The Bazaar and Other Stories (12 page)

 

and looking owlishly at her from under his hand, “I am quite often

 

not quite myself. It’s been my trouble from childhood. I wouldn’t

 

mention it now, but this evening has been unusual.”

 

“Yes,” she agreed, with a kind of Olympian primness, as though

 

he were exchanging small-talk with Venus herself. Very much

 

attached to her prey
⁴
– oh yes, he thought, very.

 

“I often say things I don’t mean.”

 

“Yes,” she said, “yes, I thought so.”

 

“What do you mean?” he said, starting with natural annoyance.
“Naturally,” remarked Magdalen, “I have some knowledge of

 

men.”

 

She was round him in coils: he made a restless, despairing

 

gesture, rolling his head on the cushion in sick anger: the cushion

 

slipped from under it to the floor. She came round the table,

 

stooped, and picked up the cushion. He raised his head, she put the

 

cushion back; then she remained by his side looking always down.

 

“You must be quiet,” she said with magnetic gentleness: shutting his

 

eyes, he felt something descend: she had placed a hand on his

 

forehead. He lay helpless under that cool and unmoving pressure.

 

She gave him the cold shivers.
Brigands
O
liver’s uncle’s house seemed so odd that Oliver
pinched himself when he woke up in the mornings for several days
after he came to stay.

He had been sent to stay with his uncle, who having made an
enormous amount of money in South Africa had come home to buy
a house as large as his fortune and settle down. He had brought back
with him his wife, Aunt Alice, and his daughter, Priscilla, a very fat
girl of fourteen. The castle Aunt Alice wanted had not been hard to
find, in fact she had had several to choose from, as people do not
want that sort of thing nowadays.

¹
Oliver liked his uncle, who had
tipped him two pounds when first they met, and whenever they met
again pulled his ear kindly and asked him how he was getting on.
He was a nervous man, chiefly on account of Aunt Alice, but full of
kindness. Oliver had been sent here to stay because his father had
been ill and these Easter holidays had gone abroad with his mother
to get well again. They hated to miss Oliver, but it could not be
helped.

His uncle’s enormous house looked like a castle, with turrets and
battlements, but it was really quite modern and shiny inside, not at
all dark; it was filled with bathrooms, and footmen to please Aunt
Alice, and family portraits she had had the trouble of buying at
auctions, because, she said, they had left their own family portraits
in South Africa. The house (or castle) was built at the head of a
steep, craggy valley in the north of England; a flag was kept flying
and it looked very grand as you drove up. You drove in over a
drawbridge, but this was a practical joke as the drawbridge did not
pull up. All the country round was full of these craggy valleys, with
limestone cliffs and rivers that flowed underground; it was said to be
full of caves, but no one in the castle could tell where the caves
were. If it had not been for Aunt Alice, Priscilla, the footmen and a
few other drawbacks, you could not imagine a better place to be
staying.

Oliver would not have blamed Priscilla for being fat if she had
not been so haughty. She was not intelligent and could tell him
nothing about South Africa except that it had been hot, which he
knew for himself. She did not have much of a time, poor girl, as
when she was not at lessons with her French governess (she seemed
to have no holidays) she was doing exercises on a back-board or
walking round and round with a book on her head, in order that she
might be beautiful when she grew up. This did not seem to Oliver
likely. Every day, Priscilla bumped round and round a field on a
pony, looking miserable, as her mother thought this might make her
thin. The food in the schoolroom

²
was terribly plain, for the same
reason, but the children came down to lunch in the diningroom and
on these occasions Priscilla ate all she could. Her mother adored
her and could not bear to say “No” (which was why they kept the
French governess) and it was with great distress that Aunt Alice
watched Priscilla stuffing herself with cream puddings.
³
Oliver also
ate all he could, but no one minded about his figure.

The chauffeur was nice, and Oliver spent a good deal of time in
the yard, watching the cars being washed and looking into their
engines. There were six cars. The third morning after he came, he
saw a girl in a red jersey, also hanging about the yard. She looked
about his own age, which was ten, but she scowled when he looked
her way and he thought she might be as haughty as Priscilla. The
chauffeur said her name was Maria Pelley, and that she lived with
her uncle who was Oliver’s uncle’s agent in the house near the lower
gate.

However, Oliver made friends with Maria the same afternoon,
when the groom took them both out ratting. She was sensible, did
not scream, and when she found out he had not much use for
Priscilla she got quite friendly. He asked Maria about the caves, she
said she knew of one, about three miles away, that she promised to
take him to, but she saw no reason why there should not be others,
and they decided to look for them. She also told him this house was
supposed to be built where a brigands’ castle had been. Oliver felt
quite certain the caves should be easy to find.

The next morning, when Oliver, waiting about for Maria, was
bouncing a ball on the terrace, he happened to knock the heads off
three pink hyacinths by sending the ball among them, and to tread
on a few more while getting the ball out. He heard an awful roar
from behind him, and turned to see the head gardener, Perkins,
shaking his fist at him, shouting and making a face: he looked
furious. If Perkins had not been nasty, Oliver would have apolo
gised: as it was he walked off with great dignity. He was sorry about
the hyacinths, but did not see that it much mattered. The hyacinths
had been planted in thick pink rows down the terrace and looked
like something to eat. Whenever they met after this, Perkins
scowled and Oliver knew he had made an enemy. He was an ugly
man, who wore bulgy spectacles. Oliver noticed how different
Perkins’s manner was to his uncle, his aunt, and Priscilla. Head
gardeners are supposed to be fierce, but Perkins was quite oily and
lost no opportunity of telling Aunt Alice what a fine young lady
Priscilla was. All this seemed to Oliver rather fishy. He apologised
to his uncle about the hyacinths and his uncle said it was all right.
His Aunt Alice said nothing.

Oliver told Maria about Perkins, and she suggested that they
should have a vendetta,

⁴
which is the way Sicilians keep on paying
each other out. She had read a good deal and was full of ideas: this
plan seemed to Oliver excellent.

That evening, the schoolroom supper was intended to make
Priscilla slimmer than usual: when it was over Oliver still felt hungry.
His aunt was giving a dinner party and extra good smells came up
the kitchen stairs to the schoolroom wing. It is a shocking thing to
steal food, but Oliver happened to be about in the back hall, near
the service door of the diningroom, at a place where the footmen
put down the trays when they left the diningroom. So he got two
quails in aspic, later on some very good rich pudding, and finished
up with several bits of a savoury made of crab. This is the darker
side of his character, and is only mentioned because of its exciting
results.

His inside, combined with a very good book Maria had lent him
about vendettas, kept Oliver from sleeping as usual that night. Also,
it was a full moon. He went to sleep but had queer dreams and
kept waking up again. He felt excited and restless, and certain that
something was going on. He heard one o’clock strike from the
stable belfry.

He lay with his eyes wide open and his ears drumming as though
there were a clock under his pillow. Then he did really hear
something. The creak, creak, creak of a wheel going round, and a
faint scrunch of gravel outside, like somebody walking on tip-toes.
He jumped out of bed and ran stealthily to the window. His room
looked out on a less ornamental part of the garden, the same side as
the kitchens; there were sheds there, always kept locked up. He
peered down – the moonlight was very bright, almost dazzling –
and saw a man wheeling a wheelbarrow,

⁵
trying to keep at once well
in the shadow, but not too near the windows. The wheelbarrow
seemed very heavy, for the man kept stopping and straightening his
back. As he did this just under Oliver’s window, the moonlight
gleamed on his spectacles: it was Perkins. The whole thing seemed
very suspicious. Perkins picked up the wheelbarrow and disappeared
with it round the corner.

Next day, Oliver said at luncheon: “Why does Perkins wheel
wheelbarrows in the middle of the night?” His uncle looked gloomy
and said Perkins was a good gardener and had his own way of doing
things. His aunt said sharply that this was impossible. Oliver must
have been dreaming. Priscilla turned up her nose and said: “

Our
head gardener doesn’t wheel wheelbarrows: he has twelve undergardeners to do it for him.” In fact, what Oliver said was not a
success.

So directly after luncheon he told Maria, whom he had not been
able to find that morning. She said at once that this

was
very
suspicious, and that they had better conceal themselves that night in
order to shadow Perkins. So that night Oliver slipped out of the
house by the back stairs, when he was supposed to be sound asleep,
carrying an electric torch he had got from the bedside of the French
governess. Maria was waiting for him round the corner of the house,
near the yard gates: her uncle gave no trouble. She wore a mackin
tosh, in the pockets of which she had another electric torch, a
water-pistol and a pea-shooter, besides some biscuits and a bit of
rope. She gave Oliver the pea-shooter, as he was the better shot. So
they were heavily armed.

Time went by very slowly, they told each other long stories in
whispers to keep awake: when their imaginations gave out they
pinched each other. There was so long between the hours they
thought the stable clock must have stopped. Nothing seemed to be
happening.

But at last something did. They heard a faint sound and flattened
themselves into the doorway where they stood: there were clouds
over the moon tonight, fortunately, and it was not nearly so light.
Scrunch, scrunch, softly over the gravel came Perkins with his
wheelbarrow; now and then the wheel creaked. Each time the wheel
creaked he stopped dead. Then he went by them, puffing and
blowing, with his spectacles glittering like a witch’s eyes. They gave
him time to get past, then in their rubber-soled shoes crept after
him, ever so softly, round the corner of the house. They were just in
time to see him unlock a shed, glare round cautiously, wheel the
wheelbarrow into it and disappear.

Very cautiously, Oliver and Maria crept up to the shed, to listen.
Utter, complete silence. But that the door was a little ajar you would
have thought they had come to the wrong shed. Pressed flat to the
outside wall of the shed, they waited and waited. But no one came
out again. It stayed perfectly silent inside the shed.

At last they did a very bold thing, they opened the door by
inches. Then they drew a deep breath and turned their electric
torches full into the shed. It was

empty
, as though Perkins had
melted. But here was the wheelbarrow, its load tipped out of it, lying
face down on the floor. They went into the shed: it had a board
floor, which seemed odd for a shed of that kind.

Maria and Oliver were quite staggered. For a moment, they
accused each other of having gone to sleep. But they knew this was
not so. Not quite knowing why he was doing this, Oliver stamped
carefully over the floor of the shed. And suddenly, a whole part of
the board floor gave a little, and creaked.

“A trap-door!” exclaimed Maria. They knelt down and pulled at
the floor – and, behold, it was. A great square of floor came up, and
they looked down a square black shaft cut in the rock. A cold, damp
breath came up, and though they flashed their torches into it they
could see no bottom. They saw, however, a ladder. Down this
Perkins had disappeared.

They looked at each other. “

Well
,” said Oliver. “Look – ”
“Come on!” said Maria.

 

However, he would not let her go first.

 

They climbed down very cautiously, their torches were in their

pockets; in case they should suddenly be attacked Oliver carried
the pea-shooter between his teeth, Maria carried the water-pistol
the same way. In the darkness Maria, in too much of a hurry, kept
stepping on Oliver’s head. The ladder was very slimy.

After what seemed hours, Oliver reached the bottom; he stood
clear of the ladder, Maria kicked his face for the last time and came
down also. They got out their torches and saw, straight ahead of
them, a low passage winding away through the rock. Its sides were
shiny with damp, which ran down in trickles. Oliver and Maria
ducked their heads and holding their torches firmly crept down the
passage. Perkins, who was quite tall, must have crawled.

When they had followed several turns of the passage Oliver said:
“

Hist!
”

 

“What?” said Maria.

 

“
Hist
– lights!”

 

And sure enough, a faint jiggly red light, like firelight, began to
play over the wet passage walls. Once more they were very cautious;
they went along inch by inch, with their torches out, prepared to
stop dead in a moment, holding their breaths. They began to hear
voices. The red light grew stronger and brighter. One more turn of
the passage and they pulled up, in sight of a scene that was most
amazing.