Sheiks and Adders Read online

  But what next caught his attention was the handiwork of man. It was a square board nailed to a tree, and lettered in a much bolder fashion than had been the signposts of his first observation. And whereas they had invited carefree pedestrianism in the Forest of Drool, this one was distinctly forbidding. It read simply:

  ADDERS

  KEEP OUT

  Appleby received this injunction with displeasure. He was offended, in the first place, by the irrationality of being bidden to keep out of something he must already be near the middle of. It was of course possible that the present location of the notice was a product of the same species of juvenile rustic humour as frequently occasioned the turning of signposts the wrong way round. Or conceivably Appleby had arrived at a point, not otherwise demarcated, at which one landowner’s territory gave place to that of another more nervously disposed. Or the assertion might be quite untrue, like the ones saying ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’, but more effective than that hackneyed kind, all the same. An authentic proliferation of adders was surely improbable. However all this might be, the mandatory phraseology of the notice was objectionable. Appleby had lately visited a Cambridge college, and been edified by a placard saying, ‘It is earnestly desired by the Master and Fellows that perambulators be not perambulated on the grass’. He now saw no reason to be deterred from further perambulating himself in the Forest of Drool.

  So he walked on in restored equanimity. There was much to observe. The beech trees had the curious form sometimes to be remarked of them, thrusting up out of the ground like a bunch of pencils or like so many fingers held tightly together as if in an act of prayer. Midsummer Day was only round the corner; primroses had given way to bluebells, and now the bluebells were yielding to campion and brier rose. There was a faint murmur in the air that spoke of a vigorous if invisible insect life, and the feathered songsters of the grove their various notes supplied. The wise thrush sang his song twice over; the woodland linnet – also no mean preacher – dispensed his unbookish wisdom as he flew; Appleby sat down for a few minutes on a tree trunk and was entertained alike by the various birds and their familiar poetic associations; then he glanced at his watch and decided he must return to the Rover. Still just ahead of him, however, the path took a turn round a hazel thicket and vanished. What happened round this bosky corner? The answer, almost certainly, was ‘Nothing at all’; the Forest of Drool simply went on as forests do. Nevertheless Appleby felt that he might as well walk on and see. There might be an interesting little vista down a long straight riding. He might even come upon a badger poking a misdoubting snout into sunlight. There was everything to be said for continuing to advance another hundred yards or so.

  So Appleby penetrated a little further. What he came upon almost at once was something much less interesting than badgers. It was a Range Rover, halted on a broad green riding which here cut across his own path at right angles. Beside it stood a tall lean man in an attitude suggesting a momentary pause from labour. But not a labouring man in the accepted sense of the term, since something not readily definable about him proclaimed his adherence to the academic, or at least the investigating, class of society. He could very well have passed the time of day, Appleby thought, with the Applebys’ new neighbour, Professor McIlwraith. Appleby ventured to pass the time of day himself.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said – and as he did so observed that the owner of the Range Rover was holding in his hand a piece of apparatus not readily to be identified. It was a long light pole, equipped at one end with what seemed to be a trigger-like device operating along a slender metal rod. At the other end there dangled what seemed to be a small wire loop or noose. It wasn’t a fishing-rod, nor was it a butterfly-net, but it did belong to that order of contrivance. Appleby had distinguished so much when his glance went to the vehicle, which proved to bear a neatly-lettered inscription. This read:

  Oxford University Institute of Advanced Herpetology

  ‘Dear me!’ he said. ‘May I ask, sir, if you are engaged in eradicating the adders?’

  ‘Ah, the adders! No doubt you have seen that absurd notice. Not that there are no adders. Indeed, I have seen several today, and hope to get hold of a few. But it cannot be said that I am positively engaged on a venation of vipers, sir. I am simply collecting grass snakes. And when I conclude my foray tomorrow I am confident I shall have about a hundred of them.’

  ‘But surely grass snakes are quite harmless?’

  ‘Oh, entirely so – although few will be persuaded of the fact. I am not, I fear, performing any kind of public service, but simply stocking up for certain large-scale experiments at our Institute. It is quite a new concern, you know.’

  ‘I am most interested to hear of it,’ Appleby said politely. ‘And its being of recent foundation must excuse my not having heard of it at Oxford before.’

  ‘Our fame is all to earn, my dear sir. And there were those who objected to the innovation on the score that at Oxford there are abundant snakes in the grass already.’

  Appleby received this donnish witticism with appropriate subdued amusement, and lingered for a few moments in further talk. He rather hoped to be treated to a glimpse of this devoted scientist in action. But that didn’t happen. Perhaps the chap felt that, although engaged in the serious business of enlarging the frontiers of human knowledge, he must cut rather an absurd figure angling around on dry land for anything so elusive as the reptile creation. So Appleby wished him good hunting, and walked on.

  There was a further inviting turn, and a further hazel thicket ahead. He was now moving, as it happened, quite silently, since underfoot was a thick mast such as, in a properly organized rural economy, would have been regaling a sizable herd of swine. The trees from which this neglected fruitage had fallen were a random lot. Beech, oak and chestnut stood shoulder to shoulder – nudging or jostling one another, indeed, in a spirit of robust competition. It wasn’t a scene suggesting that at any previous time the Forest of Drool had been the object of much arboricultural care. One had a feeling that in this small patch of England Nature, despite the intrusion of Advanced Herpetology, was still contriving in a more or less primaeval fashion.

  Appleby rounded the further hazel thicket and at once came upon a changed spectacle. He was looking down into a large and deep basin or natural theatre, such as might have been punched into the yielding globe by some wandering celestial object which had then evaporated in flame long before life on earth began. And an effect of grand combustion, indeed, had for a moment the appearance of strangely lingering on the stage. This was because the glade – for it had to be called that – was ringed with elms in a manner which did perhaps suggest the hand of art, elms being more commonly hedgerow than woodland trees. But the point about these elms was that they were dead, every one. From a few of them tiny shoots were already springing from the bole, so that Nature was perhaps not going to be wholly defeated in the end. But at present the spectacle was as of the aftermath of a forest fire – or better, possibly, of some unfortunate nuclear episode in human history.

  The sudden desolation of this scene was very striking, but at the same time a little mitigated by what, near the centre of the basin, had the momentary appearance of a brilliantly sunlit pond. But the pond was too blue to be true, and was in fact a small remaining sea of bluebells. And then Appleby saw that this spectacle had diverted his gaze from something else. There was also a real pond – but one dark and only faintly glinting. Beside it on the grass was seated a strikingly beautiful girl. She was quite immobile, but she was copiously weeping. So fast fell her tears, indeed, that she might have been a garden statue designed softly to replenish the pool below.

  2

  Appleby’s immediate impulse was to withdraw from this strange scene as silently as he had come upon it. His presence had not yet been observed by the dolorous maiden, and his position was such that he could quickly drop out of view. Had the grief of a child been in question
, he might have advanced and seen what comfort he could provide. But this was a young adult, not a child, so it would surely be intrusive to march up to her and propose consolation. She had chosen this solitary spot for her weeping, and must be left to get on with it.

  Yet Appleby hesitated. He did so, he realized, because of something inherently perplexing in the spectacle before him. It wasn’t precisely that there was anything theatrical about it; yet it did hauntingly suggest some familiar deliverance of art. Whether in poetry or in painting – or even, conceivably, in music – he couldn’t tell. The ring of dead trees by which the vision was encircled certainly contributed to this effect. So did the girl’s attire. There ought to be a rock – Appleby suddenly told himself – of bizarre configuration unknown to geology, and this young person in mediaeval dress ought to be chained to it. A dragon – preferably rather a comical dragon – ought to be breathing fire in the background. And he himself – a Saint George rather than a Sir John – ought to be advancing to sort things out – on horseback and armed.

  This train of thought was interrupted by the girl, who had sprung swiftly and gracefully to her feet. She was tall and slender, and her flowing green gown, which extended to her ankles, was girdled low and seemingly precariously on her hips, with the long embroidered tongue of this sole adornment depending between her knees. The effect was mediaeval enough, but mediaeval in a manner mediated through Pre-Raphaelite eyes. The scene upon which Appleby had stumbled might have been a picture telling a story in the manner of Millais or Holman-Hunt and have borne a title like The Broken Tryst or After the Fatal Word. Only some minor prescriptive element in the hinted fable was missing: perhaps a faded flower, or a love-letter, or even a blood-stained dagger, lying abandoned beside the small dark pool.

  Had Sir John Appleby not been indulging this useless fancy he might have more quickly become aware of why the girl had jumped up as she had done. It was because she had registered his presence and was disposed to some positive reaction to it. This, indeed, was so immediately apparent as to make it impossible for him simply to turn round and walk away. The girl’s connection with anything to be thought of as a courtly society doubtless extended no farther than her dress. Nor could she be described as conducting herself by any means en princesse, since her blubbering appearance was of a childish order and she was now looking distinctly cross. Nevertheless Appleby felt that some touch or token of the chivalric was required of him. No dragon showed any sign of turning up; there wasn’t even a rude carl or a sorceress disguised as a nun in the offing; nor were the shades of evening beginning alarmingly to fall. Despite all this, however, simply to murmur a civil ‘Good afternoon’ and then pass on would somehow be inadequate to the small but definite situation that had established itself. So Appleby was about to utter what would, without doubt, have been apt and adequate words when the young woman forestalled him.

  ‘Go away, you horrid beast!’ the young woman said loudly. ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with any of you. And I think my father is very silly to have brought in all that rubbish, and a lot of people like you as well. So there!’

  ‘I beg your pardon – and I shall certainly go away at once. But I think, madam, you must be under some misapprehension. I have not been “brought in” by your father, as you express it, and I think it most improbable that he and I have ever heard of one another.’

  ‘Aren’t you one of the people with the wardrobe?’

  ‘My dear young woman, it must be plain to you that my age precludes my being in employment as a furniture remover.’ Appleby had refrained from turning away – for the encounter had now developed into an affair of cross-purposes that amused him. ‘So here is another misapprehension, it seems to me.’

  ‘I don’t mean that sort of wardrobe, you stupid man!’ The young woman, as she made this extremely rude speech, stamped what appeared to be a sandalled foot soundlessly on the grass. ‘And why are you dressed like a gentleman? It’s too absurd!’

  ‘Why do I talk like one, for that matter? Say that it’s a deception that I’ve kept up more or less successfully for years. And now, listen. Get it out of your head that I’m somebody down from London with a pantechnicon. I’ve left my car on the high road to take a walk through this wood. And I find you sitting in the middle of it, crying your eyes out. You’re upset, and I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not the middle of it. It’s the other side, you silly.’ The dolorous maiden seemed obstinately addicted to nursery compliments. ‘Beyond those dead trees there’s the park. And after that there’s our house, which is called Drool Court. My name’s Cherry Chitfield.’ The maiden paused on this. ‘Worse luck,’ she added gloomily.

  ‘I’m Sir John Appleby, and I live at a place called Long Dream not a hundred miles from here.’ Appleby was reflecting that the name of Drool Court rang some faint bell in his head. The Chitfields were probably among the innumerable persons of local consequence known to Judith from her earliest years, but whom he himself could never securely fix in his memory. ‘If that dress,’ he went on, ‘comes out of what you call the wardrobe, then I don’t think your father deserves to be reproached at all. It must be a good wardrobe. For the dress is an extremely becoming one.’

  ‘That’s why I did agree just to try it on.’ Miss Chitfield was visibly mollified by this deft turn given to the conversation. ‘But then it came over me again. I don’t want to be a princess saved from an enchanter. And Tibby doesn’t want it that way, either.’

  ‘Is Tibby your brother?’ Appleby asked innocently.

  ‘Tibby is not my brother.’ Miss Chitfield stamped her foot again. ‘My brother is Mark, and he’s quite horrid. Tibby is a friend of mine, and he’s to do the rescuing. But we both think it’s silly. At least I do, and Tibby agrees with me.’ Cherry paused, as if to lend emphasis to this material distinction. ‘I want to be a girl just like I am – or almost just like I am – and to be carried off by a sheik.’

  ‘With Tibby as the sheik?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Only my father won’t allow it. He insists on the princess thing, with me in this dress, and Tibby wrapped around in a lot of tin, as if he was some sardines. Why can’t I have my own way?’

  ‘That’s a question, Miss Chitfield, we all frequently ask. But what the answer is in this particular case, I just don’t know. Perhaps it is more decorous for a young woman to be rescued from an enchanter by a knight than to be made the lawless prey of a passionate bedouin. Might that be it?’

  ‘I suppose it might. But it doesn’t really sound like my father.’

  ‘Then another explanation must be found.’ Appleby, who was intolerant even of small obscurities, uttered this with a conviction he was to remember.

  ‘Of course I know that being carried off and ravished by an Arab warrior is frightfully old-hat,’ Miss Chitfield went on. ‘It happened in Victorian novels by people like Trollope and Jane Austen. Not that anybody reads them now.’

  ‘Some demonstrably do not. However, I agree with you that the theme of the desert lover is a shade passé. But just what are we talking about? Is it some species of charades or private theatricals?’

  ‘I think it’s a fête, really.’ Cherry, who was now perfectly disposed to conversation, had sat down on the grass again. ‘I say, you don’t happen to be carrying any chocolate, do you? I’ve missed tea, and I’m getting a bit hungry.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, although I think there are some biscuits in the car. Unfortunately it’s rather a long way off.’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll just have one of your cigarettes.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not provided with cigarettes, either. I do apologize.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Cherry had glanced rather suspiciously at Appleby. ‘I’m a bit thirsty too, as a matter of fact. But I don’t like the look of this pool.’

  ‘Neither do I. You must expect a certain effect of dehydration, Miss Chitfield, af
ter shedding all those tears.’

  ‘Sarky, aren’t you?’ It was quite amiably that Cherry said this. ‘But it’s a kind of fête, as I was saying. And with a pageant. Or with some mini-pageants, really.’

  ‘I see. And the brush with the sheik was to be one of them?’

  ‘Yes – and now it’s this stupid knight-and-princess thing. But it’s a sort of fancy-dress garden party as well. That’s why my father has got in all that stuff. Anybody who doesn’t want to bother beforehand can hire a costume for an extra five pounds.’

  ‘Dear me! You must move in affluent circles, Miss Chitfield.’

  ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘And does Tibby?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. That’s part of the trouble, I suppose.’

  ‘He can be trusted as a knight, but not as a sheik?’

  ‘I suppose so. It sounds very illogical.’

  ‘It does, indeed. When is this happening?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘And is it a private affair?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Miss Chitfield sounded surprised. ‘You can buy a ticket in Odger’s shop in Linger, and various other places. It’s all in aid of a charity, you see. Fallen women or Retired governesses or Conservative Party funds – I’ve forgotten which. We have something of the sort every year – only this time it seems a bigger effort than usual. Mark – that’s my brother I told you of – says it’s going to be most exquisitely vulgar.’