Christmas at Candleshoe Read Online Free PDF Page A

resolved. But in response to the silence that seems to be gathering round them she has unconsciously lowered her voice. A rabbit not twenty yards ahead nibbles undisturbed, and for a moment the intruders find themselves standing quite still in tingling expectation. It is a drift of primitive feeling that has worked its way up wards into their eminently civilized consciousness; were it to break in on a more substantial scale they would experience panic, and the god himself might catch and claim them as they bolted for their car. But this passes; they set off up the neglected avenue; the rabbit vanishes; Mrs Feather gives a moment’s attention to the commonplace business of finding half-a-crown.
    ‘Probably it is deserted. But there may be a caretaker, and he will be glad enough to show us round. There will be quite enough daylight, although it is already dusky here in the trees.’
    Grant says nothing. He sees only cold corned beef, watery salad, blancmange, and the crowning horror known as ‘jelly’ between himself and bedtime. These will be served in penitential conditions by an obtrusively promoted scullion in an empty dining-room depressingly ‘laid’ for breakfast.
    They have reached the bend and rounded it. A few yards ahead a tree-trunk sprawls dead across the drive; it is a barrier which they must scramble over if they are to go further. Grant supposes that it must have been brought down by a storm, but when his eye travels to its base he sees that this is not so, and that it has been expertly felled to lie as it now does. He and his mother both come to a halt; as they do so there is an odd twang in the air somewhere to their left, and they are looking at the shaft of an arrow quivering in the obstacle before them.
    ‘That’s your boy with the queer cap.’ Grant is at once clear-headed about this surprising occurrence. ‘And it has a message.’ He advances to the tree-trunk and takes hold of the arrow. It is homemade, powerful, and correctly feathered; it pierces and has carried a twist of paper. Grant tears this off and unfolds it. They are looking at a single word scrawled in pencil:
     
    Avaunt!
     
    ‘An inhospitable boy.’ Mrs Feather frowns. ‘But where would a village child come by a word like that?’
    Grant laughs. ‘From a five-cent story of Robin Hood and his merry men, I’d guess. And I don’t suppose it’s meant to be ambiguous.’
    ‘How could it be ambiguous?’ Mrs Feather turns colloquial. ‘Don’t it just mean “ Git ”?’
    ‘It might mean “ Advance ”.’ Grant is on ground where his education excels his mother’s. ‘Spenser uses it that way in the Faerie Queene. ’
    ‘I never heard of village boys reading the Faerie Queene .’
    ‘This mayn’t be a village boy. It may be the young lord of the manor, amusing himself in a mildly alarming way at our expense. The way they said “Trespassers will be prosecuted” in Sherwood Forest long ago.’
    ‘We’ll take it to mean the other thing, and go right ahead.’ Mrs Feather’s resolution is mounting. She climbs over the tree and walks on.
    Twang!
    This time the arrow gives the impression of having travelled uncomfortably close to their ears. But its mark has been at a discreet distance ahead; Grant goes forward to the standing tree in which this time it has lodged, and again finds a message. He twists it open and reads:
    ‘Enter these enchanted woods,
    You who dare!’
     
    ‘Meredith.’ It is apparent that in the way of English poetry Grant Feather knows all the answers. ‘And this time I’d say it is ambiguous – a kind of challenge. But will it be safe to accept?’ Grant looks at his mother as whimsically as he can. In fact, he is uneasy. He knows that the bow and arrow at work are not the sort with which a child plays in a suburban garden. The thing could be lethal. And the child may be cracked. He does not want this Robin Hood ballad stuff to turn into a Cock Robin nursery rhyme to his mother’s personal