Wood Magic: A Fable
returned, and flew low down along the grass near Bevis. The wind came
now and then, and shook down a shower of white and pink petals from a
crab-tree in the hedge. By-and-by a squirrel climbing from tree to tree
reached the oak, and stayed to look at Bevis beneath in the shadow. He
knew exactly how Bevis felt--just like he did himself when he went to
sleep.
CHAPTER II.
AT HOME.
"Yowp, yow; wow-wow!" The yelling of Pan woke Bevis, who jumped up, and
seeing the bailiff beating the spaniel with a stick, instantly, and
without staying the tenth of a second to rub his eyes or stretch
himself, rushed at the man and hit him with his doubled fists. As if he
had seen it in his sleep, Bevis understood what was taking place
immediately his eyelids opened. So the bailiff beat the dog, and Bevis
beat the bailiff. The noise made quite an echo against the thick hedges
and a high bank that was near. When the bailiff thought he had thrashed
Pan sufficiently, he turned round and looked down at Bevis, whose face
was red, and his knuckles sore with striking the bailiff's hard coat.
"How fess you be, measter," said the bailiff (meaning fierce), "you mind
as you don't hurt yourself. Look'ee here, there've bin a fine falarie
about you, zur." He meant that there had been much excitement when it
was found that Bevis was not in the garden, and was nowhere to be found.
Everybody was set to hunt for him.
First they thought of the brook, lest he should have walked in among the
flags that were coming up so green and strong. Then they thought of the
tallet over the stable,--perhaps he had climbed up there again from the
manger, over the heads of the great cart-horses, quietly eating their
hay, while he put his foot on the manger and then on the projecting
steps in the corner, and into the hayrack--and so up. He had done it
once before, and could not get down, and so the tallet was searched. One
man was sent to the Long Pond, with orders to look everywhere, and
borrow the punt and push in among the bulrushes.
Another was despatched to the Close, to gruffly inquire where the
cottage boys were, and what they had been doing, for Bevis was known to
hanker after their company, to go catching loach under the stones in the
stream that crossed the road, and creeping under the arch of the bridge,
and taking the moor-hens' eggs from the banks of the ponds where the
rushes were thick. Another was put on the pony, to gallop up the road
after the carter and his waggon, for he had set off that morning with a
load of hay for the hills that could be seen to the southward.
Running over every possible thing that Bevis could have done in his
mind, his papa remembered that he had lately taken to asking about the
road, and would not be satisfied till they had taken him up to the
sign-post--a mile beyond the village, and explained the meaning of it.
Some one had told him that it was the road to Southampton--the place
where the ships came. Now, Bevis was full of the ships, drawing them on
the blue wall of the summer-house, and floating a boat on the trough in
the cow-yard, and looking wistfully up the broad dusty highway, as if
he could see the masts and yards sixty miles away or more. Perhaps when
the carter went with the waggon that way, Bevis had slipped up the
footpath that made a short cut across the fields, and joined the waggon
at the cross-roads, that he might ride to the hills thinking to see the
sea on the other side.
And the bailiff, not to be behindhand, having just come in for his
lunch, ran out again without so much as wetting his stubbly white beard
in the froth of the drawn quart of ale, and made away as fast as his
stiff legs could carry him to where there was a steam ploughing engine
at work--a mile distant. The sight of the white steam, and the humming
of the fly-wheel, always set Bevis "on the jig," as the village folk
called it, to get to the machinery, and the smell of the cotton waste
and oil wafted on the wind was to him like the scent of battle to the
war-horse.
But Bevis was not in the tallet, nor the brook, nor among the bulrushes
of the Long Pond, nor under the bridge dabbling for loach, nor watching
the steam plough, and the cottage boys swore their hardest (and they
knew how to swear quite properly) that they had not seen him that
morning. But they would look for him, and forthwith eagerly started to
scour the fields and hedges. Meantime, Bevis, quite happy, was sleeping
under the oak in the shadow, with Pan every now and then coming out of
the rabbit-hole to snort out the sand that got into his nostrils.
But, by-and-by, when everything had been done and everybody was
scattered over the earth seeking for him, the bailiff came back from the
steam plough, weary with running, and hungry, thirsty, and cross. As he
passed through the yard he caught a glimpse of Pan's kennel, which was a
tub by the wood pile, and saw that the chain was lying stretched to its
full length. Pan was gone. At first the bailiff thought Bevis had loosed
him, and that he had got a clue. But when he came near, he saw that the
collar was not unbuckled; Pan had worked his head out, and so escaped.
The bailiff turned the collar over thoughtfully with his foot, and felt
his scanty white beard with his hard hand; and then he went back to the
cart-house. Up in the cart-house, on the ledge of the wall beneath the
thatch, there were three or four sticks, each about four feet long and
as thick as your thumb, with the bark on--some were ground ash, some
crab-tree, and one was hazel. This one was straight and as hard as could
be. These sticks were put there for the time when the cows were moved,
so that the men might find their sticks quick. Each had his stick, and
the bailiff's was the hazel one. With the staff in his hand the bailiff
set out straight across the grass, looking neither to the right nor the
left, but walking deliberately and without hesitation.
He got through a gap in one hedge, and then he turned to the corner
making towards the rabbit-burrows, for he guessed that Pan had gone
there. As he approached he saw Bevis sleeping, and smiled, for looking
for the dog he had found the boy. But first stepping softly up to Bevis,
and seeing that he was quite right and unhurt, only asleep, the bailiff
went to the hedge and thrust his staff into the hole where Pan was at
work.
Out came Pan, and instantly down came the rod. Pan cowered in the grass;
he was all over sand, which flew up in a cloud as the rod struck him
again. "Yowp!--yow--wow--wow!" and this row awoke Bevis.
Bevis battled hard for his dog, but the bailiff had had his lunch
delayed, and his peace of mind upset about the boy, and he was
resolutely relieving himself upon the spaniel. Now the hazel rod, being
dry and stiff, was like a bar of iron, and did not yield or bend in the
least, but made the spaniel's ribs rattle. Pan could not get low enough
into the grass; he ceased to howl, so great was the pain, but merely
whimpered, and the tears filled his brown eyes. At last the bailiff
ceased, and immediately Bevis pulled out his handkerchief, and sat down
on the grass and wiped away the spaniel's tears.
"Now, measter, you come along wi' I," said the bailiff, taking his hand.
Bevis would not come, saying he hated him. But when the bailiff told him
about the hunt there had been, and how the people were everywhere
looking for him, Bevis began to laugh, thinking it was rare fun.
"Take me 'pick-a-back,'" said he.
So the bailiff stooped and took him. "Gee-up!" said Bevis, punching his
broad back and kicking him to go faster. Pan, now quite forgotten, crept
along behind them.
Bevis listened to the lecture they gave him at home with a very bad
grace. He sulked and pouted, as if he had himself been the injured
party. But no sooner was he released from the dinner-table, than he was
down on his knees at his own particular corner cupboard, the one that
had been set apart for his toys and things ever since he could walk. It
was but a small cupboard, made across the angle of two walls, and with
one shelf only, yet it was bottomless, and always contained something
new.
There were the last fragments of the great box of wooden bricks, cut and
chipped, and notched and splintered by that treasure, his pocket-knife.
There was the tin box for the paste, or the worms in moss, when he went
fishing. There was the wheel of his old wheelbarrow, long since smashed
and numbered with the Noah's arks that have gone the usual way. There
was the brazen cylinder of a miniature steam-engine bent out of all
shape. There was the hammer-head made specially for him by the
blacksmith down in the village, without a handle, for people were tired
of putting new handles to it, he broke them so quickly. There was a
horse-shoe, and the iron catch of a gate, and besides these a boxwood
top, which he could not spin, but which he had payed away half the
savings in his money-box for, because he had seen it split the other
boys' tops in the road.
In one corner was a brass cannon, the touch-hole blackened by the
explosion of gunpowder, and by it the lock of an ancient pistol--the
lock only, and neither barrel nor handle. An old hunting-crop, some
feathers from pheasants' tails, part of a mole-trap, an old brazen
bugle, much battered, a wooden fig-box full of rusty nails, several
scraps of deal board and stumps of cedar pencil were heaped together in
confusion. But these were not all, nor could any written inventory
exhaust the contents, and give a perfect list of all that cupboard held.
There was always something new in it: Bevis never went there, but he
found something.
With the hunting-crop he followed the harriers and chased the doubling
hare; with the cannon he fought battles, such as he saw in the pictures;
the bugle, too, sounded the charge (the bailiff sometimes blew it in the
garden to please him, and the hollow "who-oo!" it made echoed over the
fields); with the deal boards and the rusty nails, and the hammer-head,
he built houses, and even cities. The jagged and splintered wooden
bricks, six inches long, were not bricks, but great beams and baulks of
timber; the wheel of the wheelbarrow was the centre of many curious
pieces of mechanism. He could see these things easily. So he sat down at
his cupboard and forgot the lecture instantly; the pout disappeared from
his lips as he plunged his hand into the inexhaustible cupboard.
"Bevis, dear," he heard presently, "you may have an apple."
Instantly, and without staying to shut the door on his treasures, he
darted upstairs--up two flights, with a clatter and a bang, burst open
the door, and was in the apple-room. It was a large garret or attic,
running half the length of the house, and there, in the autumn, the best
apples from the orchard were carried, and put on a thin layer of hay,
each apple apart from its fellow (for they ought not to touch), and each
particular sort, the Blenheim Oranges and the King Pippins, the Creepers
and the Grindstone Pippins (which grew nowhere else), divided from the
next sort by a little fence of hay.
The most of them were gone now, only a few of the keeping apples
remained, and from these Bevis, with great deliberation, chose the
biggest, measuring them by the eye and weighing them in his hand. Then
downstairs again with a clatter and a bang, down the second stairs this
time, past the gun-room, where the tools were kept, and a carpenter's
bench; then through the whole length of the ground floor from the
kitchen to the parlour slamming every door behind him, and kicking over
the chairs in front of him.
There he stayed half-a-minute to look at the hornet's nest under the
glass-case on the mantelpiece. The comb was built round a central pillar