"What's no good?" asked Pod, dismayed.
"Going on like this," said Homily. "We got to do something before winter."
"Well, we are doing something, aren't we?" said Pod. He nodded toward Arrietty. "Like it says in her book-Rome weren't built in a day."
"Find some kind of human habitation," went on Homily, "that's what we've got to do—where there's fires and pickings and proper sort of cover." She hesitated. "Or," she went on in a set determined voice, "we got to go back home."
There was a stunned silence. "We got to do what?" asked Pod weakly, when he could find his voice; and Arrietty deeply upset, breathed, "Oh, Mother—"
"You heard me, Pod," said Homily. "All these hips and haws and watercress and dogs barking and foxes in the badger's set and creeping in the night and stealing and rain coming up and nothing to cook on. You see what I mean? Back home, in the big house, it wouldn't take us no time to put a few partitions up and get kind of straight again under the kitchen. We did it once, that time the boiler burst: we can do it again."
Pod stared across at her and when he spoke he spoke with the utmost gravity. "You don't know what you're saying, Homily. It's not just that they'll be waiting for us; that they've got the cat; set traps; laid down poison and all that caper. It's just that you don't go back, Homily, not once you've come out, you don't. And we ain't got a home. That's all over and done with. Like it or not, we got to go on now. See what I mean?" When Homily did not reply, he turned his grave face to Arrietty.
"I'm not saying we're not up against it; we are—right up against it. More than I like to let on. And if we don't stick together, we're finished—see? And it will be the end—like you once said, Arrietty—the end of our race! Never let me hear another word from either one of you, you or your mother, about"—with great solemnity he slightly raised his voice, stressing each word—"going back anywhere—let alone under the floor!"
They were very impressed; they both stared back at him unable, for the moment, to speak.
"Understand?" asked Pod sternly.
"Yes, Papa," whispered Arrietty; and Homily swallowed, nodding her head.
"That's right," Pod told them more gently. "Like it says in your book, Arrietty, 'A Word is enough to the Wise.'"
"Now get me the horse hair," he went on more jovially. "It's a nice day. And while you two clear breakfast, I'll start on the fish net. How's that?" Homily nodded again. She did not even ask him, as on any other occasion she would have immediately, how, when they had caught the fish, he proposed that they should cook it. "There's a nice lot of dry bark about. Do fine," said Pod, "for floats."
But Pod, though good at knots, had quite a bit of trouble with the horse hair: the long tail-strands were springy and would slide from the eye of the needle. When the chores; were done, however, and Arrietty sent off to the brook with two borrowing-bags—the waxed one for water and the other for bark—Homily came to Pod's rescue and, working together, they evolved a close mesh on the spider-web principle, based on Homily's knowledge of tatting.
"What about this Spiller?" Pod asked uneasily after a while, as he sat beside Homily, watching her fingers.
Homily snorted, busy with her knots. "Don't talk to me of that one—" she said after a moment.
"Is he a borrower or what?" asked Pod.
"I don't know what he is," cried Homily, "and what's more, I don't care neither. Threw a beetle at me, that's all I know. And stole the pin and our nail scissor."
"You know that for sure?" asked Pod, on a rising note.
"Sure as I'm sitting here," said Homily. "You ain't seen him."
Pod was silent a moment. "I'd like to meet him," he said after a while, staring out across the sunlit field.
The net grew apace and the time went by almost without their noticing. Once when, each taking an end, they held the work out for inspection, a grasshopper sprang from the bank below, bullet-like, into the meshes; and it was only after—with infinite care for the net—they had freed the struggling creature that Homily thought of luncheon.
"Goodness," she cried, staring across the field, "look at them shadows! Must be after two. What can have happened to Arrietty?"
"Playing down there with the water, I shouldn't wonder," said Pod.
"Didn't you tell her 'there and back and no dawdling'?"
"She knows not to dawdle," said Pod.
"That's where you're wrong, Pod, with Arrietty. With Arrietty you got to say it every time!"
"She's going on for fourteen now," said Pod.
"No matter," Homily told him, rising to her feet. "She's young for her age. You always got to tell her, else she'll make excuses."
Homily folded up the net, brushed herself down and bustled across the annex to the shelf above the tool rack.
"You hungry, Pod?" It was a rhetorical question: they were always hungry, all of them, every hour of the day. Even after meals, they were hungry.
"What is there?" he asked.
"There's a bunch of haws, a couple of nuts and a mildewed blackberry."
Pod sighed. "All right," he said.
"But which?" asked Homily.
"The nut's more filling," said Pod.
"But what can I do, Pod?" cried Homily unhappily. "Any suggestions? Do you want to go and pick us a couple of wild strawberries?"
"That's an idea," said Pod, and he moved toward the bank.
"But you got to look careful," Homily told him. "They've got a bit scarce now. Something's been at them. Birds maybe. Or," she added bitterly, "more likely that Spiller."
"Listen!" cried Pod, raising a warning hand. He stood quite still at the edge of their cave, staring away to his left.
"What was it?" whispered Homily, after a moment.
"Voices," said Pod.
"What kind of voices?"
"Human," said Pod.
"Oh, my—" whispered Homily fearfully.
"Quiet," said Pod.
They stood quite still, ears attuned. There was a faint hum of insects from the grasses below and the buzzing of a fly which had blundered into the alcove. It flew jerkily about between them and settled greedily at last on the sandy floor where at breakfast Homily had spilled the honey. Then suddenly, uncomfortably close, they heard a different sound, a sound which drove the color from their cheeks and which filled their hearts with dread—and it was, on the face of it, a cheerful sort of sound: the sound of a human laugh.
Neither moved: frozen, they stood—pale and tense with listening. There was a pause and, nearer now, a man's voice cursed—one short, sharp word and, immediately after, they heard the yelp of a dog.
Pod stooped; swiftly with a jerk of the wrist, he released the halliard and, hand over steady hand, he pulled on the swaying tree: this time, he used extra strength, drawing the branches lower and closer until he had stuffed the mouth of their cave with a close-knit network of twigs.
"There," he gasped, breathing hard. "Take some getting through, that will."
Homily, bewildered by the dappled half-light, could not make out his expression, but somehow she sensed his calm. "Will it look all right from outside?" she asked evenly, matching her tone to his.
"Should do," said Pod. He went up to the leaves and peered out between them, and with steady hands and sure grip tried the set of the branches. "Now," he said, stepping back and drawing a deep breath, "hand me that other hat pin."
Then it was that a strange thing happened: Pod put out his hand—and there at once was the hat pin, but it had been put in his grasp too quietly and too immediately to have been put there by Homily: a shadowy third shared their dim-lit cavern, a dun-colored creature of invisible stillness. And the hat pin was the hat pin they had lost.
"Spiller!" gasped Homily hoarsely.
Chapter Thirteen
"Meat is much, but manners are more."
Louis XIV of France died 1715
[Extract from Arrietty's Diary and
Proverb Book, September 1st]
HE MUST have slid in with the lowering o
f the leaves—a shadow among shadows. Now she could see the blob of face, the tangled thatch of hair and that he carried two borrowing-bags, one empty and one full. And the bags, Homily realized with a sinking of the heart, were the bags which, that morning, she had handed to Arrietty.
"What have you done with her?" Homily cried, distraught. "What have you done with Arrietty?"
Spiller jerked his head toward the back of the alcove. "She's coming up over yon field," he said and his face remained quite expressionless. "I floated her off down the current," he added carelessly. Homily turned wild eyes toward the back of the alcove as though she might see through the sandy walls and into the field beyond: it was the field through which they had traipsed on the day of their escape.
"You what?" exclaimed Pod.
"Floated her off down the river," said Spiller, "in half of a soap box," he explained irritably, as though Pod were being dense.
Pod opened his mouth to reply—then, staring, remained silent: there was a sound of running footsteps in the ditch below; as they came abreast of the alcove and thundered past outside, the whole of the bank seemed to tremble and the bell-clapper fell off its nail—they heard the steady rasp of men's harsh breathing and the panting of a dog.
"It's all right," said Spiller, after a tense pause. "They cut off left, and across. Gypsies," he added tersely, "out rabbiting."
"Gypsies?" echoed Pod dully, and he wiped his brow with his sleeve.
"That's right," said Spiller. "Down there by the lane; coupla caravans."
"Gypsies..." breathed Homily in a blank kind of wonderment, and for a moment she was silent—her breath held and her mouth open, listening.
"It's all right," said Spiller, listening too. "They gone across now, alongside the cornfield."
"And what's this now about Arrietty?" stammered Pod.
"I told you," said Spiller.
"Something about a soap dish?"
"Is she all right?" implored Homily, interrupting. "Is she safe? Tell us that—"
"She's safe," said Spiller. "I told you. Box, not dish," he corrected and glanced interestedly about the alcove. "I slept in that boot once," he announced conversationally, nodding his head toward it.
Homily repressed a shudder. "Never mind that now," she said, hurriedly dismissing the subject. "You go on and tell us about Arrietty. This soap dish or box or whatever it was. Tell us just what happened."
It was difficult to piece the story together from Spiller's terse sentences but at last some coherence emerged. Spiller, it seemed, owned a boat—the bottom half of an aluminum soap case, slightly dented; in this, standing up, he would propel himself about the stream. Spiller had a summer camp, or hunting lodge, in the sloping field behind—an old blackened tea kettle it was—wedged sideways in the silt of the stream (he had several of these bases it appeared, of which, at some time, the boot had been one)—and he would borrow from the caravans, transporting the loot by water; this boat gave him a speedy get-away, and one which left no scent. Coming up against the current was slower, Spiller explained, and for this he was grateful for the hat pin which not only served as a sharp and pliable punt-pole, but as a harpoon as well. He became so lyrical about the hat pin, that Pod and Homily began to feel quite pleased with themselves as though, out of the kindness of their hearts, they had achieved some benevolent gesture. Pod longed to ask to what use Spiller had put the half nail scissor but could not bring himself to do so, fearing to strike a discordant note in a state of innocent joy.
On this particular afternoon, it seemed, Spiller had been transporting two lumps of sugar, a twist of tea, three leaden hair-curlers and one of those plain gold earrings for pierced ears, known as sleepers, across the wider part of the brook where, pond-like, it spread into their field, when (he told them) he had seen Arrietty at the water's edge, barefoot in the warm mud, playing some kind of game. She had a quill-like leaf of bulrush in her hand and seemed to be stalking frogs. She would steal up behind her prey, where innocently it sat basking in the sun, and—when she was close enough—she would tap the dozing creature smartly in the small of its back with her swaying length of wand. There would then be a croak, a plop, a splash—and it was one up to Arrietty. Sometimes she was seen approaching—then, of course, it was one up to the frog. She challenged Spiller to a match, completely unaware, he said, that she had another interested spectator—the gypsies' dog, a kind of mongrel greyhound, which stared with avid eyes from the woodland edge of the pond. Nor, he added, had she heard the crackling in the underbrush which meant that its masters were close behind.
Spiller, it seemed, had just had time to leap ashore, push Arrietty into the shallow soap box and, with a few hurried directions about the whereabouts of the kettle, shove her off downstream.
"But will she ever find it?" gasped Homily. "The kettle, I mean?"
"Couldn't miss it," said Spiller, and went on to explain
that the current fetched up close against the spout, in a feathery pile-up of broken ripples—and there the soap box always stuck. "All she got to do," he pointed out, "is make fast, tip the stuff out and walk on back up."
"Along the ridge of the gas pipe?" asked Pod. Spiller threw him a startled glance, shrewd but somehow closed. "She could do," he said shortly.
"Half a soap box..." murmured Homily wonderingly, trying to picture it. "...hope she'll be all right."
"She'll be all right," said Spiller, "and there b'ain't no scent on the water."
"Why didn't you get in too," asked Pod, "and go along with her, like?"
Spiller looked faintly uncomfortable. He rubbed his dark hand on the back of his moleskin trousers; he frowned slightly, glancing at the ceiling. "There b'ain't room for two," he said at last; "not with cargo."
"You could have tipped the cargo out," said Pod.
Spiller frowned more deeply as though the subject bored him. "Maybe," he said.
"I mean," Pod pointed out, "there you were, weren't you? Out in the open, left without cover. What's a bit of cargo compared to that?"
"Yes," said Spiller and added uncomfortably, referring to his boat, "she's shallow—you ain't seen her: there b'ain't room for two."
"Oh, Pod—" cried Homily, suddenly emotional.
"Now what?" asked Pod.
"This boy," went on Homily in ringing tones, "this—Well, anyway, there he stands!" and she threw out an arm toward Spiller.
Pod glanced at Spiller: yes, indeed, there he stood, very embarrassed and indescribably grubby.
"He saved her life," went on Homily, throaty with gratitude, "at the expense of his own!"
"Not expense," Pod pointed out after a moment, staring thoughtfully at Spiller. "I mean he's here, isn't he?" And added reasonably in surprised afterthought, "And she's not!"
"She will be," said Homily, suddenly confident. "You'll see; everything's all right. And he's welcome to the hat pin. This boy's a hero." Suddenly herself again, she began to bustle about. "Now you sit here, Spiller," she urged him hospitably, "and rest yourself. It's a long pull up from the water. What'll you take? Could you do with a nice half of rose hip filled with something or other? We haven't much," she explained with a nervous laugh. "We're newcomers, you see...."
Spiller put a grubby hand into a deep pocket. "I got this," he said and threw down a sizeable piece of something heavy which bounced juicily as it hit the slate table. Homily moved forward; curiously, she stooped. "What is it?" she asked in an awed voice. But even as she spoke she knew: a faint gamey odor rose to her nostrils—gamey but deliciously savory, and for one fleeting, glorious second she felt almost faint with greed: it was a roast haunch of—
"Meat," said Spiller.
"What kind of meat?" asked Pod: he too looked rather glassy-eyed—an exclusive diet of hips and haws might be non-acid-forming but it certainly left corners.
"Don't tell me," Homily protested, clapping her hands to her ears. And, as they turned towards her, surprised, she looked apologetic but added eagerly, "Let's just eat it, shall we?"
/> They fell to, slicing it up with the sliver of razor-blade. Spiller looked on surprised: surfeited with regular protein, he was not feeling particularly hungry. "Lay a little by for Arrietty," Homily kept saying and every now and again she remembered her manners and would press Spiller to eat.
Pod, very curious, kept throwing out feelers. "Too big for field mouse," he would say, chewing thoughtfully, "yet too small for rabbit. You couldn't eat stoat.... Might be a bird, of course?"
And Homily, in a pained voice, would cry, "Please, Pod—" and would turn coyly to Spiller. "All / want to know is how Spiller cooks it. It's delicious and hung just right."
But Spiller would not be drawn. "It's easy," he admitted once to Homily's bewilderment: how could it be "easy" out here in a grateless wilderness devoid of coke or coal? And, natural gratitude apart, she made more and more fuss of Spiller: she had liked him, she was convinced now, from the first.
Arrietty returned in the middle of this feast. She staggered a little when she had pushed her way through the tight-packed screen of leaves, swayed on her two feet, and sat down rather suddenly in the middle of the floor.
Homily was all concern. "What have they done to you, Arrietty? What's the matter? Are you hurt?"
Arrietty shook her head. "Sea-sick," she said weakly. "My head's all awhirl." She glanced reproachfully across at Spiller. "You spun me out in the current," she told him accusingly. "The thing went round and round and round and round and round and round and—"
"Now, that's enough, Arrietty," interrupted Homily, "or you'll have us all whirling. Spiller was very kind. You should be grateful. He gave his life for yours—"
"He didn't give his life," explained Pod again, slightly irritated.
But Homily took no notice. "And then came on up here with the borrowing-bags to say you were all right. You should thank him."
"Thank you, Spiller," said Arrietty, politely but wanly, looking up from her place on the floor.
"Now get up," said Homily, "that's a good girl. And come to the table. Not had a bite since breakfast—that's all that's the matter with you: we've saved you a nice piece of meat...."