The Wonderful Garden or The Three Cs

‘I tell you what,’ said Charlotte. ‘Let’s do fern-seed again.’

‘It’s only on the eve of – ’ Charles began, but Charlotte interrupted.

‘The seed goes on when once you’ve planted it – chewed it, I mean. I’m certain it does. If we don’t see anything, we may dream something more.’

‘There wouldn’t be time for a really thick dream before dinner,’ Charles objected.

‘Never mind! Let’s try. If we are late for dinner we’d tell the truth and say that we fell asleep in the woods. There’s such heaps of fern here it would be simply silly not to try.’

There was something in this. Fern-seed was chewed once more. Bracken, I have heard really well-educated people say, is not a fern at all, but it seemed a fern to them. And it certainly did its best to act up to what was expected of it. For when the three removed the little green damp pads from their eyes and blinked at the green leaves, there in the thick of them was Rupert, looking at them between the hazel thicket and the honeysuckle – a real live Rupert, and no dream-nonsense about him.

‘Was it a dream last night?’ they all asked him, in an eager chorus. ‘When you came to the window?’

‘Of course it wasn’t,’ he said flatly. ‘Only I was so afraid of being nabbed. So I got out early and put the shelves back and the pillows on the bed, and I took the biscuits; I thought you wouldn’t mind – ’

‘Not a bit. Rather not’ – chorus of polite hospitality.

‘And I got out of your dressing-room window and down the ivy; it was quite easy. And I cut across the grass and in under those fancy sort of fir-trees, the ones that drag their branches – you know – in the avenue. And I saw you come out, but the place was all thick with gardeners and people. So I waited till their dinner-bell rang, and then I crept out here, and I was just going to say “Hi!” when you stuck that green stuff on your eyes. It looks nasty. What did you do it for?’

They told him.

‘That’s rummy,’ he said, sitting among them quite at his ease, with one hand in his pocket. ‘Because I knew fern-seed made you invisible – it says so in Shakespeare, you know, – and I ate a bit coming along, just on the chance it might be some good – so that no one should see me, you know – and nobody did till you did. So,’ he went on more slowly, ‘perhaps I was really invisible until you put the fern-seed on your eyes.’

‘What a perfectly splendid idea!’ cried Charlotte. ‘Because that makes it all true. We were most awfully sick when we thought it had only just made us dream. I say! Do, now, do tell us how you ran away and why – and what you’re going to do, and everything.’

‘I thought,’ Rupert answered carelessly, ‘of running away to sea. But it’s a long way to the coast. I would much rather stop here with you. Couldn’t you hide me in a log-hut or something, like a runaway slave? Just till they stopped looking for me. And I could write to my father in India and ask him to let me stay here instead of with old Mug’s brother. Couldn’t you hide me till the answer came?’

‘We could try,’ said Charles, a little doubtfully.

But Charlotte said, ‘Of course we can – we will! Only, why are you so different? You seem miles older than you were when we saw you on the platform.’

‘You’d look miles older if you’d locked your master in his study and then done a bunk – and been running and hiding for half a day and a night,’ said Rupert, a little crossly.

‘But what did he do to you?’ they asked.

‘Well, you saw what he was like in the train.’

‘But you seemed so frightened of him. I wonder you dared to run away.’

‘That wasn’t funk – in the train. That was just suppressed fury,’ Rupert explained tranquilly. ‘I was wondering where I should run to if I had to run. And then I did have to run – like Billy-o! And when I saw the name on a sign-post I remembered what you’d said about “true to the death” – and I kept behind the hedges, because I wasn’t sure about the fern-seed being any good, and I got up a tree and I saw you go by, and when you came back with the parson I just followed on quietly till I got to outside your house. I hoped you’d come out, but you didn’t. And I hid under one of those fancy firs, and then, I suppose, I went to sleep, and when I woke up there was a light in a window, and I went towards it, stupid, like a bird. You know how sparrows come out of the ivy if you show a light?’

They didn’t.

‘Well, they do. And then I saw you monkeying about. I was glad, I tell you. And I tapped on the window, and – you know the rest,’ he ended, like a hero in a book.

‘But what did the Murdstone man do to you?’ Charlotte insisted on knowing.

‘He was playing up for a row from the very first,’ said Rupert; ‘and when we got to his beastly house that night’ – Rupert lowered his voice and spoke in a tone of deep disgust and bitterness – ‘he gave me bread and milk to eat. Bread and milk – with a teaspoon! And when I said I’d rather not, he said I must learn to eat what was set before me. And he talked about discipline and showed me a cane. He said he was glad there were no other little boys there – little boys! – because he could devote himself entirely to breaking me in.’

‘Beast!’ said Charlotte.

‘He thought I was a muff of a white rabbit,’ said Rupert; ‘but he knows the difference now.’

I hope you will not think base scorn of Charles and Caroline when I own that they were both feeling a little uncomfortable in the presence of this young desperado. Fern-seed is all very well, and so is the idea of running away from school, but that any master should really be so piglike as to make running away necessary – this came too near to the really terrible for them to feel quite easy about it.

‘He must be like the Spanish Inquisition,’ said Charlotte indignantly. ‘Why isn’t he put in prison now there are proper laws?’

But Charles and Caroline still felt that it was less likely that the Murdstone man should be so hateful than that Rupert should be drawing long-bows to excuse his running away. If he had been timid and miserable they would have believed him more. As it was, he was easy when he wasn’t defiant.

You know that feeling – when you are not quite sure of some one you want to be kind to – when you can’t be quite certain that if you believe what they say you won’t be being unjust to somebody else. It is a hateful feeling. There is nothing more miserable than not being able to trust some one you want to trust. You know, perhaps, what that sensation is? Rupert, at any rate, must have known it, and must have known that the others were feeling it, for he suddenly pulled his hand out from his pocket.

‘Look here, then,’ he said. ‘But – no, I don’t blame you. I know it’s not the sort of thing you’d expect to be true. Yes. He did it. The first night. About the bread and milk. Came and did it after I was in bed. With a ruler.’

‘It’ was a blue bruise and a slight red graze across the back of the hand that, till now, had been hidden.

‘I believed you – without that,’ said Charlotte, with hot cheeks. ‘I know there are people like that. Like Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’

‘We do believe you,’ said Caroline earnestly. ‘Who said we didn’t?’

And Charles said, ‘Of course we do – what nonsense! We’ll bring you a paper and pencil and an envelope, and you can write to your father. And we will conceal you.’

‘Right O!’ said Rupert. ‘Hush!’

They hushed, and, Rupert pointing through the blue gap between the oak and the honeysuckle, their eyes followed the pointing of his finger. A figure was coming up the drive – a figure in blue.

‘Go and see what it is,’ whispered Rupert, ‘but don’t let on.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Charlotte, jumping up.

‘But what’ll you say if they ask you what you’ve come in for?’ Charles asked.

‘I shall say I’ve come in to fetch you a pocket-handkerchief,’ said Charlotte witheringly, ‘because you wanted one so badly. You always do.’

She went.

‘Look here,’ said Caroline, once more thrilling to the part of the protecting Saracen maiden. ‘Suppose they’re after you? Let’s cover you up with leaves and bracken, so that your tweediness won’t show through the trees if they look – and bracken over your head. Creep through the bracken; don’t crush it more than you can help.’

Rupert was entirely hidden when Charlotte returned, very much out of breath, from an unexpected part of the wood.

‘I came round,’ she whispered, ‘to put them off the scent.’

‘Who?’ asked Rupert, under the leaves.

‘The Police,’ said Charlotte, with calm frankness and a full sense of the tremendous news she was bringing. ‘They’re inquiring after you. They’ve traced you to Hadlow.’

‘What did they say at the house?’

‘They said they hadn’t seen you, but the Police might search the grounds.’