THE SHOCK
One immediate result of Miss Lake's indiscretion was that the children
preferred to play on the other side of the garden, the side farthest
from the Empty House. A spiked railing here divided them from a field in
which cows disported themselves, and as bulls also sometimes were
admitted to the cows, the field was strictly out of bounds.
In this spiked railing, not far from the great shrubberies where the
Indians increased and multiplied, there was a swinging gate. The
children swung on it whenever they could. They called it Express Trains,
and the fact that it was forbidden only added to their pleasure. When
opened at its widest it would swing them with a rush through the air,
past the pillars with a click, out into the field, and then back again
into the garden. It was bad for the hinges, and it was also bad for the
garden, because it was frequently left open after these carnivals, and
the cows got in and trod the flowers down. The children were not afraid
of the cows, but they held the bull in great horror. And these trivial
things have been mentioned here because of the part they played in
Jimbo's subsequent adventures.
It was only ten days or so after Miss Lake's sudden departure when Jimbo
managed one evening to elude the vigilance of his lawful guardians, and
wandered off unnoticed among the laburnums on the front lawn. From the
laburnums he passed successfully to the first laurel shrubbery, and
thence he executed a clever flank movement and entered the carriage
drive in the rear. The rest was easy, and he soon found himself at the
Lodge gate.
For some moments he peered through the iron grating, and pondered on the
seductiveness of the dusty road and of the ditch beyond. To his surprise
he found, presently, that the gate was moving outwards; it was yielding
to his weight. One thing leads easily to another sometimes, and the open
gate led easily on to the seductive road. The result was that a minute
later Jimbo was chasing butterflies along the green lane, and throwing
stones into the water of the ditch.
It was the evening of a hot summer's day, and the butterflies were
still out in force. Jimbo's delight was intense. The joy of finding
himself alone where he had no right to be put everything else out of his
head, and for some time he wandered on, oblivious of all but the
intoxicating sense of freedom and the difficulty of choosing between so
many butterflies and such a magnificently dirty ditch.
At first he yielded to the seductions of the ditch. He caught a big,
sleepy beetle and put it on a violet leaf, and sent it sailing out to
sea; and when it landed on the farther shore he found a still bigger
leaf, and sent it forth on a voyage in another direction, with a cargo
of daisy petals, and a hairy caterpillar for a bo'sun's mate. But, just
as the vessel was getting under way, a butterfly of amazing brilliance
floated past insolently under his very nose. Leaving the beetle and the
caterpillar to navigate the currents as best they could, he at once gave
chase. Cap in hand, he flew after the butterfly down the lane, and a
dozen times when his cap was just upon it, it sailed away sideways
without the least effort and escaped him.
Then, suddenly, the lane took a familiar turning; the ditch stopped
abruptly; the hedge on his right fell away altogether; the butterfly
danced out of sight into a field, and Jimbo found himself face to face
with the one thing in the whole world that could, at that time, fill him
with abject terror--the Empty House.
He came to a full stop in the middle of the road and stared up at the
windows. He realised for the first time that he was alone, and that it
was possible for brilliant sunshine, even on a cloudless day, to become
somehow lustreless and dull. The walls showed a deep red in the sunset
light. The house was still as the grave. His feet were rooted to the
ground, and it seemed as if he could not move a single muscle; and as he
stood there, the blood ebbing quickly from his heart, the words of the
governess a few days before rushed back into his mind, and turned his
fear into a dreadful, all-possessing horror. In another minute the
battered door would slowly open and the horrible Inmate come out to
seize him. Already there was a sound of something moving within, and as
he gazed, fascinated with terror, a shuddering movement ran over the ivy
leaves hanging down from the roof. Then they parted in the middle, and
something--he could not in his agony see what--flew out with a whirring
sound into his face, and then vanished over his shoulder towards the
fields.
Jimbo did not pause a single second to find out what it was, or to
reflect that any ordinary thrush would have made just the same sound.
The shock it gave to his heart immediately loosened the muscles of his
little legs, and he ran for his very life. But before he actually began
to run he gave one piercing scream for help, and the person he screamed
to was the very person who was unwittingly the cause of his distress. It
was as though he knew instinctively that the person who had created for
him the terror of the Empty House, with its horrible Inmate, was also
the person who could properly banish it, and undo the mischief before it
was too late. He shrieked for help to the governess, Miss Ethel Lake.
Of course, there was no answer but the noise of the air whistling in his
ears as his feet flew over the road in a cloud of dust; there was no
friendly butcher's cart, no baker's boy, or farmer with his dog and gun;
the road was deserted. There was not even the beetle or the caterpillar;
he was beyond reach of help.
Jimbo ran for his life, but unfortunately he ran in the wrong
direction. Instead of going the way he had come, where the Lodge gates
were ready to receive him not a quarter of a mile away, he fled in the
opposite direction.
It so happened that the lane flanked the field where the cows lived; but
cows were nothing compared to a Creature from the Empty House, and even
bulls seemed friendly. The boy was over the five-barred gate in a
twinkling and half-way across the field before he heard a heavy,
thunderous sound behind him. Either the Thing had followed him into the
field, or it was the bull. As he raced, he managed to throw a glance
over his shoulder and saw a huge, dark mass bearing down upon him at
terrific speed. It must be the bull, he reflected--the bull grown to the
size of an elephant. And it appeared to him to have two immense black
wings that flapped at its sides and helped it forward, making a whirring
noise like the arms of a great windmill.
This sight added to his speed, but he could not last very much longer.
Already his body ached all over, and the frantic effort to get breath
nearly choked him.
There, before him, not so very far away now, was the swinging gate. If
only he could get there in time to scramble over into the garden, he
would be safe. It seemed almost impossible, and behind him, meanwhile,
the sound of the following creature came closer and closer; the ground
seemed to tremble; he could almost feel the breath on his neck.
The swinging gate was only twenty yards off; now ten; now only five. Now
he had reached it--at last. He stretched out his hands to seize the top
bar, and in another moment he would have been safe in the garden and
within easy reach of the house. But, before he actually touched the iron
rail, a sharp, stinging pain shot across his back;--he drew one final
breath as he felt himself being lifted, lifted up into the air. The
horns had caught him just behind the shoulders!
There seemed to be no pain after the first shock. He rose high into the
air, while the bushes and spiked railing he knew so well sank out of
sight beneath him, dwindling curiously in size. At first he thought his
head must bump against the sky, but suddenly he stopped rising, and the
green earth rushed up as if it would strike him in the face. This meant
he was sinking again. The gate and railing flew by underneath him, and
the next second he fell with a crash upon the soft grass of the
lawn--upon the other side. He had been tossed over the gate into the
garden, and the bull could no longer reach him.
Before he became wholly unconscious, a composite picture, vivid in its
detail, engraved itself deeply, with exceeding swiftness, line by line,
upon the waxen tablets of his mind. In this picture the thrush that had
flown out of the ivy, the Empty House itself, and its horrible, pursuing
Inmate were all somehow curiously mingled together with the black wings
of the bull, and with his own sensation of rushing--flying
headlong--through space, as he rose and fell in a curve from the
creature's horns.
And behind it he was conscious that the real author of it all was
somewhere in the shadowy background, looking on as though to watch the
result of her unfortunate mistake. Miss Lake, surely, was not very far
away. He associated her with the horror of the Empty House as inevitably
as taste and smell join together in the memory of a certain food; and
the very last thought in his mind, as he sank away into the blackness of
unconsciousness, was a sort of bitter surprise that the governess had
not turned up to save him before it was actually too late.
Moreover, a certain sense of disappointment mingled with the terror of
the shock; for he was dimly aware that Miss Lake had not acted as
worthily as she might have done, and had not played the game as well as
might have been expected of her. And, somehow, it didn't all seem quite
fair.