The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood (28 page)

But her imagination was framed by what she had read. She remembered Mr. Barrie’s description of the fairy balls in the Fairy Basin at Kensington Gardens, and the magical woodland in Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

 
Then she thought of the old Cumbrian saying, “Fairy folk live in old oaks,” and the country people’s belief that the huge, gnarled roots of the oak and fir and beech trees concealed the doors to the houses where the Folk lived.

And when she remembered Arthur Rackham’s drawings of fairy doorways in
Grimm’s Fairy Tales,
she got down on her hands and knees to look for a door amongst the roots, which might have a gold doorbell hung beside it and open into little hallways, with miniature umbrella stands and pegs for hanging coats and hats and signs that said MIND YOUR STEP.

She wasn’t surprised when she didn’t find a door, for she had the feeling that fairies were extremely rare these days. If any still lived in this glen, they would have taken the trouble to hide their doors so that an inquisitive person would not be easily able to find them. But if there were fairies, they would need some fairy furniture, and so she collected some twigs and bark and leaves and small vines as pliable as twine, along with several other interesting woodsy bits. She sat down on a hummock of moss and constructed a tiny table with two fat red toadstools for stools. And then, inspired, she built a canopy of branches over it, with slabs of bark at the back and sides and ferns for a roof and a path of white pebbles leading across the mossy turf to a nearby rock, overlooking the tarn. She set two acorn caps on the table for plates and filled them with tiny red berries, and stuck a sprig of wild thyme in a bit of moss for a centerpiece. And all the while she was smiling at herself for fancying that fairies and Folk were real, and then smiling at herself for fancying they weren’t.

Now, you may think it strange and perhaps even silly that a woman of Beatrix Potter’s age (I won’t say exactly what that is, but some might say she was old enough to know better) would get down on her hands and knees to hunt for fairy doorways in the mossy roots of old oak trees, or stop to build a little garden-house for fairies who wanted to have their supper out of doors.

But if that’s what you think, you must think again. When Beatrix was a child, she played with fairies in exactly the same way she played with the animals who shared her third-floor nursery at Bolton Gardens. She believed (or wanted to believe, which came to the same thing) that real fairies lived amongst the real creatures of the real forests and fields, and that even though she might not have been lucky enough to see them on her last visit to the garden or the woods, she was bound to see them the next time, or the next, or the next. If she believed, there was always hope.

Grown up at last and required to live all day long in the real world, it now seemed to Beatrix that imaginary fairies were of a great deal more use than real ones. And I think we must agree with her on that score. It is undeniably true that the imagination is far more powerful than knowledge, and that it is much more important to believe in something than to know it! There is, after all, a limit to the things we can know (even if we are fortunate enough to be geniuses), but no limit whatsoever to the things we might imagine. And if we cannot imagine, we will never know what we have yet to learn, for imagination shows us what is possible before knowledge leads us to what is true. For Beatrix, dreaming, imagining, creating, improvising, and fancying redeemed the stern and sometimes frightening world in which she lived, and allowed her to transform it.

Well, if the fairies wouldn’t open their doors and come out and let her draw them, there were certainly many other things that belonged in her sketchbook. She drew her fairy table with its red toadstool chairs. Then, thinking about Jemima Puddleduck and the fox, she drew several trees and a view of the path, which might come in handy as a background. Then she spent some time drawing lichens growing on a larch and others on a fir tree and put a few samples into her pack, so she could take them back to Bolton Gardens and look at them under her microscope. After that, she sketched the ferns and the sedge grass along the lakeshore, and a red squirrel who ran out onto an oak branch and perked his ears and flicked his bushy tail and watched her curiously with his brilliant black eyes. (Since Beatrix didn’t know about the dwelves, she couldn’t know that they are shape-shifters and enjoy turning themselves into squirrels and magpies and even fish or frogs, when the day is very warm and they feel like having a swim. And it is, of course, quite impossible for me or you or anybody to know whether the red squirrel on the oak was really a squirrel, or a dwelf having a bit of a squirrel-frolic. Only the dwelf could say for certain and only if he wanted to, which he probably wouldn’t, since his purpose in shifting his shape in the first place was to deceive.)

It was in this way that Beatrix completely lost herself for quite a time in this magical glade, beside the small, placid tarn, imagining that she was in a primeval forest far removed in time and space from the rest of the world. In fact, it seemed so ancient and so completely, delightfully, naturally wild that when she looked up and glimpsed, at a distance through the trees, the shapes of round towers and battlemented turrets, their conical roofs silhouetted against the very blue sky, she thought at first that it had to be an enchanted castle, where a princess was waiting to be released from the spell that bound her.

And then she realized that what she was seeing was no enchanted castle, but the solid stone shape of Raven Hall. This recognition brought her back to civilization with an unpleasant thump, and looking around, she saw that the little lake (which she had thought to be far away from anywhere, away at the back of beyond) must lie instead at the bottom of Major Kittredge’s garden. She glimpsed a wide, mown lawn that sloped up to Raven Hall, the green shape of a neatly trimmed yew hedge with an arch cut into it, and the outline of an elaborate folly, like a Greek temple.

Beatrix was taken quite aback and felt really rather disappointed, as you would no doubt feel if you thought yourself in the middle of a great wilderness and suddenly discovered that you were in somebody’s garden, with the real world of houses and people not a stone’s throw away. And the realization of where she was made her remember that she had not yet had lunch and was feeling rather empty, so she looked around for a place to eat.

After a bit of searching, she found a pleasant willow-hung bank cushioned with a hummock of green moss exactly the size and shape of an overstuffed chair, and every bit as comfortable and welcoming. She took off her hat, sat down on the mossy bank, and unwrapped her mutton sandwiches. She ate both of them, and then, because the view of Fern Vale Tarn was so serene and the mossy bank so nicely warmed by the sun, she thought she would take a few quiet moments to relax. She was dozing dreamily, her sleepy mind turning over this and that—the farm, and the fox she had seen on Holly How, and the fairies she had not seen in the fairy glen—when something bounced off her nose and into her lap. She opened her eyes and saw that it was a plump acorn, and that a red squirrel (the same one she had seen earlier, or its cousin) was perched on the limb over her head, his head cocked, his tail twitching. And then the squirrel stopped twitching his tail and sat very still, listening. Beatrix listened, too, and heard voices.

Two voices, a man’s and a woman’s.

She thought at first that perhaps she was asleep and the voices were part of a dream, and then she remembered that Raven Hall was not so far away, which woke her up fully. It was probably the major and his wife, and they were coming closer. Perhaps she ought to jump up and declare herself before they got any nearer, so that they would not think she was spying on them. But perhaps that wasn’t a good idea, after all, since popping up like a jack-in-the-box in front of two unsuspecting people would startle them, to say the least, and might lead to a disagreeable encounter. Anyway, she was sitting on the opposite side of quite a large bank, under an overhanging willow. If she made herself as small as possible and sat very quietly, perhaps they wouldn’t notice her.

By then, of course, it was too late to do anything at all, even if she had wanted to, for the man and the woman were no more than a dozen feet away, just on the other side of her bank. The woman was indeed the major’s wife (to judge by her throaty voice), but the man was definitely not the major. After a moment, Beatrix recognized the unmistakable voice of Mr. Thexton, and with that came the guilty realization that the conversation was something that she ought not be hearing. It was obviously intended to be private, and Beatrix had been taught since childhood that listening to other people’s private conversations is extraordinarily impolite.

But Beatrix was in no position to stop listening. She could not escape without calling attention to herself. And worse, the more she heard, the more she knew she had to listen. (Ever afterward, when she thought of this extremely uncomfortable moment, she would remind herself of the lesson it taught her: that sometimes when you get into an adventure, there is no easy way to get out, and you simply have to carry on the way you are going and hope for the best.)

“I have told you and
told
you, Mr. Thexton,” the lady was saying, her voice tight and shrill with vexation, “I have nothing whatever to give you! Every shilling belongs to my husband, who is a very hard man when it comes to money. I haven’t a prayer of getting anything from him—much less the thousand pounds you’re asking.”

A thousand pounds? Beatrix pulled in her breath. Mr. Thexton was demanding a thousand pounds from Mrs. Kittredge? But . . . but that was extortion. It was
blackmail
!

Mr. Thexton’s voice was cold and unpleasant. “You have a great deal of fine jewelry. That necklace you’re wearing, for instance. If the emeralds are real, as I don’t doubt they are, I should put its value at twelve or fifteen hundred pounds. I suggest that you sell it.”

“I can’t sell it!” Mrs. Kittredge wailed. “It’s not mine. It belongs to my husband’s family.”

Mr. Thexton chuckled disagreeably. “But Major Kittredge is
not
your husband, my dear lady. Your husband is my friend, James Waring. And Mr. Waring is very much alive, as I am sure you know—Mrs. Irene Waring.”

Beatrix, by now thoroughly shaken, could scarcely believe her ears. The lady couldn’t be two people! She couldn’t be Mrs. Irene Waring and Mrs. Diana Kittredge at the same time. It was impossible. It was—

But of course, it was all too possible. Beatrix, an avid newspaper reader, had happened on many accounts of people who changed their identities, some of them many times. She had also read about the crime of bigamy: being married to two people at the same time. Sometimes this happened accidentally, as when a soldier went away to war and was reported dead and his wife married someone else, only to open her door one day and discover her first husband standing on the stoop. Of course, everybody felt very sorry for the people involved in this unhappy situation, and the law usually left them alone to sort things out as best they could.

But sometimes this was deliberate, as when a married person pretended to be single and (motivated by a desire for money or property or respectability) married someone else. Then it was a crime, and charges were pressed, and the bigamist could be sent to gaol.

The lady gave a low moan. “I didn’t know he was still alive, Mr. Thexton. I swear I didn’t! I thought James had died when his ship caught fire.”

Mr. Thexton’s “Really?” was full of scornful disbelief. “But he told me that he had written to you from South America, assuring you that he had escaped unhurt, and that you had written back to him in reply. At the time of that exchange, you were quite aware that he had not been killed when his ship went down. Granted, that was eighteen months ago. But he still had your letter in his possession when I spoke with him just last month.”

“My . . . my letter?” There was a tearful little gasp. “I didn’t . . . I don’t remember. I’ve been ill. I’ve—”

“Oh, come now, Mrs. Waring. Poor James has been looking everywhere for you. It was very unkind of you to drop out of sight as you did, changing your name and leaving no forwarding address. James has been quite beside himself, searching all over London. Anyone might think that you disappeared deliberately, to avoid being reunited with your lawfully wedded husband.” Another disagreeable chuckle. “I am sure that Major Kittredge will be terribly disappointed to learn that his wife isn’t who she says she is. That she isn’t his wife at all, but somebody else’s. What do you think he’ll do? Will he press charges? Or will he simply pack you off to your husband, where you belong?”

Beatrix bit her lip. Poor Major Kittredge! What
was
he likely to do?

“Oh!” the lady cried pitiably. “Oh, Mr. Thexton! You wouldn’t tell him! You
can’t
!”

Mr. Thexton gave an ironic sigh. “I shouldn’t like to, of course. What a wretched string of misfortune the poor chap has had. I should hate to be the one to tell him that the woman he thought was his wife is married to another man.”

“Oh, then don’t!” the lady pleaded desperately. “Don’t tell him!”

“I shall delay until Friday, Mrs. Waring. That will give you ample time to sell some of your fine jewelry.” Mr. Thexton’s voice hardened. “But only until Friday. After that, I shall be forced—oh, quite regretfully, you may be sure—to discuss the matter with Major Kittredge.”

Beatrix heard a man shouting in the distance, and the woman said, “He’s calling for me. I must go back.”

Mr. Thexton chuckled. “Oh, yes, you mustn’t disappoint the major, my dear Mrs. Waring. By all means, go to him. I shouldn’t think you’ll want to tell him anything about our conversation, though. It will be our little secret, won’t it? Just between the two of us. At least until Friday. After that—”