"A stray fox or two and some resident weasels. Nothing moreformidable," said Van Cheele. The artist said nothing.
"What did you mean about a wild beast?" said Van Cheele later, whenthey were on the platform.
"Nothing. My imagination. Here is the train," said Cunningham.
That afternoon Van Cheele went for one of his frequent ramblesthrough his woodland property. He had a stuffed bittern in hisstudy, and knew the names of quite a number of wild flowers, so hisaunt had possibly some justification in describing him as a greatnaturalist. At any rate, he was a great walker. It was his customto take mental notes of everything he saw during his walks, not somuch for the purpose of assisting contemporary science as to providetopics for conversation afterwards. When the bluebells began toshow themselves in flower he made a point of informing every one ofthe fact; the season of the year might have warned his hearers ofthe likelihood of such an occurrence, but at least they felt that hewas being absolutely frank with them.
What Van Cheele saw on this particular afternoon was, however,something far removed from his ordinary range of experience. On ashelf of smooth stone overhanging a deep pool in the hollow of anoak coppice a boy of about sixteen lay asprawl, drying his wet brownlimbs luxuriously in the sun. His wet hair, parted by a recentdive, lay close to his head, and his light-brown eyes, so light thatthere was an almost tigerish gleam in them, were turned towards VanCheele with a certain lazy watchfulness. It was an unexpectedapparition, and Van Cheele found himself engaged in the novelprocess of thinking before he spoke. Where on earth could thiswild-looking boy hail from? The miller's wife had lost a child sometwo months ago, supposed to have been swept away by the mill-race,but that had been a mere baby, not a half-grown lad.
"What are you doing there?" he demanded.
"Obviously, sunning myself," replied the boy.
"Where do you live?"
"Here, in these woods."
"You can't live in the woods," said Van Cheele.
"They are very nice woods," said the boy, with a touch of patronagein his voice.
"But where do you sleep at night?"
"I don't sleep at night; that's my busiest time."
Van Cheele began to have an irritated feeling that he was grapplingwith a problem that was eluding him.
"What do you feed on?" he asked.
"Flesh," said the boy, and he pronounced the word with slow relish,as though he were tasting it.
"Flesh! What Flesh?"
"Since it interests you, rabbits, wild-fowl, hares, poultry, lambsin their season, children when I can get any; they're usually toowell locked in at night, when I do most of my hunting. It's quitetwo months since I tasted child-flesh."
Ignoring the chaffing nature of the last remark Van Cheele tried todraw the boy on the subject of possible poaching operations.
"You're talking rather through your hat when you speak of feeding onhares." (Considering the nature of the boy's toilet the simile washardly an apt one.) "Our hillside hares aren't easily caught."
"At night I hunt on four feet," was the somewhat cryptic response.
"I suppose you mean that you hunt with a dog?" hazarded Van Cheele.
The boy rolled slowly over on to his back, and laughed a weird lowlaugh, that was pleasantly like a chuckle and disagreeably like asnarl.
"I don't fancy any dog would be very anxious for my company,especially at night."
Van Cheele began to feel that there was something positively uncannyabout the strange-eyed, strange-tongued youngster.
"I can't have you staying in these woods," he declaredauthoritatively.
"I fancy you'd rather have me here than in your house," said theboy.
The prospect of this wild, nude animal in Van Cheele's primlyordered house was certainly an alarming one.
"If you don't go. I shall have to make you," said Van Cheele.
The boy turned like a flash, plunged into the pool, and in a momenthad flung his wet and glistening body half-way up the bank where VanCheele was standing. In an otter the movement would not have beenremarkable; in a boy Van Cheele found it sufficiently startling.His foot slipped as he made an involuntarily backward movement, andhe found himself almost prostrate on the slippery weed-grown bank,with those tigerish yellow eyes not very far from his own. Almostinstinctively he half raised his hand to his throat. The boylaughed again, a laugh in which the snarl had nearly driven out thechuckle, and then, with another of his astonishing lightningmovements, plunged out of view into a yielding tangle of weed andfern.
"What an extraordinary wild animal!" said Van Cheele as he pickedhimself up. And then he recalled Cunningham's remark "There is awild beast in your woods."
Walking slowly homeward, Van Cheele began to turn over in his mindvarious local occurrences which might be traceable to the existenceof this astonishing young savage.
Something had been thinning the game in the woods lately, poultryhad been missing from the farms, hares were growing unaccountablyscarcer, and complaints had reached him of lambs being carried offbodily from the hills. Was it possible that this wild boy wasreally hunting the countryside in company with some clever poacherdogs? He had spoken of hunting "four-footed" by night, but then,again, he had hinted strangely at no dog caring to come near him,"especially at night." It was certainly puzzling. And then, as VanCheele ran his mind over the various depredations that had beencommitted during the last month or two, he came suddenly to a deadstop, alike in his walk and his speculations. The child missingfrom the mill two months ago--the accepted theory was that it hadtumbled into the mill-race and been swept away; but the mother hadalways declared she had heard a shriek on the hill side of thehouse, in the opposite direction from the water. It wasunthinkable, of course, but he wished that the boy had not made thatuncanny remark about child-flesh eaten two months ago. Suchdreadful things should not be said even in fun.
Van Cheele, contrary to his usual wont, did not feel disposed to becommunicative about his discovery in the wood. His position as aparish councillor and justice of the peace seemed somehowcompromised by the fact that he was harbouring a personality of suchdoubtful repute on his property; there was even a possibility that aheavy bill of damages for raided lambs and poultry might be laid athis door. At dinner that night he was quite unusually silent.
"Where's your voice gone to?" said his aunt. "One would think youhad seen a wolf."
Van Cheele, who was not familiar with the old saying, thought theremark rather foolish; if he HAD seen a wolf on his property histongue would have been extraordinarily busy with the subject.
At breakfast next morning Van Cheele was conscious that his feelingof uneasiness regarding yesterday's episode had not whollydisappeared, and he resolved to go by train to the neighbouringcathedral town, hunt up Cunningham, and learn from him what he hadreally seen that had prompted the remark about a wild beast in thewoods. With this resolution taken, his usual cheerfulness partiallyreturned, and he hummed a bright little melody as he sauntered tothe morning-room for his customary cigarette. As he entered theroom the melody made way abruptly for a pious invocation.Gracefully asprawl on the ottoman, in an attitude of almostexaggerated repose, was the boy of the woods. He was drier thanwhen Van Cheele had last seen him, but no other alteration wasnoticeable in his toilet.
"How dare you come here?" asked Van Cheele furiously.
"You told me I was not to stay in the woods," said the boy calmly.
"But not to come here. Supposing my aunt should see you!"
And with a view to minimising that catastrophe, Van Cheele hastilyobscured as much of his unwelcome guest as possible under the foldsof a Morning Post. At that moment his aunt entered the room.
"This is a poor boy who has lost his way--and lost his memory. Hedoesn't know who he is or where he comes from," explained Van Cheeledesperately, glancing apprehensively at the waif's face to seewhether he was going to add inconvenient candour to his other savagepropensities.
Miss Van Cheele was enormously interested.
"Perhaps his underlinen is marked," she suggested.
"He seems to have lost most of that, too," said Van Cheele, makingfrantic little grabs at the Morning Post to keep it in its place.
A naked homeless child appealed to Miss Van Cheele as warmly as astray kitten or derelict puppy would have done.
"We must do all we can for him," she decided, and in a very shorttime a messenger, dispatched to the rectory, where a page-boy waskept, had returned with a suit of pantry clothes, and the necessaryaccessories of shirt, shoes, collar, etc. Clothed, clean, andgroomed, the boy lost none of his uncanniness in Van Cheele's eyes,but his aunt found him sweet.
"We must call him something till we know who he really is," shesaid. "Gabriel-Ernest, I think; those are nice suitable names."
Van Cheele agreed, but he privately doubted whether they were beinggrafted on to a nice suitable child. His misgivings were notdiminished by the fact that his staid and elderly spaniel had boltedout of the house at the first incoming of the boy, and nowobstinately remained shivering and yapping at the farther end of theorchard, while the canary, usually as vocally industrious as VanCheele himself, had put itself on an allowance of frightened cheeps.More than ever he was resolved to consult Cunningham without loss oftime.
As he drove off to the station his aunt was arranging that Gabriel-Ernest should help her to entertain the infant members of herSunday-school class at tea that afternoon.
Cunningham was not at first disposed to be communicative.
"My mother died of some brain trouble," he explained, "so you willunderstand why I am averse to dwelling on anything of an impossiblyfantastic nature that I may see or think that I have seen."
"But what DID you see?" persisted Van Cheele.
"What I thought I saw was something so extraordinary that no reallysane man could dignify it with the credit of having actuallyhappened. I was standing, the last evening I was with you, half-hiddenin the hedgegrowth by the orchard gate, watching the dyingglow of the sunset. Suddenly I became aware of a naked boy, abather from some neighbouring pool, I took him to be, who wasstanding out on the bare hillside also watching the sunset. Hispose was so suggestive of some wild faun of Pagan myth that Iinstantly wanted to engage him as a model, and in another moment Ithink I should have hailed him. But just then the sun dipped out ofview, and all the orange and pink slid out of the landscape, leavingit cold and grey. And at the same moment an astounding thinghappened--the boy vanished too!"
"What! vanished away into nothing?" asked Van Cheele excitedly.
"No; that is the dreadful part of it," answered the artist; "on theopen hillside where the boy had been standing a second ago, stood alarge wolf, blackish in colour, with gleaming fangs and cruel,yellow eyes. You may think--"
But Van Cheele did not stop for anything as futile as thought.Already he was tearing at top speed towards the station. Hedismissed the idea of a telegram. "Gabriel-Ernest is a werewolf"was a hopelessly inadequate effort at conveying the situation, andhis aunt would think it was a code message to which he had omittedto give her the key. His one hope was that he might reach homebefore sundown. The cab which he chartered at the other end of therailway journey bore him with what seemed exasperating slownessalong the country roads, which were pink and mauve with the flush ofthe sinking sun. His aunt was putting away some unfinished jams andcake when he arrived.
"Where is Gabriel-Ernest?" he almost screamed.
"He is taking the little Toop child home," said his aunt. "It wasgetting so late, I thought it wasn't safe to let it go back alone.What a lovely sunset, isn't it?"
But Van Cheele, although not oblivious of the glow in the westernsky, did not stay to discuss its beauties. At a speed for which hewas scarcely geared he raced along the narrow lane that led to thehome of the Toops. On one side ran the swift current of the mill-stream,on the other rose the stretch of bare hillside. A dwindlingrim of red sun showed still on the skyline, and the next turningmust bring him in view of the ill-assorted couple he was pursuing.Then the colour went suddenly out of things, and a grey lightsettled itself with a quick shiver over the landscape. Van Cheeleheard a shrill wail of fear, and stopped running.
Nothing was ever seen again of the Toop child or Gabriel-Ernest, butthe latter's discarded garments were found lying in the road so itwas assumed that the child had fallen into the water, and that theboy had stripped and jumped in, in a vain endeavour to save it. VanCheele and some workmen who were near by at the time testified tohaving heard a child scream loudly just near the spot where theclothes were found. Mrs. Toop, who had eleven other children, wasdecently resigned to her bereavement, but Miss Van Cheele sincerelymourned her lost foundling. It was on her initiative that amemorial brass was put up in the parish church to "Gabriel-Ernest,an unknown boy, who bravely sacrificed his life for another."
Van Cheele gave way to his aunt in most things, but he flatlyrefused to subscribe to the Gabriel-Ernest memorial.
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