be seen, for the huge pillared hall was littered with furniture, which, for some reason, had been turned out of the library. But a peep into the dining-room was sensational. ‘Erb snapped a switch and Bill saw that all the lights were fantastically coloured, and that the big chandelier in the centre burned with an unearthly crimson glow. The pictures had been taken down and the walls covered with a cloth to resemble rough stone, and there was a contraption at one end which looked like a stage.
‘Erb was slightly awed. “Crikey!” he said. “This ain’t the place I’d pick to eat my meat in. But there’s no accounting for the gentry’s taste.”
After that Bill was hustled back to humble life. ‘Erb was nervous in case the kitchen tea-party should break up or the second footman return from his love-making. “Nip along, Master Bill,” he urged. “There’s funny folks in this ‘ouse, and Mr. Blett would have my ears off if he ‘eard I’d let anyone in.”
So Bill took his leave, and only just in time, for by a rapid retreat into a laurel bush he narrowly escaped the returning footman.
On his way home he paid a visit to another friend, Pobjoy, the earth-stopper, who was a brother-in-law of Thomas, his father’s keeper. He knew that at this hour Pobjoy would be busy in the lee of Wildash Great Spinney, and sure enough he found a figure like an ancient gnome, bending over his traps at the end of Lemming’s Lane. The figure was attended by a ferocious mongrel called Jum. But Jum was an ally of Bill’s and treated him kindly.
He waited until Pobjoy had finished his task, and then accompanied him to his cottage on the other side of the wood. A great plan had suddenly dawned upon Bill’s mind, and he wanted information. Pobjoy gave it him.
The Wildash Pig Club was to have its supper in the schoolroom on Christmas Eve. It was not a flourishing pig club; indeed, its finances were chronically unhealthy, but it clung to its antique custom of an annual feast. Bill knew all the members: his own Thomas was one, and Noggin the blacksmith, and Lippett the road-man, and Amos Tuck the postman, and Martin the ditcher, and the shepherd from Coldeaston, and the under-keeper from Wardsley, and Springwell the thatcher. Of this fraternity of gnarled worthies Pobjoy was President. None of the Hall servants belonged to the Club. Mr. Benison had only bought the house and a few paddocks, and his grooms and chauffeurs did not mix in local society.