‘Perhaps they will have gone?’
‘Perhaps they will.’
A few minutes later, Griselda said ‘I suppose we may be stopped?’
‘You must use your charm, Griselda. It’s there if you’ll bring it out.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I shall climb a tree.’
‘Are you good at that?’
‘Watch.’
She darted away from tree to tree.
‘We must have a clean tree. I don’t want to dirty my trousers. Wish I hadn’t lent my blue ones to Florence.’ Even though she was quite close, the Forest had begun to echo her clear voice.
Suddenly she was ascending: with unbelievable speed and agility; like a small grey and buff monkey. In a minute or two she was out of sight among the dense green summer foliage.
‘Be careful,’ called Griselda up the tree trunk.
‘I’ll be careful,’ cried Lena from the greenery; and the Forest shouted: ‘Careful, careful, careful.’
‘Look out below.’ Something was descending. It was a shoe. It was followed by another shoe. Then, a few yards away, at the perimeter of the tree, fell a pair of socks and Lena’s shirt and trousers. Griselda looked up and saw Lena brown and naked at the very end of a thick branch. She was sitting on the branch with her legs drawn up; leaning back upon the left arm and hand, which rested on the bark behind her.
‘How brown you are!’
‘The sun was my stepfather.’ Now she was standing on the branch, her hands above her head and clinging to wisps of leafy twig hanging from the branch above. ‘I’m going to the top. Then down again. Wait for me, Griselda. I’ll be very quick.’
Griselda waved up to her and she had disappeared again among the leaves.
After a pause a fairly large whole branch crashed down from high above. It lay on the ground like the handiwork of a hooligan.
‘Lena! Are you all right?’
There was no answer, but before Griselda felt alarm, Lena could be heard descending.
‘Did you get to the top?’
Lena paused about twenty feet from the ground. In the hot streaks of sunshine she looked startlingly in keeping.
‘We’re nearer the house than we thought.’
Griselda laughed. ‘Then you’d better dress quickly!’
‘It’s not that.’ Lena’s manner had changed a second time. Now she seemed almost subdued. ‘There’s something going on. There are tall trees near the house, but at the very top I could see over them. I think someone’s dead.’
‘What did you see?’
‘I’ll dress and we’ll go on. Then you can see for yourself.’
She stood on the ground shaking bits of the tree from her brown body. In a minute and a half she was dressed, and combing her hair.
‘What do you call those things you see in churches?’
‘Cockroaches,’ said Griselda.
‘Wooden things. To do with funerals.’
‘Coffins,’ said Griselda.
‘You’re wise to wear your hair short.’
‘Yours is too beautiful.’
‘I know. That’s why I keep it. It’s my sole physical asset.’
‘Not quite,’ said Griselda smiling.
‘Much good has it done me.’ She was retying the khaki ribbon. ‘Now come and look.’ She slouched ahead, her hands once more in her pockets.
After two or three hundred yards, the track became paved with kidney stones, sunk far into the earth with neglect. After another two or three hundred yards, it gave upon a well-kept lawn, round which it curved to the door of a big late seventeenth-century house, in dark red brick, with large windows at long intervals, and heavy pre-Georgian details. The front door (from which the main drive stretched away in the opposite direction) was concealed by a bulky columned porte-cochиre; high above which, rising on its own against the sky above the front wall of the house, was a massive relief representation in stone of the emblem which Griselda and Lena had noticed on the gate, the simple mailed fist. About the lawn were enormous isolated cedars of Lebanon.
Before they left the shelter of the Forest, Lena caught Griselda by the arm. ‘Look! That’s a thing to see from the top of a tree.’
In the sunshine before the porte-cochиre, a strange figure sat upon the stones of the drive working. It appeared to be a dwarf. It had very long arms (like a cuttlefish, Griselda thought), very long black hair (somewhat like horsehair), and a completely yellow face. Its ears were pointed, with strands of stiff black hair rising from the top of them. It wore black clothes. Very industriously, despite the great heat, the figure was polishing a large black piece of wood.
‘You were right,’ said Griselda, speaking unnecessarily softly; ‘that’s a hatchment.’
‘Would that be the undertaker?’
‘No. Undertakers must have charm.’
‘Dare we go past?’
‘I think so. Unless you’d prefer to go back.’
‘Aren’t we trespassing?’
‘This is the twentieth century.’
‘Should we take advantage of that?’
‘I’ll apologize and ask the quickest way out.’
They advanced from the safety of the trees. Instantly, against the ponderous grandeur of the house, they felt themselves misplaced and insignificant, wrongly dressed and intrusive.
The dwarf went on polishing until they were almost upon him, whereupon, without haste or appearance of surprise, he rose, bowed ceremonially, and extended his long left arm rewards the door of the house.
‘I’m afraid we’ve lost our way,’ said Griselda. ‘Will it be all right if we go on down the drive?’
The dwarf who had completely black eyes, bowed again, and continued to point to the front door.
‘Let’s see for ourselves,’ said Lena after a second’s silence. She tried to pass the dwarf on the other side, with a view to making for the drive.
The dwarf, still with his arm extended, stepped to the right and barred her way. Now by gestures with the right arm he seemed to reinforce the invitation already made with the left. Griselda saw that the big double front door wood wide open.
‘Shall we go back?’ said Lena.
The dwarf took a further step. He now stood facing the door and with the lawn behind him. Both his immense arms were fully extended, so that he looked like a queer tree. The hatchment lay face downward on the stones.
‘What is there inside?’ asked Griselda.
The dwarf bowed once more, this time stretching back his arms and upturning his hands. His hands were unusually large and white; and wiry black hair grew in the palms.
‘Let’s go,’ said Lena.
She looked about to run for it, but the dwarf, his arms still extended, leapt right off the ground like a goalkeeper, and descended in her course.
Griselda, anxious to prevent an unpleasant and undignified dodging contest, which, moreover, she feared the dwarf would, in at least one case, win, said ‘I think we’d better investigate. They may need help.’ Most of the blinds in the house were drawn.
‘If you say so.’
They entered the house, the dwarf one pace behind them.
When they were through the front door, he returned to his polishing in the sun.
The drawn blinds made the hall very dark, despite the strong light outside. At once, however, the two girls saw that a figure stood motionless at the bottom of the stairs which rose before them. It was an elderly woman, very tall, very upright, very grey, and wearing a grey dress reaching to the ground.
‘So you’ve come. This way.’
She began to lead the way upstairs, then stopped.
‘Only one of you.’ She peered at them. ‘You.’ She indicated Griselda. ‘You,’ she said to Lena, ‘can go – or wait. Just as you choose. It won’t take more than five or ten minutes now.’
‘There’s some mistake,’ said Griselda. ‘We—’
‘Hardly,’ interrupted the woman, smiling a slight, hard, weary smile through the gloom. ‘But you won’t have to stay long. Your friend can wait if she chooses. Come upstairs, please.’