The Borrowers (15 page)

"What did they do?"

Mrs. May laid down her work and stared for a moment, thoughtfully, at her idle hands. "I hated the rat-catcher," she said suddenly.

"Why, did you know him?"

"Everybody knew him. He had a wall eye and his name was Rich William. He was also the pig-killer, and, well—he did other things as well—he had a gun, a hatchet, a
spade, a pick-ax, and a contraption with bellows for smoking things out. I don't know what the smoke was exactly—poison fumes of some kind which he made himself from herbs and chemicals. I only remember the smell of it; it clung round the barns or wherever he'd been. You can imagine what my brother felt on that third day, the day he was leaving, when suddenly he smelled that smell....

"He was all dressed and ready to go. The bags were packed and down in the hall. Mrs. Driver came and unlocked the door and took him down the passage to Aunt Sophy. He stood there, stiff and pale, in gloves and overcoat beside the curtained bed. 'Seasick already?' Aunt Sophy mocked him, peering down at him over the edge of the great mattress.

"'No,' he said, 'it's that smell.'

"Aunt Sophy lifted her nose. She sniffed. 'What smell is it, Driver?'

"'It's the rat-catcher, my lady,' explained Mrs. Driver, reddening, 'down in the kitchen.'

"'What!' exclaimed Aunt Sophy, 'are you smoking them out?' and she began to laugh. 'Oh dear ... oh dear!' she gasped, 'but if you don't like them, Driver, the remedy's simple.'

"'What is that, my lady?' asked Mrs. Driver coldly, but even her chins were red.

"Helpless with mirth Aunt Sophy waved a ringed hand toward her, her eyes were screwed up and her shoulders shaking: 'Keep the bottle corked,' she managed at last
and motioned them weakly away. They heard her laughing still as they went on down the stairs.

"'She don't believe in them,' muttered Mrs. Driver, and she tightened her grip on my brother's arm. 'More fool her! She'll change her tune, like enough, when I take them up afterwards, laid out in sizes, on a clean piece of newspaper...' and she dragged him roughly across the hall.

"The clock had been moved, exposing the wainscot, and, as my brother saw at once, the hole had been blocked and sealed. The front door was open as usual and the sunshine streamed in. The bags stood there beside the fiber mat, cooking a little in the golden warmth. The fruit trees beyond the bank had shed their petals and were lit with tender green, transparent in the sunlight. 'Plenty of time,' said Mrs. Driver, glancing up at the clock, 'the cab's not due 'til three-thirty—'

"'The clock's stopped,' said my brother.

"Mrs. Driver turned. She was wearing her hat and her best black coat, ready to take him to the station. She looked strange and tight and chapel-going—not a bit like 'Driver.' 'So it has,' she said; her jaw dropped and her cheeks became heavy and pendulous. 'It's moving it,' she decided after a moment. 'It'll be all right,' she went on, 'once we get it back. Mr. Frith comes on Monday,' and she dragged again at his arm above the elbow.

"'Where are we going?' he asked, holding back.

"'Along to the kitchen. We've got a good ten minutes. Don't you want to see them caught?'

"'No,' he said, 'no!' and pulled away from her.

"Mrs. Driver stared at him, smiling a little. 'I do,' she said; 'I'd like to see 'em close. He puffs this stuff in and they come running out. At least, that's how it works with rats. But first, he says, you block up all the exits...' and her eyes followed his to the hole below the wainscot.

'"How did they find it?' the boy asked (puttied it looked, and with a square of brown paper pasted on crooked).

"'Rich William found it. That's his job.'

"'They could unstick that,' said the boy after a moment.

"Mrs. Driver laughed. 'Oh no they couldn't! Cemented, that is. A great block of it, right inside, with a sheet of iron across from the front of that old stove in the outhouse. He and Crampfurl had to have the morning-room floor up to get at it. All Tuesday they was working, up till tea-time. We aren't going to have no more capers of that kind. Not under the clock. Once you get that clock back, it can't be moved again in a hurry. Not if you want it to keep time, it can't. See where it's stood—where the floor's washed away like?' It was then my brother saw for the first and last time, that raised platform of unscrubbed stone. 'Come on now,' said Mrs. Driver and took him by the arm. 'We'll hear the cab from the kitchen.'

"But the kitchen, as she dragged him past the baize door, seemed a babel of sound. No approaching cab could be heard here—what with yelps and barks and stampings and excited voices. 'Steady, steady, steady, steady, steady...'
Crampfurl was saying, on one loud note, as he held back the rat-catcher's terriers which shrilled and panted on the leash. The policeman was there, Nellie Runacre's son Ernie. He had come out of interest and stood back from the others a little, in view of his calling, with a cup of tea in his hand and his helmet pushed off his forehead. But his face was pink with boyish excitement and he stirred the teaspoon round and round. 'Seeing's believing!' he said cheerfully to Mrs. Driver when he saw her come in at the door. A boy from the village was there with a ferret. It kept sort of pouring out of his pocket, my brother said, and the boy kept pushing it back. Rich William himself was crouched on the floor by the hole. He had lighted something beneath a piece of sacking and the stench of its smoldering eddied about the room. He was working the bellows now, with infinite care, stooping over them—rapt and tense.

"My brother stood there as though in a dream ('Perhaps it was a dream,' he said to me later—much later, after we were all grown up). He gazed round the kitchen. He saw the sunlit fruit trees through the window and a bough of the cherry tree which stood upon the bank; he saw the empty tea cups on the table, with spoons stuck in them and one without a saucer; he saw, propped against the wall close beside the baize door, the rat-catcher's belongings—a frayed coat, patched with leather; a bundle of rabbit snares; two sacks; a spade, a gun, and a pick-ax....

"'Stand by now,' Rich William was saying; there was a rising note of excitement in his voice, but he did not turn his head. 'Stand by. Ready now to slip the dogs.'

"Mrs. Driver let go my brother's arm and moved toward the hole. 'Keep back,' said the rat-catcher, without turning. 'Give us room—' and Mrs. Driver backed nervously toward the table. She put a chair beside it and half raised one knee, but lowered it again when she caught Ernie Runacre's mocking glance. 'All right, ma,' he said, cocking one eyebrow, 'we'll give you a leg up when the time comes,' and Mrs. Driver threw him a furious look; she snatched up the three cups from the table and stumped away with them, angrily, into the scullery. 'Seemingless smutch of something-or-other.' my brother heard her mutter as she brushed past him. And at those words, suddenly, my brother came to life.

"He threw a quick glance about the kitchen: the men were absorbed; all eyes were on the rat-catcher—except those of the village boy who was getting out his ferret. Stealthily my brother drew off his gloves and began to move backwards ... slowly ... slowly ... toward the green baize door; as he moved, gently stuffing his gloves into his pocket, he kept his eyes on the group around the hole. He paused a moment beside the rat-catcher's tools, and stretched out a wary, groping hand; his fingers closed at last on a wooden handle—smooth it was and worn with wear; he glanced down quickly to make sure—was as he hoped the pick-ax He leaned back a little and pushed—almost imperceptibly—against the door
with his shoulders: it opened sweetly, in its silent way. Not one of the men had looked up. 'Steady now,' the rat-catcher was saying, stooping closely over the bellows, 'it takes a moment like to go right through ... there ain't much ventilation, not under a floor....'

"My brother slid through the barely opened door and it sighed to behind him, closing out the noise. He took a few steps on tiptoe down the dark kitchen passage and then he ran.

"There was the hall again, steeped in sunshine, with his bags beside the door. He bumped against the clock and it struck a note, a trembling note—urgent and deep. He raised the pick-ax to the height of his shoulder and aimed a sideways blow at the hole below the wainscot. The paper tore, a few crumbs of plaster fell out, and the pick-ax rebounded sharply, jarring his hands. There was indeed iron behind the cement—something immovable. Again he struck. And again and again. The wainscot above the hole became split and scratched, and the paper hung down in strips, but still the pick-ax bounced. It was no good; his hands, wet with sweat, were sliding and slipping on the wood. He paused for breath and, looking out, he saw the cab. He saw it on the road, beyond the hedge on the far side of the orchard; soon it would reach the russet apple tree beside the gate; soon it would turn into the drive. He glanced up at the clock. It was ticking steadily—the result, perhaps, of his knock. The sound gave him comfort and steadied his thumping heart; time, that's what he needed, a little
more time. 'It takes a moment like,' the rat-catcher had said, 'to go right through ... there ain't much ventilation, not under a floor....'

"'Ventilation'—that was the word, the saving word. Pick-ax in hand my brother ran out of the door. He stumbled once on the gravel path and nearly fell; the pickax handle came up and struck him a sharp blow on the temple. Already, when he reached it, a thin filament of smoke was eddying out of the grating and he thought, as he ran toward it, that there was a flicker of movement against the darkness between the bars. And that was where they would be, of course, to get the air. But he did not stop to make sure. Already he heard behind him the crunch of wheels on the gravel and the sound of the horse's hoofs. He was not, as I have told you, a very strong little boy, and he was only nine (not ten, as he had boasted to Arrietty) but, with two great blows on the brickwork, he dislodged one end of the grating. It fell down sideways, slightly on a slant, hanging—it seemed—by one nail. Then he clambered up the bank and threw the pick-ax with all his might into the long grass beyond the cherry tree. He remembered thinking as he stumbled back, sweaty and breathless, toward the cab, how that too—the loss of the pick-ax—would cause its own kind of trouble later."

"B
UT
," exclaimed Kate, "didn't he see them come out?"

"No. Mrs. Driver came along then, in a flurry of annoyance, because they were late for the train. She bustled him into the cab because she wanted to get back again, she said, as fast as she could to be 'in at the death.' Driver was like that."

Kate was silent a moment, looking down. "So that
is
the end," she said at last.

"Yes," said Mrs. May, "it could be. Or the beginning."

"But"—Kate raised a worried face—"perhaps they didn't escape through the grating?"

"Oh, they escaped all right," said Mrs. May lightly.

"But how do you know?"

"I just know," said Mrs. May.

"But how did they get across those fields? With the cows and things? And the crows?"

"They walked, I suppose. The Hendrearys did it. People can do anything when they have a mind to."