Chapter II: Book I: Abbots Puissants (1)

chapter 1

There were only three people of real importance in Vernon's world: Nurse, God, and Mr. Green.

There were, of course, the nursemaids. Winnie, the present one, and behind her Jane and Annie and Sarah and Gladys. Those were all the ones that Vernon could remember, but there were lots more. Nursery maids never stayed long because they couldn't get on with Nurse. They hardly counted in Vernon's world.

There was also a kind of twin deity called Mummy-Daddy mentioned by Vernon in his prayers and also connected with going down to dessert. They were shadowy figures, rather beautiful and wonderful--especially Mummy--but they again did not belong to the real world--Vernon's world.

The things in Vernon's world were very real indeed. There was the drugget on the nursery floor, for instance. It was of green and white stripes and rather scrubbly to bare knees, and in one corner of it was a hole which Vernon used surreptitiously to make bigger by working his fingers round in it. There were the nursery walls where mauve irises twined themselves interminably upward round a pattern that was sometimes diamonds and sometimes, if you looked at it long enough, crosses. That seemed very interesting to Vernon and rather magical.

There was a rocking horse against one wall, but Vernon seldom rode on it. There was a basket-work engine and some basket-work trucks which he played with a good deal. There was a low cupboard full of more or less dilapidated toys. On an upper shelf were the more delectable contents that you played with on a wet day or when Nurse was in an unusually good temper. The Paint Box was there and the Real Camel Hair Brushes and a heap of illustrated papers for Cutting Out. In fact, all the things that Nurse said were "that messy she couldn't abear them about." In other words, the best things.

And in the centre of this realistic nursery universe, dominating everything, was Nurse herself. Person No. 1 of Vernon's Trinity. Very big and broad, very starched and crackling. Omniscient and omnipotent. You couldn't get the better of Nurse. She knew better than little boys. She frequently said so. Her whole lifetime had been spent looking after little boys (and incidentally little girls, too, but Vernon was not interested in them) and one and all they had grown up to be a Credit to her. She said so and Vernon believed her. He had no doubt that he also would grow up to be a Credit to her, though sometimes it didn't seem likely. There was something awe-inspiring about Nurse, but at the same time infinitely comfortable. She knew the answer to everything. For instance, Vernon propounded the riddle about the diamonds and the crosses on the wall paper.

"Ah! well," said Nurse, "there's two ways of looking at everything. You must have heard that."

And as Vernon had heard her say much the same to Winnie one day, he was soothed and satisfied. On the occasion in question Nurse had gone on to say that there were always two sides to a question and in future Vernon always visualized a question as something like a letter A with crosses creeping up one side of it and diamonds going down the other.

After Nurse, there was God. God was also very real to Vernon, mainly because he bulked so largely in Nurse's conversation. Nurse knew most things that you did, but God knew _everything_, and God was, if anything, more particular than Nurse. You couldn't see God, which, Vernon always felt, gave him rather an unfair advantage over you, because he could see you. Even in the dark he could see you. Sometimes, when Vernon was in bed at night, the thought of God looking down at him through the darkness used to give him a creepy feeling down the spine.

But on the whole, God was an intangible person compared with Nurse. You could conveniently forget about him most of the time. That was, until Nurse lugged him deliberately into the conversation.

Once Vernon essayed revolt.

"Nurse, do you know what I shall do when I'm dead?"

Nurse, who was knitting stockings, said: "One, two, three, four--there now, I've dropped a stitch. No, Master Vernon, I'm sure I don't."

"I shall go to Heaven--I shall go to Heaven--and I shall go right up to God--right up to him I shall go, and I shall say: 'You're an 'orrible man and I 'ate you!'"

Silence. It was done. He had said it. Unbelievable, unparalleled audacity! What would happen? What awful punishment terrestrial or celestial would descend upon him? He waited--breathless.

Nurse had picked up the stitch. She looked at Vernon over the top of her spectacles. She was serene--unruffled.

"It's not likely," she remarked, "that the Almighty will take any notice of what a naughty little boy says. Winnie, give me those scissors, if you please."

Vernon retired crestfallen. It was no good. You couldn't down Nurse. He might have known.

_2_

And then there was Mr. Green. Mr. Green was like God in that you couldn't see him, but to Vernon he was very real. He knew, for instance, exactly what Mr. Green looked like--of middle height, rather stout, a faint resemblance to the village grocer who sang an uncertain baritone in the village choir, bright-red cheeks and mutton-chop whiskers. His eyes were blue, a very bright blue. The great thing about Mr. Green was that he played--he loved playing. Whatever game Vernon thought of, that was just the game that Mr. Green loved to play. There were other points about him. He had, for instance, a hundred children. And three others. The hundred, in Vernon's mind, were kept intact, a joyous mob that raced down the yew alleys behind Vernon and Mr. Green. But the three others were different. They were called by the three most beautiful names that Vernon knew: Poodle, Squirrel and Tree.

Vernon was, perhaps, a lonely little boy, but he never knew it. Because, you see, he had Mr. Green and Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree to play with.

_3_

For a long time Vernon was undecided as to where Mr. Green's home was. It came to him quite suddenly that of course Mr. Green lived in the Forest. The Forest had always been fascinating to Vernon. One side of the Park bordered on it. There were high green palings and Vernon used to creep along them hoping for a crack that would let him see through. There were whisperings and sighings and rustlings all along, as though the trees were speaking to each other. Halfway down there was a door, but alas, it was always locked, so that Vernon could never see what it was really like inside the Forest.

Nurse, of course, would never take him there. She was like all nurses and preferred a good steady walk along the road, and no messing your feet up with them nasty damp leaves. So Vernon was never allowed to go in the Forest. It made him think of it all the more. Some day he would take tea there with Mr. Green. Poodle and Squirrel and Tree were to have new suits for the occasion.

_4_

The nursery palled on Vernon. It was too small. He knew all there was to know about it. The garden was different. It was really a very exciting garden. There were so many different bits of it. The long walks between the clipped yew hedges with their ornamental birds, the water garden with the fat goldfish, the walled fruit garden, the wild garden with its almond trees in springtime and the copse of silver birch trees with bluebells growing underneath, and best of all the railed-off bit where the ruins of the old Abbey were. That was the place where Vernon would have liked to be left to his own devices--to climb and explore. But he never was. The rest of the garden he did much as he liked in. Winnie was always sent out with him, but since by a remarkable coincidence they always seemed to encounter the second gardener, he could play his own games unhindered by too much kind attention on Winnie's part.

_5_

Gradually Vernon's world widened. The twin star, Mummy-Daddy, separated, became two distinct people. Daddy remained nebulous, but Mummy became quite a personage. She often paid visits to the nursery to "play with my darling little boy." Vernon bore her visits with grave politeness, though it usually meant giving up the game that he himself was engaged upon and accepting one which was not, in his opinion, nearly so good. Lady visitors would sometimes come with her, and then she would squeeze Vernon tightly (which he hated) and cry.

"It's so wonderful to be a mother! I never get used to it! To have a darling baby boy of one's very own!"

Very red, Vernon would extricate himself from her embrace. Because he wasn't a baby boy at all. He was three years old.

Looking across the room one day, just after a scene like the above, he saw his father standing by the nursery door with sardonic eyes, watching him. Their eyes met. Something seemed to pass between them: comprehension--a sense of kinship.

His mother's friends were talking.

"Such a pity, Myra, that he doesn't take after you. Your hair would be too lovely on a child."

But Vernon had a sudden feeling of pride. He was like his father.

_6_

Vernon always remembered the day that the American lady came to lunch. To begin with, because of Nurse's explanations about America which, as he realized later, she confused with Australia.

He went down to dessert in an awe-stricken state. If this lady had been at home in her own country she would be walking about upside down with her head hanging down. Quite enough, this, to make him stare. And then, too, she used odd words for the simplest things.

"Isn't he too cute? See here, honey, I've gotten a box of candy for you. Won't you come and fetch it?"

Vernon came gingerly; accepted the present. The lady clearly didn't know what she was talking about. It wasn't candy, but good Edinburgh Rock.

There were two gentlemen there also, one the husband of the American lady. This one said:

"Do you know half a crown, my boy, when you see it?"

And it presently turned out that the half crown was to be for his very own to keep. Altogether it was a wonderful day.

Vernon had never thought very much about his home. He knew that it was bigger than the Vicarage where he sometimes went to tea, but he seldom played with any other children or went to their homes. So it came to him with a shock of wonder that day. The visitors were taken all over the house, and the American lady's voice rose ceaselessly.

"My, if that isn't too wonderful! Did you ever see such a thing? Five hundred years, you say? Frank, listen to that. Henry the Eighth--if it isn't just like listening to English history. And the Abbey older still, you say?"

They went everywhere, through the long picture gallery where faces strangely like Vernon's, with dark eyes set close together and narrow heads, looked out from the painted canvas arrogantly or with cold tolerance. There were meek women there in ruffs or with pearls twisted in their hair--the Deyre women had done best to be meek, married to wild lords who knew neither fear nor pity--who looked appraisingly at Myra Deyre, the last of their number, as she walked beneath them. From the picture gallery they went to the square hall, and from there to the Priest's Chamber.

Vernon had been removed by Nurse long since. They found him again in the garden feeding the goldfish. Vernon's father had gone into the house to get the keys of the Abbey ruins. The visitors were alone.

"My, Frank," said the American lady, "isn't it _too_ wonderful? All these years. Handed down from father to son. Romantic, that's what I call it, just too romantic for anything. All these years. Just fancy! How is it done?"

It was then that the other gentleman spoke. He was not much of a talker, so far Vernon had not heard him speak at all. But he now unclosed his lips and uttered one word--a word so enchanting, so mysterious, so delightful that Vernon never forgot it.

"Brumagem," said the other gentleman.

And before Vernon could ask him (as he meant to do) what that marvelous word meant, another diversion occurred.

His mother came out of the house. There was a sunset behind her--a scene painter's sunset of crude gold and red. Against that background Vernon saw his mother--saw her for the first time--a magnificent woman with white skin and red-gold hair--a being like the pictures in his fairy book; saw her suddenly as something wonderful, wonderful and beautiful.

He was never to forget that strange moment. She was his mother and she was beautiful and he loved her. Something hurt him inside, like a pain--only it wasn't a pain. And there was a queer booming noise inside his head--a thundering noise that ended up high and sweet like a bird's note. Altogether a very wonderful moment.

And mixed up with it was that magic word _Brumagem_.

chapter 2

Winnie the nursemaid was going away. It all happened very suddenly. The other servants whispered together. Winnie cried. She cried and cried. Nurse gave her what she called a Talking To and after that Winnie cried more than ever. There was something terrible about Nurse; she seemed larger than usual and she crackled more. Winnie, Vernon knew, was going away because of Father. He accepted that fact without any particular interest or curiosity. Nursemaids did sometimes go away because of Father.

His mother was shut in her room. She too was crying. Vernon could hear her through the door. She did not send for him and it did not occur to him to go to her. Indeed he was vaguely relieved. He hated the noise of crying, the gulping sound, the long-drawn sniffs, and it always happened so close to your ears. People who were crying always hugged you. Vernon hated those kinds of noises close to his ears. There was nothing in the world he hated more than the wrong sort of noise. It made you feel all curled up like a leaf in your middle. That was the jolly part about Mr. Green. He never made the wrong kind of noise.

Winnie was packing her boxes. Nurse was in with her--a less awful Nurse now--almost a human Nurse.

"Now you let this be a warning to you, my girl," said Nurse. "No carryings on in your next place."

Winnie sniffed something about no real harm.

"And no more there wouldn't be, I should hope, with Me in charge," said Nurse. "A lot comes, I dare say of having red hair. Red-haired girls are always flighty, so my dear mother used to say. I'm not saying you're a bad girl. But what you've done is Unbecoming. Unbecoming--I can't say more than that."

And, as Vernon had often noticed after using this particular phrase, she proceeded to say a good deal more. But he did not listen, for he was pondering on the word "unbecoming." Becoming, he knew, was a thing you said about a hat. Where did a hat come in?

"What's unbecoming, Nurse?" he asked later in the day.

Nurse, with her mouth full of pins, for she was cutting out a linen suit for Vernon, replied:

"Unsuitable."

"What's unsuitable?"

"Little boys going on asking foolish questions," said Nurse with the deftness of a long professional career behind her.

_2_

That afternoon Vernon's father came into the nursery. There was a queer furtive look about him--unhappy and defiant. He winced slightly before Vernon's round interested gaze.

"Hullo, Vernon."

"Hullo, Father."

"I'm going to London. Good-bye, old chap."

"Are you going to London because you kissed Winnie?" inquired Vernon with interest.

His father uttered the kind of word that Vernon knew he was not suppose to hear--much less ever repeat. It was, he knew, a word that gentlemen used but little boys didn't. So great a fascination did that fact lend it that Vernon was in the habit of sending himself to sleep by repeating it over to himself in company with another forbidden word. The other word was Corsets.

"Who the devil told you that?"

"Nobody told me," said Vernon, after reflecting a minute.

"Then how did you know?"

"Didn't you, then?" inquired Vernon.

His father crossed the room without answering.

"Winnie kisses me sometimes," remarked Vernon. "But I don't like it much. I have to kiss her, too. The gardener kisses her a lot. He seems to like it. I think kissing's silly. Should I like kissing Winnie better if I was grown up, Father?"

"Yes," his father said deliberately, "I think you would. Sons, you know, sometimes grow up very like their fathers."

"I'd like to be like you," said Vernon. "You're a jolly good rider. Sam said so. He said there wasn't your equal in the county and that a better judge of horse flesh never lived." Vernon brought out the latter words rapidly. "I'd rather be like you than Mummy. Mummy gives a horse a sore back. Sam said so."

There was a further pause.

"Mummy's gotaheadacheanlyingdown," proceeded Vernon.

"I know."

"Have you said good-bye to her?"

"No."

"Are you going to? Because you'll have to be quick. That's the dogcart coming round now."

"I expect I shan't have time."

Vernon nodded wisely.

"I dare say that would be a good plan. I don't like having to kiss people when they're crying. I don't like Mummy kissing me much anyway. She squeezes too hard and she talks in your ear. I think I'd almost rather kiss Winnie. Which would you, Father?"

He was disconcerted by his father's abrupt withdrawal from the room. Nurse had come in a moment before. She stood respectfully aside to let the Master pass, and Vernon had a vague idea that she had managed to make his father uncomfortable.

Katie, the under-housemaid, came in to lay tea. Vernon built bricks in the corner. The old peaceful nursery atmosphere closed round him again.

_3_

There was a sudden interruption. His mother stood in the doorway. Her eyes were swollen with crying. She dabbed them with a handkerchief. She stood there theatrically miserable.

"He's gone," she cried. "Without a word to me. Without a word. Oh! my little son. My little son."

She swept across the floor and gathered Vernon in her arms. The tower, at least one story higher than any he had ever built before, crashed into ruins. His mother's voice, loud and distraught, burrowed into his ear.

"My child--my little son--swear that you'll never forsake me. Swear it--swear it."

Nurse came across to them.

"There, ma'am, there, ma'am, don't take on so. You'd better get back to bed. Edith shall bring you a nice cup of hot tea."

Her tone was authoritative--severe.

His mother still sobbed and clasped him closer. Vernon's whole body began to stiffen in resistance. He could bear it a little while longer--a very little while longer--and he'd do anything Mummy wanted if only she'd let go of him.

"You must make up to me, Vernon--make up to me for the suffering your father has caused me. Oh! my God, what shall I do?"

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Vernon was aware of Katie, silent, ecstatic, enjoying the scene.

"Come along, ma'am," said Nurse. "You'll only upset the child."

The authority in her voice was so marked this time that Vernon's mother succumbed to it. Leaning weakly on Nurse's arm, she allowed herself to be led from the room.

Nurse returned a few minutes later very red in the face.

"My," said Katie, "didn't she take on? Regular hysterics--that's what they call it! Well, this has been a to-do! You don't think she'll do a mischief to herself, do you? Those nasty ponds in the garden. The Master is a one--not that he hasn't a lot to put up with from Her. All them scenes and tantrums----"

"That'll do, my girl," said Nurse. "You can get back to your work, and under-servants discussing a matter of this kind with their betters is a thing that I've never known take place in a gentleman's house. Your mother ought to have trained you better."

With a toss of her head, Katie withdrew. Nurse moved round the nursery table, shifting cups and plates with unwonted sharpness. Her lips moved, muttering to herself.

"Putting ideas into the child's head. I've no patience with it...."

chapter 3

A new nursemaid came, a thin white girl with protruding eyes. Her name was Isabel, but she was called Susan as being More Suitable. This puzzled Vernon very much. He asked Nurse for an explanation.

"There are names that are suitable to the gentry, Master Vernon, and names that are suitable for servants. That's all there is to it."

"Then why is her real name Isabel?"

"There are people who when they christen their children set themselves up to ape their betters."

The word "ape" had a distracting influence on Vernon. Apes were monkeys. Did people christen their children at the Zoo?

"I thought people were christened in church."

"So they are, Master Vernon."

Very puzzling. Why was everything so puzzling? Why were things more puzzling than they used to be? Why did one person tell you one thing and another person something quite different?

"Nurse, how do babies come?"

"You've asked me that before, Master Vernon. The little angels bring them in the night through the window."

"That Am-am-am----"

"Don't stammer, Master Vernon."

"Amenkun lady who came--she said I was found under a gooseberry bush."

"That's the way they do with American babies," said Nurse serenely.

Vernon heaved a sigh of relief. Of course! He felt a throb of gratitude to Nurse. She always knew. She made the unsteady swaying universe stand still again. And she never laughed. His mother did. He had heard her say to other ladies: "He asks me the quaintest questions. Just listen to this.... Aren't children funny and adorable."

But Vernon couldn't see that he was funny or adorable at all. He just wanted to know. You'd got to _know_. That was part of growing up. When you were grown up you knew everything and had gold sovereigns in your purse.

_2_

The world went on widening.

There were, for instance, uncles and aunts.

Uncle Sydney was Mummy's brother. He was short and stout and had rather a red face. He had a habit of humming tunes and of rattling the money in his trouser pockets. He was fond of making jokes, but Vernon did not always think his jokes very funny.

"Supposing," Uncle Sydney would say, "I were to put on your hat. Hey? What should I look like, do you think?"

Curious, the questions grown-up people asked! Curious--and also difficult, because if there was one thing that Nurse was always impressing upon Vernon, it was that little boys must never make personal remarks.

"Come now," said Uncle Sydney perseveringly. "What should I look like? There--" he snatched up the linen affair in question and balanced it on top of his head--"what do I look like, eh?"

Well, if one must answer, one must. Vernon said politely and a little wearily:

"I think you look rather silly."

"That boy of yours has no sense of humour, Myra," said Uncle Sydney to his mother. "No sense of humour at all. A pity."

Aunt Nina, Father's sister, was quite different.

She smelt nice, like the garden on a summer's day, and she had a soft voice that Vernon liked. She had other virtues--she didn't kiss you when you didn't want to be kissed, and she didn't insist on making jokes. But she didn't come very often to Abbots Puissants.

She must be, Vernon thought, very brave, because it was she who first made him realize that one could master the Beast.

The Beast lived in the big drawing room. It had four legs and a shiny brown body. And it had a long row of what Vernon had thought, when he was very small, to be teeth. Great yellow shining teeth. From his earliest memory Vernon had been fascinated and terrified by the Beast. For if you irritated the Beast it made strange noises, an angry growling or a shrill angry wail--and somehow those noises hurt you more than anything in the world could. They hurt you right down in your inside. They made you shiver and feel sick, and they made your eyes sting and burn, and yet by some strange enchantment you couldn't go away.

When Vernon had stories read to him about dragons he always thought of them as like the Beast. And some of the best games with Mr. Green were where they killed the Beast--Vernon plunging a sword into his brown shining body whilst the hundred children whooped and sang behind.

Now that he was a big boy he knew better, of course. He knew that the Beast's name was Grand Piano, and that when you deliberately attacked its teeth, that was called "playingthepiano"! and that ladies did it after dinner to gentlemen. But in his inmost heart he was still afraid and dreamed sometimes of the Beast pursuing him up the nursery stairs--and he would wake up screaming.

In his dreams the Beast lived in the Forest, and was wild and savage, and the noises it made were too terrible to be borne.

Mummy sometimes did "playingthepiano," and that Vernon could just bear with difficulty. The Beast, he felt, would not really be waked up by what she was doing to it. But the day Aunt Nina played was different.

Vernon had been conducting one of his imaginary games in a corner. He and Squirrel and Poodle were having a picnic and eating lobsters and chocolate éclairs.

His Aunt Nina had not even noticed that he was in the room. She had sat down on the music stool and was playing idly.

Fascinated, Vernon crept nearer and nearer. Nina looked up at last to see him staring at her, the tears running down his face and great sobs shaking his small body. She stopped.

"What's the matter, Vernon?"

"I 'ate it," sobbed Vernon. "I 'ate it. I 'ate it. It hurts me _here_." His hands clasped his stomach.

Myra came into the room at that minute. She laughed.

"Isn't it odd? That child simply hates music. So very queer."

"Why doesn't he go away if he hates it?" said Nina.

"I can't," sobbed Vernon.

"Isn't it ridiculous?" said Myra.

"I think it's rather interesting."

"Most children are always wanting to strum on the piano. I tried to show Vernon chopsticks the other day, but he wasn't a bit amused."

Nina remained staring at her small nephew thoughtfully.

"I can hardly believe a child of mine can be unmusical," said Myra in an aggrieved voice. "I played quite difficult pieces when I was eight years old."

"Oh! well," said Nina vaguely. "There are different ways of being musical."

Which, Myra thought, was so like the silly sort of thing the Deyre family would say. Either one was musical and played pieces, or one was not. Vernon clearly was not.

_3_

Nurse's mother was ill. Strange unparalleled nursery catastrophe. Nurse, very red-faced and grim, was packing with the assistance of Susan Isabel. Vernon, troubled, sympathetic, but above all interested, stood near by, and out of his interest asked questions.

"Is your mother very old, Nurse? Is she a hundred?"

"Of course not, Master Vernon! A hundred indeed!"

"Do you think she is going to die?" continued Vernon, longing to be kind and understand.

Cook's mother had been ill and died. Nurse did not answer. Instead she said sharply:

"The boot bags out of the bottom drawer, Susan. Step lively now, my girl."

"Nurse, will your mother----"

"I haven't time to be answering questions, Master Vernon."

Vernon sat down on the corner of a chintz-covered ottoman and gave himself up to reflection. Nurse had said that her mother wasn't a hundred, but she must, for all that, be very old. Nurse herself he had always regarded as terribly old. To think that there was a being of superior age and wisdom to Nurse was positively staggering. In a strange way it reduced Nurse herself to the proportions of a mere human being. She was no longer a figure secondary only to God himself.

The universe shifted--values were readjusted. Nurse, God, and Mr. Green--all three receded, becoming vaguer and more blurred. Mummy, his father, even Aunt Nina--they seemed to matter more. Especially Mummy. Mummy was like the princesses with long beautiful golden hair. He would like to fight a dragon for Mummy--a brown shiny dragon like the Beast.

What was the word--the magic word? Brumagem--that was it--Brumagem. An enchanting word! The Princess Brumagem! A word to be repeated over to himself softly and secretly at night at the same time as Damn and Corsets.

But never, never, never must Mummy hear it, because he knew only too well that she would laugh--she always laughed, the kind of laugh that made you shrivel up inside and want to wriggle. And she would say things--she always said things, just the kind of things you hated. "Aren't children too _funny_?"

And Vernon knew that he wasn't funny. He didn't like funny things--Uncle Sydney had said so. If only Mummy wouldn't....

Sitting on the slippery chintz he frowned perplexedly. He had a sudden imperfect glimpse of two Mummies. One, the princess, the beautiful Mummy that he dreamed about, who was mixed up for him with sunsets and magic and killing dragons--and the other, the one who laughed and who said, "Aren't children too _funny_?" Only, of course, they were the same....

He fidgeted and sighed. Nurse, flushed from the effort of snapping to her trunk, turned to him kindly.

"What's the matter, Master Vernon?"

"Nothing," said Vernon.

You must always say, "Nothing." You could never tell. Because, if you did, no one ever knew what you meant....

_4_

Under the reign of Susan Isabel the nursery was quite different. You could be, and quite frequently were, naughty. Susan told you not to do things and you did them just the same! Susan would say: "I'll tell your mother." But she never did.

Susan had at first enjoyed the position and authority she had in Nurse's absence. Indeed, but for Vernon, she would have continued to enjoy it. She used to exchange confidences with Katie, the under-housemaid.

"Don't know what's come over him, I'm sure. He's like a little demon sometimes. And him so good and well behaved with Mrs. Pascal."

To which Kate replied:

"Ah! she's a oner, she is! Takes you up sharp, doesn't she?"

And then they would whisper and giggle.

"Who's Mrs. Pascal?" Vernon asked one day.

"Well, I never, Master Vernon! Don't you know your own nurse's name?"

So Nurse was Mrs. Pascal. Another shock. She had always been just Nurse. It was rather as though you had been told that God's name was Mr. Robinson.

Mrs. Pascal! Nurse! The more you thought of it, the more extraordinary it seemed. Mrs. Pascal--just like Mummy was Mrs. Deyre and Father was Mr. Deyre. Strangely enough, Vernon never cogitated on the possibility of a Mr. Pascal. (Not that there was any such person. The Mrs. was a tacit recognition of Nurse's position and authority.) Nurse stood alone in the same magnificence as Mr. Green, who in spite of the hundred children (and Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree) was never thought of by Vernon as having a Mrs. Green attached to him!

Vernon's inquiring mind wandered in another direction.

"Susan, do you like being called Susan? Wouldn't you like being called Isabel better?"

Susan (or Isabel) gave her customary giggle.

"It doesn't matter what I like, Master Vernon."

"Why not?"

"People have got to do what they're told in this world."

Vernon was silent. He had thought the same until a few days ago. But he was beginning to perceive that it was not true. You needn't do as you were told. It all depended on who told you.

It was not a question of punishment. He was continually being sat on chairs, stood in the corner, and deprived of sweets by Susan. Nurse, on the other hand, had only to look at him severely through her spectacles with a certain expression on her face, and anything but immediate capitulation was out of the question.

Susan had no authority in her nature, and Vernon knew it. He had discovered the thrill of successful disobedience. Also, he liked tormenting Susan. The more worried and flustered and unhappy Susan got, the more Vernon liked it. He was, as was proper to his years, still in the Stone Age. He savoured the full pleasure of cruelty.

Susan formed the habit of letting Vernon go out to play in the garden alone. Being an unattractive girl, she had not Winnie's reasons for liking the garden. And besides, what harm could possibly come to him?

"You won't go near the ponds, will you, Master Vernon?"

"No," said Vernon, instantly forming the intention to do so.

"You'll play with your hoop like a good boy?"

"Yes."

The nursery was left in peace. Susan heaved a sigh of relief. She took from a drawer a paper-covered book entitled _The Duke and the Dairymaid_.

Beating his hoop, Vernon made the tour of the walled fruit garden. Escaping from his control, the hoop leaped upon a small patch of earth which was at the moment receiving the meticulous attentions of Hopkins, the head gardener. Hopkins firmly and authoritatively ordered Vernon from the spot, and Vernon went. He respected Hopkins.

Abandoning the hoop, Vernon climbed a tree or two. That is to say, he reached a height of perhaps six feet from the ground, employing all due precautions. Tiring of this perilous sport, he sat astride a branch and cogitated as to what to do next.

On the whole, he thought the ponds. Susan having forbidden them, they had a distinct fascination. Yes, he would go to the ponds. He rose, and as he did so another idea came into his head, suggested by an unusual sight.

_The door into the Forest was open!_

_5_

Such a thing had never happened before in Vernon's experience. Again and again he had secretly tried that door. Always it was locked.

He crept up to it cautiously. The Forest! It stood a few steps away outside the door. You could plunge straightway into its cool green depths. Vernon's heart beat faster.

He had always wanted to go into the Forest. Here was his chance. Once Nurse came back, any such thing would be out of the question.

And still he hesitated. It was not any feeling of disobedience that held him back. Strictly speaking, he had never been forbidden to go into the Forest. His childish cunning was all ready with that excuse.

No, it was something else. Fear of the unknown--of those dark leafy depths. Ancestral memories held him back.

He wanted to go--but he didn't want to go. There might be Things there--Things like the Beast. Things that came up behind you--that chased you screaming....

He moved uneasily from one foot to the other.

But Things didn't chase you in the daytime. And Mr. Green lived in the Forest. Not that Mr. Green was as real as he used to be. Still, it would be rather jolly to explore and find a place where you would pretend Mr. Green did live. Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree would each have a house of his own--small leafy houses.

"Come on, Poodle," said Vernon to an invisible companion. "Have you got your bow and arrow? That's right. We'll meet Squirrel inside."

He stepped out jauntily. Beside him, plain to Vernon's inner eye, went Poodle dressed like the picture of Robinson Crusoe in his picture book.

It was wonderful in the Forest--dim and dark and green. Birds sang and flew from branch to branch. Vernon continued to talk to his friend--a luxury he did not dare to permit himself often, since someone might overhear and say, "Isn't he too _funny_? He's pretending he's got another little boy with him." You had to be so very careful at home.

"We'll get to the Castle by lunch time, Poodle. There are going to be roasted leopards. Oh! Hullo, here's Squirrel. How are you, Squirrel? Where's Tree?

"I tell you what. I think it's rather tiring walking. I think we'll ride."

Steeds were tethered to an adjacent tree. Vernon's was milk white, Poodle's was coal black--the colour of Squirrel's he couldn't quite decide.

They galloped forward through the trees. There were deadly dangerous places, morasses. Snakes hissed at them and lions charged them. But the faithful steeds did all their riders required of them.

How silly it was playing in the garden--or playing anywhere but _here_! He'd forgotten what it was like, playing with Mr. Green and Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree. How could you help forgetting things when people were always reminding you that you were a funny little boy playing make-believe?

On strutted Vernon, now capering, now marching with solemn dignity. He was great, he was wonderful! What he needed, though he did not know it himself, was a tom-tom to beat whilst he sang his own praises.

The Forest! He had always known it would be like this, and it was! In front of him suddenly appeared a crumbling moss covered wall. The wall of the Castle! Could anything be more perfect? He began to climb it.

The ascent was easy enough really, though fraught with the most agreeable and thrilling possibilities of danger. Whether this was Mr. Green's Castle, or whether it was inhabited by an Ogre who ate human flesh, Vernon had not yet made up his mind. Either was an entrancing proposition. On the whole, he inclined to the latter, being at the moment in a warlike frame of mind. With a flushed face he reached the summit of the wall and looked over the other side.

And here there enters into the story, for one brief paragraph, Mrs. Somers West, who was fond of romantic solitude (for short periods) and had bought Woods Cottage as being "delightfully remote from anywhere and really, if you know what I mean, in the very heart of the Forest--at one with Nature!" And since Mrs. Somers West, as well as being artistic, was musical, she had pulled down a wall, making two rooms into one, and had thus provided herself with sufficient space to house a grand piano.

And at the identical moment that Vernon reached the top of the wall, several perspiring and staggering men were slowly propelling the aforesaid grand piano toward the window, since it wouldn't go in by the door. The garden of Woods Cottage was a mere tangle of undergrowth--wild Nature, as Mrs. Somers West called it. So that all Vernon saw was the Beast! The Beast, alive and purposeful, slowly crawling toward him, malign and vengeful....

For a moment he stayed rooted to the spot. Then, with a wild cry, he fled. Fled along the top of the narrow crumbling wall. The Beast was behind him, pursuing him.... It was coming, he knew it. He ran--ran faster than ever. His foot caught in a tangle of ivy. He crashed downward--falling--falling....

chapter 4

Vernon woke, after a long time, to find himself in bed. It was, of course, the natural place to be when you woke up, but what wasn't natural was to have a great hump sticking up in front of you in the bed. It was whilst he was staring at this that someone spoke to him. That someone was Dr. Coles, whom Vernon knew quite well.

"Well, well," said Dr. Coles, "and how are we feeling?"

Vernon didn't know how Dr. Coles was feeling. He himself was feeling rather sick and said so.

"I dare say, I dare say," said Dr. Coles.

"And I think I hurt somewhere," said Vernon. "I think I hurt very much."

"I dare say, I dare say," said Dr. Coles again--not very helpfully, Vernon thought.

"Perhaps I'd feel better if I got up," said Vernon. "Can I get up?"

"Not just now, I'm afraid," said the doctor. "You see, you've had a fall."

"Yes," said Vernon. "The Beast came after me."

"Eh? What's that? The Beast? What Beast?"

"Nothing," said Vernon.

"A dog, I expect," said the doctor. "Jumped at the wall and barked. You mustn't be afraid of dogs, my boy."

"I'm not," said Vernon.

"And what were you doing so far from home, eh? No business to be where you were."

"Nobody told me not to," said Vernon.

"Hum, hum, I wonder. Well, I'm afraid you've got to take your punishment. Do you know, you've broken your leg, my boy?"

"Have I?" Vernon was gratified--enchanted. He had broken his leg. He felt very important.

"Yes, you'll have to lie here for a bit, and then it will mean crutches for a while. Do you know what crutches are?"

Yes, Vernon knew. Mr. Jobber, the blacksmith's father, had crutches. And he was to have crutches! How wonderful!

"Can I try them now?"

Dr. Coles laughed.

"So you like the idea? No. I'm afraid you'll have to wait a bit. And you must try and be a brave boy, you know. And then you'll get well quicker."

"Thank you," said Vernon politely. "I don't think I do feel very well. Can you take this funny thing out of my bed? I think it would be more comfortable then."

But it seemed that the funny thing was called a cradle, and that it couldn't be taken away. And it seemed, too, that Vernon would not be able to move about in bed because his leg was all tied up to a long piece of wood. And suddenly it didn't seem a very nice thing to have a broken leg after all.

Vernon's underlip trembled a little. He was not going to cry--no, he was a big boy and big boys didn't cry. Nurse said so. And then he knew that he wanted Nurse--wanted her badly. He wanted her reassuring presence, her omniscience, her creaking rustling majesty.

"She'll be coming back soon," said Dr. Coles. "Yes, soon. In the meantime, this nurse is going to look after you--Nurse Frances."

Nurse Frances moved into Vernon's range of vision and Vernon studied her in silence. She too was starched and crackling; that was all to the good. But she wasn't big like Nurse. She was thinner than Mummy--as thin as Aunt Nina. He wasn't sure....

And then he met her eyes--steady eyes, more green than gray, and he felt, as most people felt, that with Nurse Frances things would be "all right."

She smiled at him--but not in the way that visitors smiled. It was a grave smile, friendly but reserved.

"I'm sorry you feel sick," she said. "Would you like some orange juice?"

Vernon considered the matter and said he thought he would. Dr. Coles went out of the room and Nurse Frances brought him the orange juice in a most curious-looking cup with a long spout. And it appeared that Vernon was to drink from the spout.

It made him laugh, but laughing hurt him, and so he stopped. Nurse Frances suggested he should go to sleep again, but he said he didn't want to go to sleep.

"Then I shouldn't go to sleep," said Nurse Frances. "I wonder if you can count how many irises there are on that wall? You start on the right side, and I'll start on the left side. You can count, can't you?"

Vernon said proudly that he could count up to a hundred.

"That is a lot," said Nurse Frances. "There aren't nearly as many irises as a hundred. I guess there are seventy-five. Now what do you guess?"

Vernon guessed that there were fifty. There couldn't, he felt sure, possibly be more than that. He began to count, but somehow, without knowing it, his eyelids closed and he slept....

_2_

Noise ... noise and pain. He woke with a start. He felt hot, very hot, and there was a pain all down one side. And the noise was coming nearer. It was the noise that one always connected with Mummy.

She came into the room like a whirlwind, a kind of cloak affair she wore swinging out behind her. She was like a bird--a great big bird--and like a bird, she swooped down upon him.

"Vernon--my darling--Mummy's own darling! What have they done to you? How awful! How terrible! My child!"

She was crying. Vernon began to cry too. He was suddenly frightened. Myra was moaning and weeping.

"My little child. All I have in the world. God, don't take him from me. Don't take him from me! If he dies I shall die too!"

"Mrs. Deyre----"

"Vernon--Vernon--my baby----"

"Mrs. Deyre--please!"

There was crisp command in the voice rather than appeal.

"Please don't touch him. You will hurt him."

"Hurt him? I? His mother?"

"You don't seem to realize, Mrs. Deyre, that his leg is broken, I must ask you, please, to leave the room."

"You're hiding something from me. Tell me--tell me--will the leg have to be amputated?"

A wail came from Vernon. He had not the least idea what "amputated" meant, but it sounded painful--and more than painful, terrifying. His wail broke into a scream.

"He's dying!" cried Myra. "He's dying--and they won't tell me. But he shall die in my arms."

"Mrs. Deyre----"

Somehow Nurse Frances had got between his mother and the bed. She was holding his mother by the shoulder. Her voice had the tone that Nurse's had had when speaking to Katie, the under-housemaid.

"Mrs. Deyre, listen to me. You must control yourself. You _must_!" Then she looked up. Vernon's father was standing in the doorway. "Mr. Deyre, please take your wife away. I cannot have my patient excited and upset."

His father nodded--a quiet understanding nod. He just looked at Vernon once and said: "Bad luck, old chap. I broke an arm once."

The world became suddenly less terrifying. Other people broke legs and arms. His father had hold of his mother's shoulder, he was leading her toward the door, speaking to her in a low voice. She was protesting, arguing, her voice high and shrill with emotion.

"How can you understand? You've never cared for the child like I have. It takes a mother. How can I leave my child to be looked after by a stranger? He needs his mother.... You don't understand. I _love_ him. There's nothing like a mother's care--everyone says so."

"Vernon darling"--she broke from her husband's clasp, came back toward the bed--"you want me, don't you? You want Mummy?"

"I want Nurse," sobbed Vernon. "I want Nurse."

He meant his own Nurse, not Nurse Frances.

"Oh!" said Myra. She stood there quivering.

"Come, my dear," said Vernon's father gently. "Come away."

She leaned against him, and together they passed from the room. Faint words floated back into the room.

"My own child, to turn from me to a stranger."

Nurse Frances smoothed the sheet and suggested a drink of water.

"Nurse is coming back very soon," she said. "We'll write to her to-day, shall we? You shall tell me what to say."

A queer new feeling surged over Vernon--a sort of odd gratitude. Somebody had actually understood....

_3_

When Vernon, later, was to look back upon his childhood, this one period was to stand out quite clearly from the rest. "The time I broke my leg" marked a distinct era.

He was to appreciate, too, various small incidents that were accepted by him at the time as a matter of course. For instance, a rather stormy interview that took place between Dr. Coles and his mother. Naturally this did not take place in Vernon's sick room, but Myra's raised voice penetrated closed doors. Vernon heard indignant exclamations of "I don't know what you mean by upsetting him.... I consider I ought to nurse my own child.... Naturally I was distressed--I'm not one of these people who simply have no heart--no heart at all. Look at Walter--never turned a hair!"

There were many skirmishes too, not to say pitched battles, fought between Myra and Nurse Frances. In these cases Nurse Frances always won, but at a certain cost. Myra Deyre was wildly and furiously jealous of what she called "the paid nurse." She was forced to submit to Dr. Coles's dictums, but she did so with a bad grace and with an overt rudeness that Nurse Frances never seemed to notice.

In after years Vernon remembered nothing of the pain and tedium that there must have been. He remembered only happy days of playing and talking as he had never played and talked before. For in Nurse Frances he found a grown-up who didn't think things "funny" or "quaint." Somebody who listened sensibly and who made serious and sensible suggestions. To Nurse Frances he was able to speak of Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree, and of Mr. Green and the hundred children. And instead of saying "What a _funny_ game!" Nurse Frances merely inquired whether the hundred children were girls or boys--an aspect of the matter which Vernon had never thought of before. But he and Nurse Frances decided that there were fifty of each, which seemed a very fair arrangement.

If sometimes, off his guard, he played his make-believe games aloud, Nurse Frances never seemed to notice or to think it unusual. She had the same calm comfortableness of old Nurse about her, but she had something that mattered far more to Vernon: the gift of answering questions--and he knew, instinctively, that the answers were always true. Sometimes she would say, "I don't know that myself," or, "You must ask someone else. I'm not clever enough to tell you that." There was no pretense of omniscience about her.

Sometimes, after tea, she would tell Vernon stories. The stories were never the same two days running--one day they would be about naughty little boys and girls, and the next day they would be about enchanted princesses. Vernon liked the latter kind best. There was one in particular that he loved, about a princess in a tower with golden hair and a vagabond prince in a ragged green hat. The story ended up in a forest, and it was possibly for that reason that Vernon liked it so much.

Sometimes there would be an extra listener. Myra used to come in and be with Vernon during the early afternoon when Nurse Frances had her time off, but Vernon's father used sometimes to come in after tea when the stories were going on. Little by little it became a habit. Walter Deyre would sit in the shadows just behind Nurse Frances's chair, and from there he would watch, not his child, but the story-teller. One day Vernon saw his father's hand steal out and close gently over Nurse Frances's wrist.

And then something happened which surprised him very much. Nurse Frances got up from her chair.

"I'm afraid we must turn you out for this evening, Mr. Deyre," she said quietly. "Vernon and I have things to do."

This astonished Vernon very much, because he couldn't think what those things were. He was still more puzzled when his father got up also and said in a low voice:

"I beg your pardon."

Nurse Frances bent her head a little, but remained standing. Her eyes met Walter Deyre's steadily. He said quietly:

"Will you believe that I am really sorry, and let me come to-morrow?"

After that, in some way that Vernon could not have defined, his father's manner was different. He no longer sat so near Nurse Frances. He talked more to Vernon and occasionally they all three played a game--usually Old Maid, for which Vernon had a wild passion. They were happy evenings enjoyed by all three.

One day, when Nurse Frances was out of the room, Walter Deyre said abruptly:

"Do you like that nurse of yours, Vernon?"

"Nurse Frances? I like her lots. Don't you, Father?"

"Yes," said Walter Deyre, "I do."

There was a sadness in his voice which Vernon felt.

"Is anything the matter, Father?"

"Nothing that can be put right. The horse that gets left at the post never has much chance of making good--and the fact that it's the horse's own fault doesn't make matters any better. But that's double Dutch to you, old man. Anyway, enjoy your Nurse Frances while you've got her. There aren't many of her sort knocking about."

And then Nurse Frances came back and they played Animal Grab.

But Walter Deyre's words had set Vernon's mind to work. He tackled Nurse Frances next morning.

"Aren't you going to be here always?"

"No. Only till you get well--or nearly well."

"Won't you stay always? I'd like you to."

"But, you see, that's not my work. My work is to look after people who are ill."

"Do you like doing that?"

"Yes, very much."

"Why?"

"Well, you see, everyone has some particular kind of work that they like doing and that suits them."

"Mummy hasn't."

"Oh, yes, she has. Her work is to look after this big house and see that everything goes right, and to take care of you and your father."

"Father was a soldier once. He told me that if ever there was a war he'd go and be a soldier again."