‘It has a wine-dark sea,’ said Nan. It was a phrase she had heard once and forgotten. It had needed Uncle Ambrose’s brilliant hooking glance to make her remember it again.
‘Good,’ said Uncle Ambrose and passed on to Betsy. ‘You, child. What do you know of Greece?’
Betsy had not understood much of what had passed, but she remembered her nursery night-light burning in a little pan of grease and she said, ‘It is a bright light.’
Uncle Ambrose leaned back in his chair and stared at her and his jaw dropped. Then an expression of great tenderness came over his face and he said: ‘Child, you are right. A bright light. One of the brightest the world has known. But that you should know that, a child of your age. I am astonished. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.’
He smiled at Betsy as though he loved her very dearly and she smiled back at him. The other three, though well aware of the night-light in Betsy’s mind, did not give her away. They never gave each other away. Also it would be useful if Uncle Ambrose should become infatuated with Betsy. She would be able to wheedle things out of him.
‘Sir,’ said Robert suddenly, ‘what about pocket money?’
‘Pocket money?’ ejaculated Uncle Ambrose.
‘Yes, sir, I had sixpence, but it’s spent now. Do you give us pocket money?’
‘I do not,’ said Uncle Ambrose sternly.
‘Betsy likes sweets,’ said Robert. ‘They’re good for her. I mean the plain boiled kind. Grandmama said so.’
‘I do not give pocket money,’ said Uncle Ambrose more gently, his eyes on Betsy’s shock of red curls in the sunshine, ‘but it can be earned.’
‘How, sir?’ asked Timothy.
‘Threepence for a bucket of snails collected in the garden,’ said Uncle Ambrose. ‘Sixpence for a barrowfull of weeds similarly come by. Sixpence a week for grooming Jason-Rob-Roy and polishing his harness. Sixpence a week for darning the socks of the male members of the family. A penny for any child who helps Ezra with the washing-up. Sixpence a week for cleaning the shoes of the entire household. These tasks may be divided among yourselves as you wish, excepting only that Robert, single-handed, tackles the snails.’ His terrible eyes searched out the thoughts Robert thought he had hidden so carefully. ‘No, Robert, not the pony only, leaving the less congenial tasks to the weaker sex. Pony and snails or no pony. You are likely to earn a considerable income. Let that console you.’
He opened a drawer, took something out and laid it in the centre of the table. It was a slender little switch.
‘I do not like caning boys,’ said Uncle Ambrose, ‘though I have of course caned hundreds in the course of my professional duties. Upon a girl I would never practise corporal punishment. Nevertheless, Robert and Timothy, any serious wrongdoing, and under that heading I include deliberate disobedience, lying, stealing, and any form of unkindness, will be punished with this switch. There is one more thing that will cause you to be severely punished, and that is interrupting the process of education with conversation upon irrelevant matters. For this once, Robert, we will pass it over, but if it occurs again you will know what to expect. We will now return to that bright light, the land of Greece. Before you learn her language, her history and her literature, I will tell you of the land itself. I have travelled there, and shall endeavour to travel there again in your company. Attention, please.’
Uncle Ambrose did not have to call for attention twice, for in a few moments he had them spellbound. He was, they discovered, the most wonderful storyteller. Who would have thought that education was like this? He told them first about the land itself, and he took books down from his shelves and showed them pictures of the glories he had seen, mountains crowned with ruined palaces, statues and temples and shrines beside the sea. And all he described they saw with their inside eyes, so that the pictures in the books were scarcely necessary, and the words that he used fell chiming, so that they remembered the sequence of them as one remembers the sequence of the notes in a tune. Milk and biscuits were brought by Ezra at eleven o’clock and devoured and then they were sent into the garden for ten minutes. When they came back again it was even better, for Uncle Ambrose told them a story about one of the Grecian heroes. He told them about Jason and the golden fleece. He had in front of him a box filled with the letters of the alphabet cut out in cardboard and painted in different colours (had he been up half the night making them? Nan wondered), and with these he set out Jason’s name for Betsy on the table top, and made her do it. And she learned to make ‘bright light’ too, and her own name. She learned quickly and easily, and the other three learned to repeat after Uncle Ambrose lines of poetry that he spoke for them, first in Greek and then in English. There was a bit about the evening star that made them think of Ezra and stuck in their minds. ‘Star of evening, bringing all things that bright dawn has scattered, you bring the sheep, you bring the goat, you bring the child back to its mother.’ It was wonderful how Uncle Ambrose seemed to keep the three things going at once, telling stories, speaking poetry and helping Betsy with her coloured letters, as though he were a conjuror tossing three balls in the air. When one o’clock struck from the church tower, and Ezra sounded the gong, they could not realize it was dinner time already.
‘Enjoyed yourselves?’ said Uncle Ambrose.
‘Yes!’ they chorused.
‘Enjoyed yourselves enough to want to learn the history of this country, its language and poetry? And in due course the history, language, and poetry of other countries, including your own?’
‘Yes!’ they said.
‘Together with the knowledge of such kindred subjects as mathematics, geography, grammar, and syntax? Education is a mosaic of beauty. The various coloured fragments are interrelated.’
Understanding failed them, but they still said yes.
‘Very well then,’ said Uncle Ambrose. ‘Tomorrow we start work.’
They gazed at him open-mouthed and Betsy said in a small voice, ‘Haven’t we been working this morning?’
‘Working? By Hector no!’ said Uncle Ambrose. ‘That was mere titillation of the appetite. Tomorrow I shall teach you how to lay the foundation stone of all education; hard work. Robert, do not look so downcast. Believe me, I will teach even you to find sweated labour entirely admirable. Go and wash your hands. I smell liver and bacon.’
At dinner Uncle Ambrose was quite gay and chatty. ‘The education of the very young is something at which I have not hitherto tried my hand,’ he said to the world at large. ‘I taught the sixth form in my teaching days. But I have had my theories and I am not displeased at being compelled to put them into practice. Ezra, what’s to follow? Apple dumplings, I trust.’
‘No, sir. Junket, sir. Miss Betsy was poorly yesterday.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Uncle Ambrose resignedly. ‘You delivered my note to Lady Alicia?’
‘Yes, sir. An’ waited for the reply. ’Er ladyship will be pleased to lend ee two truckle-beds, two goose feather mattresses an’ two patchwork counterpanes. I be to take the trap to the Manor this afternoon an’ Moses Glory Glory Alleluja will give ’em to me.’
Four pairs of pleading eyes fixed themselves on Uncle Ambrose’s face. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘Did I not say you could go where you liked and do what you liked in hours not devoted to education? It is most unlikely that you will see Lady Alicia, who has lived in strict seclusion for thirty years, but should you do so, present my compliments. Ezra, these children will accompany you upon your errand in order, I gather, to set eyes upon a man whose name it appears intrigues them. Ezra, if I am to eat junket it must be to the accompaniment of nutmeg, sugar, and cream.’
An hour later Ezra and the children, Betsy’s doll Gertrude, with whom she had been reunited yesterday, Absolom, Rob-Roy and the pony-cart were driving up the hill to the village. Old Tom Biddle, who seemed to sit permanently just inside his front door, nodded and smiled as they went by and called out to Ezra, ‘See the little maid don’t get ’er eyes scratched out.’
Ezra who did not seem to
like Tom Biddle, growled and muttered to the children, ‘The old varmint! Today’s the second day I be forgettin’ to shut the dinin’ room window.’
‘Who would scratch out Betsy’s eyes?’ asked Nan anxiously. ‘Not Moses Glory Glory Alleluja?’
‘Lor’ no! Moses wouldn’t hurt a fly. ’E means Abednego. But if you don’t worrit Abednego, ’e won’t do you no ’arm. Likes to keep ’imself to ’imself, Abednego does. But worrit Abednego and I won’t be answerable for no consequences.’
‘We won’t worrit Abednego,’ they promised. They had reached the green and Ezra drove round it and stopped in front of the iron gates between the stone pillars with lions on top. The monkey was not there today. So this was the home of Lady Alicia. The children looked at each other with sparkling eyes and then the boys and Nan scrambled out of the trap to help Ezra get the gates open. Betsy stayed where she was, for she had Gertrude in her arms, and looking round she saw the cat Frederick come out of the shop. He sat down on the doorstep and became absorbed in washing behind his ears, but she knew very well that he was keeping his eye on them.
The gates opened reluctantly, as though they seldom did, and did not want to now, and Ezra led Rob-Roy and the trap through. Nan and the boys did not get in again, for the drive beyond the gates led into such a thicket of evergreens that they had to go ahead, pushing the branches back to make a way through for the trap. But though they made a way through, they didn’t seem to come through. The shrubbery appeared endless, a tangled dark forest of yews, laurels and rhododendrons, and the moss under their feet was so thick and soft that the wheels, and Rob-Roy’s hooves, made no sound. Absolom did not like it very much and kept his tail tucked down.
‘Lady Alicia, she don’t like visitors,’ explained Ezra. ‘Moses an’ Abednego, they comes an’ goes over the wall.’
After that he did not say any more, for the strange twilit place imposed its own silence. It was a relief when they saw light breaking through the thinning evergreens and knew they were coming out into the open again. Presently the moss under their feet turned golden-green and an archway cut in the yews straight ahead was ablaze with sun. The children began to run, full of joy, and then suddenly there stepped into the archway, blocking out most of the sunshine, the most alarming figure.
He was a coal-black giant with a big head and long loose arms. He had a curved knife in one hand and stood a little crouched, as though ready to spring at them. Absolom growled and the children stopped dead so suddenly that Ezra, leading Rob-Roy, bumped into Timothy.
‘Get on then,’ said Ezra, annoyed. ‘What’s come to ee? That’s only Moses Glory Glory Alleluja. Don’t hurt the poor chap’s feelin’s now. Gentle as a dove ’e be.’
Nan walked bravely forward, for she was a child who would not have liked to hurt the feelings of the devil himself, the others following, and the nearer they came to Moses Glory Glory Alleluja the less terrible did he appear, and when they were through the arch of yew and quite close to him, he was suddenly changed by some miracle of the sunlight from a figure of fear into one of the most attractive men they had ever seen. He was a black man with white woolly hair, tall but stooped about the shoulders, his face folded into deep lines of age and kindness. His eyes were sad, but his smile, as he looked at the children, was as wide with pleasure as Ezra’s own. He wore the tattered remnants of a coat of dark green livery, from which one brass button still hung by a thread, as though he had once been a coachman or footman, a gardener’s corduroy trousers and a sacking apron tied round his waist. The knife in his hand was a scythe, with which he was trying to clear a path through the mass of grass and docks and nettles in which he stood knee-deep. Nan held out her hand to him.
‘The children,’ he said with delight and took Nan’s hand in his. He had a fascinating hand, large as a ham, coal-black but with a pink palm. All the children shook hands and Absolom removed his tail from between his legs and wagged it. How, they all wondered, could they have felt afraid of this glorious man? After their father, Uncle Ambrose and Ezra, he was without doubt God’s masterpiece.
‘They’re good children as children go,’ Ezra informed him. ‘An’ Absolom’s a good dog. ’Ave ee got these ’ere beds up the ’ouse?’
‘Got ’em at the back door,’ said Moses. ‘Put the children in the cart or their legs will be stung.’
They piled into the cart again and followed in the wake of Moses and Ezra, swaying through the green sea of grass and docks and nettles. Presently they realised to their astonishment that once it had been an orchard or a garden, for apple trees in full bloom and tall black cypresses grew up out of it, and ahead of them were two great trees of japonica covered with flaming blossom. The sun was bright and hot and there was the hum of bees.
‘Our bees?’ Robert asked.
‘Aye,’ said Ezra. ‘Powerful fond o’ Linden Manor, our bees be.’
They came between the japonica trees, where the mossy drive appeared again from beneath the weeds and grasses, and there before them was the Manor. It was an old house built of weathered grey granite with a stone-tiled roof. It was surrounded by unpruned rose bushes and its dormer windows peered like eyes through the hairy creepers that had climbed right up to the roof and even in places to the tall chimneys. From the front there seemed no entrance; briars grew over the pillared porch of the front door and all the downstairs windows had blind eyes, for their curtains were drawn. There was a stone terrace in front of the house, but the weeds had pushed up the paving stones. Directly behind it Lion Tor towered to the sky and Linden Wood surrounded the house and its ruined garden as a moat surrounds a castle, completely cutting it off from the world beyond. Hot, murmurous with bees, the place cast a spell.
Turning right, Moses led them to the back of the house where the wood came pressing almost up to the walls. It was full of great linden trees, oaks and beeches all dressed in their bright spring green. There was a cobbled yard behind the house with a tumbledown stable to one side. The back door was open and the monkey was sitting on the doorstep playing cat’s-cradle. He was a sad-eyed grey monkey with an irritable expression, wearing a tattered green livery coat like the one that Moses wore, and when he saw the children he chattered with annoyance and scrambled back into the house.
‘Children, do not worrit Abednego,’ cautioned Moses.
‘We won’t,’ they said.
‘Where be beds?’ asked Ezra.
‘In the kitchen,’ said Moses.
The back door opened straight into the big kitchen. It was a dark dreary place, not at all like the bright happy kitchen at the Vicarage. It had a well in the middle of the floor and a big oak dresser stretched from floor to ceiling. On the top of the dresser was Abednego, still chattering with annoyance. By the well in the middle of the floor there were two truckle-beds, two feather mattresses and two little folded quilts. Moses, Ezra and the boys carried the beds and mattresses out to the cart and Nan followed with the quilts in her arms. They smelt faintly of cedar wood and they were made of hundreds of diamond-shaped patches of silk, satin, velvet, and brocade of all the colours of the rainbow. She was so absorbed in them that she did not notice, as she stepped out into the sunlight, that Betsy had stayed behind in the kitchen.
Betsy was gazing at Abednego. He was about her own size, but he had the face of a very old man and he was like Absolom. The queer mixture of man, child, and creature fascinated her. And so did his long tail, which hung down over the willow-patterned china on the dresser like a velvet bell-rope. Mechanically rocking Gertrude in her arms, she stared and stared, and Abednego stopped chattering and stared at Gertrude, who was a very beautiful doll with red cheeks, golden hair, a blue silk dress, a lace petticoat, and red shoes. Betsy said afterwards that she did not mean to worrit Abednego and had no intention of pulling his tail. She merely wanted to stroke it to see if it was as velvety as it looked, and standing on tiptoe and stretching up her left hand she did so, and like a snake striking down came Abednego’s long hairy arm and skinny hand and snatc
hed Gertrude from the crook of her right arm. Before she had time even to get her breath he had leapt from the top of the dresser, wrenched open the door beside it and vanished, carrying Gertrude with him. At once Betsy dashed in pursuit, for she was a brave child, and though she was no more than mildly fond of Gertrude, she had a very strong sense of personal property.
The door closed itself behind her and she was in darkness. She ran and ran, and felt as she ran that the strange dark tunnel was taking her right into the heart of a mountain. She forgot this was a house. Now and then a faint glimmer of light suggested that other tunnels led off to right and left, but she kept straight on because she very soon became so frightened that she could not stop. She was brave, but she thought she heard long swift loping footsteps padding up behind her and she pictured some creature rather like Abednego, but more horrible, reaching out for her with furry paws. She very soon forgot about Gertrude and even about the others and home, she forgot about everything except the hairy creature coming behind her. Then she tripped over something and fell headlong. She did not hurt herself, partly because she was so well cushioned with fat and partly because she fell on something soft, but she was startled and for a few moments she could only lie still with her face pressed against the softness.
Then she heard not the footsteps of the creature but a soft humming, and it was so familiar and reassuring that immediately all the fear went out of her and she sat up and opened her eyes, and the first thing she saw was a slanting sunbeam, and slowly and happily revolving in it, as though bathing their wings in the gold, were three bees. It was not total darkness about her now, but a dim green underwater light with the sunbeam slanting through it, and she thought at first that she was sitting on thick green moss in a cavern in the mountain. Then she realised that this must be a house after all because she was sitting on a green carpet. The long dark passage had led her into the hall of the house and she had tripped on the carpet because it was ragged at the edges. Under the carpet the hall was paved with stone, like the passage, and it smelt cold and dark because the windows were all closed and covered with green velvet curtains. They were old and shabby and there was a big hole in one of them. It was through this hole that the sunbeam slanted. Betsy didn’t know how the bees had got in. If they had followed her up the passage then they had been with her all the time and she needn’t have been so frightened. Uncarpeted stairs led up from the hall into darkness and their curved balustrade was festooned with cobwebs. Betsy had thought the cobwebs at the Vicarage were glorious, but they were nothing to these, which looked as though they had been here for a hundred years, growing more intricate and marvellous all the time.