The Box of Delights (3 page)

The old man paused an instant and looked about him. By this time, all those who had met or who had travelled by the train were gone from the station yard, while the porters and ticket man had
gone back to shelter.

‘And now, Master Harker, of Seekings,’ the old man said, ‘now that the Wolves are Running, as you will have seen, perhaps you would do something to stop their Bite? Or
wouldn’t you?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Kay said, ‘but is there anything I can do for you?’

‘Master Harker,’ he said, ‘there is something that no other soul can do for me but you alone. As you go down towards Seekings, if you would stop at Bob’s shop, as it were
to buy muffins now . . . Near the door you will see a woman plaided from the cold, wearing a ring of a very strange shape, Master Harker, being like my ring here, of the longways cross in gold and
garnets. And she has very bright eyes, Master Harker, as bright as mine, which is what few have. If you will step into Bob’s shop to buy muffins now, saying nothing, not even to your good
friend, and say to this Lady “The Wolves are Running,” then she will know and Others will know; and none will get bit.’

‘I’ll do that, of course,’ Kay said. ‘But how did you know my name?’

‘When Wolves Run it betides to know, Master Harker,’ he said. ‘And I do bless you.

‘But Time and Tide and Buttered Eggs wait for no man,’ he added. He swung away at once, bent under his pack, followed by his Dog Barney. He had that odd stagger or waddle in his
knees that Kay had so often noticed in old countrymen.

‘How on earth does he know my name?’ Kay thought. ‘And how does he know Bob’s shop? I’ve certainly never seen him before today . . .’ He went back to the
car.

‘I’m sorry to have been so long,’ he said. ‘He’s a queer old man. I should think he has been something very different once . . .’

‘About your being robbed,’ Caroline Louisa said. ‘Who was with you in the train?’

‘Two men, but I don’t think they would have robbed me. They were two sort of curates. They got in at Hope-under-Chesters and got out here. The funny thing was that they knew my name
and that I came from Seekings.’

‘They could have read that from your luggage labels,’ she said. ‘If your curates got in at Hope-under-Chesters they may have been members of the Missionaries College
there.’

‘I say,’ Kay said, ‘are there any muffins?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘teacakes, but no muffins.’

‘Would you mind frightfully, if we stopped at Bob’s and got some muffins? Only you’ll have to lend me some tin, for my purse is gone. I haven’t a tosser to my
kick.’

‘Now Kay, you mustn’t use slang in the holidays.’

‘That’s nothing to some I know.’

At this moment, the car passed the old man. Kay waved to him and the old man waved back.

‘By the way,’ Kay said, ‘are there Buttered Eggs for lunch?’

‘Yes, specially for you. We must get on to them.’

‘You know,’ Kay said, ‘there’s something very queer about that old man. He knew that there would be Buttered Eggs. He said “Time, Tide and Buttered Eggs wait for no
man.”’

‘I expect that a good many have said something of the sort.’

‘No,’ Kay said. ‘He meant me, and that I ought to hurry up. There’s something uncanny about him. I mean in a good sense.’

‘Do you think that he could have picked your pockets?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘He was near you.’

‘No, but I had my money and watch after I was near him and missed them before I saw him the second time. Look. Look . . . There are the two curate sort of men, both in the bus,
there.’

‘I can’t look at them while I’m driving, I’m afraid. You’re sure they didn’t rob you?’

‘Quite. Though I didn’t like them much. I say, I wish you would let me drive.’

‘Not for another five years, Kay.’

‘I say; why ever not?’

‘Because it’s against the law, for one thing and likely to be fatal, for another.’

‘Fatal fiddlesticks. We’ve a man in the Fourth, at the Coll, who drove the old Bodger’s car once. What do the curates do at Chesters?’

‘They read good books and learn how to be clergymen. They have to work in the farm and garden, I believe. Did they want you to join them?’

‘They didn’t ask me. I wish you’d tell me about them.’

‘I don’t know very much to tell. They’re the other side the county. I seem to have heard that most of them go off to missions after a time of training.’

‘And get eaten by the cassowary?’

‘Some of them, perhaps. But I’m not telling you the news. I’ve got rather a shock to give you. All the Jones children are with us for the holidays.’

‘Oh, I say, golly, whatever for?’

‘The parents have to go abroad, and I couldn’t bear the children to have nowhere to go for Christmas. I do hope you won’t mind frightfully.’

‘I don’t mind at all,’ he said. ‘I like the Joneses . . . some of them. No, I like them all, really. There’s rather a gollop of them, though.’

‘I’m putting Peter into your room,’ she said. ‘You’ll have two little snug beds and can be like robbers in a cave.’

‘We’ll have some larks, I expect,’ Kay said. ‘I do hope Maria has brought some pistols. She generally has one or two.’

‘I hope she has nothing of the kind. What do you mean by pistols? What sort of pistols?’

‘Oh, the usual sort of pistols: revolvers: she got a lot of them from some robbers once. She’s sure to have some still. She says she couldn’t live without pistols now. She
shoots old electric light bulbs dangling from a clothes-line.’

‘She shall shoot none at Seekings, I trust.’

They sped on towards Seekings. ‘I say,’ Kay said, ‘how far is Hope-under-Chesters from here?’

‘Thirty or thirty-five miles.’

‘Do you know it at all?’

‘No, not more than one can know by passing.’

‘I thought it looked a wonderful sort of place. I’d like to go exploring there.’

‘It’s deep, wild country,’ she said, ‘but it is just a little far away for winter exploring. Leave it till the summer.’

‘When I grow up,’ Kay said, ‘I mean to explore all the wild bits left in England.’

‘There aren’t very many,’ she said, ‘but the Chesters are the wildest near here.’

‘Do you think any of the people are pagans, there, still?’

‘Not at heart, the Bishop says, but a good many in outward observance.’

‘There’s some snow,’ he said. ‘I do hope we shall have a real deep snow, so that we can make a snowman.’

‘The paper says that there will be snow, and the glass is falling.’

As they entered the little street, it was so dark with the promise of snow that the shops were being lighted. They were all decked out with holly, mistletoe, tinsel, crackers, toys, oranges,
model Christmas trees with tapers and glass balls, apples, sweets, sucking pigs, sides of beef, turkeys, geese, Christmas cakes and big plum puddings.

‘I say, I do love Christmas,’ Kay said. ‘You’ll have to give me a whole lot of tin presently, please, for I’ll have to get four extra presents for the Joneses. And
I wonder if I could get Jane to give me a plum pudding that I could give to that old man? I wouldn’t like him to have no plum pudding on Christmas. And would you mind stopping at
Bob’s?’

‘Jane will give you a plum pudding,’ she said, as she stopped the car in the busy market-place. There were open-air booths there selling all manner of matters for Christmas; chiefly
woollen mufflers, nailed boots, cloth caps, hedger’s gloves and the twenty-eight-pound cheeses, known as Tatchester Double Stones. The keepers of the stalls were flogging their arms against
the cold; some of them were packing up before the snow began. Kay passed through these in some excitement. ‘Of course, it’s all rot,’ he said. ‘How can he know that there
will be a woman near the door there . . . And yet, there is one, sure enough . . .’

Bob was the baker and confectioner of the little town. His shop was always sweet and pleasant with the smell of new bread. His window at this Christmas time was a sight to see. In it were two
Christmas cakes, four storeys high, in pink and white sugar, both crowned with little dancers in tinsel who went round and round, each holding little electric light bulbs. All round these cakes
were the most marvellous crackers that eye ever saw or child pulled. But Kay was not thinking of cake or crackers. He looked only at the figure of a woman who stood near the shopwindow, with her
back to the wall, staring at the man who was calling at a near-by booth:

She was plaided over the head and shoulders with a grey plaid shawl. Now, as Kay drew near, the woman, who had been motionless, stirred. Her right hand came from underneath the
plaid, drew the plaid closer about her, and held it there. Her hand was wearing what looked like a chamois-leather glove. On the middle finger outside the glove, and, therefore, very conspicuous,
was a ring such as the old man had worn, a heavy gold ring arranged in a St Andrew’s Cross and set with garnets. At the same moment the woman shook the plaid back from her face, so that Kay
saw a pair of eyes so bright that they seemed to burn in the head. She looked keenly at Kay. At the instant there was nobody very near. Kay looked at her. His heart beat as he said in a low voice,
‘The Wolves are Running.’ She looked hard at him, gave a very, very slight nod, and, as Kay went on into the shop to buy the muffins, she slipped away sideways, walking very swiftly
with an erect bearing. An old woman coming out of the shop with a basket shoved Kay aside, so that he lost sight of her at that point. She had moved into the thickest of the crowd in the
market-place.

‘Well, it’s very odd,’ Kay thought to himself. ‘I wonder what on earth he meant by “the Wolves are Running”, and why it was so important that she should
know?’

When he had bought his muffins, he stood on Bob’s steps for a moment trying to get the packet into his pocket. He looked out with relish at the street, thinking how good it was to be home
for the holidays. ‘Well, I’m blest,’ he said. ‘There are some more of those Police Dogs . . . working a cold scent.’

Indeed, some Alsatian dogs were at the cross-roads, testing the air with their noses, swaying their heads with the motion of a weaving horse, as though trying to catch a difficult scent. There
were three or four of them. They padded about, casting this way and that, sometimes lifting, sometimes dropping their noses; somehow he did not like the look of them.

‘I wonder who it is who has Alsatians?’ he said to Caroline Louisa.

‘Oh, a good many people have them,’ she said. ‘I never like them: they are too like wolves.’

‘Yes, they are like wolves, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘Are they the sort of dog that they have as Police Dogs?’ But this Caroline Louisa did not know.

W
hen they reached Seekings, there were the Joneses; Jemima very smart, Maria very untidy, Susan like a little fairy and Peter, a good honest sort
of chap.

At lunch, Kay said, ‘What asses we were not to ask that Punch and Judy man to come here to give his show. Don’t you think we might go down and find him and ask him to come? Do
let’s; we could have him in the study.’

‘Yes, certainly, you can have him, if you can find him, and if he will come.’

‘Then I vote we have tea at about half-past four,’ Kay said, ‘and have the Punch and Judy man at about half-past five, if we can get him, then.’

‘I do wish,’ Maria said, ‘that we could hear of a gang of robbers in the neighbourhood, come down to burgle while people are at dinner, and hear all their plans, and be ready
waiting for them and then have a battle with revolvers.’

‘I hope we may get through Christmas without that,’ Caroline Louisa said.

‘Christmas ought to be brought up to date,’ Maria said; ‘it ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.’

After lunch, Kay went out with Peter to look for the Punch and Judy man. It was a dark, lowering afternoon, with a whine in the wind, and little dry pellets of snow blowing horizontally. In the
gutters, these had begun to fall into little white layers and heaps.

‘I say, it is a foul day,’ Peter said. ‘I’ll go back and get a coat. You go on; I’ll catch you up. Which way will you go?’

‘Down towards Dr Gubbinses,’ Kay said. ‘But you’d better ask for the Punch and Judy man: and look for him, not for me.’

Kay went on alone into the street. He thought that he had never been out in a more evil-looking afternoon. The market-place had emptied, people had packed their booths, and wheeled away their
barrows. As he went down towards Dr Gubbinses, the carved beasts in the woodwork of the old houses seemed crouching against the weather. Darkness was already closing in. There was a kind of glare
in the evil heaven. The wind moaned about the lanes. All the sky above the roofs was grim with menace, and the darkness of the afternoon gave a strangeness to the firelight that glowed in many
windows.

From the cross-roads behind him a rider came cloppetting up, the horse slipping a little, the rider bent into a long white overall to keep the snow from blowing down his neck. ‘How
d’you do, Master Kay?’ the rider cried, checking his horse and looking down upon him. Kay did not recognise the man, but he noticed that his eyes were very bright. The man suddenly put
his right hand to his chin. The hand wore a pale wash-leather glove; outside the glove on the middle finger was a gold St Andrew’s Cross, set with garnets.

‘They tell me, Master Harker,’ the man said, ‘that Wolves are Running. If you see Someone,’ he added meaningly, ‘say Someone’s safe.’

‘I will,’ Kay said.

‘And, look out for fun, Master Harker,’ the man said, shaking up the horse and riding on. Kay watched him go. He went skittering a little sideways and champing on the bit. It seemed
to Kay that the man’s arms were hung with little silver chains which jangled. Later it seemed to him that it was not a horse and rider at all, but a great stag from the forest. Certainly the
figure that passed round the bend out of sight was a stag.