It was not until he had absorbed four lentil cutlets and an inordinate amount of greenstuff that Mr. Craddock emerged from his philosophic abstraction. That he happened to do so at the moment when Miss Silver was remarking upon the ruins of what appeared to be a chapel at some little distance from the house was no doubt a coincidence. She had asked if the damage had been caused by the same bomb which wrecked the house, and was surprised to receive a decided negative.
“Oh, no. The old church had been a ruin for thirty or forty years before that. And by the way, the place is not safe. There is a danger of flying masonry.”
With striking lack of tact Benjy chose this moment to say,
“We play hide-and-seek there. It’s a very good place for hide-and-seek.”
Parental displeasure descended.
“It is not at all a safe place for you to play. If one of those big stones fell-”
“Would it cut my head off?”
There was a gasp of “Benjy!” from Mrs. Craddock, and a calm “It might ” from Mr. Craddock.
“Right off? ” enquired Benjy with interest. “ And my hands? And my feet? Like the stone man inside the church?”
“Benjy!”
Jennifer, sitting next to him, slid a hand under the table and pinched hard. His outraged roar effectually changed the conversation, since he howled at the top of his voice until he discovered that the pudding was apple dumpling.
It was over the washing-up that Jennifer, washing whilst Miss Silver dried, said defiantly,
“Benjy is a damfool.”
It was beyond Miss Silver to let this pass.
“My dear, you should not use such words.”
Jennifer looked at her calmly.
“I shall use any words I like. If you interfere with my self-expression you will do something to my psyche. You ask him if you won’t! ” She broke into an angry laugh. “He talks that way, but when we do anything he doesn’t like, a lot he cares about our psyches!” Then, still with the utmost aggressiveness of voice and manner, “Don’t you hate, and loathe, and abominate, and detest washing-up?”
Miss Silver decided that it would be better to reply only to this last sentence.
“No, I really do not dislike it at all. With two of us it will be quickly done, and a great help to your mother. Do you not think that she might be persuaded to take a little rest while you and I go out for a walk with the boys?”
Jennifer said, “I don’t know!” in an angry voice, but this time the anger was not for Miss Silver. She washed up at an incredible pace, neither chipped nor broke anything, and darted out of the room whilst Miss Silver finished the drying, to return a moment later with the triumphant announcement that Mrs. Craddock had promised to lie down.
Miss Silver, having donned the black cloth coat, the elderly fur tippet, the felt hat with a purple starfish on one side, and the black woollen gloves, her invariable wear in winter except when the occasion demanded her best hat and the kid gloves reserved to go with it, they set out, Benjy and Maurice running ahead, Jennifer hatless in her scarlet jumper, not walking with Miss Silver but making short excursions here, there, and everywhere, yet always coming back after the manner of a puppy or any young thing for whom the pace of its elders is too slow.
They were out of sight of the house and had come to the edge of a wide sloping common, when Benjy came running back.
“Are we going there now?” he said, the words tumbling one over the other. “I want to show her the man what had his head broke off, an’ I want a piece of stone for my ruin I’m making in my garden, an’ I want a snail for my other snail to run races with, an’ I want-”
Jennifer came up with him and caught his hand.
“You want a lot, don’t you?”
“I want a snail, an’ a white spider, an’ a little green spider, an’ put them in a cage and see if they eat each other. An’ I want a big fir cone-”
Jennifer said, “All right, Toad-come along!” She waved with her free hand to Miss Silver. “We shall be about an hour. We don’t want you, and you don’t want us. You can meet us where the ruined chapel is and make sure we don’t get hit by flying masonry like he says.”
She gave Benjy a tug, and they raced away together, gathering up Maurice as they went.
It being no part of Miss Silver’s plan for the afternoon to pursue three wild children over country quite strange to her and perfectly well known to them, she merely remarked “Dear me!” and having watched them out of sight, retraced her steps until the ruins came in sight, and made her way towards them.
The church must have been a very tiny one. The chancel arch still stood, with parts of two others. Fallen stone lay confusedly amongst a prickly growth of bramble, whilst all around were the half-obliterated mounds and sunken headstones of a disused graveyard, the whole enclosed by a low wall. As this was in the same condition of disrepair as the church itself, it could no longer serve to keep anyone out.
Miss Silver walked through a gap and made her way cautiously amongst faded grass and fallen stones. The place was desolate in the extreme. With Deepe House behind her, there was not a human habitation in sight. All who had used this place for worship, for the christening of their children, for the marriage of their young people, for the burial of their dead, were gone. David’s words came into her mind-“For the wind passeth over it and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.”
In what had been the nave she came upon Benjy’s man without a head, a tomb with the recumbent figure of a knight in armour. The head was gone, and so were the feet. The hands, much weathered, were crossed upon a sword, and the legs crossed at the knees, showing that he had been upon two crusades-the only information which the tomb could now afford, since the inscription which had once set forth his name and virtues could no longer be deciphered. A little nearer to what had been the entrance a stone slab lay slightly raised above the ground. She made out that it would have been just within and to the right of the west door, and that there was an inscription now so much defaced that it could no longer be read.
After observing it for some minutes Miss Silver prepared to go. She was not very strongly addicted to ruins. Benjy’s remarks about the snails and spiders lingered unfavourably in her mind. If a sense of duty compelled her to wait here for the children, she felt it would be more agreeable to do so on the other side of the wall. Turning from the stone slab, she saw that the ruins had another visitor, and a striking one. A very tall and very large woman in a voluminous dark cape was standing just beyond the gap through which she herself had entered. The cape billowed out on every side, giving in spite of her bulk the impression that it might at any moment spread into wings and carry its wearer away. She had blunt, ugly features, a pair of rolling eyes, and an immense bush of the dark red hair which is usually a product of the dye bottle. Miss Silver found herself quite unable to believe that it was natural, though, being old-fashioned in her taste and preferring the more conventional shades, she was at a loss to imagine why anyone should wish to dye her hair such a distressing colour.
A large hand let go of the cloak to wave at her and then clutched it again. A deep voice hailed her.
“That place isn’t safe. The masonry flies.”
This inversion of Mr. Craddock’s phrase had a very peculiar sound, a peculiarity which was intensified when the stranger continued,
“Other things too perhaps. You had better not linger.”
Declaimed in that contralto manner, the words were arresting. Miss Silver, having reached the gap in the wall, was arrested. The cloak flapped loose again. Her hand was grasped.