THE LUMBER ROOM
The children were to be driven, as a special treat, to the sands atJagborough. Nicholas was not to be of the party; he was in disgrace.Only that morning he had refused to eat his wholesome bread-and-milk onthe seemingly frivolous ground that there was a frog in it. Older andwiser and better people had told him that there could not possibly be afrog in his bread-and-milk and that he was not to talk nonsense; hecontinued, nevertheless, to talk what seemed the veriest nonsense, anddescribed with much detail the colouration and markings of the allegedfrog. The dramatic part of the incident was that there really was a frogin Nicholas’ basin of bread-and-milk; he had put it there himself, so hefelt entitled to know something about it. The sin of taking a frog fromthe garden and putting it into a bowl of wholesome bread-and-milk wasenlarged on at great length, but the fact that stood out clearest in thewhole affair, as it presented itself to the mind of Nicholas, was thatthe older, wiser, and better people had been proved to be profoundly inerror in matters about which they had expressed the utmost assurance.
“You said there couldn’t possibly be a frog in my bread-and-milk; there_was_ a frog in my bread-and-milk,” he repeated, with the insistence of askilled tactician who does not intend to shift from favourable ground.
So his boy-cousin and girl-cousin and his quite uninteresting youngerbrother were to be taken to Jagborough sands that afternoon and he was tostay at home. His cousins’ aunt, who insisted, by an unwarranted stretchof imagination, in styling herself his aunt also, had hastily inventedthe Jagborough expedition in order to impress on Nicholas the delightsthat he had justly forfeited by his disgraceful conduct at thebreakfast-table. It was her habit, whenever one of the children fellfrom grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which theoffender would be rigorously debarred; if all the children sinnedcollectively they were suddenly informed of a circus in a neighbouringtown, a circus of unrivalled merit and uncounted elephants, to which, butfor their depravity, they would have been taken that very day.
A few decent tears were looked for on the part of Nicholas when themoment for the departure of the expedition arrived. As a matter of fact,however, all the crying was done by his girl-cousin, who scraped her kneerather painfully against the step of the carriage as she was scramblingin.
“How she did howl,” said Nicholas cheerfully, as the party drove offwithout any of the elation of high spirits that should have characterisedit.
“She’ll soon get over that,” said the _soi-disant_ aunt; “it will be aglorious afternoon for racing about over those beautiful sands. How theywill enjoy themselves!”
“Bobby won’t enjoy himself much, and he won’t race much either,” saidNicholas with a grim chuckle; “his boots are hurting him. They’re tootight.”
“Why didn’t he tell me they were hurting?” asked the aunt with someasperity.
“He told you twice, but you weren’t listening. You often don’t listenwhen we tell you important things.”
“You are not to go into the gooseberry garden,” said the aunt, changingthe subject.
“Why not?” demanded Nicholas.
“Because you are in disgrace,” said the aunt loftily.
Nicholas did not admit the flawlessness of the reasoning; he feltperfectly capable of being in disgrace and in a gooseberry garden at thesame moment. His face took on an expression of considerable obstinacy.It was clear to his aunt that he was determined to get into thegooseberry garden, “only,” as she remarked to herself, “because I havetold him he is not to.”
Now the gooseberry garden had two doors by which it might be entered, andonce a small person like Nicholas could slip in there he couldeffectually disappear from view amid the masking growth of artichokes,raspberry canes, and fruit bushes. The aunt had many other things to dothat afternoon, but she spent an hour or two in trivial gardeningoperations among flower beds and shrubberies, whence she could keep awatchful eye on the two doors that led to the forbidden paradise. Shewas a woman of few ideas, with immense powers of concentration.
Nicholas made one or two sorties into the front garden, wriggling his waywith obvious stealth of purpose towards one or other of the doors, butnever able for a moment to evade the aunt’s watchful eye. As a matter offact, he had no intention of trying to get into the gooseberry garden,but it was extremely convenient for him that his aunt should believe thathe had; it was a belief that would keep her on self-imposed sentry-dutyfor the greater part of the afternoon. Having thoroughly confirmed andfortified her suspicions Nicholas slipped back into the house and rapidlyput into execution a plan of action that had long germinated in hisbrain. By standing on a chair in the library one could reach a shelf onwhich reposed a fat, important-looking key. The key was as important asit looked; it was the instrument which kept the mysteries of thelumber-room secure from unauthorised intrusion, which opened a way onlyfor aunts and such-like privileged persons. Nicholas had not had muchexperience of the art of fitting keys into keyholes and turning locks,but for some days past he had practised with the key of the schoolroomdoor; he did not believe in trusting too much to luck and accident. Thekey turned stiffly in the lock, but it turned. The door opened, andNicholas was in an unknown land, compared with which the gooseberrygarden was a stale delight, a mere material pleasure.
Often and often Nicholas had pictured to himself what the lumber-roommight be like, that region that was so carefully sealed from youthfuleyes and concerning which no questions were ever answered. It came up tohis expectations. In the first place it was large and dimly lit, onehigh window opening on to the forbidden garden being its only source ofillumination. In the second place it was a storehouse of unimaginedtreasures. The aunt-by-assertion was one of those people who think thatthings spoil by use and consign them to dust and damp by way ofpreserving them. Such parts of the house as Nicholas knew best wererather bare and cheerless, but here there were wonderful things for theeye to feast on. First and foremost there was a piece of framed tapestrythat was evidently meant to be a fire-screen. To Nicholas it was aliving, breathing story; he sat down on a roll of Indian hangings,glowing in wonderful colours beneath a layer of dust, and took in all thedetails of the tapestry picture. A man, dressed in the hunting costumeof some remote period, had just transfixed a stag with an arrow; it couldnot have been a difficult shot because the stag was only one or two pacesaway from him; in the thickly-growing vegetation that the picturesuggested it would not have been difficult to creep up to a feeding stag,and the two spotted dogs that were springing forward to join in the chasehad evidently been trained to keep to heel till the arrow was discharged.That part of the picture was simple, if interesting, but did the huntsmansee, what Nicholas saw, that four galloping wolves were coming in hisdirection through the wood? There might be more than four of them hiddenbehind the trees, and in any case would the man and his dogs be able tocope with the four wolves if they made an attack? The man had only twoarrows left in his quiver, and he might miss with one or both of them;all one knew about his skill in shooting was that he could hit a largestag at a ridiculously short range. Nicholas sat for many golden minutesrevolving the possibilities of the scene; he was inclined to think thatthere were more than four wolves and that the man and his dogs were in atight corner.
But there were other objects of delight and interest claiming his instantattention: there were quaint twisted candlesticks in the shape of snakes,and a teapot fashioned like a china duck, out of whose open beak the teawas supposed to come. How dull and shapeless the nursery teapot seemedin comparison! And there was a carved sandal-wood box packed tight witharomatic cotton-wool, and between the layers of cotton-wool were littlebrass figures, hump-necked bulls, and peacocks and goblins, delightful tosee and to handle. Less promising in appearance was a large square bookwith plain black covers; Nicholas peeped into it, and, behold, it wasfull of coloured pictures of birds. And such birds! In the garden, andin the lanes when he went for a walk, Nicholas came across a few birds,of which the
largest were an occasional magpie or wood-pigeon; here wereherons and bustards, kites, toucans, tiger-bitterns, brush turkeys,ibises, golden pheasants, a whole portrait gallery of undreamed-ofcreatures. And as he was admiring the colouring of the mandarin duck andassigning a life-history to it, the voice of his aunt in shrillvociferation of his name came from the gooseberry garden without. Shehad grown suspicious at his long disappearance, and had leapt to theconclusion that he had climbed over the wall behind the sheltering screenof the lilac bushes; she was now engaged in energetic and rather hopelesssearch for him among the artichokes and raspberry canes.
“Nicholas, Nicholas!” she screamed, “you are to come out of this at once.It’s no use trying to hide there; I can see you all the time.”
It was probably the first time for twenty years that anyone had smiled inthat lumber-room.
Presently the angry repetitions of Nicholas’ name gave way to a shriek,and a cry for somebody to come quickly. Nicholas shut the book, restoredit carefully to its place in a corner, and shook some dust from aneighbouring pile of newspapers over it. Then he crept from the room,locked the door, and replaced the key exactly where he had found it. Hisaunt was still calling his name when he sauntered into the front garden.
“Who’s calling?” he asked.
“Me,” came the answer from the other side of the wall; “didn’t you hearme? I’ve been looking for you in the gooseberry garden, and I’ve slippedinto the rain-water tank. Luckily there’s no water in it, but the sidesare slippery and I can’t get out. Fetch the little ladder from under thecherry tree—”
“I was told I wasn’t to go into the gooseberry garden,” said Nicholaspromptly.
“I told you not to, and now I tell you that you may,” came the voice fromthe rain-water tank, rather impatiently.
“Your voice doesn’t sound like aunt’s,” objected Nicholas; “you may bethe Evil One tempting me to be disobedient. Aunt often tells me that theEvil One tempts me and that I always yield. This time I’m not going toyield.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said the prisoner in the tank; “go and fetch theladder.”
“Will there be strawberry jam for tea?” asked Nicholas innocently.
“Certainly there will be,” said the aunt, privately resolving thatNicholas should have none of it.
“Now I know that you are the Evil One and not aunt,” shouted Nicholasgleefully; “when we asked aunt for strawberry jam yesterday she saidthere wasn’t any. I know there are four jars of it in the storecupboard, because I looked, and of course you know it’s there, but shedoesn’t, because she said there wasn’t any. Oh, Devil, you _have_ soldyourself!”
There was an unusual sense of luxury in being able to talk to an aunt asthough one was talking to the Evil One, but Nicholas knew, with childishdiscernment, that such luxuries were not to be over-indulged in. Hewalked noisily away, and it was a kitchenmaid, in search of parsley, whoeventually rescued the aunt from the rain-water tank.
Tea that evening was partaken of in a fearsome silence. The tide hadbeen at its highest when the children had arrived at Jagborough Cove, sothere had been no sands to play on—a circumstance that the aunt hadoverlooked in the haste of organising her punitive expedition. Thetightness of Bobby’s boots had had disastrous effect on his temper thewhole of the afternoon, and altogether the children could not have beensaid to have enjoyed themselves. The aunt maintained the frozen mutenessof one who has suffered undignified and unmerited detention in arain-water tank for thirty-five minutes. As for Nicholas, he, too, wassilent, in the absorption of one who has much to think about; it was justpossible, he considered, that the huntsman would escape with his houndswhile the wolves feasted on the stricken stag.