by B. B.
‘It’s a pity there aren’t any boars and wolves now,’ sighed John.
‘Or deer,’ put in Harold, tossing an onion from one hand to the other.
‘There may be deer,’ said Robin, ‘though I’ve never seen one and the Whiting hasn’t either. But old Smokoe Joe said he’d seen ’em, and I’ll bet he’s poached them too.’
‘Who does the Chase belong to?’ Harold asked.
‘Most of it belongs to the Duke, I suppose,’ replied Robin. ‘He seems to own all the land round here for miles. Rumbold told me he even owns Cherry Walden. But the Crown owns some of it and I expect there are keepers there, but we needn’t go near that side.
‘As for the Duke, the Whiting told me he is an old man now and never goes near the Chase. At one time he was quite keen on butterflies and used to hang about the keeper’s gibbets looking for purple emperors.’
‘Well – he won’t bother us much then,’ said Harold.
There was a silence in the dim loft. Outside the little window the light was fading and the lilac crown was dark against the sky. Sparrows rustled in the ivy and hopped restlessly among the lilac leaves. They were thinking of bed already and were as restless as domestic fowls at roosting time. Then from below, the boys heard the sound of paws scrabbling on the potting shed door and suppressed whines.
‘There’s Tilly!’ exclaimed Robin, and they all crept out of the loft and down the creaking stairs to be greeted by the boisterous welcome of the fat spaniel.
From bed to bed that night, Robin and John talked over their plans. It was strange lying there in the room where day still lingered, hearing the thrushes and blackbirds singing outside.
‘It worries me a lot about Harold,’ said Robin. ‘I’m sure he’ll crock up or something; he’s too young to rough it and he’ll only be a nuisance and get homesick and we’ll have no end of bother. I didn’t think he looked too well tonight, sort of flushed and bright-eyed.’
Harold had indeed seemed rather strange, so much so that their sharp-eyed aunt had made him sleep in the dressing room, next to her bedroom. She was terrified of even the commonest cold turning into something more serious, and she was one of those people who have a ‘germ’ complex. Every time she passed a bad smell in the street, or even the quite healthy smell of a farmyard, she would say, ‘Spit, children,’ as though the air was seething with virulent plague.
‘Oh, I think it was simply excitement,’ said John. ‘I remember I used to feel just the same way before a party. Anyway, he’ll have to come now; he’d pine away if he was left.’
Neither Robin nor John had any fear that Harold would ever split on their scheme, even if they decided he was too young to accompany them – they ‘knew their man’.
It was some time before either of the boys could get to sleep and when they did it was to dream of nightmarish attempts to escape from Aunt Ellen and of vast green forests inhabited by strange and fearsome monsters which pursued them, breathing fire.
A letter arrived next morning which shook the boys up considerably. It was from their parents in India and the envelope bore the Simla postmark.
In effect it was to wish them well for the summer term at Banchester, and said that, if they worked especially hard, there was a chance that both their parents would be returning in the New Year as their father had been promised leave.
John could see by Robin’s face that their bright plans were doomed. ‘It’s no good, John, we can’t sneak off after this, we really can’t. It’s up to us to see the term through at any rate and then, in the summer hols, we might do it. The point is, Father wouldn’t mind us taking to the woods a bit in the hols, I’m sure of that; he’d understand and Mother would, too, though, of course, she’d fuss no end. But they wouldn’t agree to us cutting school. We can’t let ’em down, old boy.’
John agreed, though his heart was heavy with disappointment. After all, they couldn’t let their parents down. What a pity they had not thought of the whole scheme before, last summer, for instance, when they had had to kick their heels around Cherry Walden all through August and the greater part of September.
Harold, who appeared at breakfast seemingly his old self, was soon informed of the change of plan. Robin thought he detected a certain relief flit over his brother’s features, but Harold affected to be as disappointed.
So, after all, the Last Day had dawned and tomorrow, for all the brave bold plans, the boys would be speeding back to school! They lay on the grass under the cedar on the lawn and heard, through the morning-room window, the voice of Aunt Ellen going over their school lists with Miss Holcome – erstwhile governess who was staying on as an ‘Aunt’s help’. ‘Robin, three pairs pants,’ and Miss Holcome’s reply, like a response to a prayer, ‘Robin, three pairs pants.’ ‘Harold, one wool sweater.’ ‘Harold, one wool sweater.’
After lunch the boys were summoned upstairs to superintend the packing of boxes. And then – Fate stepped in.
Harold, who earlier in the day had seemed quite recovered, again complained that he didn’t feel well. Passing the schoolroom door, John saw him seated in a chair with a clinical thermometer sticking out of his mouth like a rakish cigar and Aunt Ellen and Miss Holcome poring over a gruesome medical book which gave coloured plates of all the various diseases common to those of tender years.
And when, later in the afternoon, the doctor’s brougham was seen in the drive, it was obvious that something was really amiss. Robin and John, going their last round of the garden and visiting all the nests, were called indoors by Aunt Ellen. She was visibly upset, grey of face and tight-lipped.
‘Harold has measles,’ she said. ‘You cannot return to Banchester tomorrow and I have wired Mr Rencombe to that effect. Both of you may catch it as you have been in contact with him. On the other hand, you may not. But it would not be fair on the school if you returned.’
‘Then we can stay on here?’ John asked, hardly believing his ears. ‘We needn’t go back?’
‘Yes, you will stay on here, and on no account must you go near Harold’s room. But though your return to school has to be postponed, I am arranging with the vicar to tutor you each day. You will work from eleven o’clock until one o’clock and from two-thirty to four-thirty, with the exception of Saturdays, when you will be allowed a half-holiday.’
‘But, Aunt,’ Robin began.
‘Now, no “buts”, Robin. I have arranged it all and you start tomorrow. The vicar, kind good man, has been most helpful; he is an excellent teacher. He tells me that before he entered the Church he was a schoolmaster, and he did quite brilliantly at Cambridge – he is a fellow of his college. Now, off you go and don’t worry me any more; you must be as good and thoughtful as you possibly can as I have so much to arrange.’
‘The old dragon,’ growled John as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘Isn’t that Aunt Ellen all over, she can’t bear to think of us not going back to school.’
‘How long does it take to develop measles?’ asked Robin, looking very thoughtful.
‘Oh, weeks and weeks I think. I don’t suppose we shall go back this term now, it won’t be worth it. Why do you ask?’
‘Well, I was just thinking that we might run away after all!’
‘What, tonight you mean, as we planned?’
‘Why not?’
‘But supposing we found we’d got measles?’
‘Pooh, we shan’t catch it,’ said Robin. ‘Besides, outlaws don’t catch measles; they’re hard and brown and lean and never have a day’s illness, not even a cold. And even if we did begin to feel a bit queer, well then, we could come back, couldn’t we?’
‘Aunt Ellen never said how long we were to be at home for,’ said John. ‘Supposing Harold gets better quickly, won’t we have to go back?’
‘No, stupid, he’ll be in quarantine for weeks. Anyway I’m not going to kick my heels in Cherry Walden any longer. This place is all right; I like it, the house and garden and all that, but I can’t bear another day of Aunt Ellen. I’m off tonight
. Are you coming, too?’
‘You bet I am,’ said John with quiet glee.
After tea the two boys made a cache of some of the equipment in the Nutwalk. There was an old ivied stump, well hidden in the thickets, where once they had found a hibernating hedgehog. In this cavity they put the saucepan, frying pan and three tin plates from the picnic basket, together with a packet of matches and the Marbles waterproof matchbox. There too they put their hunting knives – surreptitiously purchased out of Christmas money – and five packets of Quaker Oats which they bought at the post office. A large tin of salt completed their supplies. The blankets and rifle they would leave until the moment of departure.
Tilly, sensing in that uncanny way dogs have that her gods were contemplating a journey to a distant country, stuck to them like a leech. Wherever they went she followed, with an enquiring look on her snub-nosed face.
It was a lovely soft evening, and the western sky a riot of daffodil, rose and blue. Their preparations complete, the boys strolled about the garden and then down to the tennis lawn. From the laburnum on the upper terrace a blackbird warbled richly and swifts clove the air like dusky crossbows, wheeling and screaming round the lichened gargoyles on the church tower.
This time tomorrow night the boys would be far away, beginning their new life, deep in the ancient forest; perhaps they would be setting out for their evening’s hunt. Their hearts warmed at the thought.
With Tilly rushing alongside they jumped the ha-ha wall into the paddock and ran away over the shining grass – on, on, under the copper beeches, until they came to the still mirror of the Willow Pool. The trout were rising and this put the boys in mind of their fishing lines and snares. They had forgotten them, a dreadful lapse, which they would remedy when they returned to the house.
Along the shore of the pool rhododendrons grew right down to the water’s edge and here Tilly put up a rabbit which she chased along the bank, puffing and panting far in the rear of the bobbing scut.
Robin looked back towards the old Dower House set among its cedars and limes. A light was already burning in Harold’s room and as Robin watched he saw Miss Holcome gently draw the blinds.
‘Pity about Harold. I bet he doesn’t feel much like running away to the greenwood now!’
‘It’s the Hand of Providence,’ said John with unwonted piety. ‘We could never have taken him, you know.’
Aunt Ellen, all her plans laid with such efficiency and the unhappy patient safe in bed, was moving among the rose trees – she was a keen but ineffectual gardener.
‘Poor old Aunt,’ said John, ‘she’s not a bad sort according to her lights. I think she does her best for us in her own way.’
‘Yes, I think we ought to leave a note or something,’ said Robin. ‘If we just disappear she might think we’d been murdered.’
So in the shadow of the rhododendrons they penned the following:
Dear Aunt,
John and I have decided that we would be better out of the way while Harold is ill, we might catch it.
We will be back sometime, but don’t worry about us, we shall be all right and please explain to the vicar.
Don’t try to find us because you never will.
Signed,
Robin (Hood)
John (Big)
‘There,’ said Robin, reading it through once more and folding it up, ‘we’ll put it on the card tray in the hall as we go out tonight. She’ll find it in the morning.’
And so arm in arm they strolled back towards the house, where the bats were already hawking about the gables, not failing to notice their corded and labelled boxes still standing in the hall, a mute reminder that our destinies are ever in the lap of the Gods.
2. The Getaway
A house, even one so friendly and well loved as was the Dower House, is an eerie place at dead of night. Some miraculous change seems to take place when the last light goes out, as though a magic spell has been pronounced and every living moving thing frozen into immobility.
Familiar corridors and rooms, which during the daylight hours were full of laughter and bustle, the clatter of feet and merry clink clank of distant kitchen activity, are horribly silent, as silent as a vault – with shadows and vagueness everywhere.
The boys had no knowledge of this transformation. Their bright days were full of activity and sunlight. At nightfall, they, with other mortals, retired like fowls to their respective roosts, and left the old Dower House to its own ghostly devices.
So that when, with thumping hearts, Robin and John found themselves tiptoeing out to the landing, they sensed this new phenomenon and were momentarily appalled.
In some strange way they felt the hostility in their surroundings and for a few seconds they stood still, listening and watching like startled rabbits. But in all the old sleeping Dower House there was no sound, save for the sotto voce ‘tick tock’ of the grandfather clock on the stairs.
‘Come on,’ whispered Robin, startling John out of a trance, and they slid silently to the head of the front stairs. Aunt Ellen’s shoes were outside her door waiting for the morning maid and there was light glowing dimly from Harold’s sickroom, a long narrow strip of light between the bottom of the door and the curly black carpet on the threshold. But even the patient must have slept, his mind perhaps busy with feverish dreams connected with the escapade. He would not know what course his brothers had decided to take; perhaps he had guessed that now he had fallen ill with the measles they would carry out the original plan. It was easy to imagine his discreet probings the next day, his seemingly innocent enquiries as to what his brothers were doing. Knowing Aunt Ellen and Miss Holcome, and thereby knowing the ways of women, Robin and John realized that even when their disappearance became known, Harold would not be told for fear of heightening his fever.
Robin cocked his thigh over the smooth oak banister and the next second had plunged from sight into the dark well of the front hall with no more sound than that of a stealthy snake. John followed suit, landing silently beside him on the Persian carpet. For a moment they again paused and listened but there was nothing but the subdued ‘tick tock’ of the stair clock.
‘John!’ – this in a whisper.
‘Yes?’
‘We’ve gone and forgotten the blankets!’
‘Oh Lord!’
‘One of us must go back,’ he whispered again. ‘We’d better have them. Pop back and get them; it won’t take a minute.’
Obediently, but with a quaking heart, John made to ascend the stairs but at the first cautious tread a board squeaked agonizingly and the boys shrank back against the hall curtains.
To John’s annoyance he found his limbs trembling violently as though he had an ague. It was not fear but excitement.
‘It’s no good, we must leave them, we shall be warm enough! Besides they will be awfully awkward things to carry,’ he said weakly.
‘All right, leave them. Come on!’
They tiptoed down the stone-flagged passage to the kitchen door. Inch by inch Robin turned the brass knob. There was a loud click from the lock. Again they stood. In the silence of the sleeping house these sounds assumed titanic proportions.
Ting chimed the grandfather clock way back on the stairs and the boys jumped. One o’clock in the morning and they must make the forest before dawn! There was not a moment to lose!
It was unbelievably dark in the kitchen. John, feeling his way along the scrubbed white table, encountered a chair leg. It fell over with a hideous crash which seemed to echo through the house.
‘Clumsy owl,’ hissed Robin. ‘Look where you’re going!’
‘How can I when it’s dark?’ he growled. The sweat was standing in beads on his forehead. ‘Hist!’
They were both again frozen into immobility. From upstairs was heard the unmistakable noise of Harold’s door being opened. It had a squeak which the boys knew well.
‘Oh Lord!’ groaned Robin. ‘Somebody’s heard us now. If they come down the front stairs we must bolt for it.
Listen!’
But the guilty consciences were soothed by the sound of bold steps bound for the bathroom. It was Miss Holcome, or possibly their aunt, going to fill a water jug. They heard water running from the taps and steps returning along the passage. Then Harold’s door shut quietly.
Perhaps the poor feverish patient was thirsty.
Breathing again they softly undid the bolts of the back door and the next moment were out in the garden and all the sleeping beauty of the early summer night. The stars shone clear and bright and the crisp bow of the moon in its first quarter was cocked jauntily over the stable roof.
It was the work of a moment to undo the door of the toolshed and secure the rook rifle and ammunition, scaring a rat as big as a rabbit which was sitting on the bottom stair.
And in the leafy Nutwalk they collected together their simple needs; the frying pan, saucepan and plates, the matches and waterproof matchbox, the Quaker Oats and salt. John made sure that the fishing lines and snares were in his pocket and after feeling about inside the root to discover if anything had been overlooked, they jumped the ivied sunken wall and struck off across the fields.
They passed the churchyard, crammed with its glimmering white tombstones which made them avert their eyes, for fear of what they should see; they passed the ivied bulk of the old church tower framed against the luminosity of the sky.
A dog barked at them from Baldrick’s farm and the noise roused every village cur within hearing. Worse still, from the direction of the Dower House, the boys heard Tilly uplifting her voice in plaintive howls. ‘Blast the dog, she’ll wake the whole place,’ growled Robin as they hurried along in the shadow of a thick thorn hedge. ‘I believe she knows it’s us, doing a midnight flit.’
‘By the way she’s barking, she’s trying to tear down the stable door,’ said John. ‘The sooner we’re clear of the village the better for us.’
‘It’s all the fault of Baldrick’s beastly cur …’