The Box of Delights (21 page)

‘Ah, Kay,’ she said, ‘I know why you come to me today. You will hear more tomorrow, if you go to Chester Hills. Now that you are here, what of all the things in the world would
you like to eat?’

Kay thought and thought, at last he said, ‘I think, mangoes, please.’ Instantly out of the wall three plates appeared laden with mangoes. The plates had neat little legs which
walked. They walked up to the table and bowed down before him, so that he could eat the mangoes; afterwards a sponge walked up and mopped off the stickiness.

‘And now, Kay,’ the Lady said, ‘what, of all things, would you like to see?’

‘Well, of all things, I think,’ he said, ‘a tournament.’

Instantly, one wall of the room rolled away, so that he could look into the courtyard of the Castle, which was now divided into two by a gaily painted barrier. The sides of the yard were lined
with tiers of seats, full of people and gay with banners.

At each end of the lists two Knights, one in scarlet, one in white armour, were taking position on horses excited by the music and the crowd. Suddenly, the trumpeters in the royal box blew all
together, the Knights dropped their lances to the rests, drove in their spurs, and hurtled at each other on different sides of the barrier. Under the royal box, they struck each other’s
shields with their spears; they themselves reeled in their saddles, but were not unseated: the spears broke at the guards and leaped a dozen feet into the air: the Knights finished their courses,
then wheeled round and waited for fresh spears. ‘Would you like to do that, Kay?’ the Lady asked.

‘Oh, I would,’ he said.

Instantly a squire led forth a warhorse with blue and white trappings for him. Out of the wall, the pieces of a suit of armour walked towards him and buckled themselves about him, first the
footgear, leggings and cuisses, then the body-armour and arm-pieces, lastly the helmet with its plume. A squire came forward to give him a leg-up into the saddle; another squire brought him a
lance.

‘It is not always wise to take part with the Past, Kay,’ the Lady said. ‘Arnold of Todi did so, as you may hear tomorrow, and where, in the Past, is he now? He is lost,
Kay.’

But Kay could not think of Arnold of Todi; he was on a great horse, feeling his mouth, and staring through the slit of his helm at his enemy at the other end. His enemy was a red Knight, just
gathering his shield, which now turned to Kay, so that he saw upon it a black wolf rampant. A squire handed him a white shield with blue chevrons on it, but before he could take it, the trumpets
blew. At once he drove forward at the Wolf Knight. The horses whinnied with delight, the joy of the charge surged up in him, he saw the red helm crouched above the Wolf; then, crash, they met.

‘I’ve got him,’ Kay shouted, as he felt his spear drive home on to the Red Knight’s chest, and the Knight go backward over the crupper.

He
had
got him, but something odd had happened to himself. ‘My girths are gone,’ he cried. He felt the saddle turn under his horse’s belly while himself was flung
headlong, endlong, anylong, down, down, down, back to his chair by the fireplace in his room at Seekings.

‘Well, tomorrow,’ he said, ‘as soon as ever it is light, I’ll go out to Chester Hills to hear more.’

Next morning, as soon as ever it was light, he dressed. Taking the Box, he turned the knob first so that he might become tiny; next, so that he might go swiftly; instantly, he was whirled up
through the chimney, out through the cowl and away, just as it was growing to be light. He felt so minute that he trembled lest a sparrow should peck him in mistake for a caterpillar. In a moment
or two he was whirled down to the doorstep of the great house at Chester Hills, still clutching the Box. He was shrunken to the size of one of his leaden soldiers. The front door was open. He was
on the top step; he walked towards the hall.

Unfortunately, at that instant, a boy and girl were coming towards the house carrying between them a basket of packages. The sun shone at that instant on the doorstep. The girl dropped her end
of the basket and made a dart up the steps.

‘Quick, Bert!’ she cried. ‘There’s a fairy. Quick, catch him! We’ll catch him and sell him.’

As she darted up the steps Kay slipped into the house and dodged to cover under the hangings of a window-seat. The two children followed and peered about at the door, whispering together.
Plainly they were afraid to come further.

‘What was it you saw?’ the boy asked.

‘A fairy dressed like a little boy.’

‘Oh, go on!’

‘But I did and he can’t have gone far.’

‘What d’you mean by a fairy?’ the boy asked.

‘A fairy, like a little boy – a little, tiny boy no bigger than my little finger.’

‘Go on,’ the boy said. ‘There aren’t such things as fairies: it’s all rot about fairies.’

‘But, I tell you, I saw one,’ the girl said.

‘Well, we’ll cop it if we are caught in here,’ the boy said.

‘Here,’ the girl said, taking a walking-stick from the walking-stick-stand just inside the door, ‘I’m going to give a prod underneath the seat there.’

The stick which she took was a sort of alpenstock with a long steel spike at the end of it. She thrust it under the hangings of the window-seat and raked with it there. Kay saw it coming at him
like the head of a battering-ram mounted on a tree-trunk. It missed him by about an inch.

‘It was in there he went, I’ll bet a dollar,’ the girl said.

The steel spike came prodding round again. Kay, crouching against the panels, gave himself up for lost.

There came the pad of straw-soled slippers on the stone corridor and the squeaky voice of an old man said, ‘What are you two doing there?’

The battering-ram fell with a crash. Kay heard the children rush away, pick up the basket and fly off. The old man came slowly limping to the door. Kay could see his feet in straw-soled
slippers, with old trouser-ends dangling down over them and the end of a dark green apron; also the head of a broom which the old man was trailing after him.

‘I shall report them,’ the old man muttered. ‘They’re not allowed in. They know that just as well as I do. I shall report them. It’s not the first time. I’ll
report them as sure as my name’s in the Bible. It was that girl and boy who cried “Hoi!” at me, and I shall report them and they’ll get stick pie, as sure as my name’s
in the Bible. I’ll teach them to cry “Hoi!” at me!’

He kept muttering how he would report them and how his name was in the Bible as he began to sweep out the hall. The broom began its work under the window-seat. In one instant the broom was
rushing at Kay with a row of bristling hairs like a small plantation. They were soft hairs but they did not seem soft to Kay. They swept him off his feet into a collection of dust, pins, wool,
matches which looked like stakes of wood, and cigarette ends which to Kay seemed like great logs all covered with charred grass. Kay was rolled over and over into the open hall, with his eyes tight
shut for fear of being blinded and clutching the Box of Delights lest he should lose it. Another thrust of the broom buried him deep in grits, bits of gravel, mud and dead leaves which had been
knocked off on the hall floor from boots coming in. He saw the old man’s foot poised above him and thought, ‘Now I shall be trodden on and squashed flat.’ The old man pitched the
doormat out of doors, picked up his broom, gave three vigorous thrusts with it and rolled Kay with the last of them right out on to the porch.

Kay picked himself up and contrived to press the knob on the Box, saying, ‘I want to go fast to the chief room in this place.’

Instantly he was plucked through the hall, along a corridor into a room where he was set down on a shelf of books, six feet from the floor. Near to him on the shelf was a sand-glass and behind
him a row of the works of the English Poets, edited by somebody called Gilfillan. The walls were hung with hunting pictures and one especially he noticed which represented a small waterfall
sweeping away a fox and three hounds; just beside the waterfall a hunter in a red coat was climbing to his feet from a fallen horse; with the legend: ‘The Chester Hills Day: February,
1841.’

He heard the bell of the house chime for half-past eight. Then a pleasant, silky voice came towards him from along the passage singing a popular song.

‘That’s Abner Brown,’ Kay muttered; ‘and he wouldn’t sing unless he were doing something pretty bad.’

Kay slipped in between two of the English Poets as Abner entered the room.

‘What news? What news?’ Abner muttered.

He pressed the button of a bell and sat at his desk. Presently someone entered.

‘Did you please to ring, oh Father?’ the newcomer asked.

‘Yes, Nineteen,’ Abner said, ‘I did ring. Send Seven here, will you, please?’

Kay saw Abner take up various typewritten slips.

‘The latest wireless,’ he said. ‘Ho, he won’t, won’t he? Oh, so the Police have a clue, have they? Clever chaps, the Police; clever fellows. Ha! She offers seventy
thousand for the sapphires. Ah no, Madam: this is not a bargain-sale. Eighty-five thousand is our price.’

Presently a robust voice was heard approaching from the back of the house. It was singing a song which was certainly not the song for a young clergyman:

The door was shoved open and a man came striding in. He was the big man whom Kay had seen at the
Rupert’s Arms
: the man called Joe. He was laughing and singing in a
breath.

‘You want me, Chief?’ he said.

‘You might close the door, perhaps,’ Abner said: ‘Gently.’

The man, from where he stood, made a long leg and kicked the door to; then he drew near to Abner’s desk and stood there, waiting.

‘You sent for me, Chief?’ he said at last.

‘Yes,’ Abner said. ‘I hear you’ve permitted yourself some little criticisms of my orders about these clergymen.’

Kay, who could see Joe’s face, saw at once that Joe was asking himself, ‘Who on earth could have told him that?’

‘Odd how the news gets about here, isn’t it?’ Abner said.

‘You’re right,’ Joe said.

‘So you
have
been criticising my orders. Why?’

‘Well,’ Joe said, ‘if I knew why the orders were given I might see sense in them, but to kidnap a lot of clergymen, who can’t afford any ransom worth your while, seems to
me a lot of foolishness. You’ve roused the Press, you’ve roused the Yard and you’ve roused the Nation . . . here’s the morning papers . . . all to get a Box, you say, that
belongs to the Punch and Judy man.’

‘Correct,’ Abner said. ‘That was in the possession of the Punch and Judy man would be better, perhaps.’

‘Well, then, that’s why we criticise,’ Joe said. ‘You know that this old man, Cole Hawlings, had the Box when he went to Seekings House. You know that he hadn’t got
it next morning. Well, you’ve got Him, haven’t you? What we can’t understand is why you don’t make him tell you where he put it.’

‘How would you make him?’ Abner asked.

‘He’s an old man: a bit of talking-to would make him tell. No need to hurt him; threaten him with a red-hot poker, or keep him awake with Itchy Powder. If he’d scratched all
these last two nights he’d have told you by this time.’

‘Then you don’t realise who Cole Hawlings is?’

‘We don’t. To us, he’s a prisoner with information which you want. I say threaten him (or hurt him, if he’s stubborn) till he gives you the information. If that’s
not cold sense, what is?’

‘Cold sense,’ Abner said; ‘the English strong point, like “fair play” and “justice” and these others.’

‘Well, they’re things you get the benefit of,’ Joe said, ‘little as you may like them. What about it?’

‘Ah,’ Abner said, ‘what indeed?’

Some of his words had been spoken with such savage sarcasm that Kay had trembled in his shoes; now all the savagery went out of his voice; he spoke again, with the utmost gentleness.

‘Joe,’ he said, ‘can I trust you with a secret?’

‘Why, Chief,’ Joe said, ‘you know you can trust me with anything, except perhaps a cold drink on a hot summer day.’

‘I think I can, Joe,’ Abner said. ‘As a general rule, if a man can’t keep a secret he needn’t expect anybody else to keep it for him. Still, in this case, I will
tell you why even I dare not threaten or hurt Cole Hawlings. It will go no further, of course,’ Abner said.

‘It will be secret as the grave with me,’ Joe said.

‘Yes,’ Abner said. ‘As secret as the grave; I think it will be; as secret as a very secret grave.

‘Did you ever heard of Ramon Lully, Joe?’ Abner asked.

‘You mean the chap who did the box trick at the Coliseum?’ Joe asked.

‘No, Joe, not the Coliseum man,’ Abner said. ‘The man I mean was a philosopher of the Middle Ages. They show his tomb at Palma. Remember the name, for I shall allude to it
later.’

‘Right,’ Joe said. ‘I can remember. But if you are going opening tombs don’t ask me. It’s a job I don’t hold with, though, of course, I know some people have
done very well out of it.’

‘Well,’ Abner continued, ‘did you ever hear of Arnold of Todi?’

‘No, I can’t say I ever did,’ Joe said. ‘What was he, or is he?’

‘Well, he too was a philosopher of the Middle Ages,’ Abner said, ‘and not very, very much is known of him. But the son of one of his disciples left some papers which say that
he and Lully were rivals. Lully was all for finding an Elixir of Life that would make him last through the Future: Arnold was always trying to find some power of entering the Past.’

‘Golly!’ Joe said, ‘they were a couple of queer cough drops, if you ask me.’

‘I’m not asking you,’ Abner said: ‘I am telling you. This unknown man whom I mentioned says in his papers that Arnold, by some extraordinary magic power, created a Box,
by means of which he could enter the Past at will.’

‘In fact, he did the box trick,’ Joe said; ‘like that chap at the Coliseum.’

‘Now,’ Abner said, ‘some think that Arnold entered the Past by means of this Box and could not get out of it, but is wandering there for ever. Anyhow, he disappeared; but the
Box, the man says, remained. He thinks that Dante had it, and that two of the great painters of Italy had it, and then a lesser painter, Zaganelli. I have reason to believe that Shakespeare had it
and that he gave it to a poet called Wilkins, who was afraid to use it; and Wilkins gave it to a lady – one of the Stiboroughs – who was afraid of it. She kept it in Stiborough Castle,
about twenty miles from here. In the Civil War Stiborough was besieged and she buried the Box in the Castle vaults. When the Parliament took the Castle they blew up most of it, so that the vaults
were filled with the ruins.