The Wonderful Garden or The Three Cs

‘But we’ve got to bring the clergyman home to tea.’

‘Oh, bother!’ was the remark that sprang to the lips of Caroline. ‘I never thought of that.’

CHAPTER X

BREWING THE SPELL

It was awkward, certainly. And the awkwardness kept worrying and worrying at the back of Caroline’s mind all through the pleasure of going out in the carriage to make a call by themselves, and the delight of the call, which was diversified by peppermints, a fine collection of butterflies, and being allowed to try and play the harmonium.

It was while Charles and Charlotte were busy with this in the large bare room which had been the last rector’s drawing-room, and was now used for all sorts of parish parties, that Mr. Penfold took Caroline into the conservatory to show her a pet newt.

‘A friend of mine with an orange waistcoat,’ Mr. Penfold said.

He was a very nice newt, but even his orange-coloured stomach could not drive away the worries from the back of Caroline’s mind. How were the tumblers of food to be got to Rupert? Altogether she felt worried; the whole adventure was beginning to feel too big and too serious. And when Mr. Penfold, suddenly asking her if she could keep a secret, showed her a green parrot sitting on a nest behind a big geranium, she longed to say that she would keep his, and to tell him her own.

What she did say when she had admired the parrot was:

‘You’re a clergyman, and so I suppose you know all about right and wrong?’

‘I do my best to know,’ he said. ‘Well?’

‘Well, aren’t there some secrets you ought to keep, even if you know that some people would say you oughtn’t to if they were to know you were keeping them – only of course they don’t?’

I think it was rather clever of Mr. Penfold to understand this; but he did.

‘There are some things we all have to judge for ourselves,’ he said. ‘Could you give me an instance of the sort of thing you mean? Not the real thing you were thinking about, of course; but something like it.’

‘Of course not the real thing,’ she said, and paused.

The temptation to be very clever came to her. She would tell him the real thing, and he would never think it could be the real one.

‘Well, suppose,’ she said slowly, and stopped.

‘Suppose?’

‘You heard about that boy who ran away, and they were looking for him yesterday?’

‘He wasn’t found, was he?’ the clergyman asked, carefully picking dead leaves from a salmon-coloured fuchsia.

‘No,’ said Caroline. ‘Well, suppose the boy had come to you, what would you have done? You wouldn’t have given him up, would you?’

‘I don’t know any of the facts of the case,’ he answered slowly.

‘But suppose it was a runaway slave.’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Well, then,’ said Caroline.

‘But, you see, it wouldn’t stop with not giving him up. He would have to be fed and clothed, and have somewhere to sleep, and it would be impossible, quite impossible, to keep him concealed. They would be sure to find him.’

‘Ye-es,’ said Caroline; ‘but what could you do?’

‘Well, leaving the boy out of the question – he was just given as an instance, wasn’t he – suppose you were in any other sort of difficulty, the thing for you to do would be to tell your uncle. You take it from me, you can trust him absolutely. He’ll decide what’s right. Unless you’d like to tell me. I’d help all I could.’

‘If ever I have a secret I can tell you, I will,’ Caroline promised. ‘We’re a Secret Society just at present. That’s why we’re all wearing red roses.’

‘I wish I could have joined it,’ said the Unusual Clergyman; ‘perhaps you’ll let me join later?’

‘If I ever can, I will,’ said Caroline cordially. And then the others came to look at the newt, and they all went home in the carriage to tea. The Uncle and the Unusual Clergyman talked about things which the children did not understand, or perhaps they might have understood if they had listened, but their thoughts were in tumblers full of beef and pudding behind the books on the shelves, and though they caught a few words, ‘golden bough,’ ‘myths,’ ‘folk-lore,’ they did not pay much attention till they heard the words ‘secret rites’ and ‘symbolic,’ and then the Uncle suddenly said:

‘Well, come along to my room, won’t you? I’ll show you that passage I was speaking of.’ And he and the clergyman went off.

Of course the three C.’s hastened to the stable-yard. The men had gone to their tea and the servants were having theirs, so it was quite safe. The tumblers of food, now thinly iced with congealed fat and looking very uninviting, were carried in the side-pockets of Charles and under the pinafores of the girls.

William received the visitors with marked disapproval.

‘You’re late,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go down to the village to see about a new axle for the light cart. What’s all that rubbish? Ain’t what I gives him good enough for his lordship?’ He looked sourly at the tumblers the children had stood upon the corn-bin.

‘Of course it is,’ said Caroline, feeling that a fatal error had been committed. ‘We only thought he’d like a change. Don’t be cross, William. You know you’re our beanyfactor.’

‘Well, beany or no beany, you don’t see ’im to-night. Off with you. I’ll see ’e’s all right. Yes, you can leave the grub. You come ’bout eight in the morning if you can, and then we’ll see.’

It was a disappointed party that returned to the dining-room.

‘I did think it would be different,’ said Charlotte. ‘It’s all so dull. And it’ll go on being like this for weeks.’

‘It’s the dreadful anxiousness I don’t like,’ said Caroline. ‘The clergyman said secrets were awkward pets to keep, and they are.’

‘Why is everything always different from what it was when you thought it was always going to be the same?’ Charlotte asked, with the air of an inquiring philosopher.

‘You see,’ said Caroline, ‘we are rather young for rescues.’

‘Yes, but,’ Charles urged, ‘we couldn’t do anything except rescue. We can’t do anything else now, however young we are.’

They talked about it for an hour, and said the same things over and over, and then Mr. Penfold came in to say good-bye.

‘I’m translating that book. I’m getting on with it,’ he said; ‘it’s most interesting. I’ve got some of the manuscript in my pocket.’

‘Oh do let us look!’ they all said at once.

‘Well, just one page then, only one, or I shall be late for the choir practice.’

He laid down a type-written page and they all sprawled over the table to read it.

‘To obtain your suit,’ it said. ‘Herbs favourable to the granting of petitions…’ There was a blank for the names of the herbs, which Mr. Penfold hadn’t yet had time, he told them, to translate.

‘Suitors to kings and those in high places shall note well these herbs,’ the translation went on, ‘and offer the flowers and leaves in bunches or garlands when they go to tender their suit. More efficacious it is, however, if the herbs be bruised and their juices expressed, and a decoction given to drink in a little warm sack or strong waters or any liquor convenient. But for this ye need interest with the household of the king or him who has the granting of the desire. These herbs have the virtue to incline the heart favourably towards suitors if gathered in the first quarter of Luna by the hand of the petitioner in his proper person.’