The Borrowers Afloat Page 5

  One after another they scrambled down the matchstick ladder, careless now of noise. The wood box had been pulled well back from the hole, and they flowed out into the room—cathedral-high, it seemed to them, vast and still and echoing, but suddenly all their own. They could do anything, go anywhere. The main window was shuttered as Pod had foreseen, but a smaller, cell-like window, sunk low and deep in the wall, let in a last pale reflection of the sunset. The younger cousins and Arrietty went quite wild, running in and out of the shadows among the chair legs, exploring the cavern below the table top, the underside of which, cobweb hung, danced in the light of their dips. Discoveries were made and treasures found—under rugs, down cracks in the floor, between loose hearth stones—here a pin, there a matchstick, a button, an old collar-stud, a blackened farthing, a coral bead, a hook without its eye, and a broken piece of lead from a lead pencil. (Arrietty pounced on this last and pushed it into her pocket; she had had to leave her diary behind, with other nonessentials, but one never knew....) Then dips were set down and everybody started climbing—except Lupy, who was too stout; and Pod and Homily who watched silently, standing beside the door. Hendreary tried an overcoat on a nail for the sake of what he might find in the pockets, but he had not Pod's gift for climbing fabric and had to be rescued by one of his sons from where he hung, perspiring and breathing hard, clinging to a sleeve button.

  "He should have gone up by the front buttonholes," Pod whispered to Homily. "You can get your toes in and pull the pocket toward you like by folding in the stuff. You never want to make direct for a pocket...."

  "I wish," Homily whispered back, "they'd stop this until we're gone." It was the kind of occasion she would have enjoyed in an ordinary way—a glorious bargain hunt—findings keepings with no holds barred; but the shadow of their ordeal hung over her and made such antics seem foolish.

  "Now," exclaimed Hendreary suddenly, straightening his clothes and coming toward them as though he had guessed her thought, "we'd better test out this escape route."

  He called up his two elder sons, and together the three

  of them, after spitting on their hands, laid hold of the piece of wood that covered the hole in the door.

  "One, two, three—hup!" intoned Hendreary, ending on a grunt. They gave a mighty heave and the slab of wood pivoted slowly, squeaking on its one nail, revealing the arch below.

  Pod took his dip and peered through. Grass and stones he saw for a moment and some kind of shadowy movement before a draft caught the flame and nearly blew it out. He sheltered the flame with his hand and tried again.

  "Quick, Pod," gasped Hendreary, "this wood's heavy...."

  Pod peered through again. No grass now, no stones—a rippling blackness, the faintest snuffle of breath, and two sudden pin points of fire, unblinking and deadly still.

  "Drop the wood," breathed Pod—he spoke without moving his lips. "Quick," he added under his breath as Hendreary seemed to hesitate, "can't you hear the bell?" And he stood there as though frozen, holding his dip steadily before him.

  Down came the wood with a clap, and Homily screamed. "You saw it?" said Pod, turning. He set down his dip and wiped his brow on his sleeve; he was breathing rather heavily.

  "Saw it?" cried Homily. "In another second it would have been in here amongst us."

  Timmus began to cry and Arrietty ran to him. "It's all right, Timmus, it's gone now. It was only an old ferret, an old tame ferret. Come, I'll tell you a story." She took him under a rough wooden desk where she had seen an old account book; setting it up on its outer leaves, she made it into a tent. They crept inside, just the two of them, and between the sheltering pages they soon felt very cozy.

  "Whatever was it?" cried Lupy, who had missed the whole occurrence.

  "Like she said—a ferret," announced Pod. "That boy's ferret I shouldn't wonder. If so, it'll be all round the house from now on seeking a way to get in...." He turned to Homily. "There'll be no leaving here tonight."

  Lupy, standing in the hearth where the ashes were still warm, sat down suddenly on an empty matchbox that gave an ominous crack. "...nearly in amongst us," she repeated faintly, closing her eyes against the ghastly vision. A faint cloud of wood ash rose slowly around her, which she fanned away with her hand.

  "Well, Pod," said Hendreary after a pause, "that's that."

  "How do you mean?" said Pod.

  "You can't go that way. That ferret'll be round the house for weeks...."

  "Yes..." said Pod, and was silent a moment. "We'll have to think again." He gazed in a worried way at the shuttered window; the smaller one was a wall aperture, glazed to give light but with the glass built in—no possibility there.

  "Let's have a look at the washhouse," he said. This door luckily had been left ajar, and, dip in hand, he slid through the crack. Hendreary and Homily slid through after him, and after a while Arrietty followed. Filled with curiosity, she longed to see the washhouse, as she longed to see every corner of this vast human edifice now that they had it to themselves. The chimney she saw, in the flickering light of the dip, stood back to back with the one in the living room; in it there stood a dingy cooking stove. Flagstones covered the floor. An old mangle stood in one corner, in the other a copper for boiling clothes. Against the wall, below the window, towered a stone sink. The window above the sink was heavily shuttered and rather high. The door, which led outside, was bolted in two places and had a zinc panel across the bottom, reinforcing the wood.

  "Nothing doing here," said Hendreary.

  "No," agreed Pod.

  They went back to the living room. Lupy had recovered somewhat and had risen from the matchbox, leaving it slightly askew. She had brushed herself down and was packing up the borrowings preparatory to going upstairs. "Come along, chicks," she called to her children. "It's nearly midnight and we'll have all day tomorrow...." When she saw Hendreary, she said, "I thought we might go up now and have a bite of supper." She gave a little laugh. "I'm a wee bit tired—what with ferrets and so on and so forth."

  Hendreary looked at Pod. "What about you?" he said, and as Pod hesitated, Hendreary turned to Lupy. "They've had a hard day too—what with ferrets and so on and so forth—and they can't leave here tonight...."

  "Oh?" said Lupy, and stared. She seemed slightly taken aback.

  "What have we got for supper?" Hendreary asked her.

  "Six boiled chestnuts"—she hesitated—"and a smoked minnow each for you and the boys."

  "Well, perhaps we could open something," suggested Hendreary after a moment. Again Lupy hesitated, and the pause became too long. "Why, of course—" she began in a flustered voice, but Homily interrupted.

  "Thank you very much. It's very kind of you, but we've got three roast chestnuts ourselves ... and an egg"

  "An egg," echoed Lupy, amazed. "What kind of an egg?"

  "A hen's egg..."

  "A hen's egg," echoed Lupy again, as though a hen were a pterodactyl or a fabulous bird like the phoenix. "Wherever did you get it?"

  "Oh," said Homily, "it's just an egg we had."

  "And we'd like to stay down here a bit," put in Pod, "if that's all right with you."

  "Quite all right," said Lupy stiffly. She still looked amazed about the egg. "Come, Timmus."

  It took some minutes to round them all up. There was a lot of running back for things, chatter at the foot of the ladder, callings, scoldings, giggles, and "take-cares." "One at a time," Lupy kept saying, "one at a time, my lambs." But at last they were all up and their voices became more muffled as they left the echoing landing for the inner rooms beyond. Light running sounds were heard, small rollings, and the faintest of distant squeakings.

  "How like mice we must sound to humans," Arrietty realized as she listened from below. But after a while even these small patterings ceased and all became quiet and still. Arrietty turned and looked at her parents: at last they were alone.

  Chapter Nine

  "Between the devil and the deep blue sea, that's us," said Pod with a wan smi
le. He was quoting from Arrietty's diary and proverb book.

  They sat grouped on the hearth where the stones were warm. The iron shovel, still too hot to sit on, lay sprawled across the ashes. Homily had pulled up the crushed matchbox lid on which, with her lighter weight, she could sit comfortably. Pod and Arrietty perched on a charred stick; the three lighted dips were set between them on the ash. Shadows lay about them in the vast confines of the room, and now that the Hendrearys were out of earshot (sitting down to supper most likely), they felt drowned in the spreading silence.

  After a while this was broken by the faint tinkle of a bell—quite close it seemed suddenly. There was a slight scratching sound and the lightest, most delicate of snuffles. They all glanced wide-eyed at the door, which, from where they sat, was deeply sunk in shadow.

  "It can't get in, can it?" whispered Homily.

  "Not a hope," said Pod. "Let it scratch ... we're all right here."

  All the same Arrietty threw a searching glance up the wide chimney; the stones, she thought, if the worst came to the worst, looked uneven enough to climb. Then suddenly, far, far above her, she saw a square of violet sky and in it a single star, and, for some reason, felt reassured.

  "As I see it," said Pod, "we can't go and we can't stay."

  "And that's how I see it," said Homily.

  "Suppose," suggested Arrietty, "we climbed up the chimney onto the thatch?"

  "And then what?" said Pod.

  "I don't know," said Arrietty.

  "There we'd be," said Pod.

  "Yes, there we'd be," agreed Homily unhappily, "even supposing we could climb a chimney, which I doubt."

  There was a few moments' silence, then Pod said solemnly, "Homily, there's nothing else for it..."

  "...but what?" asked Homily, raising a startled face. Lit from below, it looked curiously bony and was streaked here and there with ash. And Arrietty, who guessed what was coming, gripped her two hands beneath her knees and stared fixedly down at the shovel, which lay sideways across the hearth.

  "But to bury our pride, that's what," said Pod.

  "How do you mean?" asked Homily weakly, but she knew quite well what he meant.

  "We got to go, quite open-like, to Lupy and Hendreary and ask them to let us stay...."

  Homily put her thin hands on either side of her thin face and stared at him dumbly.

  "For the child's sake..." Pod pointed out gently.

  The tragic eyes swiveled round to Arrietty and back again.

  "A few dried peas, that's all we'd ask for," went on Pod very gently, "just water to drink and a few dried peas...."

  Still Homily did not speak.

  "And we'd say they could keep the furniture in trust like," suggested Pod.

  Homily stirred at last. "They'd keep the furniture anyway," she said huskily.

  "Well, what about it?" asked Pod after a moment, watching her face.

  Homily looked round the room in a hunted kind of way, up at the chimney then down at the ashes at their feet. At last she nodded her head. "Should we go up now," she suggested after a moment in a dispirited kind of voice, "while they're all at supper and get it over with?"

  "Might as well," said Pod. He stood up and put out a hand to Homily. "Come on, me old girl," he coaxed her. Homily rose slowly and Pod turned to Arrietty, Homily's hand pulled under his arm. Standing beside his wife, he drew himself up to his full six inches. "There's two kinds of courage I know of," he said, "and your mother's got both of 'em; you make a note of that, my girl, when you're writing in your diary...."

  But Arrietty was gazing past him into the room; she was staring white-faced into the shadows beyond the log box toward the scullery door.

  "Something moved," she whispered.

  Pod turned, following the direction of her eyes. "What like?" he asked sharply.

  "Something furry..."

  They all froze. Then Homily, with a cry, ran out from between them. Amazed and aghast, they watched her scramble off the hearth and run with outstretched arms toward the shadows beyond the log box. She seemed to be laughing—or crying—her breath coming in little gasps. "...the dear boy, the good boy ... the blessed creature!"

  "It's Spiller!" cried Arrietty on a shout of joy.

  She ran forward too, and they dragged him out of the shadows, pulled him onto the hearth and beside the dips, where the light shone warmly on his suit of moleskins, worn now, slightly tattered, and shorter in the leg. His feet were bare and gleaming with black mud. He seemed to have grown heavier and taller. His hair was still as ragged and his pointed face as brown. They did not think to ask him where he had come from; it was enough that he was there. Spiller, it seemed to Arrietty, always materialized out of air and dissolved again as swiftly.

  "Oh, Spiller!" gasped Homily, who was not supposed to like him. "In the nick of time, the very nick of time!" And she sat down on the charred stick, which flew up, the farther end scattering a cloud of ash, and burst into happy tears.

  "Nice to see you, Spiller," said Pod, smiling and looking him up and down. "Come for your summer clothes?" Spiller nodded; bright-eyed, he gazed about the room, taking in the bundles strapped to the hatpin, the pulled-out position of the log box, the odd barenesses and rearrangements that signify human departure. But he made no comment. Countrymen, such as Spiller and Pod were, do not rush into explanations; faced with whatever strange evidence, they mind their manners and bide their time. "Well, I happen to know they're not ready," Pod went on. "She's sewn the vest, mind, but she hasn't joined up the trousers...."

  Spiller nodded again. His eyes sought out Arrietty who, ashamed of her first outburst, had become suddenly shy and had withdrawn behind the shovel.

  "Well," said Pod at last, looking about as though aware suddenly of strangeness in their surroundings, "you find us in a nice sort of pickle...."

  "Moving house?" asked Spiller casually.

  "In a manner of speaking," said Pod. And as Homily dried her eyes on her apron and began to pin up her hair, he outlined the story to Spiller in a few rather fumbling words. Spiller listened with one eyebrow raised and his mocking v-shaped mouth twisted up at the corners. This was Spiller's famous expression, Arrietty remembered, no matter what you were telling him.

  "...and so," said Pod, shrugging his shoulders, "you see how we're placed?"

  Spiller nodded, looking thoughtful.

  "Must be pretty hungry now, that ferret," Pod went on, "poor creature. Can't hunt with a bell: the rabbits hear him coming. Gone in a flash the rabbits are. But with our short legs he'd be on us in a trice—bell or no bell. But how did you manage?" Pod asked suddenly.

  "The usual," said Spiller.

  "What usual?"

  Spiller jerked his head toward the washhouse. "The drain, of course," he said.

  Chapter Ten

  "What drain?" asked Homily, staring.

  "The one in the floor," said Spiller, as though she ought to have known. "The sink's no good—got an's' bend. And they keep the lid on the copper."

  "I didn't see any drain in the floor..." said Pod.

  "It's under the mangle," explained Spiller.

  "But—" went on Homily. "I mean, do you always come by the drain?"

  "And go," said Spiller.

  "Undercover, like," Pod pointed out to Homily. "Doesn't have to bother with the weather."

  "Or the woods," said Homily.

  "That's right," agreed Spiller. "You don't want to bother with the woods. Not the woods," he repeated thoughtfully.

  "Where does the drain come out?" asked Pod.

  "Down by the kettle," said Spiller.

  "What kettle?"

  "His kettle," put in Arrietty excitedly. "That kettle he's got by the stream...."

  "That's right," said Spiller.

  Pod looked thoughtful. "Do the Hendrearys know this?"

  Spiller shook his head. "Never thought to tell them," he said.

  Pod was silent a moment and then he said, "Could anyone use this drain?"

&nbs
p; "No reason why not," said Spiller. "Where you making for?"

  "We don't know yet," said Pod.

  Spiller frowned and scratched his knee where the black mud, drying in the warmth of the ash, had turned to a powdery gray. "Ever thought of the town?" he asked.

  "Leighton Buzzard?"

  "No," exclaimed Spiller scornfully. "Little Fordham."

  Had Spiller suggested a trip to the moon, they could not have looked more astonished. Homily's face was a study in disbelief, as though she thought Spiller was romancing. Arrietty became very still; she seemed to be holding her breath. Pod looked ponderously startled.

  "So there is such a place?" he said slowly.

  "Of course there is such a place," snapped Homily. "Everyone knows that; what they don't know exactly is —where? And I doubt if Spiller does either...."

  "Two days down the river," said Spiller, "if the stream's running good."

  "Oh," said Pod.

  "You mean we have to swim for it?" snapped Homily.

  "I got a boat," said Spiller.

  "Oh, my goodness..." murmured Homily, suddenly deflated.

  "Big?" asked Pod.

  "Fair," said Spiller.

  "Could she take passengers?" asked Pod.

  "Could do," said Spiller.

  "Oh, my goodness..." murmured Homily again.

  "What's the matter, Homily?" asked Pod.

  "Can't see myself in a boat," said Homily. "Not on the water, I can't."

  "Well, a boat's not much good on dry land," said Pod. "To get something, you got to risk something—that's how it goes. We got to find somewhere to live."

  "There might be something, say, in walking distance," faltered Homily.

  "Such as?"

  "Well," said Homily unhappily, throwing a quick glance at Spiller, "say, for instance ... Spiller's kettle."

  "Not much accommodation in a kettle," said Pod.

  "More than there was in a boot," retorted Homily.

  "Now, Homily," said Pod, suddenly firm, "you wouldn't be happy, not for twenty-four hours, in a kettle; and inside a week you'd be on at me night and day to find some kind of craft to get you downstream to Little Fordham. Here you are with the chance of a good home, fresh start, and a free passage, and all you do is go on like a maniac about a drop of clean running water. Now, if it was the drain you objected to—"