Chapter VII: The Fairy Piper

“But there couldn’t be!” said Gerry, staring. “You see, nobody’s there.”

“There was, though,” said Betty. “Listen, I truly believe I heard it again.”

Both the girls sat back on the sunny patch of grass between the gardens and held their breath.

“O-ver the hills and far a-wa-ay!”

The air of the quaint old song could plainly be heard, growing fainter and more far-away even as they listened, but certainly there for all that.

“The funny part of it is,” said Betty, “that somehow I think I’ve heard it before. Only I never thought it came from a person, you know, Gerry. It seemed the same kind of tune as the bees somehow--a sort of out-of-doors sound, and mixed up with every other sound.” She stopped, wondering whether her companion would understand what she meant.

Gerry, however, appeared to take the remark as a perfectly intelligible one. She nodded gravely.

“Yes, I know. Only it couldn’t be, of course; because it really is a _tune_. I wish----”

By this time the pair of them were leaning over the fence which divided the gardens from the school wood.

“Nobody’s here,” said Gerry. “You see, it’s private; and we couldn’t hear sounds from the road--it’s too far off. But the sound did come from the wood; I heard it too.”

“Just as though,” burst in Betty, “it was a kind of ‘Piper of Dreams’ sound. Gerry, there’s a picture in the post-office at home--framed, you know, and to sell. There’s a boy there, sitting under a tree--a kind of fairy boy, I think--playing a pipe. And rabbits and birds are round his knees listening to him, and not minding him. I’ve often taken the twins to see it”--Betty gave a little gulp of remembrance--“and some day when I’m rich I shall buy it for them. But even then I shan’t like it any better than I do now, I don’t think. Perhaps not so much. It’s nice not to have a thing for altogether, but to have to go out and look at it.”

Gerry nodded again. “But,” she objected, “this music couldn’t be him--I mean we couldn’t have fairy-piper music here, unless--” Transfixed with a sudden idea she gave a little cry. “If it came from _Witch’s_ Wood now,” said Gerry. “_That’s_ supposed to be magic. But of course it didn’t; and no _witch_ would ever play fairy music of course.”

“‘Witch’s Wood!’” repeated Betty, staring.

“You can ask Rene about it. Her father is the doctor here. She’s only a boarder at Benedick’s because she wants to be so much. She knows about Witch’s Wood; it was she who told Mona and me.” Gerry turned from the fence and seized a trowel. “Let’s go on gardening, Betty, and get the ground ready for the mignonette seeds, like Sybil said. We’ll listen while we do it. It’s funny that I’ve been to school a year longer than you and never heard it before till to-day. And you’ve heard it often.”

“I _think_ I have,” corrected Betty. “Always when I’ve been alone, I think; or else I would have been sure to have asked if you and the others were hearing it too. To-day, though, you came along just as I was beginning to wonder about it. Perhaps if we don’t talk it will come back.”

Gardening went on, however, after that without the interruption that they hoped for. Every now and then the girls lifted their heads, but no sound came from the wood on the other side of the fence save the faint soughing of the breeze in the branches and the occasional call of a bird.

“Doesn’t anybody ever go in there, Gerry?” inquired Betty, rather inclined to look upon the wood as the home of Faery.

“Anybody? Why, of course; we often do. The senior girls built their huts in there for the Pioneer badge last summer, and they gave the whole school tea. And we fetch primrose plants for the gardens from the wood--from where the wood doesn’t miss them, you know. We often go in there, too, on hot days. But it’s private except to us. No one else goes there.” Gerry threw back her mop of hair. “We might get some foxglove plants for the garden from there later on. They’d be lovely.”

“Wouldn’t they!” agreed Betty.

But she spoke half-abstractedly. Her heart was filled with another idea. The sound of the music and the remembrance of the dream picture in the little post-office at home had set her own dreams racing. Gerry had mentioned Witch’s Wood; and the name had a splendid mystery about it too. At the very next chance she would ask Rene to tell her about it.

“What?” Up in the dormitory that night, while they brushed their hair, Rene listened rather incredulously to their tale. “No, _I’ve_ never heard it. It must have been a mistake. Or else a trespassing boy. Though--” Rene broke off.

“Well?” inquired Gerry, scenting disbelief in Rene’s voice.

“Dad says that the boys _don’t_ trespass in our wood. He says we’re lucky. He says that the Witch’s Wood being close by is more help to the school wood than a hundred ‘Trespassers will be Prosecuted’ boards,” finished up the doctor’s daughter.

“But _our_ wood’s not Witch’s Wood,” broke in Gerry.

“Of course it’s not. But they’re close; there’s only a broken-down fence between. So I suppose the boys think the witch might lean over the palings and catch them,” Rene laughed.

“I wish you’d tell me about Witch’s Wood,” broke in Betty eagerly. “It’s such a story-book name, and so thrilly.”

“It’s not so thrilly as it sounds, then.” Rene’s tone sounded superior. “It’s absolutely ordinary. And it’s only private because the owner died abroad years ago and his estate went into Chancery, and the village people got ideas about the wood because of the haunted cottage in the middle. They _say_ that it’s haunted anyhow. They say that it’s a witch’s cottage, and that it gave the name to the wood. But Dad says it ought to be spelt Wych’s Wood, and that it’s because of the wych elms that it’s got its name. And he’s sure to be right.”

“Besides,” said Mona severely, breaking in, “we’re Guides. And Guides don’t believe in ghosts.”

“I don’t either. Oh, do tell everything about the witch’s cottage, though, Rene,” begged Betty.

“It’s there. And nobody goes into the wood, so nobody goes near it. A lawyer came down from London once and looked at it. Dad says it couldn’t possibly be lived in. That’s all.”

It wasn’t “all” to Betty, though. She had made up so many fairy stories for Jan and Jack in the past that she had grown used to weaving wonderful fancies out of very little material by dint of a great deal of imagination. Here, with Witch’s Wood as a background, and with the memory of the “fairy music” still echoing in her mind in spite of the superior looks of Rene and Mona, Betty felt herself equipped with material for a whole host of tales. There was no one to tell them to unfortunately, though; and her “supposings” met with a cold reception from two of the dormitory at least.

“You couldn’t have heard it. And Guides don’t believe in ghosts,” repeated Mona.

“Nor do I. Ghosts are silly and frightening,” burst out Betty impatiently. “I never said a word about them. Witches are quite different; they might be quite nice, only rather cross on top with unhappiness. And I am sure some Guides _must_ believe in fairies anyway!”

But the others appeared to consider that the Mascot was not qualified to express such definite opinions. Only Gerry stood up for her friend.

“Truly, Mona, I don’t see why not either. Betty, you’d better ask Sybil--when you go to repeat the promises, you know. Oh, I say, that reminds me: she’ll never know them unless we help her now.”

The learning of the Guide promises had been a labour on which the whole dormitory had employed itself, anxious that the Mascot should be a credit to the patrol. By the end of her second week Betty was word perfect at least. She had learned to repeat that a Guide’s honour is to be trusted; that a Guide is loyal; that she is a friend of all, and so on: there were ten commandments in the law. Betty, studiously repeating them at odd moments, found herself wondering if she ever would be good enough to be elected a real Guide; whether she could ever be good enough to make the Guide’s promise! The rest of the guide work which Sybil had set her--the tying and untying of sundry boot-lace ends, under the direction of Mona on the lawn in the grounds, into knots--was just like play. There had been a Guiding practice too already; for the younger Guides, under the direction of Eve--Sybil’s second in the patrol--had to study some of the woodcraft signs, and how to track and trail. That, so Betty decided, had also been play.

But the promises and the law felt different--not play at all. And somehow, though she couldn’t explain it, the salute seemed to “come in between.”

“A kind of bridge the salute is. You feel sort of responsible when you salute, though it’s fun too. But the promises and the law _couldn’t_ be fun,” was her summing up to Sybil on the Saturday, a fortnight after her arrival, when the head of the patrol had sent for the newest recruit.

“A bridge, is it? Well, perhaps,” agreed Sybil, smiling at the recruit. “Well, you can say the law through as well as any one of us, I think. But being word perfect, you know, is just the very beginning. Now let me see the reef-line knot. And you have been doing some gardening, I know.”

“Oh, Sybil,” Betty remembered suddenly, “may Guides believe in fairies?”

Sybil thought they certainly might, and that many of them did, after screwing up her brows a little to deliberate. She listened, too, to the tale of the fairy music in much more sympathetic a manner than had Rene and Mona. “I have never heard it,” she said, “but I should not like to say you made a mistake. Besides, you say that Gerry heard it too?”

“Once, when she came up suddenly,” said Betty, with eyes glistening. “But till then I’d always been alone, you know.”

“Well, next time I am gardening alone I shall listen for it too,” said the head of the patrol soberly. “But even if you should find out that it is not fairies who make it, that need not disappoint you, need it? Tell me if you hear it again, though.” Sybil stopped short and coloured a little before she went on. “Some things,” she said (shyly, Betty thought, if a head girl _could_ feel shy), “are loveliest somehow if one keeps them secret. Like fairy music, perhaps, and--oh, other things that sometimes happen when one is alone. It somehow takes the bloom off the loveliness to talk about them.” Sybil stopped. “Miss Carey said something like that in the Oak Room last year,” said Sybil; “but I am afraid I have not made it plain enough for you to understand.”

Betty retreated into the garden feeling more anxious than ever, however, that the “Piper of Dreams” should play. The rest of the girls were at sketching class, away at the other end of the grounds under the charge of the art mistress; she herself was free for one of her quiet hours. She was still thinking of what Sybil had said as she made her way to the Daisy plot and up beyond it to the fence which divided the gardens from the school wood, and stood there, leaning over and listening.

“Just in case----”

There was no sound; but suddenly her eyes fell on something bright lying at her feet, and she bent down. A peacock’s feather lay there. It seemed to have been pushed through an opening in the fence, and lay on the blade of the spade which she had left there that afternoon.

“I believe it’s a present to _me_!” said Betty, staring.