Bedknob and Broomstick Page 10

  "Who's going to take him back?" asked Miss Price. She frowned. "No, Carey, I do think this is thoughtless of you. I had made up my mind this was the last trip the bed was going to make, and there you go picking up strange necromancers who you know perfectly well have to be taken home again, which means another journey." She pushed her feet into her bedroom slippers. "Where did you say he was?"

  "He's in your bedroom," said Carey. "On the bed."

  Miss Price looked really put out. "Oh, dear," she said. "Whatever next?" She slipped her arms into her blue flannel dressing gown. "How am I to get my clothes, or do my hair, or anything? I really am annoyed, Carey!" She gave a vicious tug as she tied up her dressing gown. "You must take him down to breakfast, and I'll have to see about him later."

  Emelius meekly followed Carey down the stairs. He looked dazed and gazed wanly about him. As he took his place at the breakfast table, he staggered slightly against Paul, who was halfway through his porridge.

  Carey looked worried. "Mr. Jones, are you all right?"

  "Yes, I am well enough."

  "You look so pale."

  Emelius ran a limp hand across his windblown hair. "Small wonder," he remarked, smiling faintly.

  Carey gazed at him uneasily; she was thinking of Miss Price. Would he, she began to wonder, give quite the right impression? In the bright light of day Emelius looked far from clean: his tousled hair hung wispily about his ears and his pallid skin was grayish. The long thin hands were stained, she noticed, and the nails were rimmed with black. The velvet of his fur-trimmed robe, though rich, was sadly spattered; and when he moved, he smelled of cottage kitchens.

  There was no time to do anything about it, however; Miss Price came in almost immediately, looking slightly flustered. She was wearing her best pink blouse, the one she kept for trips to London. Emelius rose to his feet—long and thin, he towered above the table.

  Miss Price, in one swift glance, took in his appearance from top to toe. "So this is Mr. Jones?" she remarked brightly—not, it seemed, to anyone in particular.

  "Emelius Jones. Your servant, madam. Nay"—he bowed deeply—"your slave—"

  "How do you do," put in Miss Price quickly.

  "—humbly content," Emelius persisted, "to raise his eyes to one whose subtle craft, maturing slowly through the ages as a plant in the dark earth spreads its roots and sucks its sustenance, bringing forth shoot and stem and branching foliage to burst at length into dazzling blossom, blinding in this your twentieth century the reverent gaze of one who dared to doubt..."

  Miss Price, blushing slightly, moved to her place behind the teapot. "Oh, well," she exclaimed, and gave a little laugh, "I wouldn't say that exactly. Do you take milk and sugar?"

  "You are bountiful," exclaimed Emelius, gazing at her spellbound.

  "Not at all. Do sit down."

  Emelius sat down slowly, still gazing. Miss Price, her lips pursed, poured out two cups of tea in thoughtful silence. As she passed his cup, she said conversationally, "I hear you have an aunt in these parts?"

  "And a house," put in Carey quickly. To establish Emelius as a man of property might help, in Miss Price's eyes, to enhance his status. "At least, it will be his. On Tinker's Hill..."

  "Really?" remarked Miss Price. She sounded dubious. She helped herself to a boiled egg and began to tap it thoughtfully. "Is there a house on Tinker's Hill?"

  "Yes, indeed," Emelius assured her, "a comely, neat house—with an apple orchard."

  Miss Price looked noncommittal. "Really?" she said again, then, remembering her manners, "Porridge, cornflakes, or rice crispies?"

  He took porridge. Again there was silence—only comparative: Emelius was a noisy eater and not, Carey noticed, a very tidy one. When he drank down his tea in a series of gulps (as though it were medicine, thought Carey), Miss Price tightened her lips and glanced at Paul. "You had better get down, dear," she said.

  "I haven't finished," complained Paul.

  "Eat up, then. Quickly."

  Paul, nothing loath, gobbled noisily, copying Emelius. Miss Price, averting her face, took a dainty spoonful of boiled egg, which, closing her eyes, she consumed very slowly. "Oh dear," thought Carey, who knew this sign. She glanced sideways at Emelius, who, having peeled one egg and eaten it whole, was reaching for another. He picked off the shell abstractedly, deep in thought. Suddenly he gave a large belch.

  Miss Price opened her eyes, but she did not change her expression. "Some more tea, Mr. Jones?" she asked sweetly.

  Emelius looked up. "Nay, I am well enough," and, as he thought they seemed puzzled, he added quickly, "but 'tis an excellent infusion. None better. And good they say against the Falling Sickness."

  "Really?" said Miss Price again, and hesitated. "Some toast and marmalade?"

  "Marmalade?"

  "It's a preserve made from oranges."

  "Ah, yes, indeed," exclaimed Emelius, "I am very partial to it." He took the cut-glass dish, and, using the jam spoon, quite unhurriedly he scraped it clean. Paul was fascinated; his eyes seemed to bulge and his mouth fell open.

  "Now, get down, Paul," Miss Price said quickly when he seemed about to speak; and she turned again politely to Emelius who, more relaxed, was leaning back in his chair thoughtfully licking the jam spoon. "The children tell me you are interested in magic?"

  He laid down the spoon at once, all courteous attention. "Yes, that is so. It is, as one might say, my calling."

  "You practice for money?"

  Emelius smiled, shrugging slightly. "For what else?"

  Miss Price, quite suddenly, looked pleasantly flustered. "I don't know ... You see—" Her face became quite pink. "A real professional! I've never actually met one..."

  "No?"

  "No." Miss Price hesitated, her hands clasped together in her lap. "You see—I mean—" She took a long breath. "This is quite an occasion."

  Emelius stared. "But you, madam—do you not practice for money?"

  "I? Oh dear me, no." She began to pour a second cup of tea. "I'm only an amateur—the merest beginner."

  "The merest beginner..." repeated Emelius, amazed. He stared even harder. "Then—if I understand rightly—it was not you, madam, who caused the bed to fly?"

  "The bed-knob? Yes, that was, me. But"—she laughed a little deprecatingly, sipping her tea—"it was quite easy really—I just went by the book."

  "You just went by the book," repeated Emelius in a stunned voice. He drew out an ivory toothpick and, in a worried way, began to pick his teeth.

  "Yes." (Carey felt happier now: Miss Price was almost prattling.) "I have to measure everything. I can't do a thing out of my head. I'd very much like to invent a spell. That would be so worthwhile, don't you think? But somehow..." She shrugged. "You, I dare say," she went on, dropping her voice respectfully, "have invented many?"

  For one panic-stricken moment, Emelius caught Carey's eye. He quickly looked away again. "No, no—" he declaimed. Then, seeing Miss Price's expression, he added modestly, "None to speak of." He gazed in a hunted way about the room and saw the cottage piano. "That's a strange instrument," he remarked, as though to change the subject.

  Miss Price got up and went toward it. "Not really," she explained, "it's a Bluethner." As Emelius came beside her, she raised the lid of the keyboard. "Do you play?"

  "A little."

  He sat down on the music stool and struck a few notes, half closing his eyes as though listening to the tone. Then, head nodding and fingers skipping, he swept into a little piece by William Byrd. He played with great feeling and masterly restraint, using the piano as though it were a harpsichord. Miss Price seemed quite impressed.

  "That was very nice," she admitted guardedly. And, glancing quickly at her watch, she moved away and began to clear the table.

  "It was lovely," cried Carey warmly, as she jumped up to help. "Do play some more!"

  Emelius, turning to look at her, smiled a trifle wanly. "Saepe labat equus defessus," he explained, glancing at Miss Price.

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nbsp; Miss Price looked back at him, her face expressionless. "Yes, quite," she agreed uncertainly.

  "Or perhaps," Emelius went on, "one might more truly say 'mira nimia oculos inebriant'?"

  "Well," said Miss Price and gave a little laugh, "it's as you like, really," and she clashed the plates together rather noisily as though to make a distraction.

  "I think," said Charles uncertainly, aside to Miss Price, "that perhaps he means he's tired..."

  Miss Price blushed warmly, immediately all concern. "Oh, dear, oh dear ... of course; how stupid of me! Charles, dear, put a chair under the mulberry tree for Mr. Jones; he can rest there quietly..." She glanced about the room. "And we must find him something to read. Where's the Daily Telegraph?"

  They could not find the Telegraph but found instead a book called Little Arthur's History of England. "Couldn't he have this?" Charles urged. "It would be even better. I mean, it would be all news to Mr. Jones from chapter seven onward."

  They went out through the back way for Emelius to see the kitchen. Surprised and delighted, he admired all the right things in the right way—the electric cooker, the plastic plate rack, and the stainless steel sink. He clothed his wonder in odd, poetical phrases. Miss Price seemed very pleased. "I can't afford a refrigerator—at least, not yet," she told him as he ran a loving hand across the gleaming surface of the sink. "But this is rather jolly, don't you think? Forty-three pounds, seven shillings and tenpence, excluding the plumbing. But worth it in the end, wouldn't you say?"

  But it was in the garden that Emelius came into his own. His knowledge of plants astounded even Miss Price, and he told her countless uses for what had seemed the commonest of herbs. Mr. Bisselthwaite's boy, who was delivering the milk, broke off his whistling to stare at Emelius. Emelius, his long velvet robe sweeping the lawn, returned the milkboy's stare with somber dignity. The whistling was resumed, and the milkboy clanged down the two pints with his usual roughness.

  Later, leaving Emelius with a history book in the shade of the mulberry tree, reading with much interest of what was to come to pass in his future, Charles and Carey sought out Miss Price in her bedroom.

  "Miss Price," whispered Carey, as if Emelius might hear, "do you like him?"

  Miss Price, who was making up the bed, paused, sheet in hand. "He has distinction," she admitted guardedly.

  "Think, Miss Price," went on Carey, "of the things you'd have to talk about. You haven't even begun—"

  Miss Price wrinkled her forehead. "Ye-s," she said uncertainly.

  "Couldn't he stay a bit longer? Couldn't he stay a week?"

  Miss Price turned. She sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed. "I had better be perfectly frank," she announced firmly. "He could only stay on one condition."

  "What condition?" they asked excitedly.

  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 hoarded 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 Shakespearean 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-fashioned 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 overall 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 Bloodyditch, 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 scraping 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. TRESPASSERS 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, skirti
ng 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 grass. 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 assured 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.