He stepped away again, feeling small and apologetic, as he always did after touching the big tree. "Without permission" was the phrase that occurred to him: but of course that was ridiculous. He turned his back on it (for the last time?) and went downward again.
He had been listening for the sound of the water, and now he heard it. It grew stronger as he went down the zigzag stairway, his footsteps hollow on the boards. The upper falls, swollen by spring rains, made a thunderous white torrent, dropping short and heavy into the upper pool. The spray filled the air, almost hiding the carved-out niche in the rock wall opposite, on whose cold, slippery floor he and Adam had crouched so often, playing Crusoe, or Captain Nemo, or ...
He followed the stream down past the dark middle pool and out into the glen. Even here the sunlight had not yet reached, but there was a diffuse glow from above, like a winter dawn. The water was as clear as melting ice, and almost as cold in the lower pool and the stream, inch-deep over the smooth red stones with their startling dividing lines of green algae. He crossed the footbridge and continued down the other side, relishing the padded silence that closed in on him as he grew farther away from the nearest human soul.
This was the heart of Buckhill, somehow. All the fields above were noisy with birds at this moment -- jays, grackles, crows, cardinals -- but down here there was not a sound; even the falls were muffled out of hearing. This was the quiet, secret place around which all the rest turned. And he was saying his good-bye to it.
When he at last got up from the weedy bank, he was aware that he had stayed longer than he meant to. He couldn't tell how much longer; tune seemed to run at a different rate in the glen. Or, rather, it seemed not to run at all, until you suddenly awoke with a lurch to find that your muscles ached and your stomach felt empty.
That reminded him: there wouldn't be any lunch, on account of the banquet. He crossed the lower footbridge and toiled up the slope, quartering back to the house by way of the bridle path. Sure enough, the sun was high; in another fifteen minutes it would be flooding the glen. It was getting hot, top; he was flushed and sweating by the time he reached the kitchens.
Inside, it was hotter still; a cook's inferno of sweat-dripping scarlet noses, spattered aprons, curses, banging plates and scullions underfoot. The breathless air was thick with the smells of duck, goose, pheasant, capon, squab; of venison, beef pie, whole suckling pig, breast of lamb; of steamed oysters, clams, giant prawns, lobsters, soft-shell crabs; of cod, albacore, flounder, mackerel, swordfish, salmon; of compotes and savories, sweet-and-sours, cheeses, puddings; of breads, rolls, biscuits, lady fingers, pies, cakes little and big. Greasy kitchen boys with stuffed eyes were hurrying everywhere; oven doors were banging, dishes clattering, men at the edge of their sanity were shouting from raw throats. A steel tray went ringing across the floor with a tinkle of broken crockery behind it; there was a shriek from the smallest kitchen boy and a torrent of abuse from the cooks. Dick seized the moment to slip around behind a long table loaded with floral centerpieces (all smelling of hot grease), to the counter where the cut cheeses stood, surrounded by tiny genteel wedges. Dick cut himself a more substantial chunk, grasped a pitcher of milk with the other hand, and escaped.
That the cheese was duped, like the milk, mattered to him not at all; he had stolen his meal from the kitchen like a person, instead of asking Possum for it like a slob. He ate under an arbor beside the bowling green, dropped the remains under a bush, and strolled down the hill past the pavilion and the tennis courts. Every yard of the grounds was thick with memories; the soil, the weeds in odd corners, the very tufts of grass were the same year after year. Everything was known and familiar, sight, sound and smell. He paused at the edge of the exercise ground, where, little Blashfield the armorer was shouting at his awkward squad, "Hup! Two! Dree! Faw! By de right flank, hup! you donkeys, hup!" Sunlight glittered on the stocks of the dummy rifles; the green-striped legs rose, fell.
Here was Artcraft Row, heat waves rising from the potters' kilns as usual, an intermittent tapping from the low, cool sheds where the cobblers and carvers worked. A mongrel yawned in the dust, scratching its ear. There was a clang! tink, clang! tink from the smithy, that fell pleasantly into silence. High in the blasted oak over the carpentry shops, a catbird began to sing. Full-hearted, Dick passed on toward the stables.
The exercise boys were taking out the Arabs and thoroughbreds, gray coat and brown, proud Assyrian heads tugging at the bridles. Dick watched them with a connoisseur's pleasure for a while, then went on down the row to where his own favorite, Gypsy Fiddler the Morgan was stalled. The gelding had just had his morning rundown and his coat gleamed like silk. His head came up when he saw Dick; he whinnied, and stretched his neck over the stall door. Gyp was a three-year-old, wide-chested, short and compact, the perfect saddle horse for broken country, in Dick's view. One of the stable boys came up. "Ride him dis mornen, misser?" Dick waved him aside and saddled the gelding himself.
They took the easy upland trail past the meadows and the blossoming apple orchards. Lulled by the mild air and the motion, Dick fell into a reverie of himself in a gaudy uniform, feather-helmeted, leading a troop of horse against some vaguely imagined enemy.
But four years ...
Why, four years ago, he had been twelve, a mere tadpole.
He had broken his leg on the ice, learned to dive from the high board, been praised by Blashfield for his small-arms shooting, grown about nine inches, started to shave, killed his first buck -- all that arid innumerable other things, in four years.
He imagined himself coming home, tall and fierce, thinner in the cheeks and heavier in the shoulders, with a look in his eye of things unspeakable. His mother met him at the door. She had been crying. "Oh, Richard! Your father has ... "
He came out of it with a start. The gelding had carried him all the way up the trail to Skytop; the sky was a wide blue bowl around him, and far off to northward he saw a glint of light: It was a dyne or copter, lowering. After a moment he saw another, and then a third. The guests were beginning to arrive.
5
The Upper Hall was crowded and stifling with noise. Women "in clouds of chiffon and in bags of tweed, some with cheeks rouged in two staring disks, like dolls, others with honest country faces reddened by nothing but food, wine and fresh air, were complaining about the trip, fussing after children, nervously bowing when they encountered each other, like hens uncertain of whom to peck. Slobs were scuttling this way and that under mountainous loads of personal luggage -- favorite tennis rackets, windbreakers, lounging robes, collapsible sedan chairs, all manner of unexpected and unsightly things. There were more children than ever, some with runny noses, some airsick, some running zigzags through the crowd, some sitting on the floor and howling. And the men themselves, all the lesser persons of the Poconos and surrounding areas, were stalking stiff-legged here and there with sidelong glances, conspicuously armed, pricking up their fierce mustaches, like dogs in a strange kennel.
Dick glimpsed his father in the middle of a cigar-smoking group. He edged past. "Wanted to wait for her second heat to breed her, but ... " "What do you think of this? (Here, boy, hand that case over.) Nice little needle-gun -- the Chassepot design, 1870. Old Flack traded it to me for two Black Labradors and a kitchen wench with a mole on her hip ... " " ... as it happens, the only copies of these particular daily strips known to be in existence. Not many people have even heard of The Bungles, but to my mind ... "