The Fox in the Attic
So she reached the next story, and it was from this point she reckoned that nearly the whole building lay open right up to the roof: a timber skeleton only—rooms never partitioned, floors that had mostly never been planked. But in that case, surely she ought to ... wouldn’t she hear the roof-clock clearly, not muffled like this?
She should have, of course! And this muffled sound convinced her she’d made a mistake. So long was it since she’d been up here she’d counted them wrong: there must be another flight yet before one got to the attics. This was a whole story of rooms she’d somehow forgotten ... and just then she tripped over a jug.
Again Mitzi started to mount; but confused now, for having once made a mistake she could no longer imagine at all what her eyes should be seeing. Progress was nightmarishly slow although the need for haste was so desperate for she had to trust wholly to feel, and feeling explored no more than one arm’s-length ahead every time.
Then her ears told her she had got there at last! The slow, clear tick of the clock ... a feeling of space all around her, the breath of a draft again Mitzi stood still and listened. Though clear and sharp it was still far above her, the tick ... tock ... of that clock. From far above, too, came the sizzle of water that trickled into the tank in the roof through a half-frozen ball-cock. And the squeaking of bats.
From here on, the stairs were a makeshift: little more than a ladder. She needed her hands to climb with. Then she came to what must be some sort of platform, for her shuffling foot felt an edge—with nothing below; and her fingers confirmed it.
The sound of the clock and the sizzling water were nearer now. But now there was something else too—a faint sound of movement ... quite close to her ... yes, the sound of ... Someone was there!
Mitzi opened her lips, and licked them, and called: “Who is it?”
No answer; and yet the faint sounds continued.
“Don’t be afraid!” she called clearly: “I’m coming to help you! Where are you?”
No answer; yet still that rustle, of somebody moving. A creak—very close to her now.
The fox had been here: Mitzi smelt him. She dropped to a squatting position calling his name, and he thrust his wet nozzle into her hand with a stifled half-howl. The creature was in a queer state: she could feel it, and caught the infection. Suddenly she too was thoroughly frightened.
That faint sound was movement—within feet of her surely! Nearer than ticking clock or dribbling water, although so much fainter. Mitzi wanted to call out again “Who is it?” but now her voice wouldn’t come. The stairs! Could she find her way back to the stairs if ... if she had to? But she mustn’t think about stairs yet: she had come here to bring help.
“Sub pennis ejus sperabis,” Mitzi breathed: “Non timebis a timore nocturno. A sagitta volante per diem, a negotio pera bulante in tenebris, a ruina et dæmonio meridiano ...” As that gabbled childhood spell against the dark had always done long ago, now too the sacred words began to work in her instantly. “Under His feathers thou shalt find hope,” she repeated (in German this time). “Thou shalt not be afraid for any terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day ...” and now fear totally left her: and left of “her,” seemingly, nothing but a love that spread outwards like pulsing chimes from a bell.
But then in a puff of sound the distant happy voices of the children floated up to her followed by Franz’s scandalized voice that admonished them. That recalled “Mitzi”: for the sound must come through a window, and this meant that now she knew where she was—somewhere close to the dormer! This platform must be the narrow planked catwalk that led to it.
On her hands and knees she crept there. The dormer was open! Something smelling of ammonia was close to her ... She craned out and called to him:
“Franz!—Quick, Franz!”
“COMING!” he shouted.
*
The children—this was what had scandalized Franz—were chasing Augustine out through the Great Gate pelting him with snow: so neither they nor Augustine heard Mitzi. But Franz heard, and flight after flight he bounded upstairs, burst into the attic, then up the ladder ... and saw them—there, by the perilous window! His sister was crouched at the low sill. Close behind her was Wolff, looming over her. Close to Mitzi—as in life he had never been close.
For this was Wolff’s body, hanged from the beam. The feet were clear of the gangway—out over nothing. The body was swinging a little still, and slowly turned from the tension it put on the creaking rope.
Franz’s first thoughts were none for his hideous friend but all for his sister: how could he get her away unaware of what was hanging right over her? Any moment she’d stand up and bump into it.
Franz grabbed her, but Mitzi strongly resisted: “No!” she cried. “Idiot. There’s someone up here, I heard him! I called you ...”
She only gave in when he told her, sharply, that Wolff was beyond help.
21
Buckets ringing like bells on the cobbles: the early-morning caroling of boys with December voices still hoarse from the pillow, with unwashed eyes still sticky from sleep and new-donned breeches still cold to their bums! Jinglings from the saddle-room, whinnyings from the stalls: a smell of leather, metal-polish, saddle-soap, of linseed bubbling on the stove, of warm new dung being shaken, of sizzling urine ... bobbing lanterns haloed in mist, rime on the great yard pump ghostly in the gloaming—and a huge forkful of hay traveling high like a giant’s head on a pike ...
Two weeks to Christmas—and the stable clock striking Six! For life began mighty early in Mellton stables under Mary’s regime even if this wasn’t a hunting morning (hunting had stopped even in this scrambling Mellton country because of the iron frost).
Polly in her nightgown hung out of the nightnursery window, listening to it all and trying to watch. Alas that it was all too far off to be smelt also; for in Polly’s nose nothing after Gusting’s smell equaled the smell of stables, not even a rabbit-hutch full of her own particular rabbits. As she leaned from the window the December air was raw and her teeth started to chatter, but Polly paid no attention: it was better to be cold than bored. Polly’s purgatory was that every single day she woke soon after five; and unless Augustine was in the house, at five no one seemed to welcome a visit. But except Christmas and birthdays Polly wasn’t allowed to dress till years later—not till Minta came at the dreary hour of seven. If only they’d let Polly take her rabbits to bed with her or even a kitten she’d have stopped on in bed, perhaps; but not just with teddies, for teddies smelt only of shop, she’d no use for teddies ... Oh lucky stable-boys (thought Polly) allowed to get up at half-past five every day of their lives!
Polly had told Willie-Winkie once how lucky he was; but he only made noises for answer, and the noises were rude. All the same, Wee-Willie-Winkie was her favorite (fourteen, yet almost Polly’s own size). Willie smelt of gin and tobacco as well as of horses and “boy”: he was aimed for a jockey, he told her. Willie was clever too: she had seen him bridle a hunter of seventeen hands; he tempted its head down with an apple laid on the ground, and then when the horse’s head went up again wee Willie went up with it.
Now the stable clock struck half-past, and Polly could stand it no longer. She would creep downstairs to see what the housemaids were up-to, enjoying their brief hour of sovereignty now while the house was exclusively theirs. As she opened the door Jimmy scuttled past down the passage, his arms full of boots and his mouth full of jokes. Then she found Gertie brushing the stairs: Polly stepped over her carefully, but Gertie tickled her legs with the long-haired banister-brush as she passed.
When Polly got to the drawing-room, Rosamond was dusting the Cupiddy ceiling with a bunch of cock’s-feathers on the end of a twelve-foot cane. Polly hoped to be chased with it; but Rozzie was “busy”... The dining-room, then? But Violet was sweeping the dining-room and Violet was always a cross-patch, so Polly tiptoed away unseen. However, in the morning-room she found Mabel, lighting the fire and singing. Mabel had polished the grate till i
t shone, and Polly by now was shivering (she’d forgotten her slippers and dressing-gown) so sat herself down on the fender to admire it, watching the flames as they grew and warming her toes. She and Mabel were friends: Mabel let her stay on (but, “Now then, Polly Flinders!” said Mabel, and stopped her playing with coal).
When Mabel departed at last she forgot her blacklead, and Polly—deeply admiring the shine on the grate—thought suddenly how very much nicer the rocking-horse up in the nursery would look ... so annexed the saucer of wet blacklead and the brushes and (remembering Gertie to pass) secreted them under her nightgown. But they were awkward to carry that way, and she dropped them twice before she successfully got to her room. Just as she got there moreover the clock chimed the three-quarters: Minta might come any minute, so prudently Polly hid her spoils in her bed and climbed in on top of them. Thus at Seven, when Minta did come at last, against all precedent Polly was fast asleep.
At Eight, kitchen-breakfast was over and Lily—you remember young Lily—was out in the scullery washing it up. For Lily this was a fine coign of vantage for saucing the postman (a light-weight boxer of note); for at Eight the post was delivered. The mail for the Chase arrived grandly, in their own private leather dispatch-box with the Wadamy crest: Mr. Wantage it was who unlocked it and gave out the post, and as usual he made this a solemn occasion. The Master’s and Mistress’s letters he would sort and set out with his own hands by their places at breakfast, with the “halfpennies” underneath the real letters (today the Mistress had one with a foreign stamp: he would put this on top). Any letters for Kitchens he gave to Cook to distribute. Today there was one for Mrs. Winter: that went to the Room. There was a letter today too for Nanny Halloran; and this he entrusted to Minta.
Minta took Nanny’s letter up with the Nursery breakfast, and as soon as Nanny had drawn an elegant “P” in golden syrup on Polly’s plateful of Force she opened it. The letter came from Minta’s forerunner, Brenda (an orphan, Brenda was devoted to Mrs. Halloran and still looked to her for advice when she needed it).
Brenda had gone temporary now to Lady Sylvia to help “Mumselle” with little Lady Jane; and the letter was dated from a village near Torquay, for in spite of the season Her Ladyship had packed Janey off into lodgings—as far from Eaton Square as she could. Now, Brenda wanted advice about giving her notice. “Tchk, Tchk,” said Nanny, pursing her lips as she read it and absently cooling her tea in the saucer: for Janey (it said) the very first day there had locked Mumselle in her bedroom and gone off ferreting with some village boys. She enjoyed this so much that next day she and the boy at the lodgings decided to go on their own; but, not having a ferret, took the cat with them instead. However, it seems that when the boy pushed his cat down a rabbit-hole the cat had objected. It tried to get out, and so Janey sat on the hole. Thus began a battle of wills; for the half-suffocated cat was desperate and yet under the boy’s eyes Janey just couldn’t give in. It bit and it scratched, but she sat and she sat. In the end, she “come home with her knicks all blood and fair tore to rovings”—and also minus the cat.
“Tchk, Tchk,” said Nanny, passing the letter to Minta. Then she added: “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven!” and sighed at the prospect. “When that one was old enough,” Nanny went on, “I’d send her into the Navy—if she wasn’t a girl.”
“If she was a boy, you mean,” put in Polly.
“That’s what I said: ‘if she wasn’t a girl.’”
“But she might be a dog,” said Polly, her eyes shining with logic: “Not everyone’s boys or girls.”
“Eat up your Force, dear,” said Nanny.
*
Mrs. Winter’s letter was propped beside Mrs. Winter’s breakfast egg in its green crochet-work cozy, and the postmark was “Flemton” (“Proper mad-house!” Mrs. Winter muttered: “Ought to be certified the whole lot of them.”). The letter of course came from Nellie’s mother-in-law; and it was certainly short. The old lady was well but wanted a catapult and hoped dear Maggie would send one.
22
When Gwilym’s mother first had that seizure at the mortuary she was taken to the Penrys Cross infirmary, but when she was better they had wanted to send her home. Where should they send her however? She was a bit “funny” after her illness: she certainly mustn’t live alone any more. Could she come to her son at the “Hermitage”?
She’d have to sleep in the kitchen of course, and if she was bedridden ... but still, if they had to ... Nellie herself was prepared. All this ought to have worried Gwilym, no doubt; but nowadays Gwilym seemed to have lost the power of worrying just as he had lost the power of using his legs. It certainly worried Nellie! But what could be done? Maggie was adamant the old lady mustn’t come to the “Hermitage”; but Nellie couldn’t even get away to go down there and see to things (nor could she have borne to go there). So, in the end, Maggie it was who went.
This had been Mrs. Winter’s second visit to Penrys Cross: she had gone to the funeral (sole family mourner thereat), and after had called on the coroner to learn all she could. So now she went straight to the one person she knew at the Cross. Luckily this was one of Dr. Brinley’s “good” days: when she showed him how hopeless it was to think of Gwilym and Nellie he promised to fix it. “A bit funny, you say? Then it means finding suitable lodgings.” He would find the old lady somewhere in Flemton (a place where no one thought anyone inside the community odd).
On the orders of Dr. Brinley, therefore, Alderman Teller, who combined a moribund sweets-and-drapery business with marketing prawns, agreed to let her a room; and there Mrs. Winter installed her. After that, Mrs. Winter had to go home.
The room was lofty, and paneled, and musty, with an elegant marble mantelpiece (gone a trifle rhomboidal); and for company, plenty of mice. The mice had shocked Mrs. Winter; but the old lady took to them and started a war at once to protect them from cats. For at Alderman Teller’s (all former High Stewards had this courtesy-title of “Alderman”) the cats of the town roamed in and out as they liked. They seemed to find Teller mice extra-desirable—because (she supposed) of some special bouquet these acquired from their diet of prawns; and soon it was war to the knife between her and the cats. Thus the mice were in clover at Alderman Teller’s: what with unlimited prawns, and with snippets of velvet to upholster their holes, and now the old lady’s protection; and she too was in clover—what with the mice, and the Tellers couldn’t be kinder, and even in bed she could hear the roar of the sea which she loved and the far-off occasional ping of the cash-till as sixpence went in.
True, she couldn’t see out much unless the window was open; for the glass was frosted with salt and scratched and pitted by a century’s driving sand. Some days it had to be tight shut, for at times she felt she was floating and might float out of it. But the days she felt stable enough to risk it she kept the window wide open—to harass the cats, whose favorite way into the house was a broken pane in the window directly below hers. At first she was able to check them by waving her arms out of the window and cursing; but in time they got used to that, and ignored her and still went in and out as they chose. However, someone had left a salmon-rod in her wardrobe. So she plugged up the hole in the glass downstairs, and went back to her room. There she waited till a queue of frustrated cats had formed on the sill underneath her, then leaned right out and swept them all off with the rod (two tabbies, three tortoiseshells, one semi-demi-Persian, and the old red tom with one ear).
After that, as the cats grew warier she too grew warier: she developed her sport to an art. As for Flemton, Dr. Brinley was right: at the spectacle of an old lady fishing for cats all day with a salmon-rod from a second-floor window not even the children looked twice.
To get back to the railhead at Penrys Cross Mrs. Winter had traveled by carrier’s-cart on top of the Alderman’s prawns; and His Worship the driver was Tom, the present High Steward himself. From a lifetime of lifting weights, Tom’s bull-neck and shoulders were prodigious: he was solider far than his horse. His manner wa
s always laconic: he drank like a fish: his schooling had been kept to a minimum: but Tom was no fool. Tom’s brother George owned the “Wreckers,” Hugh fattened store cattle on the Marsh and together these three were the power in Flemton, with the “Worshipful Court” and all that in their pockets (there was a fourth brother too but he didn’t count. Aneurin was a coasting-smack skipper whose ships always sank and who now had set up as a dentist—or so his brass plate described him, but no one had ventured inside).
Jogging along the lanes Tom had given Mrs. Winter some news which surprised her: Newton was going to be sold! Oh yes, Tom was sure of it: the young squire had decided to sell (Tom glanced at her sideways) and any day now the bills would be out for the auction ... though some said the place had been sold already—a war-profiteer it was who had bought it, one who Lloyd George had turned into a Lord. After all, why wouldn’t he sell? Nice welcome he’d get if he ever come back here (Tom glanced at her sideways again). “But some say it’s entailed and mustn’t be sold.”
When Tom wanted to find something out he never asked questions: he formed working hypotheses, announced them like this and observed the effect. But although Mrs. Winter hadn’t known this and was taken by surprise, Tom’s “method” had at last met its match in her habitual discretion: she listened politely but gave him no shadow of lead. Tom lashed at his willowy dawdling horse and lapsed into silence. The point was that just now Tom was thinking of buying a bus and this made it vital to know whether Newton was going to be sold, for when an estate like Newton comes under the hammer there are pickings which mustn’t be missed. If Newton was up for sale, then the brothers would need all the cash they could raise and the bus would be better postponed.
“After all,” he resumed, “now Young Squire has turned Roman Catholic and settled in Rome ... bought a very fine house there they tell me, next door to the Pope ...”