CHAPTER V

THE GARDEN DOOR

‘I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.’

――_Rossetti._

‘He that hath found some fledg’d bird’s nest may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair Well or Grove he sings in now, That is to him unknown.’

――_Henry Vaughan._

At breakfast Jim issued his croquet challenge, which was immediately taken up by Edward and Palmer, with the natural result that all the others wanted to play too.

“Why not let them have a tournament?” said Aunt Caroline. “I’m sure they’d like that.”

“Capital idea, if everybody is willing to join in.”

Jim was already counting up the possible entries, nodding at each person as he mentally ticked him off. “There’s nine here,” he said.

“That won’t do――unless you’re going to play singles. I wonder if we could get anybody else?”

“I’m sure Mr. Drummond would play. He’s always most obliging.”

The canon chuckled. “You’d better send a deputation to wait upon him then. He ought to be told what he’s letting himself in for.”

“Who’s Mr. Drummond?” asked Jim.

“He’s grandpapa’s curate, dear; and if he comes you must all be very nice to him.”

“Why? Is he ill?” Jim wondered.

“No; but it is possible to be nice to people even when they’re well.”

“Oh yes; I thought you meant――――”

“I shall choose Balmer,” Ann declared.

“You won’t do anything of the sort,” answered Edward. “You’ve just heard us arrange to play together.”

“Partners will be drawn for,” Aunt Caroline decided. “That avoids all difficulties and disputes.”

“We’ll stick our names down on bits of paper and put them in a hat!” cried Jim. He jumped up from the table to put this plan into instant execution, but was called back by Miss Johnson.

Reluctantly he returned to his chair. “Bags I to be drawer,” he murmured; and watching till he saw Miss Johnson’s attention diverted he gave his grandfather a slight nudge. “_You_ write the names down.” He felt in his trouser pockets and produced a stump of pencil.

Grandpapa, having sampled it, dipped his fingers in hot water and preferred to use his own. He tore up a long blue envelope and wrote the names as Jim called them out.

“It had better be an American tournament; each pair to play every other pair: and those who get most points of course win the prize.”

“Will we begin to-day?” asked Jim, dropping a spoonful of marmalade on the table-cloth. “Oh, sorry, frightfully!”

“Jim! I _never_ saw you behaving so badly!”

The remark came from Miss Johnson, but Jim, secure in his grandfather’s protection, remained unperturbed.

“Yes, you can begin to-day. I must make out a card――for keeping the scores on, you know. Five entries:――that will mean ten games altogether.” He explained how the points were to be counted.

The signal of release came at last, and Jim flew into the hall for a hat, while grandpapa mixed up the little folded slips of paper. Then, the centre of an eager circle, Jim drew out the first name. “Edward,” he read aloud, diving his hand in for the next.

He unfolded it excitedly. “Barbara.”

“Oh, I say!” growled Edward. “I think we’d better choose our partners.”

Barbara glared at him. “In that case I certainly shan’t choose you.”

“There must be no grumbling,” said Aunt Caroline quickly. “Those who don’t wish to play can scratch; or if you like we needn’t have a tournament at all.”

“Edward, you’re awful!” murmured Ann.

Edward apologized, and the ballot continued.

The next name to appear was Ann’s own. “Oh!” she whispered; “I _hope_ it will be Balmer!”

Palmer it was, and the canon might almost have been suspected of wizardry, for Jim and he were drawn as partners, Grif and Aunt Caroline, Miss Johnson and Mr. Drummond.

“Matches to be played in the afternoon,” said Aunt Caroline,――“for grown-ups, at any rate. The only handicaps need be that grandpapa and Jim give eight bisques, and Grif and I will give five.”

“Shall we do that, partner?” grandpapa inquired.

“Yes, yes. What are they?”

“It means we give them eight extra turns.”

“Oh!” Jim’s face grew grave. But the implied superiority was seductive, and he yielded.

“We might play our match off now, Dorset?” Edward proposed.

“If you like.”

There was a rush for mallets and balls, in which Ann, as usual, was left in the rear. “Balmer, don’t let them take the little mallet,” she squealed, “the one with the string round it. I want it.”

“I think you’d better go and see that they start properly, papa,” said Aunt Caroline. “Remember,” she called out, “if there’s any squabbling neither side gets a point.”

Out of doors, the smooth sunlit lawn looked very attractive, and when the clips were put on the first hoop, and the balls were gathered behind the starting-peg, Jim was assailed by a passionate longing for the afternoon. The fact that he was to act as referee only partially consoled him.

“You shout!” cried Edward, tossing up a coin.

“Tails!... Good man! Will you go first, partner?”

“No, you.... Oh, Balmer! _what_ are you doing?” For Ann’s partner had hit the blue ball straight up the ground and off the top boundary.

“He’s all right,” said grandpapa. “You seem to understand the game, Palmer.”

“My pater is rather keen on it,” Palmer admitted, “and I play a bit when I’m at home.”

“You ought to have said that sooner,” grumbled Edward. “You should be giving us a handicap.” He tried for the first hoop and missed it.

Palmer looked inquiringly at Canon Annesley.

“Perhaps you’d better give them something. I’ll wait and see you take a turn.”

“Shall I try for the hoop, too, Balmer?” Ann called out.

“No; come up to me.”

Ann made a valiant attempt, landing some three yards from her partner’s ball.

“I don’t know what they think they’re doing,” exclaimed Edward discontentedly. “Oh, rotten shot!” as Barbara failed to hit.

“Your own wasn’t so splendid!” Barbara replied.

“Good, Balmer!” squealed Ann. “Now he’ll come down and get the hoop. No――he’s bringing me down! He’ll knock the others away, and then I’ll get the hoop next time.... There goes Edward.... Good-bye, Edward.... Good-bye, Barbara.”

“I think you’d better give them four bisques,” said the canon, turning back to the house.

The game, which had been far from silent before, immediately relapsed, so far as Edward and Barbara were concerned, into a perpetual argument about who should take the bisques and when, interspersed with erratic shots that produced expressions of commiseration from Ann. She and Palmer were getting on swimmingly, but Edward’s face was like a thundercloud.

“We ought to have a bigger handicap. Barbara’s rotten; she’s not as good as Ann.”

“I’m better than Ann,” said Barbara, coldly.

“You’re not; you’re worse. Ann does what her partner tells her.”

“You forget that Ann’s partner knows how to play.”

Edward took aim and missed a ball a couple of yards away.

“Damn.”

“Edward, if you say that again, I’ll tell Aunt Caroline.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You did.”

“I said ‘dash.’”

“It wasn’t ‘dash.’”

“Oh, Balmer, I’m so sorry!” cried Ann penitently, as her ball, with the mallet firmly adhering to it, jammed tight against the wire of the hoop.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m afraid it would have been a foul anyway. You’re not allowed to push, you know.”

“But you can’t get through from the side that way unless you _do_ push――a little.”

“Here, I’m going to play again,” cried Edward.

“Why should _you_ play? You missed the last time, and it was closer than it is now.”

“I’m captain of the side and the captain settles who’s to play. I only missed because you put me off.”

“You’re not captain, and it’s my turn.”

“There’s no turns in it, silly. The same ball can go on playing all the time.”

“Well, then, I’ll go on playing. Besides, I’m wired, and can go into baulk.”

“Referee!” shouted Jim, rushing on to the ground.

Edward caught him by the arm. “Here, you clear out.”

“I’m referee,” gasped Jim, struggling to free himself. “Amn’t I, Palmer?... Now;――Palmer says I am!” He lay down on his stomach on the grass, and examined the balls at considerable length. “You’re _not_ wired, Barbara,” he decided. Everybody gathered round to offer an opinion.

“Hang it all, there’s Pouncer running away with the blue ball! What a mouth! How on earth did he――――” There was a wild chase, and Pouncer, still with the ball, disappeared into the shrubbery.

It was at this point that Grif came to the conclusion that he had watched the game long enough. Palmer had offered to lend him his butterfly-net, and now he went into the hall to get it. Shouts and laughter still came from the shrubbery, where evidently the ball had not yet been found, but Grif did not go to the searchers’ assistance. Instead, he ran round behind the stables, climbed the low wall beyond, and dropped down into the wood.

It was not that he wanted to be unsociable, but something in the morning called to him, something in the bright clear air, the radiant sunshine, the rapturous singing of a lark. His blood was stirred, and a restlessness had entered into him. He must run and shout and roll in the grass like a colt. If Jim wanted to come it would be all right, but he could not wait for him. He would leave plenty of tracks that the scout would be able to follow.

He made his way through the trees and the thick undergrowth, blundering at length upon a kind of path, or what had once been a path, for it was now overgrown with brambles. The voices of the croquet-players grew fainter and fainter in the distance, the quiet of the wood deeper and deeper, till at last he felt he was alone.

Simultaneously with this he became aware of a new sound, the low cool noise of running water. It seemed quite close, and he paused, trying to get the direction. Then he forced a passage through the bushes on the right, sliding downhill, his feet sinking in loose mould and beds of withered leaves. Dry sticks snapped under his tread, brambles and trailing creepers clutched at his knickerbockers. But the farther he went, the thinner the trees grew, and the easier he found it to walk, till by the time he reached the grassy margin of the stream he was out again in the sunlight.

On the opposite bank the ground was marshy, with beds of irises in full bloom. The purple flowers, smoked with a delicate grey, shone vividly amid their green spiked leaves, and Grif sat down to wait for Jim in case he should be following.

The wood just here was no denser than a park. To right and left of the iris-swamp it stretched away in a grassy valley, bathed in sunlight. Then, where the slope began on either side, the trees grew thicker, towering to the sky and shutting out all view of what lay beyond.

It was intensely quiet. He could hardly believe he was not more than five minutes’ walk from home, so solitary and undisturbed the spot seemed, so remote from human habitation. The tall feathery mountain-ashes, which looked as if a breath could bend them to the ground, stood motionless; the dark beech-leaves shone like polished jewels. Clumps of anemone-leaves grew in the shadow cast by old silver-grey roots, and the fallen tree on which he sat was festooned with the leaves of a nightshade, whose spiked flowers, purple and yellow, dropped down to the surface of the water.

But Jim did not come, and presently he wandered on, keeping to the stream’s edge, his butterfly-net over his shoulder. He had gathered a bunch of irises for Aunt Caroline, but soon they began to droop in the hot sun and in his hot hand, and he threw them away.

He began to sing. His clear fresh treble voice seemed, like the skylark’s song, a part of the morning. It rose above the prattle of the stream, wordless, in a simple tune, simple as all the other tunes of nature. And then, quite suddenly, he came to the end of his path.

He had reached a fence of barbed wire, beyond which stretched a meadow, where lazy cows stood patiently switching the flies from their backs. Grif, after tearing his jacket, managed to climb the fence. He ran across the meadow and up a daisied bank, on the top of which grew a hawthorn hedge. He squeezed himself through a gap and dropped down on the other side.

He was on a road now, but he had not the faintest idea where it led to, nor how far he was from home. Right in front of him was a high brick wall, with a green wooden door in it; but the door looked as if it was not meant to be opened, and the wall was uncommonly like the back wall of a garden. As he paused, undecided whether to return to the wood or not, a tortoiseshell butterfly flitted over the hedge. It hovered above him; alighted for a moment on the wall, spreading its delicate wings flat against the warm brick; then flew over and disappeared.

Grif’s net was in his hand, and he became aware that he had lost an opportunity. It is true, tortoiseshell butterflies are not uncommon, but this one seemed larger than usual, and at any rate Grif’s collection, if it were ever to come into existence, ought to contain one or two. The fact was that he had an unconquerable aversion to killing things. At breakfast, and under the influence of Palmer’s conversation, a collection of butterflies had seemed a highly desirable affair. But when the time came, his hunting in the wood had been lamentably half-hearted, and the solitary captive that had fluttered helplessly in his gauze net had been released.

He approached the garden door, feeling sure it would be locked. There was a tuft of grass growing below it, which must mean that it was rarely used. But the door, to his surprise, was open, or rather it opened when he pushed it, giving out, as it turned on its hinges, a single clear note, that sounded to Grif’s fancy like the sound of his name.

And on the threshold, as he stood net in hand, hatless, dishevelled, one stocking sagging down over his ankle, he was confronted by a lady who walked slowly towards him, a bunch of roses in her hand. She looked, he imagined, almost as if she had expected him. Very much abashed, his first impulse was to take to his heels, and he would doubtless have done so had not the lady smiled at him and seemed in every way as kind as possible.

“If you are coming in, shut the door behind you, like a good boy. William must have left it unbolted.”

Grif came in. He pushed, with some difficulty, the stiff bolt back into its socket, and begged pardon. This lady seemed to him quite beautiful, with a sort of autumnal sweetness in her face. He thought she must be rather old, certainly a good deal older than either Aunt Caroline or his mother. She was dressed in black, with black lace mittens on her wrists. Her thin hair, not so much white as colourless, was parted in the middle and smoothed closely down on either side of her forehead. She wore a cap of soft white lace with a lilac ribbon in it.

Grif stammered out an explanation of his intrusion and hastily pulled up his stocking; but the lady only laughed and waved a pair of scissors at him.

“I won’t allow you to catch butterflies here:――if they were caterpillars, that would be another matter. How would you like to hunt for ripe gooseberries instead? Those are the earliest bushes near the wall.”

A tabby cat, with a tail standing up straight and stiff as a poker, stepped down the mossy path and rubbed itself against Grif’s legs. Then, jumping on to a bench and from that on to his shoulder, it pushed its face against his cheek, purring loudly, and pulling at his jacket with affectionate claws, as it passed from one shoulder to the other, pressing its warm body caressingly against the back of his head and neck.

Thus accompanied, Grif began his search among the gooseberry-bushes. He had been busy for five minutes or so, and――being not so very particular as to ripeness――quite successfully, when he heard a heavy step on the cinder path, and a deep voice asking, “Who may our young friend be?”

He thought at first the question was addressed to himself, and looked up quickly; but it was the lady who replied.

“I’m afraid I haven’t been properly introduced. He is lunching with us, however, and I dare say he will tell us then.”

Grif did not know whether he ought to join in this conversation. The mention of lunch recalled to him the fact that dinner was at two o’clock, and that he ought to be getting home. The old gentleman with the deep voice had evidently been gardening, for he held a basket in one hand and a pruning-knife in the other. Like Grif, he was bareheaded. His hair was white and fluffy, his face very red, and his eyes very blue. Also he was dressed in the oddest of clothes. When Grif, stepping out from the gooseberry-bushes, asked him politely what time it was, he produced a huge silver watch, hauling it out of the depths of an immense pocket, like an anchor at the end of a chain. “Lunch-time――lunch-time――half-past-one. You’d better come in and wash your paws. I can see you’ve travelled far and by difficult ways this morning.”

“I’ve really only travelled from grandpapa’s,” said Grif.

“Ah! from grandpapa’s.”

“Grandpapa is Canon Annesley. I am Grif Weston, and we only arrived yesterday. We are going to stay all summer though.”

“I’m glad to hear it. We have very few visitors, and I take your paying us so early a call as uncommonly civil.”

Grif hesitated. He had an idea that this old gentleman might be indulging in one of those dreary and inexplicable pleasantries to which grown-up people are often addicted. But perhaps he _really_ thought grandpapa had sent him. At any rate he would give him the benefit of the doubt. “I’m afraid you are mistaken,” he said courteously. “I mean, I didn’t exactly call. I didn’t know about you. It was an accident. I came through the wood and I wasn’t sure of my way home, and that is how I got here.”

“Well, the chance guest should be the most welcome, for is he not sent us by the gods? And you aren’t far from home――only a mile or so. I am Captain Narcissus Batt, and this is my sister, Miss Nancy Batt.”

Grif bowed politely, and they all walked towards the house together. It was built of red brick and stood upon a grassy terrace, below which were other terraces, leading down to the garden. Grif thought he had never seen so beautiful a place. Beside the house, at a little distance, was a stone-lipped pond almost flush with the sward. Water-lilies spread their broad green leaves on the motionless surface, and cedars stretched dark flat branches above it. In the garden, flowers and fruit-trees and vegetables grew in luxuriant profusion. Some of the roses were already in bloom; and there were stocks and carnations, pinks and peonies, while the sweet-pea was everywhere in bud. Against the brick wall beside which they walked trailed a green wistaria, and as they climbed the terraces he had a view of meadow-lands beyond, and in the distance of a river, grey and quiet, winding on into the unknown. The murmur of bees mingled with the heavy scent of pinks and the fresh green scent of newly-mown grass; the birds were silent; while all over there hung the hot, drowsy, June sun.

But, quite apart from its beauty, Grif was aware of something in this place which appealed to him. He had a curious, yet very real sense of being welcomed, not alone by the people who lived here, but by the place itself. There was in its atmosphere something which made him happy, something oddly familiar even in its strangeness. He did not feel as if he were visiting it for the first time, but as if it were a dream-place to which he was coming back. And the impression was redoubled when he entered the house. Then it occurred to him in a flash that the garden――the garden, and still more the house――was haunted.

But not by ghosts. Anything less ghostly could scarce be imagined. There was no shadow of melancholy or regret: all was happy and peaceful. Only he knew there were many voices here, far more than at his grandfather’s or even in the wood; and that they were closer and clearer than any he had heard before; and that, though now in the hot windless noon they were sighing and whispering so faintly, some day they would sing aloud and he should be able to make out the words.

He had taken it quite for granted that he would come again, come frequently. These people were his friends, they were _his_ kind of people, and he recognized them at once, though he had never met anyone like them elsewhere. At the same time, he knew that he should not bring Jim or Edward or Barbara when he came: he would always come alone――or perhaps now and then he might bring Ann:――which was very strange, for Grif was the least selfish boy in the world. Of course if the others _wanted_ to come it would be different, but he didn’t think they would want to――unless――they heard about the gooseberries.

The house was cool and the light rather dim. When Grif had washed himself and brushed his hair the captain took him downstairs and introduced him to his other sister, Miss Jane. Miss Jane sat in a deep, high chair, with her thin pale hands folded. She was old, very old, older it seemed to Grif than anything he had ever seen. Beside her Miss Nancy looked almost a girl. And she was so frail, so quiet, so extraordinarily quiet, that he would never have imagined her to be alive if every now and again a word or two had not dropped from her lips, showing that she listened to all that was said. But her voice was so low and toneless that it seemed to come from far back out of a remote past――faint, lingering, like a whisper from a star.

Grif made a much better lunch than he usually did, and drank three glasses of raspberry wine. Afterwards he examined the curiosities which the captain had brought back from all corners of the world. And as he wandered about the room, looking at this and that, on one of the shelves of a cabinet he came upon a flute. He took it up and examined it, he even ventured to ask the captain if he played on it: but the captain shook his head. “It belongs to Billy――Billy Tremaine, my grandson.” He paused a moment. “Would you like to take him up to Billy’s room, Nancy?” he asked, with a certain hesitation, almost a diffidence.

“No, not to-day, I think. Possibly――some other time. I expect he would rather go for a little stroll with you to-day.”

Grif would have liked immensely to have been taken to Billy Tremaine’s room, but he showed nothing of his disappointment as he followed Captain Narcissus Batt out into the garden. There the captain smoked pipe after pipe, and as he took his young friend round, stooping every now and again to pull up a weed, he told him curious, involved tales, that perhaps could hardly have been more than “founded upon fact.” The captain’s ships appeared to have put in at every port in the world, to have weathered countless storms, and to have come through infinitely perilous adventures; but they must certainly have sailed up the rivers of Wonderland too. To Grif the time passed lightly as a dream.

Presently Miss Nancy called them to tea, which was laid under one of the cedars near the pond. And, as he sat talking with them, Grif was more and more conscious of how much he liked his new friends. He himself was transformed. Nobody at home would have recognized him if they had heard his chatter――he who was supposed to live in the clouds. The great thing was that his present companions lived in the clouds also. At any rate they all got on uncommonly well together, and, when he rose to say good-bye, it seemed quite natural that Miss Nancy should kiss him instead of shaking hands.

The captain put him on the road for home, pointing out the steeple of the church. When he reached that he must turn to his left and five minutes’ walk would bring him to the Glebe.