Ben went to a large box hidden away in a corner and produced from it a somewhat battered skeleton. It was his very own. He had had a birthday lately, and John Adair upon one of his trips to London had got it and conveyed it home, strapped up in a railway rug, as a birthday present. The presence of Horace at the Herb of Grace was not known to anyone except the two artists.
“When the holidays come and Tommy comes home, do you think it would be wrong not to tell him I’ve got Horace?” asked Ben.
“Most certainly keep Horace dark,” counseled John Adair. “I know these surgeon fellows. Horace will be hacked bone from bone in the twinkling of an eye.”
“It seems a bit mean somehow—”
“Not at all. We all have our reticences. They are particularly desirable in large families, where the piratical spirit is apt to batten upon the knightly. Now come on, Chevalier, get going.”
“Chevalier?” queried Ben, hanging Horace on a nail.
“Sally’s name for you, so I understand.”
“What does she mean by that?”
“No idea. Better ask her.”
“I wouldn’t like to,” said Ben, but he spoke dreamily, for he had already fastened a large piece of paper to his board, and chosen a piece of chalk, and the world outside the studio door was slipping away. Brockis Island had been in water color, but this was to be in oils, no less. But he was going to do a preliminary sketch in colored chalks first.
“Shout when you’re ready for some devastating criticism,” said John Adair.
“Umm,” said Ben.
The painter smiled and turned his back on the boy. That “umm” of Ben’s, a contented humming sound like bees getting down to the job, meant that he had already tasted honey. “For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise.” Lucky young squirt! The gods were already as liberal with their gifts as the boy was quick in his response. It seemed to the painter that as vision and imagination met and fused the light brightened in the room. . . . Then he mocked at himself. The rain had stopped for a moment and the sun had come out.
For an hour there was complete silence in the room, a locked and happy silence, no door in either absorbed mind left ajar for the intrusion of irrelevancies. Then a light step sounded on the stairs.
“Mother!” gasped Ben, and with a swift movement of panic swung his drawing round with its face to the easel. With an equally swift movement John Adair unhooked Horace and stowed him away out of sight. “Come in,” he called.
Nadine entered. “Are the twins here?” she asked.
“No, Mother,” said Ben.
“You don’t know where they are?”
“No.”
“They’re completely lost,” said Nadine wearily, a worried frown between her brows. “Jill left them in the kitchen doing jigsaws, as good as gold, and now they’ve just vanished.”
“Let them vanish,” said John Adair callously. “A peaceful morning will then be enjoyed by all.”
“With my twins perhaps drowning in the river?” asked Nadine indignantly. “Jill is hunting in Knyghtwood, and George has gone to look for them along the riverbank, and Sally went along the lane to the Hard. Why I was such a fool as to consent to George buying a house by a river I don’t know. Unless the twins are actually under my eye or with Jill I live in a state of perpetual torment.”
John Adair looked at her with benign interest. She was more maternal than he had thought.
“Shall I come and help look too, Mother?” asked Ben dutifully, but a little desperately. He had just seen in a flash what he wanted in his picture, and if he were to stop now he’d never get hold of it; it would be gone, like a galloping white deer in the forest.
“No need,” said John Adair quickly, for by Ben’s tone he knew exactly where he was. “Nothing untoward ever happens to tough guys, and I never met a tougher pair than those children.”
Nadine swept them both with a withering glance. “I’ve also lost the key of the storeroom,” she said. “So there will be semolina pudding for lunch instead of jam puffs. And you won’t forget, will you, that lunch is early today? I’m going to the hairdresser’s and taking the twins, too, to have their hair cut—that is, if my twins turn up.”
Both the artists groaned. They both hated semolina pudding and early lunch. Nadine withdrew, outraged at the unhelpful selfishness of the artistic temperament. John Adair restored Horace to his nail, Ben turned his drawing round again, and silence held them. After a while he let out a deep sigh. John Adair knew where he was. To the best of his ability he had captured what he’d seen.
“Your mother, of course, came in at an awkward moment,” he said. “You were perhaps right, just then, to turn your board round. But, generally speaking, don’t do that. Don’t hide your work. What you have done you have done and you must take the consequences.”
“I hate people seeing my stuff,” murmured Ben.
“Afraid of being laughed at? Well, what of it? Never hide from adverse criticism. Mockery, indifference, misunderstanding—welcome the lot. Criticism of your work is much the same as criticism of yourself, you know, your work being an extension of yourself, and there’s nothing like good slashing personal criticism for begetting humility. A conceited man never yet made a good artist. How could he? Satisfied, you stick where you are.”
“But even the humblest artists writhe a bit when their work is slashed,” objected Ben. “It’s as though there were something in it besides an extension of themselves . . . something else. . . .”
“So there is, of course. Your vision, given you, nothing to do with yourself. Mockery, aimed at that, seems to you a form of sacrilege. But even that you must not resent, for it is not possible to mock at an artist’s vision unless his presentation of it is at fault. Dress it up in ridiculous garments and it is you who are guilty of sacrilege, not the mocker.”
“Yes,” agreed Ben. “I wish I hadn’t drawn the white deer in the picture hung in the drawing room so badly.”
“Yes, it was a pity. As regards technique, it’s one of your worst efforts. He’s the thing sent, is he?”
“Yes. The other deer are galloping after him and the light comes from him. Without him the other deer wouldn’t know what direction to take, or if they did they couldn’t see the way.”
“They, I suppose, are a man’s own natural powers?”
“Yes. Did you guess that when you saw the picture?”
“It’s an interpretation of your obviously allegorical work of art that occurred to me.”
There was a note of amusement in his voice that made Ben’s ears go red again. “Unutterable ass I must seem to you,” he murmured.
“No. If I smiled it was as much at myself as at you. We’re all of us helter-skelter after the white deer, each of us arrogantly expecting to catch up with him at last. Yet who does? To most of us he gives no more than a sense of direction. That’s all.”
“In this life,” said a voice. But there was no sound. The man who spoke was the man in Ben’s drawing. Ben fell back a few paces and looked at the picture. “I don’t think I can do any more for a bit,” he said.
“That being so,” said John Adair, “I suggest that there may be some connection between the disappearance of the twins and the disappearance of the key of the storeroom.”
“Gosh, yes! I never thought of that. And nor did Mother.” And Ben swung round.
“May I look at your work while you’re away?”
“Yes, sir, of course. But I haven’t had time really to—”
“Don’t make excuses,” interrupted John Adair. “You’ve had plenty of time to make a good start. If you haven’t that’s your fault. And don’t say ‘but.’ You know how I detest the word.”
— 3 —
Ben took himself off, grinning. He ran lightly down the turret staircase, tried the storeroom door, and found it locked. He applied his ear to t
he keyhole. Inside he could hear squeaks and scratchings and sneezings, like little animals scrabbling and scrooging.
“Hi! Rat! Mole!” he called softly. “Badger here. Let Badger in.”
There was a cessation of the scrabblings and scroogings, but not of the sneezings. “Only Badger?”
“Yes, only Badger.”
The door was unlocked and Ben was admitted. “What on earth?” he demanded. The floor was covered with flakes of distemper and peelings of wallpaper. The twins themselves had a powdering of white dust all over them, and their faces and hands were filthy. But they looked radiantly happy. “Look, Badger, look!” they cried, seizing hold of him. “Under the shelf. A wood and flowers growing. And a bunny. Look!”
Ben, sneezing loudly as the white dust went up his nose, was dragged to the floor and pushed beneath the shelf. For two hours they had been scratching and scrooging, using the old iron key and their industrious little fingernails, and they had laid bare quite a large patch of the original wall of this strange little octagonal room. The rear elevation of a rabbit was now clearly to be seen by an imaginative eye, also a small clump of starry red flowers, a robin, and the root of a tree. Ben backed out from beneath the shelf, his face white with excitement. He sat back on his heels, thought for a moment in silence, and then addressed the younger brethren.
“Now, see here, Rat and Mole, I’ll give you a bob each if you don’t say a word to anybody yet a while about the bunny and the flowers on the wall.”
“Why not?” demanded Jerry.
“Rat and Mole,” said Ben impressively, “there’s a picture painted there under the wallpaper and stuff. I think it’s a very old picture, perhaps hundreds of years old. I want to get much more of it uncovered before we tell everybody about it.”
“We’ll uncover it,” said José. “Jerry and you and me.”
“It would take us too long, and we might scratch the picture with our nails,” said Ben. “It needs what they call an expert to do it properly—someone like Old Beaver.”
“But it’s our picture. We found it,” said the twins indignantly.
“Yes, I know you did, and it was jolly clever of you. And later on I’ll tell everyone how clever you were. But just for now, Rat and Mole, you must keep your mouths shut. Promise? A bob each.”
The twins sneezed and looked doubtful.
“Rat and Mole, did you know Mummy was taking you into Radford this afternoon in the car to have your hair cut? If you have that two bob you’ll be able to buy things at Baxter’s.”
Jerry and José looked at each other. Baxter’s had fireworks and the Fifth of November was approaching. But two bob was insufficient. There was no need for speech between them. They knew each other’s minds.
“No,” said Jerry. “It’s our picture and we won’t not tell everybody about it.”
Ben tried another tack. “If I take down a pot of jam to Mummy there’ll be jam puffs for lunch, but if I don’t there’ll be semolina pudding.”
The twins made despairing noises. They hated semolina pudding even more passionately than did John Adair and Ben. Yet they stood firm. They were, as John Adair had remarked, tough guys.
“No,” said José.
“Half a crown between the two of you.”
“No,” said Jerry.
“Three bob.”
“No,” said José. “More.”
Ben felt desperate. He only possessed three and sixpence halfpenny. “Mercenary little beasts,” he said. “Three and sixpence halfpenny.”
“Five bob between the two of us,” said Jerry. “And a pot of raspberry jam for the puffs.”
“O.K.,” said Ben bitterly. “Now come along up to the bathroom and get clean, and if you make a single sound while I’m washing you I’ll smack you as hard as Old Beaver did when you squeezed his paints on the floor. O.K.?”
“O.K.,” said the twins.
Ben seized a pot of raspberry jam from the shelf and pulled the twins out of the storeroom, locking the door behind him and slipping the key into his pocket. They sped noiselessly up the turret stairs and along to the bathroom, where Ben brushed the white dust out of the twins’ hair and off their jerseys, and scrubbed their hands and faces till they squeaked, but very softly, for they were children of their word. Then, leaving them to dry themselves, he raced up the attic stairs to the studio. John Adair, standing still and attentive before Ben’s drawing, looked round in surprise.
“House on fire?” he asked.
“No, sir. Could you lend me one and fivepence halfpenny? I wouldn’t ask such a thing but it’s pretty desperate. And, sir, please, may I use the telephone in your room? If I use the house one downstairs, everyone hears what I say, and I don’t want them to.”
“Putting something on a horse?” inquired John Adair, counting out one and fivepence halfpenny from a handful of loose change with maddening slowness. “Buying a ring for your best girl? I’m not an inquisitive man, of course, but before parting with such a vast sum as one and fivepence halfpenny—”
“I’ll tell you later, sir,” said Ben, grabbed the cash and fled back to the bathroom, seized the twins and the jam and descended to the hall. “Hoy!” he yelled. “Found!”
Nadine appeared from the drawing room. “Jerry! José! Where have you been? You’ve frightened Mummy to death and poor Jill is getting all wet looking for you outside. And Daddy and Sally too.”
“They’ll dry,” said Jerry.
“They were playing in the storeroom, Mother,” said Ben. “They didn’t do any harm there. I’ve locked it up again. And here’s a pot of raspberry jam, Mother, for the puffs.”
“They’re sure to have done some harm there,” said Nadine. “How much jam have they eaten?”
“One pot of strawberry,” said José.
“Pigs,” said Nadine. “Give me the storeroom key, Ben, and ring the dinner bell at the front door. I told the others I would if they turned up safely.”
“No, me!” shrieked Jerry, and seized the bell as Ben fled upstairs, his hands still clasping the key in his pocket.
In John Adair’s bedroom he sat breathlessly at the writing table and rang up Damerosehay. By the mercy of heaven it was David himself who answered. “Yes?” he inquired in a cold, bored, noncommittal voice. But Ben was too excited today to be chilled by the extraordinary way in which people you love speak to you on the phone when they haven’t the ghost of a notion who you are.
“David! ’Smee!”
“Who?”
“ ’Smee. Ben. David, there’s a fresco on the storeroom wall!”
“A what on the storeroom wall? Don’t pant so, old boy. I can’t hear a word.”
“A fresco. ‘F’ for Freddy, ‘R’ for Reginald, ‘E’ for Ernest, ‘S’ for Sydney—”
“Oh, fresco.” David’s voice became suddenly interested. “How did you find it?”
“The twins found it. They stripped a bit of the paper off. David, Mother and the twins are going to Radford this afternoon, and Father’s taking Sally to see the Abbey if it clears, and you can see it’s going to, and Malony and Annie-Laurie will be busy moving into the flat over the garage (they got nearly blown away in the houseboat last night), so come over this afternoon and you and I and Old Beaver will work at it in peace and quiet.”
“Don’t the family at large know about it?”
“No! I couldn’t bear them to—not yet. It seems sort of—private—I can’t explain. It must be just you and I and Beaver.”
“What’s to be seen so far?”
“A rabbit and flowers.”
“Sounds to me like an illustration from some children’s picture book pasted on by Auntie Rose’s mother-in-law.”
“No!” yelled Ben furiously. “It’s not that sort of rabbit!”
“You mean not a sentimental rabbit? Apocryphal, perhaps.”
“N
o. There’s nothing apocryphal about it. It’s real. It’s alive there on the wall . . . just the hind part,” he added weakly.
“Keep calm, old boy. I’ll come along,” said David, suddenly as serious as could be wished. “And thank you very much for letting me in on this.”
There was a click and he had gone. Ben replaced the receiver, and with his short stiff dark hair standing up in peaks all over his head, and his eyes shining, he rushed back to the studio and poured it all out to Old Beaver, where he still stood thoughtfully before Ben’s easel.
John Adair’s reception of the news, though not as enthusiastic as could have been wished, was not unsatisfactory. “Quite possible,” he conceded. “The room’s octagonal, you say, with lancet windows? And this is a pilgrim inn. It might have been the chapel.”
“Would they have had a chapel in a pilgrim inn?”
“If, as you seem to think, Mine Host was a monk, put here to look after the pilgrims coming to the Abbey.” And he indicated the drawing before which he stood. Ben looked at his chalk drawing, which half an hour ago had been his very life, but which for the last twenty minutes he had completely forgotten. “I didn’t think of him as being a monk,” he said, puzzled. “Just as being wrapped in a dark cloak, because of the dark paneling and the stairs. Besides, he’s too burly-looking for a monk, surely.”
“The Cistercians were fine farmers,” said John Adair. “Great fellows for tilling the land and raising stock. The chap you’ve drawn is a Cistercian lay brother. I like the look of the fellow so far, though I’d be glad to see him with a face. And where the dickens is the light coming from? The only place it can come from, if you’re standing in the entrance to the inn, is the open front door behind you, but in your picture it is coming from behind the figure.”
His tone was severe, and Ben’s ears went scarlet. He had drawn a large sturdy man standing on the stairs of the inn with arms held wide. The figure was superimposed upon the cruciform structure of the branching staircase as the Figure is fastened to the Cross, appearing one with it. But except for a willed strength in the attitude, as though the man braced himself against the wood of the cross, an immense patience in the sturdily planted feet, the figure did not suggest suffering. The outspread arms suggested a huge welcome, the fold of the habit had a winged protectiveness, and the cowled head was held high as though the man laughed. The lighting came from behind the head, giving a clear outline to both head and shoulders, in striking contrast to the rest of the figure, where the falling folds of the habit were scarcely distinguishable from the dark wood of the stairs.
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