Bedknob and Broomstick Part 14

For about the twentieth part of a second the children saw the folds of the black cloak hang limp, before the whole equipage dropped like a stone. Then they could see it no more. People ran out of doorways, out of yards, out of alleys. Some were armed with staves, some with clubs; they saw one man, a butcher he must have been, with a large and shining chopper. All these people made for the spot where the broomstick had fallen. The narrow mouth of the street was choked with an ever increasing crowd, composed mostly of boys and men. No one glanced at the stake or felt the sudden onslaught of the rain. It poured down suddenly, a slanting rushing sheet of water, mingling with the tears on Carey's face and turning the churned dust into mud.

"Miss Price . . . Miss Price . . ." sobbed Carey, while the rain ran down her hair into the neck of her dressing gown. She hardly noticed Charles had left her side. She did not know how he had got there when she saw him clamber on the steaming f.a.gots, which hissed and blackened under the downpour. She watched Charles seize the sword and chop at the ropes that bound Emelius. She saw Emelius fall forward on the piled wood, and the wood roll from under him. She saw Emelius. .h.i.t the ground, and Charles climbing down from the stake, sword in hand. She saw Emelius picking himself up from the ground in a dazed way, his charred robe hanging in strips about his yellow-stockinged legs. She saw Charles urging him, talking to him, pulling him by the arm. Then Charles and Emelius were there beside her where she leaned with Paul against the cattle pen. Charles was pulling off Emelius's coat, so that he stood in shirt and breeches and wrinkled yellow stockings. . . .

"Miss Price, Miss Price . . ." Carey went on sobbing.

"They won't recognize you so easily like that," Charles was-explaining to Emelius. "You're not a bit burnt. Lucky your clothes were so wet. Come, Carey," he went on, looking white but determined. "Do shut up, we've got to get back to the bed."

"But Miss Price-" cried Carey wildly. "We can't leave Miss Price."

"We must," said Charles. "There's nothing we can do now. She would want us to be sensible."

Paul began to bellow loudly. He had no inhibitions. If Miss Price was dead, he was not going to be brave. Paul's noise had a steadying effect on Carey; she took his hand. "Quiet, Paul," she said, sniffing. "We can cry when we get home."

They could not walk quickly because Charles had burned his feet. Perhaps it was just as well; running might have aroused suspicion. Emelius seemed in a dream. He did not speak and gazed before him as if he still saw a black figure fluttering wildly on a broomstick. As they neared the gate leading into the field, the same fear descended on all of them. Suppose the bed had gone. . . .

Carey and Paul had dropped a little behind, and it was Charles who entered the cowshed first. When Carey heard him exclaim, she deliberately stood still-waiting there in the squishy gra.s.s while the rain poured down. She felt she couldn't bear much more.

"Carey!" Charles was shouting. "Carey! Come and see!"

Carey dragged herself to the door of the cowshed. At first, in the gloom, she could see nothing. Then she distinguished the outline of the bed. A figure was lying on it-a figure propped up on one elbow-and a pair of angry eyes met her own in a stare of baleful accusation.

"Oh, Miss Price!" cried Carey. She clutched at the doorpost, as if she might have fallen.

"You may well look guilty," scolded Miss Price. Even in that light the tip of her nose was an angry pink. "You are the most thoughtless and untrustworthy children. I distinctly told you to stay by the bed. I've been frightened out of my wits about you. Out of my wits. I come back here, worn out with witchcraft, longing to put my feet up for five minutes-and what do I find?"

"Oh!" cried Carey. She rushed across the cowshed. She flung herself upon the bed. She sobbed down Miss Price's neck as if her heart would break.

"There!" said Miss Price uncomfortably, patting Carey's shoulder blades. "There! No need to get emotional. We've all been a little upset, that's what it is."

"You're safe," gasped Carey. "Darling Miss Price. They didn't kill you."

Miss Price drew her head away as if she were surprised. "Kill me?" she exclaimed, with something like horror. She stared at them unbelievingly. "Gracious goodness alive, you didn't imagine that was me on the broomstick?"

"Then what was it,Miss Price?" asked poor Carey, wiping her eyes. "Whatever was it?"

Miss Price stared at her a moment longer, then she gave a little triumphant glance in the direction of Emelius. "That," she said, blushing slightly, "was just a particularly apposite use of intrasubstantiary-locomotion."

But Emelius, stretched out wearily on the hay in the corner, did not even look up.

1O AND FARTHER STILL.

Emelius was put to bed in Charles's room and remained there several days. He was suffering, Miss Price said, from "shock." Charles's feet were more scorched than burned, and some yellow ointment spread on gauze soon healed them. In a week's time the vacation would be aver, and Miss Price was gentler, kinder to them than they had ever known her. She spent her time between packing for the children and arranging trays for Emelius. She was so kind, so unusually long-suffering, that the children were a little afraid. They thought Emelius must be worse than Miss Price had at first supposed. Several times Carey saw a strange man in the house, and it was not always the same one. Once Miss Price came downstairs with two of them at her heels. All three went into the dining room and closed the door, and, for over an hour, the house felt tense with mystery. She seemed, too, to be writing a lot of letters and running off down to the village to telephone. But instead of getting fussed, she became kinder and kinder. They didn't like it at all and were filled with dread when, on the last day of the holidays, she summoned them rather solemnly into the sitting room, where, since Emelius came, Charles had been sleeping.

The three children sat on Charles's bed, and Miss Price, facing them, took a little upright chair. There was a feeling of great tenseness in the air.

Miss Price cleared her throat and clasped her hands together in her lap.

"Children," she said, "what I am going to tell you will not come altogether as a surprise. You have noticed a good deal of coming and going in the house during this past week and must have gathered something was afoot."

Miss Price moistened her lips with her tongue and clasped her hands a little tighter together. The children's eyes watched every movement, seeking some hint of what was going to come.

"I do not possess anything of great value," went on Miss Price, "but my belongings, such as they are, are in excellent repair. The kitchen sink, put in only last year, cost me, with the labor, nearly fifty pounds, but I shall not leave the bathroom fittings. It was a help to me, in making my decision, to remember that I could take these with me. If I have a weakness, and we all have many, it is a weakness for modern plumbing. I've nothing against the Simple Life, a.s.suming that there is such a thing, but bathing in a washtub is so unnecessarily complicated." Miss Price paused. "The proceeds will go to the Red Cross," she added.

Carey leaned forward. She seemed to hesitate a moment, and then she said: "What proceeds, Miss Price?"

"I keep telling you, Carey. The proceeds from the sale of the house."

"You're going to sell the house!"

"Carey, try to pay more attention when people are speaking to you. I'm selling the house and the furniture, except, as I say, the bathroom fittings."

"And you're giving the money to the Red Cross?"

"Every penny."

"Why?" asked Charles.

"To compensate this century for the loss of an able-bodied woman."

Carey began to smile. She half stood up and then sat down again. "I see," she said slowly. "Oh, Miss Price-"

"I don't see," complained Charles.

"Charles," said Carey, turning to him eagerly. "It's sort of good and bad news. Miss Price means-" She looked at Miss Price uncertainly. "I think Miss Price means-"

Miss Price made her face quite expressionless. She cleared her throat. "Perhaps I didn't make it quite clear, Charles," she conceded, "that Mr. Jones has asked me to share his life." She allowed Charles a small and dignified smile. "And I have accepted."

Charles stared. He looked completely bewildered. "You're going to live in the seventeenth century?"

"Of necessity," said Miss Price. "Mr. Jones can't stay here, and, there, we have a house and livestock, an orchard -and Mr. Jones has a little something laid by."

"But how will you go?" asked Charles. "Unless Paul comes too?"

"It's all arranged. Mr. Bisselthwaite will call for you tomorrow morning and will put you on the train. And this evening, after supper, Paul will stand on the floor near the head of the bed and twist the k.n.o.b."

"You're going tonight?" exclaimed Charles.

"Unfortunately we must. I dislike doing things in a hurry, but, without Paul, we have no means of conveyance."

Carey turned sideways, so that she lay on one elbow. She picked some fluff off the blanket, staring closely at her hand.

"Miss Price-" she said.

"Well?"

"Will you-" Carey stared hard at the blanket. "Will you like it?"

Miss Price lifted her hands and let them fall on the arms of the chair. Strangely enough she did not, as Carey expected, have an answer ready.

"Mr. Jones and I," said Miss Price slowly, gazing at the wall as if she could see through it, "are two lonely people. We shall be better together."

"The bed can never come back," said Charles.

Miss Price, gazing at the wall, did not reply.

Once again there was a faint film of dust (and two feathers) where the bed had stood. But this time the room looked barer still, with the rugs rolled up and the dressing-table drawers left slightly open. A crumpled piece of tissue flew lightly across the room and caught itself against the leg of the washstand.

She had gone. Where a minute before there had been bustle and flurry, tyings-up and tuckings-in, hurried good-bys and last-minute hugs, there was silence and emptiness.

The bed had been dangerously overloaded. The bathroom plumbing, dissected amateurishly by Charles and Emelius, and wrapped in ironing blankets and dust sheets, took up so much room to start with. And then, besides the clothes-basket and two suitcases, there were the last-minute things that Miss Price could not bear to leave behind. The silver cream jug, her extra hot-water bottle, an egg beater, a cake tin tied with string in which she had put her store of tea, some biscuits, a packet of Ryvita, and six tins of sardines. There were her apostle spoons and the best tea cloth, her father's sword, her photographs, a bottle of lavender water. . . . They had tied and retied it all with the clothesline, but, all the same, it looked terribly perilous with Miss Price and Emelius perched on top. In spite of everything, Carey pointed out, Miss Price would wear her best straw hat, which had been "done over" by a woman in the village. "Better to wear it than pack it," she had insisted, as if there had been no other alternative. She had cried a little when she said good-by to the children and reminded them that Mrs. Kit-hatten down the road was coming in to cook their breakfast; and that their tickets were on the mantelpiece in the dining room; and that Mr. Bisselthwaite would be there by nine-thirty; and to remind Mrs. Kithatten that the men would be along any time after one to check on the inventory; and that they were to boil up the rest of the milk in case it turned before morning.

And then Paul had wished, standing there beside the bedstead, and, suddenly, the room was empty, except for the rustling tissue paper and the curtains falling softly back in place as if there had been a wind.

They felt terribly alone. They went downstairs, and the emptiness of the house seemed to follow them. They walked through the kitchen into the scullery. The drainboard was still damp from the washing up of the supper things, a washing up Miss Price had shared. The door of the garden stood open, and they wandered out. There, by the garbage can, stood a pile of Miss Price's old shoes. One pair, very stiff and mud-caked, were the ones she kept for gardening in wet weather.

The sun was sinking behind the wood, but the hillside was bathed in golden light.

"They'll be there by now," Charles said at last, breaking the dreary silence.

Carey looked across the shadowed wood to the familiar, friendly slope of Tinker's Hill.

"I know what," she exclaimed suddenly. "Let's run up there! We'll be back before dark."

"Well, we wouldn't see them or anything," objected Charles.

"It doesn't matter. Miss Price might sort of know."

It was good to run and climb, panting, up the sandy paths, through the bracken, onto the turf. It was good to reach the wind and feel the sunshine as, rich and warm, it fell on their shoulders and sent long shadows bobbing on ahead across the gra.s.s.

When they reached the ruined house, Carey climbed alone to the highest spot on the wall. She sat with her chin in her hands, as if in a trance, while the wind blew the wisps of hair on her forehead and her motionless shadow stretched out across the blackberry bushes and up the sun-drenched hill. Charles and Paul just messed about among the stones, uneasily picking an occasional blackberry and watching Carey.

After a while Carey climbed down. She did not speak. She walked slowly past the boys. There was a faraway expression on her face, and her eyes were dreamy.

"I can see them," she said in a chanting kind of voice. She stood quite still, among the brambles of the "apple orchard."

"Oh, come on, Carey," said Charles. He knew she was acting, but all the same he did not like it.

"I can see them quite plainly," went on Carey, as if she had not heard. She stretched out her hands in a "hushing" gesture and raised her face a little, like a picture they had at home called "The Prophetess." "They are walking slowly down the path, hand in hand." She paused. "Now, they have stopped under the apple tree. Miss Price has no hat on. Now they have turned and are looking back at the house-"

"Oh, Carey, come on," said Charles uncomfortably. "It's getting dark."

"Now," Carey dropped her voice respectfully, "Mr. Jones has kissed Miss Price on the cheek. He's saying-" Carey paused, as if thinking up the words. "He is saying," she went on triumphantly, " 'My own true love'. . ."

Then suddenly Charles and Paul saw Carey's expression change. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. She looked round hurriedly, then she ran, almost leapt out of the brambles, and clambered awkwardly upon the wall. She stared downwards at the spot where she had stood.

"What's the matter, Carey? What happened?" cried Charles.

Carey's face was pale. She looked unnerved, but somewhere about her mouth was the shadow of a smile.

"Didn't you hear?" she asked.

"No," said Charles, "I didn't hear anything."

"Didn't you hear Miss Price?"

"Really Miss Price!"

"Yes. It was her voice. Quite loud and distinct."

Charles and Paul looked grave.

"What-what did she say?" stammered Charles.

"She said: 'Carey, come at once out of those lettuces.' "