The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (6 page)

‘How peculiar! Can we have been mistaken? But no, we could not have confused a grey dress with a red one,’ Sylvia said.

Bonnie was frowning. ‘I do not understand it! What can a strange woman in a carriage have been doing in our woods? The road runs through there, but it goes nowhere save to the house.’

‘Perhaps when we get back we shall find her. Perhaps she is a neighbour come calling,’ Sylvia suggested.

Bonnie shook her head. ‘There are no neighbours.’ Then she seized Sylvia’s arm. ‘Look!
There
is Miss Slighcarp!’ Sure enough, the grey figure they had first observed was now to be seen, far away behind them, walking swiftly in the direction of the house.

‘She must have turned back when we were between the high banks,’ Bonnie said repentantly. ‘And I have brought you so far! Poor Sylvia, I am afraid that you are dreadfully tired.’

‘Nonsense!’ Sylvia said stoutly. ‘We had to come. And I shall manage very well.’

But she was really well-nigh exhausted, and could not help skating more and more slowly. Bonnie bit her lip and looked anxious. The sky was becoming overcast with the promise of more snow, and, worse, it would not be long until dusk.

‘I have done very wrong,’ Bonnie said remorsefully.
‘I
should have made you turn back, and come on myself.’

‘I should not have let you.’

A sudden wind got up, and sent loose snow from the banks in a scurry across the grey ice. One or two large flakes fell from the sky.

‘Can you go a little faster?’ Bonnie could not conceal the anxiety in her tone. ‘Try, Sylvia!’

Sylvia exerted herself valiantly, but she was really so tired that she could hardly force her limbs to obey her.

‘I am so stupid!’ she said, half-laughing, half-crying. ‘Suppose I sit here on the bank, Bonnie, while you go home for assistance?’

Bonnie looked as if she were half-considering this proposal when a low moaning sound rose in the distance, a sound familiar to Bonnie, and, since yesterday, full of terrible significance for Sylvia. It was the far-off cry of wolves.

‘No, that is not to be thought of,’ Bonnie said decisively. ‘I have a better plan. We must take off our skates. Can you manage? Make haste, then!’

They sat on a clump of rush by the river’s edge, and with chilled fingers tugged at the knots in their bootlaces. Sylvia shivered as once again the wolf-cry stole over the frozen parkland; it had been bad enough heard from the train, but
now
, when there was nothing between them and those pitiless legions, how dread it sounded!

The children stood up, slinging their skates round their necks.

‘Now we must climb this little hill,’ Bonnie said.
‘Here
, I’ll take your hand. Can you run? Famous! Sylvia, you are the bravest creature in the world, and when we get home I shall give you my little ivory workbox to show how sorry I am for having led you into such a scrape.’

Sylvia did her best to smile at her cousin, having no breath to answer, and tried to stifle all doubts that they ever
would
get home.

Arrived at the top of the hill, Bonnie stood still and, as it seemed to Sylvia, wasted precious moments while she glanced keenly about her through the rapidly thickening snowstorm.

‘Ah!’ she cried presently. ‘The temple of Hermes! We must go this way.’ She tugged Sylvia at a run down the slope and across a wide intervening stretch of open ground towards a little pillared pavilion that stood on an artificial knoll against some dark trees. They had now put the river between them and the cry of the wolves, which was comforting, but Sylvia was dismayed to see that Bonnie was once more leading her away from the house.

‘Where are we going, Bonnie?’ she panted, fighting bravely to keep up.

‘I have a friend who lives in the woods,’ Bonnie returned. ‘I only hope he is not away. Let us rest a moment here.’

They stood struggling to get their breath in the temple of Hermes, which was no more than a roof supported on slender columns.

‘Oh, Bonnie, look, look!’ Sylvia cried in uncontrollable alarm, pointing back the way they had come. Through the dusk they could just distinguish
two
small black dots at the top of the slope, which were soon joined by several others. After a moment all these dots began coursing swiftly down the hillside in their direction.

‘There is not a moment to be lost,’ Bonnie said urgently. ‘Make haste, make haste!’ Half-leading, half-supporting the exhausted Sylvia, she urged her on through the deepening wood. Here Bonnie seemed to know her way almost by instinct. She passed from tree to tree, scanning them, apparently, for signs invisible to her cousin.

‘Here we are!’ she exclaimed in a tone of unutterable thankfulness, and, to Sylvia’s astonishment, she put her fingers to her lips and gave vent to a long, clear whistle. More surprising still, she was instantly answered by another whistle which seemed to come from the very ground beneath their feet.

A clear, ringing voice called, ‘Here, Miss Bonnie! Here, quick!’

Sylvia found a lithe, bright-eyed boy beside her, helping her on. Taller than Bonnie, he was dressed entirely in skins. He wore a fur cap, carried a bow, and had a sheaf of arrows slung over his shoulder.

As the first of the wolf-pack found their track in the temple of Hermes and came raging after, along the clear scent, the boy turned, fitted an arrow to his bow, and sent it unerringly into the midst of the pursuers. One wolf fell, and his companions immediately hurled themselves upon him with starving ferocity.

‘That gives us a breathing-space!’ the boy exclaimed. ‘Inside, Miss Bonnie! Don’t lose a moment.’

With Bonnie tugging at her hand, and the boy guarding the rear, threatening the wolves with his bow, Sylvia found herself whisked down a long narrow path, or passage-way, snow-lined at first, then floored with dead leaves. It was dark, she was in a cave! And more curious still, she could feel a number of live creatures pushing against her legs, almost overbalancing her. They were soft and smooth, and she could hear an angry hissing coming from them which almost drowned the clamour of the wolves outside. She would have cried out in fright if she had had any breath left – and then she and Bonnie rounded a corner in the passage and saw before them the comfortable glow of a fire burning on a sandy hearth.

Heaped-up piles of ferns and dead leaves, covered with furs, lay against the cave walls, and on these Bonnie and Sylvia flung themselves, for even Bonnie could now acknowledge that she was nearly fainting from weariness.

‘There!’ said the boy, following them in. ‘I’ve shut the gate. They’ll not catch you this time! But what was you doing, Miss Bonnie, so far from the house on a night like this? It’s not like you to take such a foolish risk.’

As Bonnie began explaining how it had come about, Sylvia was amazed to see a number of large white geese waddle after the boy into the cave. They looked rather threateningly out of their flat, black, beady eyes at Sylvia and Bonnie. One or two of them thrust out their necks and hissed, but the boy waved
them
back into the passage and flung them a handful of corn to keep them quiet.

Lulled by the flickering firelight and the long white necks weaving up and down in the entrance as the geese pecked their corn, Sylvia, who was half-stupefied by exhaustion, fell fast asleep.

When she awoke it was to the sound of voices. Bonnie was saying anxiously:

‘But Simon, we cannot stay here all night! My dear Pattern will be so worried! She will be certain the wolves have got us. And Miss Slighcarp, too, will be concerned. Perhaps they have already sent the men out searching for us.’

‘I’ll have a look in a moment,’ the boy returned. ‘Now, if you’ll wake your cousin, miss, the cakes are ready, and you’ll both feel better on full stomachs than empty.’

He spoke with a pleasant country burr. Sylvia, lying drowsy on her heap of leaves, thought that his voice had a comfortable, brown, furry sound to it.

‘Sylvia! Wake up!’ Bonnie said. ‘Here’s Simon made us some delicious cakes. And if you are like me you are ravenous with hunger.’

‘Indeed I am!’ Rubbing her eyes and smiling, Sylvia brushed off the leaves and sat up.

The boy had separated the fire into two glowing hillocks. From between these he now pulled a flat stone on which were baking a number of little cakes. The two children ate them hungrily as soon as they were cool enough to hold. They were brown on the outside, white and floury within, and sweet to the taste.

‘Your cakes are splendid, Simon,’ Bonnie said. ‘How do you make them?’

‘From chestnut flour, Miss Bonnie. I gather up the chestnuts in the autumn and pound them to flour between two stones.’

While they were eating he went along the entrance-passage. In a minute he came back to say, ‘Wolves have gone, and it’s a fine, sharp night, all spiky with stars. No signs of men out searching, Miss Bonnie. It’s my belief we’d best be off now while the way’s clear. Do you think you can walk as far as the house now, Miss Sylvia?’

‘Oh yes, yes! I feel perfectly rested,’ declared Sylvia. But she was obliged to acknowledge when she
stood
up that she still found herself stiff and tired, and would be unable to keep up a very fast pace.

‘I have badly overtaxed your strength this first day,’ exclaimed Bonnie self-reproachfully. ‘Still, if you
can
walk, Sylvia, I think we should be off now and save our poor Pattern some hours of dreadful worry.’

‘Certainly I can walk,’ Sylvia said stoutly, ‘let us start at once,’ though inwardly her heart quailed somewhat at the thought of the wolves very likely still in the neighbourhood.

‘A moment before we start.’ The boy Simon dug in shallow sand at the side of the cave and brought out a large leather bottle and a horn drinking-cup. He gave the girls each a small drink from the bottle. It was strong, heady stuff, tasting of honey.

‘That will hearten you for the walk,’ he said.

‘What is it, Simon?’

‘Metheglin, miss. I make it in the summer from the heather honey.’

He picked up his bow and flung a few logs on the fire. The children resumed their furs, which they had taken off at their first entry into the warm cave.

‘I do love your home, Simon!’ Bonnie exclaimed. ‘I hate to leave it!’

‘
You
, miss?’ he said, grinning, ‘with your grand house and a different room for each day in the year?’

‘Well, yes, of course I love that too, but this is so snug!’

Simon quieted the geese, who raised their necks and hissed as the children passed them.

‘I wish I had another weapon to defend you with,’
he
muttered. ‘One bow is hardly sufficient for three. I will cut you a cudgel when we are outside, Miss Bonnie.’

‘I know, Simon!’ Bonnie cried. ‘My old fowling-piece that I left here that rainy day last autumn! I have never thought of it since. Have you it still?’

‘Of course I have,’ he said, his face lighting up. ‘And carefully oiled, too, with neat’s-foot oil. It is in good order, Miss Bonnie. I am glad you reminded me of it — what a fool I was not to think of it before!’

He took it down from where it hung on the passage wall in a leather sack. Bonnie, somewhat to her cousin’s alarm and amazement, handled the gun confidently and soon satisfied herself of its being in excellent order and ready to fire.

‘Now let us be off,’ she said gaily. ‘I can keep the villains at a distance with this.’

They went out into the clear, sparkling night. The new snow, which had obliterated both their footprints and those of the wolves, made a crisp carpet beneath their feet. Bonnie and Simon kept a vigilant look-out for wolves, and Sylvia did too, though secretly she felt she was almost less afraid of the wolves than of her cousin Bonnie’s gun. However, there was no occasion to use the fowling-piece, as the wolves appeared to have left that region for the moment, drawn away, doubtless, by some new quarry.

Their journey back to the house was quiet and uninterrupted.

‘It is strange,’ remarked Bonnie in a puzzled voice, ‘that we do not see men out everywhere with lanterns
searching
for us. Why, the time I was late back from picking wild strawberries, my father had every man on the estate out with pitchforks and muskets!’

‘Aye,’ said Simon, ‘but your father’s from home now, isn’t he, Miss Bonnie?’

‘Yes he is,’ answered Bonnie sighing. ‘I suppose that is the reason.’

And she fell into rather a sad silence.

When they reached the great terrace, Bonnie suggested that they should go in by a side entrance, and thus avoid informing Miss Slighcarp of their return.

‘For it is possible that Pattern, fearing her anger, has left her in ignorance that we were out,’ she suggested thoughtfully. ‘I believe Pattern is a little frightened of Miss Slighcarp.’

‘I am sure
I
am,’ Sylvia agreed. ‘There is something so cold and glittering about her eyes, and then her voice is so disagreeable. I dare say that is the reason, Bonnie.’

As they passed a large, lighted window, Bonnie murmured, ‘That is the great library, Sylvia, where my father keeps all his books and papers. I will show you over it tomorrow … Why, what a curious thing!’ she exclaimed. For, glancing in as they walked by, they saw Miss Slighcarp, under the illumination of numerous candles, apparently hard at work searching through a mass of papers. There were papers on chairs, on tables, on the floor. Beyond her, at the far end of the room, similarly engaged, was a gentleman who looked amazingly like Mr Grimshaw. Could it be he? But at the slight noise made by their feet oh the snow, Miss Slighcarp turned. She could
not
see the watchers, who were beyond the lighted area near the window, but she crossed with a decisive step and flung-to the heavy velvet curtains, shutting off the scene within.