Bedknob and Broomstick Part 12

The tip of Miss Price's nose became rather pink.

"He must be persuaded to have a good hot bath," she said. "And he must have a haircut."

"Oh, I'm sure he'd do it. Willingly," said Carey.

"And his clothes must go to the cleaners."

"But what will he wear meantime?"

Miss Price looked thoughtful. "There's that old Norfolk suit of my father's, and . . . yes, I've some things in a trunk . . ."

Carey and Miss Price were not present when Charles tackled Emelius under the mulberry tree, but in the still summer air the sound of their voices floated in through the open window. Charles's voice was a burbling monotone, but Emelius's was raised. Charles's suggestions were meeting with opposition. The conversation went on and on. There were a few deep silences. Carey shut her eyes and crossed her thumbs; the going, she realized, was not easy. At last, through the mist of leaves, she saw Emelius stand up. As the two figures began to approach the house, Carey drew back into the room, but not before she heard Emelius's parting shot, delivered in a voice that broke. "So be it," he said, "if it is the custom, but I had an uncle died of the ague through this same cause."

Preparing Emelius's bath was something of a ceremony. Miss Price dug out her fluffiest and softest bath towel and a clean cotton kimono with an embroidered spray of flowers across the back. Carey ran the water to a pleasant, even temperature and threw in a handful of Miss Price's carefully h.o.a.rded bath salts. She spread out the bath mat and closed the window. Emelius was ushered in, the plumbing was explained to him by Charles, and he was asked to put his clothes outside the door.

He was a long time in the bath. The children tiptoed around the house in a state of nervous anxiety, as if a major operation was taking place upstairs. After a while, they heard him running the hot and cold taps and raising his voice, against the sound of the water, in a little Shake-sperian ditty, slightly off key.

"He's enjoying it," said Charles.

Emelius bathed, his soft mouse-colored hair falling carelessly across his brow, looked almost ten years younger. And there was an old-fas.h.i.+oned distinction about the Norfolk suit. It fitted him quite well; Miss Price's father, Carey realized, must have been as thin and angular as Miss Price. The buckled shoes, perhaps, were not quite right, but the over-all effect was pleasing; he looked rather romantic, or -as Charles put it-"like some kind of poet from Oxford."

Miss Price examined him with critical eyes and, on the whole, seemed pleased. With comb and nail scissors, she lightly trimmed the hair behind his ears. "That's better," she said, as she brushed him down. Modestly proud, she seemed, as though she had.invented him. "Now let me see your nails. . . ."

Emelius submitted humbly to being turned about-to having his tie knotted and his collar straightened; this was his homage to a master-craftswoman-one who would always know best.

They arranged to make tea a picnic meal and to take Emelius across the fields to Pepperinge Eye. It was with no small excitement that they started out on this expedition. Miss Price herself looked strangely moved as Emelius with sparkling eyes named each field or wood. There were few changes. Rush Field, Stummets, Cankerho, these had been the same in his day. Blowditch in Emelius's time had been called b.l.o.o.d.yditch, an echo of past battles, but Farr Wood was still Farr Wood, "and still," said Carey, who had walked there often, "as far." Emelius could not find his father's house in Pepperinge Eye. He thought it had stood on the site of the present vicarage. They all insisted upon going into the churchyard to see if, by any chance, Emelius had been buried there. But he wasn't-at least he couldn't find his own grave. He found, however, the grave of his aunt- Sarah Ann Hobday-and to his surprise, after sc.r.a.ping the lichen from the nearly defaced gravestone, he found that she had died on the twenty-seventh of August, 1666, the day-was it yesterday?-on which the children had appeared in his rooms. It was like getting a telegram.

"Oh, dear," said Miss Price, distressed, "I am so sorry. Perhaps we had better go home. ..."

"Nay," said Emelius somberly. "Charon waits for all. Better to live well than to live long. I had not seen her since I was a child. . . ." He sighed. "Every light has its shadow."

"And it's an ill wind-" began Charles eagerly.

Miss Price turned sharply. "What can you mean, Charles?"

"Nothing," said Charles. He looked a little shamefaced and stooped to pick up a stone.

"He's thinking of the house," said Carey. "Couldn't we go and see it?"

"Well, really, Carey-" began Miss Price. She seemed a little shocked.

"I mean, as we're so near? What's the good of going home? We'd only sit and mope. It might cheer him up," she added quickly. "I mean, it's his house now. . . ."

"Would it yet be there?" asked Emelius.

Miss Price looked thoughtful. "I don't see why it shouldn't be." She turned to Emelius. "Do you know the way?"

Yes, he knew the way all right-none better-by Tinker's Lane. But this they found had become a cart track and disappeared into a farm. "Trespa.s.sers will be prosecuted" said a notice on the gate, and a large black dog rushed out to bark at them.

"No matter," Emelius told them. Suddenly taking the lead, he led them back to the road, and, skirting the farm buildings, he took them through fields and spinneys to the base of the hill beyond. Miss Price became a little fussed and disheveled-she was not at her best climbing through hedges.

"Are you sure there isn't a bull?" she would ask, perched precariously on the upper rungs of a five-barred gate.

At last, they found the track again-a faint depression in the turfy gra.s.s. No more hedges; the hill swelled steeply above them. There were chalk and harebells and an occasional clump of beech trees. They followed the curve of the hill until at last the view widened beneath them and a sweet breeze stole their breath. Carey found a fossil; Miss Price mislaid a glove.

While they were searching, Emelius went ahead; turning a sudden corner, he seemed to disappear. When at last they came upon him, he was standing in a hollow, knee-deep in brambles. Among the brambles, there were stones and rubble. It might well have been the ruin of a house, Carey thought- looking about her-awash with elder bushes and trailing honeysuckle. Tears of disappointment came to her eyes. "Was it really here? " she asked, hoping he might be mistaken.

"Indeed, yes," Emelius a.s.sured her. He seemed elated rather than depressed-as though this was proof of his having skipped the centuries. He took Miss Price's hand and helped her down-quite excited he had become, almost boyish-and left her marooned on a piece of coping while gingerly he jumped from stone to stone, showing the general layout of the rooms. "Here was the parlor, here the dairy. This," he explained as he jumped down into a long hollow, "was the sunken garden where my aunt grew sweet herbs." He kicked the sandy rubble from some flat stones. "And here the cellar steps." He showed them where the apple orchard had been and the barn. "It was a comely, neat house," he repeated proudly. "And none to inherit it save I."

When they reached the main road, a strange incident occurred. Emelius disappeared. One moment he was walking just behind them, and the next he was nowhere to be seen. Miss Price stopped Dr. Lamond in his old Ford and asked him if he had seen, along the road, a young man of Emelius's description.

"Yes," said the doctor. "As I turned the corner, he was close behind you; then he made a dart for that field."

They found Emelius behind the hedge, white and shaking. It was the car that had unnerved him. His panic, in the face of such a monster, had left no place for courtesy. It was some time before Miss Price could calm him. When the mail van pa.s.sed them later, Emelius stood his ground, but the sweat broke on his brow, and he quivered like a horse about to shy. He did not speak again until they reached home.

6 MAGIC IN MODERATION.

Breaking Emelius into twentieth-century life was not easy, but Miss Price had great patience. He learned to clean his own shoes and to pa.s.s the bread and b.u.t.ter at tea. He became more modern in his speech, and once was heard to say O.K. They had no sooner got him used to cars when he saw a jeep, and all their good work was undone. Airplanes he marveled at, but they did not come close enough to frighten him. But daily, as he learned more of the state of the world, modern inventions and the march of "progress," he clung closer to Miss Price as the one una.s.sailable force in the midst of nightmarish havoc.

On warm evenings, after the children were in bed, he would be with Miss Price in the garden, stripping damsons with a rake (for bottling), and they would talk about magic. Carey could hear them through her window, their voices rising and falling in restrained but earnest argument as the damsons pattered into the basket and the sun sank low behind the trees. "I never sc.r.a.pe the scales from an adder," she once heard Miss Price say earnestly. "It takes force from any spell except those in which hemlock is combined with fennel. The only time I ever sc.r.a.pe the scales from an adder is in spells against St. Vitus's dance; then for some reason, it gives better results. . . ." Sometimes, when Emelius had been speaking, Miss Price would exclaim rather scornfully: "Well, if you want to go back to the wax image and pin school-" and Carey always wondered what the wax image and pin school was, and why Emelius, having graduated, should want to go back there.

One evening Carey overheard a most curious conversation. It began by Miss Price saying brightly: "Have you ever tried intrasubstantiary-locomotion? "

There was a mystified silence on the part of Emelius. Then he said, rather uncertainly: "No. At least, not often." (He had never confessed to Miss Price that, after a lifetime's study of magic, he had never yet got a spell to work.) "It's awfully jolly," she went on. "I had a positive craze for it once." The damsons pattered gently into the basket, and Carey wondered if Emelius was as curious as she was.

Miss Price gave a little laugh. She sounded almost girlish. "Of course^ as spells go, it's child's play. But sometimes the easiest things are the most effective, don't you think?"

Emelius cleared his throat. "I'm not sure that I haven't got it a little muddled in my mind," he ventured guardedly. "I may be confusing it with-"

Miss Price laughed quite gaily. "Oh, you couldn't confuse intrasubstantiary-locomotion with anything else." She seemed amused.

"No," admitted Emelius. "No. I suppose you couldn't."

"Unless," said Miss Price, suddenly thoughtful, leaning forward on the rake and gazing earnestly into the middle distance, "you mean-"

"Yes," put in Emelius hastily, "that's what I do mean."

"What?" asked Miss Price wonderingly.

"That's what I was confusing it with."

"With what?"

"With-" Emelius hesitated. "With what you were going to say."

"But intrasubstantiary-locomotion is quite different." Miss Price sounded surprised and rather puzzled.

"Oh, yes," admitted Emelius hastily, "it's completely different, but all the same-"

"You see intrasubstantiary-locomotion is making a pair of shoes walk without any feet in them."

"Ah, yes," agreed Emelius with relief. "Shoes. That's it."

"Or a suit of clothes get up and sit down."

"Yes," said Emelius, but he sounded a little less sure of himself.

"Of course," went on Miss Price enthusiastically,. "the very best results are got from was.h.i.+ng on a line." She laughed delightedly. "It's amazing what you can do with was.h.i.+ng on a line."

"Astounding," agreed Emelius. He gave a nervous little laugh.

"Except sheets," Miss Price pointed out.

"Oh, sheets are no good."

"It has to be wearing apparel. Something you can make look as if a person was inside it."

"Naturally," said Emelius rather coldly.

At first Miss Price, anxious not to have him on her hands for too long, had taken great trouble to explain the circ.u.mstances that governed the length of Emelius's visit, but, latterly, as he began to settle down and find happiness in the discovery of friends, she, too, seemed sad at the thought of his departure. And contented as he was, he himself was a little worried about the Fire of London and what might have happened to his rooms in Cripplegate, and, also, he felt in duty bound (having read of his aunt's death in the churchyard) to attend to the business of inheriting her estate. "I can always come back and visit you," he would explain, "if you could come and fetch me."

But Miss Price didn't approve of this idea. "One thing or another," she would say, "not this das.h.i.+ng about between centuries. A settled life is good for everyone. I think the wise thing to do would be to give up your London establishment and settle down in your aunt's house at Pepperinge Eye. And we could walk up there sometimes, and it would be nice to think of your living there. You would not seem so far away."

Emelius thought this over. "It's a good piece of land," he said at last, but he spoke rather sadly.

Carey, who was present, said warmly, as if to comfort him: "We'd go there often. We'd sit on the stones in the parlor, near where the fireplace was, and we'd feel awfully near you-"

Emelius looked at her. "I'd like you to see the house," he said. "As it is in my day."

Carey turned to Miss Price.

"Couldn't we go just once?" she asked.

Miss Price tightened her lips. "It's always 'just once,' Carey. You've had your 'just once,' and we've still to take Mr. Jones back."

"If we promise not to stay a minute, just a second, when we take him back, couldn't we just go once and see him at his aunt's house?"

Emelius glanced at Miss Price's face, then sadly down at the lawn.

"It isn't," said Miss Price uncomfortably, "that I wouldn't be happy to go and see Mr. Jones, especially in that dear little house, but-"

"But what?" asked Carey.

"I'm responsible for you children. There seems to be no way of knowing what may happen on these outings-"

"Well," said Carey reasonably, "it's hardly much of an outing-just to go and visit Mr. Jones-in his quiet little house at Pepperinge Eye-not two miles away."

"I know, Carey," Miss Price pointed' out. "But what about that quiet day we planned on the beach?"

"Well, after all, that was a cannibal island. This is quite different. Mr. Jones's -aunt's dear little house. At Pepperinge Eye-"

"If you came just once," said Emelius. "Say, a week after I left, just to see it all. Then after that you could just come in spirit-"

"In spirit?" said Miss Price dubiously.

"I mean just take a walk up to where the house was and we'll think of each other," said Emelius.

Miss Price sat silent. They could not read her expression. At last she said, rather surprisingly: "I don't like flying in the face of nature-"

"Well," Carey pointed out, "isn't the broomstick-?"

"No," said Miss Price, "that's different, that's accepted- witches have always flown on broomsticks." She paused. "No, I don't quite know how to put it, and I don't really like to mention it, but there's no getting away from the fact that, as far as we're concerned, Mr. Jones is long since dead and buried."

Emelius stared glumly at the gra.s.s between his feet. He could not deny it.

"I don't hold it against him," went on Miss Price. "We must all come to it sooner or later, but it doesn't seem wise or natural to foster these attachments with one who is no more."

They sat silent; then, after a bit, Emelius sighed. "There is no record of my death in the churchyard," he pointed out.

Miss Price pursed up her lips. "That proves nothing. We did not look in the annex behind the yew hedge."

"Don't let's," said Carey suddenly.

A CHANGE OF MIND.

But Miss Price stuck to the original plan. When Emelius's clothes arrived from the cleaners, they took him back. They dropped him in Goat Alley at night and did not stay a minute. Miss Price never liked long-drawn-out good-bys, and in her efforts to spare everybody's feelings she was almost too businesslike. She would not "step upstairs" to try his cherry cordial. She bundled the children back onto the bed with almost indecent haste, and left Emelius standing, somber and dark-robed, in the moonlit street. Embarra.s.sed she seemed, and worried by the whole business, and she was sharp with the children when they got home, and next day flung herself into bottling as though she tried to drown the memory of that sad white face deep in sliced apricot and squashed tomato pulp. She did not join the children on their expeditions, and the bed-k.n.o.b had been hidden away.

The happy atmosphere of the little house seemed to have dispersed, and the children wandered into the fields and sat on gates, talking and kicking their heels. They chewed long stalks of gra.s.s and quarreled idly, while the end of the holidays loomed in sight and lowered over them.

No one even mentioned Emelius until one day at tea when Miss Price, quite suddenly, brought the subject up herself.

"I wonder," she said, gazing pensively at the brown teapot, "if we should have taken Mr. Jones right home."

The atmosphere at once became electric. Carey laid down her teaspoon. All three pairs of eyes were fixed on Miss Price's face.

"But we did," said Charles after a moment.

"I mean," went on Miss Price, "leaving him in the street like that. It was rather rude."

"Yes," said Carey. "His house might have been damaged in the fire, or anything. He might have had nowhere to sleep that night."

Miss Price looked worried. "It was just that we agreed- didn't we?-not to stay."

"Yes," said Carey. "You remember we asked you whether if we promised not to stay a minute, a second, when we took him back, you would let us go later and visit him properly."

"I didn't promise anything," replied Miss Price hastily. She poured herself out another cup of tea. As she stirred it, she said uncertainly: "But I think he's all right, don't you? He could always go down to Pepperinge Eye."

"Yes," said Carey, "I'm sure he'd manage."