VI. — “BEAUTY” AND “BANDS”

THREE days later at breakfast Bill’s father looked up from his letters.

“Glenmore seems to have become demented,” he said. “First I had a wire from Mrs. Macrae.” He fumbled in his pocket and produced a pink slip.

“‘Is the bairns alright. Macrae.’ The honest woman does not waste words. I could make nothing of it, and thought it might be a new kind of Christmas greeting. But here’s the explanation in her letter. It seems that Glenmore is haunted, and by such fearsome spectres as Bill and Peter. They were seen three nights ago in Mrs. Macrae’s best room by Mrs. Macrae herself, and afterwards in the garden by Angus as well. She says that Angus was not a yard off when they disappeared, and that he saw their faces quite clear and could describe what they were wearing. It seems that the whole glen is solemnised. I wired at once that the boys were perfectly well, but Mrs. Macrae is not satisfied. She thinks it may be a forewarning of coming disaster, and she implores me never to take my eyes off them till Hogmanay is past.”

Bill’s mother looked anxious. “What an extraordinary thing! I always thought Mrs. Macrae a pillar of common sense. She hasn’t second sight, has she?”

“If she has, I don’t suppose Angus has it, and they both saw the ghosts. They were solid enough ghosts, for they knocked a stone off the wall and broke the branch of a pear tree. A couple of Abercailly boys on the loose! Bill, did you know that you had a double in Abercailly?”

Bill grinned sheepishly and said nothing. He had begun to realise that in this business of the magic staff he must walk delicately and provoke no questions. Any future enterprise must be carefully thought out in all its bearings. He had already passed a self-denying ordinance, and had made no experiment since the rescue of Catsbane.

“Does she say anything about Mrs. Cameron?” he heard his mother ask.

“Yes. She is not out of danger, but the reports are good. Apparently they got her to Abercailly and operated in the nick of time. That was the evening they saw the ghosts, and naturally Mrs. Macrae’s mind was keyed up for marvels. You had better write to her, Jean, and say the boys are all right. She will believe you sooner than me.”

Then Barbara, to Bill’s disquiet, put in an unwanted oar. “That was the evening that Catsbane was lost and came back covered with peat. You remember, Daddy? And the boys found bog myrtle!”

After tea Bill was allowed for a treat to sit in the library and study the pictures in the big bird book. His father sat in an armchair with an old calf-bound folio on his knee, from which he appeared to be taking notes. From time to time he made ejaculations of interest or surprise, and once he said, “Bless my soul, what a queer story!”

Several times he got up to refer to other books among the thousands which lined the great room. Then at last he startled Bill out of his contemplation of a coloured plate of the red-necked phalarope by dropping the folio on the floor. He stood up on the hearth-rug, filled his pipe from a box on the mantelpiece, and looked down at Bill.

“I have just come across a very good story,” he said. “Would you like to hear it?”

He took down from a shelf a slim black volume and found a passage. “Read that,” he said.

Bill read:

“Et assumpsi mihi duas virgas, unam vocavi Decorem, et alter am vocavi Funiculum; et pavi gregem.”

“Now have a shot at construing it.”

Bill had a shot, but he did not succeed. Latin was not his strong suit, and half the words were unfamiliar.

His father handed him a Bible. “Look up the seventh verse of the eleventh chapter of Zechariah and read.”

Bill read:

“And I took unto me two staves, the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock.”

“You understand that?” his father said. “The prophet had two staves, one called Decor and the other Funiculus; that is ‘Beauty’ and ‘Bands.’ One was for comfort and the other for discipline—you might say one was a walking-stick and the other a schoolmaster’s cane. Now the book I have been reading—it is a volume of Acta Sanctorum, the ‘Doings of the Saints,’ and it was written in Germany in the twelfth century—says that these staves were real sticks and that they had magical power. They lay in the treasury in the Temple of Jerusalem until the Emperor Titus sacked it and carried them off. After that they seem to have roamed for centuries about Europe. Charlemagne—you have heard of Charlemagne?—had one, and the Emperor Justinian had one; but they were never long in one place. Sometimes a Pope got hold of them, and sometimes a Bishop, and sometimes a King, and sometimes a peasant, but they disappeared as soon as they were misused. The point about them was that they were magic sticks and would carry their possessor anywhere in the world he wanted to go to. But the trouble was that you could not be certain what was their particular magic. They were as alike as two peas, but one was Decor and the other Funiculus, and if you treated Decor like Funiculus it took the huff and disappeared. If it was Decor it would take you gallivanting about the earth for your amusement and never complain. But if you used it for some big serious job, it was apt to leave you in the lurch. Funiculus was just the opposite. It was all right in things like battles and rescues and escapes, but if you took it on a pleasure trip it would let you down.”

Bill listened with breathless interest. “What happened to the sticks?” he asked.

“My book says that in its time, that is the twelfth century, Funiculus had gone over the horizon, but Decor was believed to be in the possession of the Emperor Frederick.... It’s a good story, isn’t it? I dare say it is the origin of all the old witches’ broomsticks in the fairy tales. But these were broomsticks with wills of their own.... Hullo! hullo! it’s six o’clock. I must see Thomas about to-morrow’s covert shoot.”

When his father had left, Bill sat for a long time in meditation. Clearly he had got one of the two staves which had come down from the old prophet in the Bible and had drifted for two thousand years through the hands of Popes and Kings. The question was, which one? Was it Beauty or Bands?

Bill was a conscientious thinker, and set himself to analyse his experiences. The adventures of Alemoor and the Solomon Islands had been more or less undertaken for his own amusement, and so had the first visit to Glenmore. On the other hand, the rescue of Catsbane and the summoning of the doctor to Mrs. Cameron had had a distinct flavour of duty. As yet there was not enough evidence to decide which staff he had got. It would have been an awful business if he had used it wrongly and it had objected; Bill shuddered when he remembered the faces of the South Sea Islanders. Perhaps he was being allowed a trial trip to test him. On the whole, he decided that this was the likeliest explanation. But the time of probation was probably now over, since he knew about the staff’s peculiarities. He had an eerie feeling that some fate had led his father to discover that story in the funny old book.

Bill found the page in it which his father had marked, but he could make nothing of the close black type and the queer Latin. Then he read again the passage in Zechariah. For a long time he thought hard, till Groves came in to make up the fire and to warn him that his supper was ready. He had reached the conclusion that the next experiment must combine somehow the partialities of both Beauty and Bands, for he could not afford to make a mistake.

Next morning he overheard a conversation between his father and his mother. His father seemed to be very angry.

“It is getting simply intolerable. Those disgusting Benisons have been at their monkey tricks again. It appears that there was a biggish party at Yardley last week-end, to meet the Viceroy, who was at school with the General. What did the bright young Benisons do but make a raid in the middle of the Saturday night! They managed to burgle the back premises, and flung every scrap of food in the house into the moat, leaving an idiotic doggerel poem in the butler’s pantry. Yardley is ten miles from a town, so you may imagine the trouble about the commissariat on the Sunday. The General went raving mad, and started out for Wildash with a horsewhip; but he thought better of it and turned back. What could he do? They would only laugh at the old fellow. He talks about prosecuting; but it won’t be easy to bring the charge home, for the brutes are pretty clever. I wish to heaven somebody would retaliate in kind and give those jokers a taste of their own medicine.”

Bill pricked up his ears. He knew all about the Benisons, who five years before had bought Wildash from a long-descended bankrupt squire. They were his father’s nearest neighbours, but there was no commerce between the two houses. The elder Benison had made a great deal of money in the City during the War, and had brought...