CHAPTER XIII

THE PERFUMES OF ARABIA

‘Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.’

――_Coleridge._

Looking rather tired, with a large hole in the knee of his stocking, and a very dirty collar, but in the glory of a motor-car, Grif arrived home when the others were finishing dinner. The car had departed again before any one had time to reach the door, but Grif and Pouncer were there, upon the step, and in her relief at seeing him safe and sound Aunt Caroline forgot all about the scolding she had prepared.

He was dragged into the dining-room by excited young Westons, though in the general hubbub nothing could be made out very clearly, except that he was home once more and had had his dinner. Ann, finding it difficult to get near her brother, devoted herself to Pouncer.

For a minute or two the noise was deafening, because everybody tried to talk at once. Then Grif’s adventures were drawn from him in jerks, and the tale of Palmer’s burglar, who that morning had been discharged and sent back to his comrades, was told by Edward.

In the first lull Aunt Caroline pounced upon Grif. She wanted him to go to bed, or at least to lie down on the sofa. Only through repeated assurances that he could not possibly sleep was he absolved from this, and, even then, promises were extracted from him that he would keep quiet, and not run about in the sun. She accompanied him to his room and watched him change his stockings and his collar.

“If Doctor O’Neill comes round before you go to bed this evening you’re to see him,” she suddenly declared.

“I’m all right,” Grif protested. “I know I am, and I hate doctors.”

“But _I_ don’t know it,” said Aunt Caroline. She looked at the sallow face, at the dusky lines under the dark eyes, and felt dissatisfied. “Where are you going to now? Why can’t you stay quietly in the house?”

“I’m going to be quiet. I want to read about Tobias. Grandpapa told me it was in the old Bible in church.”

“The church is locked up.”

“He told me I could have the key,” said Grif. “He left it for me in the drawer of the hat-stand, so that I could get it when I wanted.”

“Come and let me brush you; your jacket’s covered with dust. Grandpapa spoils you all. If you _do_ go, remember you’re not to be late for tea. I’ll be very angry if you are, and not allow you to go out by yourself again.”

“How can I help forgetting, if I do forget?” Grif argued gently, as Aunt Caroline turned him round to brush the back of his coat. “I mean I can’t _remember_ not to forget.”

“You can remember to come straight home at any rate,” said Aunt Caroline. “You must have _known_, Grif, that you shouldn’t have run off the way you did yesterday, without telling anybody where you were going to!”

Grif listened patiently, and as she dropped the brush stooped and picked it up for her. “I didn’t know: I hadn’t time to think: it was hearing the engine whistle that put it into my head. And at all events I got Pouncer.”

“If you had stayed at home, if you had told grandpapa, you would have got Pouncer; and you wouldn’t have needed to wander about out of doors all night.”

She let him depart, reluctantly, for after the events of yesterday nothing seemed safe, though it was difficult, unless an aeronaut descended and carried him off, to imagine what harm could come to him now. She herself was going into Ballinreagh to return Palmer’s revolver. She had insisted on grandpapa’s confiscating _that_ immediately after breakfast, and she felt that she shouldn’t be happy till it was safely back in the shop, and till she had said a word or two to the man who had sold it.

She had kept Grif so long, however, giving him various injunctions, and examining him minutely as to the state of his health, that when he at last escaped from her clutches the others had disappeared. He went round to the back of the house and whistled two or three times; then, getting no answer, trotted on down the drive by himself, and out on to the road.

He took a short-cut across the fields, but, characteristically, stopped to scratch the face of a cow, and to brush away the flies that kept buzzing round her eyes and settling at the corners of them. The cow lowered her head till it was well within Grif’s reach, and then stood perfectly still, breathing her sweet breath into his face, while he rubbed all round her eyes where the flies tormented her. Solemn, motionless as one of those extraordinary wooden beasts of Noah’s Arks, she probably would have been pleased to pass a good portion of the afternoon in the enjoyment of this novel and delightful sensation, but Grif, having scratched for several minutes, moved on. The cow followed him as far as the next stile, where she stood, her head stretched over the bars. A low moo brought the tender-hearted Grif back again, but he couldn’t scratch the cow forever, and, giving her a last pat on her wet soft nose, he turned and ran across the field and on to the church.

He opened the door with his big iron key, and went up to the reading-desk for the Bible. It was a large book, and a brown powder from its calf back came off on his jacket as he carried it under his arm. He brought it out into the sunlit churchyard and looked about for a comfortable corner. He wandered among the graves, most of them marked by head-stones stained green by time and weather, some with their lettering almost indecipherable, and some lying prone on the grass. He read the names and the dates, now and then having to kneel down and pull away a creeper that had half hidden an inscription:――

Our Life a Vapour Our days do quickly pass Fade as a flower And wither as the grass.

It seemed odd to Grif to think that many of these people who lay here had lived more than a hundred years ago――some of them a great deal more. It made the world appear very old, and gave him a curious impression of dabbling in past times.

Here lieth the Body of Henry Tisdale Who was present at the Action off Cape Trafalgar October 1805.

In the midst of it all he remembered Billy Tremaine, and began to search for _his_ grave, looking among the newer stones. Yet, when he found it, it was rather an old one, and there were several names on it, the one he sought for being the last:――William Batt Tremaine, aged fourteen years. There was no text, merely at the top of the stone an engraved crest, with a Latin motto which he could not make out. All the other people buried in this grave had been old, and it seemed to Grif rather sad that a boy should have to lie here among men and women, not one of whom but had attained his allotted span of three score years and ten.

The grave was close to the wall, and just beside it Grif sat down, with his book on the grass near him. The hot sun made him sleepy and comfortable and not inclined to begin reading, so he remained for a while thinking of the Batts, and of Billy’s room, which he had not yet been taken to see, though he had gone to the house a good many times; and presently he heard the thin, creaking, rather battered voice of the wall:――

In the old grey stone wall grow daisies, White and gold, With green trembling leaves like feathers And roots that hold Firmly between the grey crumbling stones.

In the old grey stone wall grow thistles, Purple and strong, And the ivy clings there and dark mosses Creep along The battered ancient stones.

Here out of the wind and in the sunshine I find a nook; Pleasant to lie here in simple idleness, Or with a book Sit, leaning my back against the stones.

While overhead the sky is blue, And at my feet the grass is green, And a bee crawls on the thistle, And a lark sings, unseen.

And quietly the spider spins his web Between the stones, and waits for foolish flies; And a cock crows in the distance, and a dog barks, And when the wind passes, when the wind shakes it and awakens it, The old elm-tree sighs.

Grif opened his Bible and after some trouble found the Book of Tobit. He read it carefully, but with a good deal of disappointment, for, though it was like them, it did not seem to him nearly so interesting as the stories in the _Arabian Nights_. The genni that fled from Tobias into “the utmost parts of Egypt” was evidently not so powerful as those which King Solomon had sealed up in brazen jars and thrown into the ocean; nor was the magic which Tobias used very exciting. He only burned the heart and liver of a fish, and it was just the smell that the genni didn’t like. Perhaps it was a herring, Grif thought, for he himself detested the smell of herrings. Moreover, Tobias’s dog, which he had imagined as playing a principal part in the adventure, was just mentioned and no more. Grif believed he could make up a better story out of his own head, and one more like the picture.

He shut the Bible and placed it on the grass beside him. Through sleepy, narrowed lids he looked at the square tower of the church. He wondered if it could be getting late already, for the sun seemed to be setting; and he thought dimly of teatime and then forgot it. Across the dusky flush of the sky he saw a bridge of golden light, and he knew that if he could walk up this bridge it would lead him to fairy-land. Above his head he heard a heavy flapping of wings, a flapping growing louder and louder, till at last it made quite a wind in the trees. An immense shadow suddenly darkened the churchyard, and Grif, lifting his face, saw an enormous lizard-shaped creature, with great green protuberant eyes, eyes brighter than the brightest motor-lamps, circling over him and dropping closer and closer to the ground. Its flaming green and yellow body shone as if it were coated with precious stones; it had huge claws, and its legs were in a kind of bunch in the front: all the rest of it seemed to stretch out in an enormous tail. From its open jaws came a glow like the glow of a smith’s fire, brightening and dulling as it breathed. Suddenly, with a startled little scream, he saw it drop on to the church tower and swing there, its tail reaching nearly to the ground. For a moment he felt afraid, and then, as it slid to the earth and sprawled over the graves, his fear vanished, for he saw it was only the dragon-fly he had saved that morning....

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. The dragon had vanished; the dragon-fly too; but the sound that had awakened him persisted. It was the sound of some one running, running quickly, down the cinder path. He sprang to his feet and was just in time to see Palmer disappear through the gate, which he slammed behind him in Mr. Bradley’s face.