The Wonderful Garden or The Three Cs

‘’Tain’t nothing, then,’ he said; ‘’twas the way he acted about my dog license, and the dog only two months over puppy-age, when no license is taken nor yet asked.’

‘I don’t fancy Poad much myself,’ said Rupert; ‘he needn’t have been so keen about catching me.’

‘Now that’s where you’re wrong,’ said William. ‘Hunting of you, that was no more than Poad’s duty; and if he set about it like a jackape, well, some is born silly and can’t help it, and why blame the man? But the dog, ’e worn’t Poad’s duty. He exceeded about the dog, Poad did, and I don’t bear malice; but I’ll be even with him yet about that dog.’

‘How?’ asked Rupert.

‘Oh, I’ll find a way,’ said William carelessly. ‘No hurry. Acts like that act what Poad did about my Pincher, they always come home to roost – them acts do. Now then, Miss Charlotte, leave that saddle soap alone, and get along into the garden. The gates ’as been locked since eight this morning, and you’re to go through the secret way to-day, and not to go outside the garden because of that old speckled Le-o-pard.’

The three C.’s went, but Rupert lingered beside William, fingering the bright buckles of the harness and passing the smooth reins slowly through his fingers.

For some time the three C.’s were very busy in the garden, gathering heart-shaped green leaves and golden fragile daisy-like flowers.

‘I never thought,’ said Caroline earnestly, opening the brown book and sitting down on the terrace steps with a sheaf of green and yellow beside her, ‘that we should need it when I read about it in the Language Of, and in the medicine book. Look here, it says: “It is under Apollo, and the flowers and leaves thereof all leopards and their kind do fear and abhor. Wherefore if it be ſtrewn in the paths theſe fearful beaſts do frequent, they may not paſs, but ſhall turn again and go each to his own place in all meekneſs and ſubmiſsion. Indeed, it hath been held by the ancients, aye and by philoſophers of our own times, that in this herb lieth a charm to turn to water the hearts of theſe furious ſpotted great cats, and to looſe the ſtrings of their tongues, ſo that they ſpeak in the ſpeech of men, uttering ſtrange things and very wondrous. But of this the author cannot ſpeak certainly, ſince the Leopard is not native to this land unleſs it be in Northumberland and Wales where all wild things might well be hidden.”’

‘So, you see,’ said Caroline.

But Charlotte said it was all very well, only how were they to get the bane to the leopard?

‘It isn’t as if we were allowed free,’ she pointed out. ‘I wish they hadn’t been so careful. The leopard would never have hurt us as long as we carried the bane, and we could have surrounded it, like snakes, with ash leaves, and it would have had to surrender.’

‘And perhaps it would have talked to us and followed us like tame fawns,’ suggested Charlotte; ‘or Una; only hers was a lion.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Charles; ‘you know you’d have been afraid.’

‘I shouldn’t,’ said Charlotte.

‘You would,’ said Charles.

‘I shouldn’t.’

‘You would.’

‘I shouldn’t.’

‘You would.’

‘And now you’re both exactly like Rupert,’ said Caroline; ‘and the leopard wandering about unbaned while you’re wrangling. You’re like Nero and Rome.’

Twenty minutes had passed before peace was restored, and the leopard’s-bane lay drooping in the sun, the delicate gold and green heaps of it growing flatter and flatter.

‘Well, then,’ said Charles suddenly, ‘if you’re not afraid, let’s go. No one’s forbidden us to, except William.’

‘I will if you will,’ said Charlotte, turning red.

‘So will I,’ said Caroline, turning pale.

‘Rupert said it was nonsense about the leopard’s-bane when you read it this morning.’

‘That doesn’t make it nonsense,’ said Charlotte sharply.

‘But suppose you meet it?’

‘You can’t – if you keep to the road. Leopards get into trees. They never walk about in roads like elephants do. Not even when the circus man is moving. It’s serious what we’re going to do,’ said Caroline; ‘and what’ll people say about it, depends how it turns out. If we parrylise the leopard and save the village, we shall be heroines like – ’

(‘And heroes,’ said Charles.)

‘Like Joan of Arc, and Philippa who sucked the poison out of the burgesses’ keys at Calais.’

‘And if we don’t put the stuff in the right place, or the leopard doesn’t take any notice of it, they’ll just say we were disobedient.’

‘And suppose we meet the leopard face to face?’

‘It’s a tame leopard,’ said Caroline in a faltering voice.

‘Oh, I don’t want to go. I really am frightened. I don’t mind owning up. I am. I’m so frightened I think we ought to go. I don’t want to so dreadfully, that I’m sure it’s right for me to go. But I wish you and Charles would stay here. Suppose the leopard came over the wall and there was no one here to cope with it?’

She was very pale and she trembled. And when the others, without hesitation, said, ‘Not much, we don’t!’ she certainly breathed more easily.

‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘We’ll strew a little here because of the gardeners. Oh no, of course the roots will make it all safe here. The gate’s locked; we must go through the secret passage and then creep through the stable-yard and out along the garden wall, so that the Wilmington doesn’t see us. And then out by the deserted lodge.’

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LEOPARD’S-BANE

Their minds once made up, the children collected the fading armfuls of leopard’s-bane and made for the arbour that led to the tunnel. Inside the door they lighted the candle, closed and bolted the door as they had been told to, and went carefully down the steps and along the secret passage. And as they went they heard something moving in the darkness that lay thick beyond the little wavering light of their candle.

They stopped and listened. They heard the sound of breathing, and the next moment they saw, vaguely, in the almost darkness, something four-footed, spotted, furry, creeping along the passage towards them. It uttered a low, fierce, snarling growl.

‘Throw it down,’ said Caroline, casting her flowers from her. ‘It can’t pass it. It can’t.’

A heap of tangled crushed leaves and flowers was all that there was now between the children and the leopard.

‘It can’t pass it. It can’t,’ said Caroline again, in an agonised whisper. Yet none of the children dared to turn and fly. Charlotte had remembered what she had heard of quelling wild animals by the power of the human eye, and was trying, almost without knowing that she tried, to meet the eye of this one. But she could not. It held its head down close to the ground and kept quite still. Every one felt it was impossible to turn their backs on the creature. Better to face it. If they turned and ran, well, the door at the end of the passage was bolted; and if the flower-spell should fail, then, the moment their backs were turned, the leopard might – with one spring —

‘Oh, I wish we hadn’t,’ said Charles, and burst into tears.

‘Don’t, oh, don’t!’ said Caroline; and to the leopard, who had not moved, she said, with wild courage:

‘Down, sir! Lie down!’

The leopard lay down, flat – flatter than you would think a leopard could lie.

‘It understands,’ said Charlotte.

‘Oh yes.’ Caroline’s voice trembled as much as the hand that held the candlestick. ‘It does. Poor Pussy! Poor Leopard, then.’

A faint rumbling sound came from the crouching heap of spotted fur.