The Box of Delights (10 page)

‘Oh,’ Peter said, ‘these bird enthusiasts are always doing things like that to let the birds get at the worms.’

‘That’s a bright idea,’ Kay said. They went on, noticing that here and there the snow had been carefully swept aside. As they were now trackers on a trail, they went
cautiously. When they came in sight of the spot where the old man had been set upon, they saw two men sweeping the snow with a sort of hard hand-brush.

‘Keep under cover, Peter,’ Kay said. ‘There are your bird enthusiasts. The plot thickens. I see it all. They scrobbled that old man thinking that he’d got something which
they wanted. They released the old man when they found he hadn’t got it. Now they think that he’s dropped it in the snow and they are looking for it. They won’t find it in this
slush, I’ll bet. What d’you make of the two men?’

‘They look like two curates to me,’ Peter said.

‘They’re the two who were in the train with me yesterday, and I’ve a very shrewd suspicion that they picked my pockets.’

‘You think that curates’ clothes are a disguise?’

‘Yes.’

‘Golly!’ Peter said. ‘Well, let’s watch.’

Presently, the two men wearied of their search and decided that it was no good searching longer. They went off down the hill. With some little trouble, the boys followed, unobserved (as they
hoped). The two curates went downhill to the road, where a big, dark, shabby car was waiting for them: they got into the car and drove off. They went, as Kay noticed, in a north-westerly direction.
Presently, as he chanced to look in that direction, he saw some bright, moving speck in the sky, which he judged to be an aeroplane.

‘I wonder,’ he thought to himself, ‘if that motor car could turn into an aeroplane.’

‘I wonder what it was,’ Peter said, ‘I wonder what it was that the men were hoping to find?’

Kay knew very well what it was that they were hoping to find, but he did not feel that he had a right to say.

‘Oh, these gangs,’ he said airily, ‘they always try to get each other’s codes and passwords.’

‘I shouldn’t think they’d bother about those,’ Peter said. ‘They could always torture a prisoner till he told them all the passwords. I should think they were rival
gangs of jewel thieves, after the same diamond necklace, and one of the gangs has got it and is trying to get it out of the country, and the other gang is trying to waylay it.’

‘That’s an idea,’ Kay said. He was afraid that that might be the explanation. ‘When I get in,’ he thought, ‘I will hide, and look at this Box. If it
is
a diamond necklace I’ll take it straight to the Police Inspector.’ They went home.

Now, at last, Kay felt that he was free to look at the Box of Delights. He went up to his bedroom. He was very anxious not to be spied upon, and, remembering how those three
spies had been peering in at the window the night before, and how the repulsive Rat had crept about in the secret passages finding out all sorts of things, he was not sure that he could guard
himself from being seen. His bedroom had two doors in it opening on to different landings. He locked both doors and hung caps over the keyholes: he drew down the window blinds and pulled the
curtains: he looked under the beds. Then, as in the past, when he had wished to hide from his governess, he crept under the valance of his dressing-table: no one could possibly see him there.

The Box was of some very hard wood of a dense grain. It had been covered with shagreen, but the shagreen was black with age and sometimes worn away so as to show the wood beneath. Both wood and
shagreen had been polished until they were as smooth as a polished metal. On the side of it there was a little countersunk groove, in the midst of which was a knob. ‘I press this to
open,’ he repeated. ‘If I push it to the right I can go small, whatever that may mean. If I push it to the left I can go swift, and that I’ve tried. I do want to see what’s
inside it. I wonder, is this wood that it’s made of lignum-vitæ wood?’

‘It’s the wood the Phœnix builds in,’ the Box said.

‘Is it really?’ Kay said. ‘No wonder it smells like spice.’

Then he saw that the groove was inlaid with gold and that the golden knob within the groove had been carven into the image of a rosebud, which was extraordinarily fragrant. ‘I say,’
Kay said to himself, ‘this is a wonderful Box. Now I’ll open it.’

He pressed the tiny, golden rosebud and, at once, from within the box, there came a tiny crying of birds. As he listened he heard the stockdove brooding, the cuckoo tolling, blackbirds,
thrushes, the nightingale singing. Then a far-away cock crowed thrice and the Box slowly opened. Inside he saw what he took to be a book, the leaves of which were all chased and worked with
multitudinous figures, and the effect that it gave him was that of staring into an opening in a wood. It was lit from within and multitudinous, tiny things were shifting there. Then he saw that the
things which were falling were the petals of may-blossom from giant hawthorn trees covered with flowers. The hawthorns stood on each side of the entrance to the forest, which was dark from the
great trees yet dappled with light. Now, as he looked into it, he saw deer glide with alert ears, then a fox, motionless at his earth, a rabbit moving to new pasture and nibbling at a dandelion,
and the snouts of the moles breaking the wet earth. All the forest was full of life: all the birds were singing, insects were humming, dragonflies darting, butterflies wavering and settling. It was
so clear that he could see the flies on the leaves brushing their heads and wings with their legs. ‘It’s all alive and it’s full of summer. There are all the birds singing:
there’s a linnet; a bullfinch; a robin; that’s a little wren.’ Others were singing too: different kinds of tits; the woodpecker was drilling; the chiffchaff repeating his name;
the yellowhammer and garden warbler were singing, and overhead, as the bird went swiftly past, came the sad, laughing cry of the curlew. While he gazed into the heart of summer and listened to the
murmur and the singing, he heard another noise like the tinkling of little bells. As he wondered what these bells could be he decided that they were not bells, but a tinkling like the cry of many
little long-tailed tits together. ‘Where did I hear that noise before quite recently?’ Kay said to himself. It was not the noise of long-tailed tits: it was the noise of little chains
chinking. He remembered that strange rider who had passed him in the street the day before. That rider, who seemed to have little silver chains dangling from his wrists, had jingled so.
‘Oh,’ Kay said, as he looked, ‘there’s someone wonderful coming.’

At first he thought that the figure was one of those giant red deer, long since extinct: it bore enormous antlers. Then he saw that it was a great man, antlered at the brow, dressed in deerskin
and moving with the silent, slow grace of a stag; and, although he was so like a stag, he was hung about with little silver chains and bells.

Kay knew at once that this was Herne the Hunter, of whom he had often heard. ‘Ha, Kay,’ Herne the Hunter said, ‘are you coming into my wild wood?’

‘Yes, if you please, sir,’ Kay said. Herne stretched out his hand. Kay took it and at once he was glad that he had taken it, for there he was in the forest between the two hawthorn
trees, with the petals of the may-blossom falling on him. All the may-blossoms that fell were talking to him, and he was aware of what all the creatures of the forest were saying to each other:
what the birds were singing, and what it was that the flowers and trees were thinking. And he realised that the forest went on and on for ever, and all of it was full of life beyond anything that
he had ever imagined: for in the trees, in each leaf, and on every twig, and in every inch of soil there were ants, grubs, worms; little, tiny, moving things, incredibly small yet all thrilling
with life.

‘Oh dear,’ Kay said, ‘I shall never know a hundredth part of all the things there are to know.’

‘You will, if you stay with me,’ Herne the Hunter said. ‘Would you like to be a stag with me in the wild wood?’

Now, next to being a jockey, Kay had longed to be a young stag. Now he realised that he had become one. He was there in the green wood beside a giant stag, so screened with the boughs that they
were a part of a dappled pattern of light and shade, and the news of the wood came to him in scents upon the wind.

Presently the giant stag gave a signal. They moved off out of the green wood into a rolling grassland, where some fox cubs were playing with a vixen. They passed these and presently came down to
a pool, where some moorhens were cocking about in the water; a crested grebe kept a fierce eye upon them. They went out into the water. It was lovely, Kay thought, to feel the water cool upon the
feet after running, and to be able to go paddling, although it had been winter only a minute before. ‘And it’s lovely, too,’ he thought, ‘to have hard feet and not get sharp
bits of twig into one’s soles.’ They moved through the water towards some reeds. Looking through the stalks of the reeds Kay saw that there were a multitude of wild duck. ‘Would
you like to be a wild duck, Kay?’ Herne asked.

Now, next to being a jockey and a stag, Kay had longed to be a wild duck, and, at once, with a great clatter of feathers, the wild duck rose more and more and more, going high up, and, oh joy!
Herne and Kay were with them, flying on wings of their own, and Kay could just see that his neck was glinting green. There was the pool, blue as a piece of sky below them, and the sky above
brighter than he had ever seen it.

They flew higher and higher in great sweeps, and, presently, they saw the sea like the dark blue on a map. Then they made a sweeping circle and there was the pool once more, blue like the sky.
‘Now for the plunge,’ Herne cried, and instantly they were surging down swiftly and still more swiftly, and the pool was rushing up at them, and they all went skimming into it with a
long, scuttering, rippling splash. And there they all were paddling together, happy to be in water again.

‘How beautiful the water is,’ Kay said. Indeed it was beautiful, clear hill-water, with little fish darting this way and that and the weeds waving, and sometimes he saw that the
waving weeds were really fish. ‘Would you like to be a fish, Kay?’ Herne asked.

And, next to being a jockey, a stag and a wild duck, Kay had always longed to be a fish. And then, instantly, Kay was a fish. He and Herne were there in the coolness and dimness, wavering as the
water wavered, and feeling a cold spring gurgling up just underneath them and tickling their tummies.

While Kay was enjoying the water Herne asked, ‘Did you see the wolves in the wood?’

‘No,’ Kay said.

‘Well, they were there,’ Herne said; ‘that was why I moved. Did you see the hawks in the air?’

‘No,’ Kay said.

‘Well, they were there,’ Herne said; ‘and that was why I plunged. And d’you see the pike in the weeds?’

‘No,’ Kay said.

‘He is there,’ Herne said. ‘Look.’

Looking ahead up the stream Kay saw a darkness of weeds wavering in the water, and presently a part of the darkness wavered into a shape with eyes that gleamed and hooky teeth that showed. Kay
saw that the eyes were fixed upon himself and suddenly the dark shadow leaped swiftly forward with a swirl of water. But Kay and Herne were out of the water. They were trotting happily together
over the grass towards the forest: Herne a giant figure with the antlers of the red stag and himself a little figure with little budding antlers. And so they went trotting together into the forest
to a great ruined oak tree, so old that all within was hollow, though the great shell still put forth twigs and leaves.

Somehow, the figure of Herne, which had been so staglike, became like the oak tree and merged into the oak tree till Kay could see nothing but the tree. What had been Herne’s antlers were
now a few old branches and what had seemed silver chains dangling from Herne’s wrists were now the leaves rustling. Then the oak tree faded and grew smaller till it was a dark point in a
sunny glade. The glade shrank and there was Kay standing between the two hawthorn trees, which were shedding their blossoms upon him. Then these shrank till they were as tiny as the works of a
watch and then Kay was himself again under the valance in his room at Seekings looking at the first page in the Book of Delights contained within the Box. ‘My goodness,’ Kay said,
‘no wonder the old man treasured this Box and called it a Box of Delights. Now, I wonder,’ he said, ‘how long I have been in that fairyland with Herne the Hunter?’ He looked
at his watch and found that he had been away only two minutes. It was now ten minutes to eleven. ‘My goodness,’ Kay said, ‘all that took only two minutes.’

H
e was just wondering whether he should hide the Box in his secret locker, when he remembered that Abner had told the Rat to report to him at
eleven at the usual place. ‘I wonder,’ Kay thought, ‘if I could possibly be present when he reports.’

He took the Box of Delights in his hand and muttered, ‘If I push this to the right I can go small, and if I push it to the left I can go swift.’ He pushed the knob to the right and
instantly found himself dwindling and dwindling, while the furniture in his room grew vaster and vaster, and there beside him, just beyond the edge of the carpet, was a little hole between two
boards in the flooring. A mouse had once lived in the hole but had long since gone, and once Kay had dropped a sixpence there and had fished for it in vain with a bootlace smeared with
cobbler’s wax. He could see it shining there still now. Without any hesitation he slipped himself down the crack and picked up the sixpence, which was now bigger than his head and much too
big to go into any of his pockets. The wonderful thing was that down there, where the mouse had lived, was a most charming corridor all as bright as day. It ran on and opened into a great space
which had once been, as Kay knew, a secret hiding-place made by his great-grandfather. This was now all laid out as a mouse’s recreation ground. There was a little tennis-court, and a
charming bowling-green and a little, tiny red pole hung about with ropes for the giant-stride. Then, in one corner, a part had been specially polished and a mouse was roller-skating here.