The Box of Delights (6 page)

As Kay shut the door and slipped the chain on to it, he heard the bell of the back door violently rung. Someone beat on the knocker there. Jane and Ellen hurried to the kitchen to see who was
knocking. Then the telephone bell in the porch began to ring. Caroline Louisa went to the telephone.

At this instant, little Maria, who was with the other children upstairs, leaned over the banisters and cried, ‘Buck up, Kay! We are going to dress up and play Pirates.’

‘All right. In a minute,’ Kay said.

He went back into the study to look after the old man. He noticed that the curtains, which had been disarranged when Peter and the rest had stared at the carol-singers, were now carefully
re-drawn over the French window. The Punch and Judy man stood in the corner near the door, looking very white and tense, as though the earth were about to open.

‘So, Master Harker,’ the old man said, ‘we always used to say, “It’s the snow that brings the wolves out.” Many a bitter night did we stand the wolf-guard.
Now here, once more, they’re running. We must stand to our spears.’

‘Everything’s all right,’ Kay said.

‘Where did those three men go?’ the old man asked in a whisper.

‘I think they went with the Choir,’ Kay said, ‘but I couldn’t see.’

The old man shook his head and pointed at the dog. Barney had stiffened in his tracks, with a bristling fell. He was showing his teeth and staring at the curtained window. There could be no
doubt that somebody was outside.

The old man lifted a finger to the dog, perhaps to keep him from barking. He then shut his eyes and muttered something. It seemed to Kay that he was in great distress of mind. Then, as he opened
his eyes, it seemed to Kay that he had found comfort, for he smiled, pointed, and whispered to Kay, ‘Master Harker, what is the picture yonder?’

‘It is a drawing of a Swiss mountain,’ Kay said. ‘It was done by my grandfather. It is called The Dents du Midi, from the North.’

‘And do I see a path on it?’ the old man said. ‘If you, with your young eyes, will look, perhaps you will kindly tell me if that is a path on it.’

As they stared at the picture, it seemed to glow and to open, and to become not a picture but the mountain itself. They heard the rush of the torrent. They saw how tumbled and smashed the
scarred pine trees were among the rolled boulders. On the lower slopes were wooden huts, pastures with cattle grazing; men and women working.

High up above there, in the upper mountain, were the blinding bright snows, and the teeth of the crags black and gleaming. ‘Ah,’ the old man said, ‘and yonder down the path
come the mules.’

Down the path, as he said, a string of mules was coming. They were led, as mules usually are, by a little pony mare with a bell about her neck. The mules came in single file down the path: most
of them carried packs upon their backs of fallen logs, or cheeses made in the high mountain dairies or trusses of hay from the ricks; one of them towards the end of the line was a white mule,
bearing a red saddle.

The first mules turned off at a corner. When it came to the turn of this white mule to turn, he baulked, tossed his head, swung out of the line, and trotted into the room, so that Kay had to
move out of his way. There the mule stood in the study, twitching his ears, tail and skin against the gadflies, and putting down his head so that he might scratch it with his hind foot.
‘Steady there,’ the old man whispered to him. ‘And to you, Master Kay, I thank you. I wish you a most happy Christmas.’

At that, he swung himself on to the mule, picked up his theatre with one hand, gathered the reins with the other, said, ‘Come, Toby,’ and at once rode off with Toby trotting under
the mule, out of the room, up the mountain path, up, up, up, till the path was nothing more than a line in the faded painting, that was so dark upon the wall. Kay watched him till he was gone, and
almost sobbed, ‘Oh, I do hope you’ll escape the wolves.’

A very, very faint little voice floated down to him from the mountain tops. ‘You’ll see me again;’ then the mule-hoofs seemed to pass on to grass. They could be heard no more.
‘He has gone forever,’ Kay thought, as he watched.

There came, as it were, a little gust of wind, blowing what looked like snowflakes from the mountain path. The snowflakes flew out into the room and fluttered about the ceiling, growing rapidly
larger. They resolved themselves into shapes of coloured tissue paper, such as the caps and crowns sometimes found within crackers: there were also little paper balloons, in the shapes of cocks,
horses, ships and aeroplanes: these floated and lifted and drifted down. Kay saw that there was one of a different shape and colour for each child there: and printed, too, with his or her name.
Thus:

When the coloured papers had all floated to the floor, the lights seemed to grow dimmer. Caroline Louisa came into the study.

‘Kay,’ she said, ‘I am so very sorry to upset your holiday. My brother is very ill again, in London, with his recurrent fever: and there is nobody to look after him at all.
I’m afraid I must go up to him by the seven train tonight. Celia has been cabled for and should be on her way to him now: I ought to be there until she comes. I hate to leave you on the first
night of the holidays, but I hope it won’t be for more than just tonight, or perhaps tomorrow night as well.’

‘I say, I’m most awfully sorry,’ Kay said. ‘I do hope you’ll find your brother better. I say, can’t I drive you to the station?’

‘No, indeed, Kay, thanks,’ she said. ‘You will not drive any car for five years.’

‘Well, can’t I see you off?’

‘No, no, thank you. I’ve told Joe to take me. He’s putting on the chains now.’

‘I will see you off though,’ Kay said. ‘It’s an awful night. I hope your train won’t be snowed up.’

‘It’s not so bad as that,’ she said. ‘Now I must run and be ready. I shall telephone to you at ten tomorrow morning.’

‘You won’t,’ Kay said. ‘All the wires will be down from the snow.’

While she ran to be ready, Kay slipped out of the front door to the garage, where he found Joe chaining the car-wheels to keep them from slipping in the snow.

‘Even with the chains her’ll slither in the drifts,’ Joe said.

Indeed, when they started for the station a few minutes later her did slither in the drifts. Kay went to the station to see Caroline Louisa away, and much enjoyed the car’s skidding and
the appearance of the engine of the express, glowing with fire and steaming, yet all hung with icicles from snow which had melted on the boiler and frozen as it dripped.

W
hile Kay was out of the house and Caroline Louisa making ready to leave, the other children were in their rooms, dressing up as pirates, and
giving themselves pirates’ moustaches with burnt cork. Just as the front door slammed and the car lurched away to the station, they came down to the study for a dress-parade. There they found
the paper toys which had floated down from the mountain. They much enjoyed seeing their names in print.

‘Shoot not, shock not,’ said little Maria. ‘I like whoever it was’s cheek. I shall shoot and I shall shock as long as my name’s Maria. Now let’s toss up for
who shall be Captain. One of you’s got to be a Merchantman and be taken and have to walk the plank.’

‘No, let’s be Christmas pirates,’ Jemima said, ‘and put all our treasure into poor people’s stockings and let nobody know who did it: let the people all go to bed
in despair wanting money, and then find it in their stockings in the morning and be made happy.’

‘I say,’ Peter said, ‘of all the sickly sentiments . . .’

‘It’s a jolly good Christmas sentiment.’

‘Well, I didn’t dress up to be a pirate to have Christmas sentiment.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ Maria said. ‘I believe there’s someone just outside that window.’

‘I expect it was only snow falling.’

‘No, somebody coughed: it’s carol-singers again. Well, I’ll tell them to sing and then we’ll get on with Pirates.’

‘Let them ring the doorbell,’ Jemima said, ‘then somebody will attend to them.’

‘Not a bit,’ Maria said. ‘They’re probably a lot of foul little boys trying to peep in at the window. I’m going to open this window to them here.’

With that she flung back the curtain, unlocked the French window, and opened it into the night. There, directly outside in the snow, was the figure of a man. ‘Good evening, my young
friends,’ he said in a gentle, silky voice. ‘I could not make anybody hear. This is the house called Seekings House, is it not?’

‘Did you want Caroline Louisa?’ Jemima asked.

‘I am afraid you will think that what I want is very absurd,’ he said. ‘I was given to understand that a man called Hollings, or Hawlings, a Punch and Judy showman, is
here.’

‘There was a Punch and Judy showman,’ Maria said, ‘but he has gone.’

‘Gone?’ the man said. ‘How long has he been gone?’

Although he had not been invited to come in out of the snow, he had come in, and had closed the French window behind him, and was shaking the snow from himself on to the mat.

Maria answered in good faith, believing that what she said was true, and little guessing what trouble her answer was to cause to others.

‘He went away with the Tatchester Choir,’ she said.

‘D’you mean the party with the Japanese lanterns?’ the man asked.

‘Yes,’ Maria said, ‘they had a lot of Japanese lanterns.’

‘That went off,’ the man asked, ‘in a motor bus to Tatchester?’

‘I don’t know how they went off,’ Maria said.

They saw that the man was dressed as a clergyman underneath his greatcoat.

‘And so, I miss him once more,’ he said. ‘How very vexatious! I am interested, I should tell you, in the various forms of the Punch and Judy show, and this man is the son, and
grandson of Punch and Judy men, who were on the roads many years ago. This man is known to have versions of the play which they played, and other versions still older, which are not played, and I
do most earnestly want to meet him, and now he is off to this wild life of the roads in weather like this, where a touch of pneumonia, or a passing van, may wipe out his knowledge for
ever.’

‘You would get him at Tatchester,’ Peter said. ‘The Bishop asked him to give a performance there tomorrow.’

‘Ah!’ the man said. ‘So that fixes him to Tatchester.’ He looked at Peter curiously. ‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘if you are the gentleman known as young
Mister Harker?’

‘No,’ Peter said. ‘I don’t know where he is at the moment: probably upstairs somewhere, dressing up.’

The man looked at little Maria. ‘And this little friend is your sister, I take it?’

‘I may be little, but I am not a friend of yours,’ Maria said, ‘and you may take it, or leave it.’

‘Indeed!’ the man said. ‘But I interrupt your Christmas gambols, and if the man is gone I must go too. Good night, my little Maria.’ He slipped out, and closed the French
window behind him.

‘I say, Maria,’ Peter said, ‘you ought not to speak to people like that.’

‘I’ll speak to people as I like,’ she said.

‘But he was a clergyman.’

‘I’ll bet he wasn’t. What would a clergyman be doing spying in at the window?’

‘He wasn’t spying in at the window.’

‘Well, he was trying to, anyhow. As to his saying that he had been trying to make people hear, that’s all bunk. If he had rung the bell, or knocked, we’d have heard him. He was
creeping round, spying. What clergyman would come round hunting for a Punch and Judy man on a night like this? Any real clergyman would be going round carol-singing, or doing choir-practice, or
visiting the sick or the poor. I vote we all go out and snowball that villain down his false neck.’

‘Oh, chuck it, Maria,’ Peter said. ‘Now, come on and play Pirates. Where on earth is Kay?’

At that moment, Kay was driving home from the station. On his way through the market-square he asked Joe to stop the car. ‘You go home alone, Joe,’ he said. ‘I must do some
Christmas shopping. I shall be back in a minute by the short cut.’

He had drawn some money from Caroline Louisa. He bought a little scissor-case for Jemima, and a sheath-knife for Peter, at the ironmonger’s. Then he went into Bob’s shop, which was
almost next door, and bought a bottle of acid drops for Maria and a box of chocolates for Susan. After stuffing these into his pockets, he turned for home up the Haunted Lane.

Near the most haunted part of the lane, there was a short cut into Seekings garden across a derelict place known as Monk’s Piece. There were still some stub ends of monkish building there,
with the hollow of their fishpond, now dry, and the vaults of some of their cellars, often full of water.

No one much liked the place after dark, but Kay liked it better than Haunted Lane, and in this night of snow it was a real short cut.

As he climbed the ruined wall into Monk’s Piece, he saw an electric torch flash in the main ruin: several men were there. He had been told that the ghosts of monks always gathered there at
Christmas time to sing carols, but ghosts of monks do not use electric torches. One of the men lit a cigarette with a pocket-lighter, another bent over a lighted match sucking at a pipe.

Kay would have slipped past without pausing, but:

‘So he was among the Bishop’s Choir and we never noticed, ha-ha, what?’ a familiar voice said.

‘Yes,’ a silky voice answered (and the silky voice was familiar to Kay, too). ‘And you never noticed. Do you notice anything, I sometimes wonder?’

Kay pressed close in to the ivy on the ruined wall.

‘A clever dodge, though, what, to get in with the Choir,’ the foxy-faced man said.

‘No doubt it seems so to you,’ the silky voice replied. ‘I should have thought it the obvious dodge that you might have expected. Now he has got right through our ring again.
Those fools let him trick them at Musborough. Then by sheer luck we got his message that he would be here. Just as we learn his disguise and where he is, you let him go right through you, with the
goods on him. Oh, if I’d only not been tricked to the
Drop of Dew
for him I’d have been here and I’d have had him.’