“What will you say?” asked Willet with interest.
“I really don’t know! This is what happens when you start out to…Well, you remember the old saw: ‘Oh, what a mangled web we…uh…leave…’”
“Not that way,” said Willet. “It goes: ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.’ But don’t worry, Hercules, it’s only for fun.” And then, in that suddenly adult way he had that seemed so sad and so surprising, he added, “This house is already full of tangled webs anyway. Someday I’m going to untangle every one, and then maybe my father will come home again.”
“I hope so,” said Hercules gently. “Good night.”
“Good night,” said Willet.
Chapter 6
Breakfast at Goody Hall turned out to be just as formal a meal as lunch and supper. And if the morning hadn’t been so deliciously sweet and sunny, Hercules Feltwright might have been a little discouraged. He came down to the table dressed for his first full day of tutorhood in the usual baggy trousers, but from the waist up he was decidedly unusual. There was a rather loose shirt striped in particularly tender shades of lavender, and over this a long vest heavily embroidered with rose-like splotches and little yellow dragons with their tails in their mouths. At least, they appeared to be dragons, but might just as well have been bananas or even sheaves of wheat. Hercules was particularly proud of this shirt and vest—he had worn them in a play—and he had decided that they struck just the right note for a casual breakfast in the country.
Mrs. Tidings didn’t agree. She came into the dining room carrying a large bowl of stewed prunes and she stopped dead when she saw him. “What in the world is that?” she said in a shocked kind of way.
“What is what?” asked Hercules, taking his place at the table and beaming a cheery good-morning smile at Willet.
“You can’t come into the dining room dressed like that,” said Mrs. Tidings. “Not in this house.”
“Why not?” asked Hercules in hurt surprise. “What’s the matter with the way I’m dressed?”
“Come come, Mr. Feltwright,” she chided. “Look around you. Surely even you can see it isn’t proper.”
Hercules looked around obediently, and the dining room frowned back at him. The lace curtains shivered slightly, the sideboard gleamed heavy disapproval, and from the mantelpiece over the graceful white fireplace a pair of smirking gilded cupids stared at him reproachfully. Hercules stared back at the cupids. Then he looked at Willet, and Willet was looking back at him, waiting. At last Hercules Feltwright shook a defiant mental fist under the nose of the beautiful house and picked up his napkin. “Pride goeth before, if at all,” he said with a meaningful smile. But there was no meaning at all in what he had said, no meaning that Mrs. Tidings could discover, and she was just about to point this out when Willet interrupted.
“I like the way he’s dressed,” he said. “I think it’s beautiful.”
Mrs. Tidings gave it up. This, after all, was the word of the master. Let no one ever think she didn’t know her place. But her expression clearly said, “We’ll see about that when Mrs. Goody comes home!” She dished out the prunes and turned toward the kitchen. And then she stopped and turned back to Hercules. “By the way, Mr. Feltwright,” she said, with the smug look of someone who has found a way to have the last word, “I think you should tell your friends not to come calling in the middle of the night.”
Hercules made a little face at Willet which seemed to say “Here we go!” “What friends?” he asked innocently, spooning up a prune.
Mrs. Tidings looked at him closely. “Well!” she said. “You had a caller last night. He wanted to know if you were here and he asked me if you had Sir Bursus with you.”
Willet giggled and Hercules sent him a warning glance. “What did he look like?” he asked.
“He was all wrapped up in a cloak and a heavy scarf,” said Mrs. Tidings.
Hercules returned a prune to his bowl and stared at her in mock alarm. “A red scarf?” he asked.
“I really couldn’t say,” said Mrs. Tidings. “Why?”
“If it was a red scarf,” said Hercules, “it must have been…no, it couldn’t have…yes, it must have been Mott Snave.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Tidings, “you’ll have to tell him we don’t receive callers at Goody Hall after four o’clock in the afternoon.” She looked at Hercules suspiciously. “Who’s Sir Bursus?”
“Not Sir Bursus. Cerberus.”
“All right, then, who’s Cerberus?”
“Why, the three-headed dog at the Gates of Hell, of course.”
Mrs. Tidings frowned impatiently. “What kind of nonsense is that?” she said.
“Oh, not the very dog himself, of course. A statue of him. A big silver statue.”
“Have you got it?”
“The statue, you mean? No, I haven’t got it. I’ve never even heard of it.”
“What do you mean, you’ve never even heard of it?” she barked. “You’ve just been telling me all about it!”
“Not all about it, by any means,” said Hercules in a wise and careful tone. “And anyway,” he added, victim of a sudden and rather unfortunate inspiration which later he always blamed on the influence of the beautiful house, “perhaps it isn’t really Cerberus Snave is after. Perhaps he’s found out about my inheritance.”
Mrs. Tidings opened her mouth to retort and then she paused. Her face changed, as if she’d just been told she was on the brink of throwing away an oyster which contained a pearl. “Your…inheritance?” she echoed.
“Oh well,” said Hercules, looking modest, “I have an old aunt who’s putting a few pennies aside for me.”
Mrs. Tidings put down the serving bowl of prunes and smoothed her apron reflectively. She thought about this aunt. The dear old creature! It just went to show, you should never judge a man too quickly. “Well now, Mr. Feltwright, isn’t that nice?” she said warmly. “Where does your aunt live? Far from here? Are you the only relative? Why don’t you invite her in for tea? And Snave, too, or whatever his name is.”
Hercules saw at last that he had gone too far. Willet, at the head of the table, saw it, too, and grinned through a mouthful of prunes.
“Now see here, Mrs. Tidings,” said Hercules hastily. “Never mind about my aunt. She lives a long way from here. And if Snave comes back, you can tell him I don’t want to see him. He’s not a friend of mine at all. I’ve never even met him.” And he began to eat prunes with remarkable speed.
Mrs. Tidings smiled knowingly. “Very well, sir,” she said. “I understand. I’ll see you’re not troubled any further. There’s always someone around who wants to borrow money, isn’t there? It must be quite a burden.” And she picked up the serving bowl and disappeared into the kitchen.
After breakfast, Hercules and Willet escaped and rushed outside to sit beside the iron stag. “Good grief!” said Hercules, shaking his head. “What on earth made me go and say all that? Now she thinks I’m rich.”
“Well, you as good as told her you were,” said Willet gleefully. “Do you really have an old aunt who’s going to leave you some money?”
“Yes, I do!” said Hercules. “I told the exact truth. She’s doing just what I said she was doing—putting a few pennies aside for me. Pennies with holes in them, bent pennies, pennies with the printing crooked. I used to collect them when I was a boy, and she’s still saving them for me. At least, she was when I left home eight years ago.” He sighed. “I guess I’ve only made things worse, haven’t I?”
Willet chewed a blade of grass. “You could always dress up as Mott Snave again and come back and tell Mrs. Tidings something else. You know—tell her about the penny collection and maybe give her a bent penny to give to you. I mean, give to Hercules. As a present from your aunt, you know. Or something like that.”
“Yes, I suppose I could do that,” said Hercules. “That might work. But I certainly do hate to go on to Act Three. We never even should have raised the curtain.” He stared
off across the lawn and sighed again. “Well, this isn’t getting any lessons done, is it? And that’s what I’m here for.”
Now it was Willet’s turn to sigh. “Do we have to?” he said.
“Yes,” said Hercules, “we have to. Your mother wants you to grow up to be a gentleman, like your father. Now, what shall we begin with? Poetry? Or perhaps posture and manners? Or else…”
“Hercules,” Willet interrupted suddenly. “Why do you suppose my father wanted to go away? I just can’t figure it out.”
Hercules decided, looking at Willet, that perhaps the lessons should be put aside for a little longer. “What do you remember about your father?” he asked.
Willet gave his tutor a grateful glance. “I was only five years old when he went away,” he said. “I don’t remember much. He built this house for my mother when I was a baby. I don’t remember that, of course. But when I was bigger, he used to play with me all the time. But sometimes he wasn’t very happy—I do remember that, I think. And when he was unhappy, he would go rushing away on a big horse. And then one morning my mother told me he’d fallen off the horse and he was dead. But I knew it wasn’t true.”
Hercules was quiet until Willet had finished and then he said, carefully, “Sometimes we don’t let ourselves believe things because we don’t want to believe them, you know. Perhaps your mother isn’t trying to fool you at all, Willet. Perhaps your father really is dead, after all.”
“He’s not!” cried Willet. “I know he’s not. Don’t you believe me? What I think we ought to do is go and look for him. He’s alive somewhere, I know he is, and he must be lonesome. Listen, Hercules, the horse never came back! Don’t horses always come back, if they’ve lost their riders? He didn’t die and he isn’t down there in the tomb. We’ll go down there and I’ll show you!” And he sprang to his feet.
Hercules leaped up in alarm. “We mustn’t do that! We can’t do that! Look here—now, sit down and listen.” They both sat down again and Hercules took Willet by the hand. “Give me some time to think about it, Willet,” he pleaded. “Perhaps I can find a way—talk to people—there must have been someone around at the time—someone who might know something that would help.”
“Well, all right,” said Willet, relaxing a little. “If you want to, I guess we can’t go looking for him if we don’t know where to start.” He beamed at Hercules happily. “Just think—the day before yesterday I was all alone except for Mama, with no one to talk to, and now you’ve come and you know everything and we’re friends and as soon as we can we’re going to go and find my father. Together.” He settled himself against one leg of the iron stag and looked at Hercules with confident resignation. “All right. Let’s get on with the lessons.”
“Yes,” said Hercules firmly. “Lessons. We’ll begin with something really pleasant, like ornithology and botany. That’s birds and flowers. A long walk in the woods would be just right for a day like today.”
But Hercules Feltwright saw that nothing much was apt to come of lessons at Goody Hall. There was too much going on in the shadows. And in spite of Willet’s certainty, he was himself not quite convinced. Was Midas Goody dead or wasn’t he? For a moment the question seemed to settle heavily about his thin shoulders and he drooped under it. What kind of a thing was this, anyway, for a brand-new tutor to take on? And then suddenly he felt that it was an extremely important kind of thing. “If a man is going to be a good teacher,” he said to himself, “he must learn to sit in strange classrooms.” The thought made him feel shy and pleased and—determined. And all at once he knew what he was going to do. He was going to have a talk with the gardener, Alfresco Rom, and maybe even with Alfreida. “Alfresco’s been down inside the tomb, or he couldn’t have described it to Willet,” he mused. “I’ll just go round to his cottage tonight and explain the situation to him. Why, it must be a terrible thing to live all alone with doubts like Willet’s, keeping them a secret and worrying about them all these years, even if he has had a beautiful house to do it in.” He looked up at the house, and the house seemed to look back at him through all its polished windows. It looked back at him—somehow—smugly, as if it were saying, “None of that matters, anyway, you know. Not while they have me.” And Hercules Feltwright felt for the first time, and felt foolish for feeling it, that the house was somehow to blame for all of Willet’s troubles, but that the house was too proud—and too beautiful—to care.
Chapter 7
“Well, Dora, what’s the news from Goody Hall?” asked the blacksmith as his sister came puffing into the shop with a market basket over her arm. “Did that strange-looking young man come by about the tutoring?”
Mrs. Tidings sank down on a nail keg and patted at her face with a small handkerchief. “Henry,” she said solemnly, “Henry, I don’t know where to begin, truly I don’t!”
“Ah!” said the blacksmith with satisfaction. “I was right! I’ve been having this feeling that something was going to happen.” He pulled up another nail keg and settled himself on it, leaning forward expectantly.
“Well!” said Mrs. Tidings. “First of all, that young man did come by. His name is Hercules Feltwright, of all outlandish things. And she hired him on the spot. On the spot, I tell you—with no questions asked. I didn’t like the looks of him at first. Not that she noticed anything peculiar, of course. I unpacked his satchel for him and it was full of what looked like costumes. Play costumes. He wears them, too. You should have seen him at breakfast this morning.”
“An actor, eh?” said the blacksmith, raising his eyebrows. “That’s a new one. What does an actor know about tutoring?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Mrs. Tidings. “He had a ratty old animal skin in his satchel, too. Most peculiar. So I said to her, I said, ‘This person you’ve hired to be a tutor is a former actor.’ And she said, ‘How lovely! I always did like a play when I was a girl.’ And then she packed up her bag and went off again up to the city without another word.”
“Oho!” said the blacksmith. “Another trip to the city, eh?”
“Another trip,” said Mrs. Tidings. She shook her head. “What do you suppose she does there? Twice a year, regular as clockwork, ever since Mr. Goody died.”
The blacksmith stroked his beard and pondered. He and Mrs. Tidings had been over it all a hundred times, but they never tired of it.
“She comes back and she never has any packages with her,” said Mrs. Tidings for the hundred-and-first time. “Not so much as a twist of brown paper in five years.”
Again they pondered.
“It’s very peculiar,” said the blacksmith.
“It certainly is!” agreed his sister. And then she said importantly, “Last night this Feltwright had a visitor. A man all wrapped up in a cloak and scarf. I wouldn’t let him in. I asked the young man about it this morning and he let slip that the fellow was probably after his money.” She paused to let this announcement make its full impact and was pleased to see her brother’s eyes widen. “It turns out, Henry, that the young man will be rich someday. He’s got an aunt who’s going to leave him everything. Now what do you think of that?”
The blacksmith sat back on his nail keg and whistled. “Well well! That explains a lot! He’s one of these eccentric young lords, then, who go about the country to sow their oats before settling down to inherit their gold. I’ve heard of that kind of thing before. Well well!”
“Oh, he’s a sly one, all right,” said Mrs. Tidings. “Tried to put me off. But it’s not that easy to fool Dora Tidings.” She smirked a little and then added confidentially, “It occurs to me that he may be connected with the Goody family somehow. A cousin, perhaps. And that would explain why she hired him so quickly.”
“Very likely, Dora,” said the blacksmith with admiration. “Very likely.” They nodded at each other happily.
“Well,” said Mrs. Tidings, getting to her feet and picking up the basket, “I’d better go on back to the Hall. I thought I’d fix something special for supper.”
The blacksmith peered into her basket and sighed. “Beef and kidneys! And wine, too,” he said longingly. “Nobody starves to death at Goody Hall.” And then, just as his sister started out the door, he called her back. “Dora! Wait! I nearly forgot, with all the talk about young Feltwright’s fortune. Did you say this visitor of his was all wrapped up in a cloak and scarf?”
“Yes, I did,” said Mrs. Tidings. “And he had a hat on, too.”
“Then I’ve seen the fellow!” the blacksmith announced, proud to have news of his own to report. “I’ve seen him. I was closing up the shop last evening when he went by across the street. I said to myself at the time that it was a funny way to dress on a warm night. A red scarf?”
“That’s it,” said Mrs. Tidings. “Young Feltwright told me his name was…now, let me see…Stave? Shave? No—Snave. That’s what it was. Mott Snave. But he told me this morning that he’d never met him. Mott Snave. I haven’t heard the name before. And you say you saw him here in the village?”
“Last night,” said the blacksmith. “He must have been on his way to the Hall at the time.”
“So he must,” said Mrs. Tidings. “How very peculiar! A red scarf and a long black cloak?”
“The very man himself,” said the blacksmith. “I’ll keep a weather eye out for him, shall I?”
“Yes indeed,” said Mrs. Tidings. “By all means. Well! It looks to be an interesting summer!”
“That’s the truth,” said the blacksmith contentedly. “That’s the truth.”
And Mrs. Tidings hummed a little tune all the way back to Goody Hall.
Chapter 8
At dusk it began to rain. Not one of your misty spring rains that whisper for a few minutes and then move off, but a hard, determined downpour, a real gully-washer that hung over the twilit countryside like smoke. Hercules Feltwright was not to be put off from his plans by a little weather, however. He fetched a wide-brimmed hat from his room and, enriched by beef and kidneys and heartened by wine, he stood before Mrs. Tidings and announced his intentions. “Willet is in bed,” he said firmly, “and I’m going out. I have some business in the village.”