The Tale of Oat Cake Crag (21 page)

“Letters?” Mathilda asked. By now she was thoroughly irritated that Bertha had led her down the wrong path with that silly business about cousins. She would set Bertha straight the next time she saw her. “Wot letters?”

Beneath Miss Potter’s chair, Rascal stirred.
“Letters,”
he said thoughtfully.
“You wouldn’t be talking about—”

“Hush, Rascal,” Mathilda commanded. “Wot letters, Miss Potter?”

“The letters Mrs. Lythecoe has been receiving,”
Rascal muttered. Well, naturally. If the cats know about the letters, all the other village animals are likely to know, too. Tabitha was right when she said that Crumpet could never keep a secret, and she isn’t much better. And then, of course, there’s Caruso, who sings so loudly that he can be heard up and down the street. Who knows what secrets he’s spilling into the air?

“Oh, nothing,” Beatrix said, glad to drop the subject. She knew Mathilda well enough to tell from her expression that she was completely in the dark. She sniffed the air. “That’s not your bread burning, is it?”

“S’cuse me whilst I check,” Mathilda said. Going to the oven gave her a chance to slightly recover herself, and she returned to the table and her guest, this time with a new—and entirely unexpected—topic of conversation. “We’ve been talkin’ about Mrs. Lythecoe and t’ vicar getting’ married, but I understand that we’ll soon be able to congratulate thi an’ Mr. Heelis, Miss Potter.”

Beatrix’s stomach knotted. “Congratulate . . . me?”

“Aye.” Mathilda smiled coyly, feeling that she had the upper hand over her guest, which was much more pleasant than being on the defensive. “It’s still s’posed to be a secret, is it?” The smile broadened into a chuckle. “Well, thi knowst our village, Miss Potter. ’Tis impossible to keep a secret, especially when it’s got to do with a weddin’!”

Now it was Beatrix’s turn to deny. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She spoke with great outward firmness, although within, she felt a great confusion. “There is to be no wedding.” This much, at least, was true, for while she was secretly engaged, there had never been any talk of a wedding—not one word. However much she and Mr. Heelis might desire it, both of them knew that marriage simply was not possible, in the circumstance.

“No wedding just yet, perhaps,”
Rascal amended, putting his muzzle on the guest’s foot.
“But we’re on your side, dear Miss Potter.”
Rascal and his friends the cats knew all about Miss Potter and Mr. Heelis, of course, and were entirely in support of the engagement.
“We hope it can happen, soon.”

“No weddin’?” Mathilda asked, disappointed. Miss Potter, who was known to be honest and straightforward, had spoken with an exceedingly firm tone. “You’re sure ’bout that?”

“No wedding,” Beatrix repeated. “Of course I’m sure. I should know, shouldn’t I?” She frowned sternly. “And I’ll thank you to say as much to anyone else who repeats such a wicked tale.”

“Aye. I’ll be sure to say jus’ that.” Mathilda raised an arch eyebrow. “ ‘Miss Potter says there’s to be no weddin’,’ ” she said, and smiled with the air of one who has triumphed over an unwary opponent. “ ‘And she’s asked me to say as much.’ Them’ll be my words, Miss Potter. My very words. You can count on me to set ’em straight.”

The knot in Beatrix’s stomach tightened. The fat was in the fire now. Mathilda would say that there would be no wedding, with a wink and a nod that implied exactly the opposite, and before long, everyone would be talking about it—if they weren’t already, that is.

Her heart sank. She would have to tell Will that their secret was out of the bag. And then what? If people were already talking about it behind their backs, it wouldn’t be long before they were asked point-blank about it. Should they deny it? How long could they deny it? And what would happen if the rumor spread beyond the village? What would happen if her parents heard it?

Beatrix was swept by a sudden panic. She could not stay another minute. “I must be going,” she said. She stood, adding, “Please let me know when you’ve finished the tablecloth, Mrs. Crook.”

“Oh, aye,” Mathilda said, beaming. Her equanimity was entirely restored, now that she had the upper hand. She was thinking that as soon as her guest was out of sight, she would rush right next door to tell Agnes Llewellyn what Miss Potter had just said.

Rascal, who knew Big People as well as they knew themselves (which sometimes isn’t saying much), understood exactly what Mrs. Crook had in mind and sensed Miss Potter’s dismay.
“I’ll walk down the hill with you, Miss Potter,”
he said, feeling that she needed a friend.

Which is why Rascal was with Beatrix a few minutes later, when she took her brother’s letter out of her pocket and opened it. She had read only a few words when he heard her sudden exclamation of shock and alarm. “Oh, no! Oh,
no
!” She stopped stock still in the middle of the lane to read the rest of the letter.

“What is it, Miss Potter?”
he cried, looking up at her.
“Is someone sick? Has someone died?”

No. No one was sick, and no one had died. But Bertram’s news really couldn’t be worse. The very same scrap of village rumor that Mathilda Crook had just repeated so triumphantly to Miss Potter had already reached the ears of her parents.

Beatrix was horrified. She couldn’t help being annoyed at Bertram’s tone of immature self-pity (“Someone must hold the fort,” “yr much-beleaguered brother,” and the like), but her exasperation was swept aside by the appalling news that her parents had learnt her secret—long before she was ready to tell them herself. Under other circumstances, she might have smiled at the image of her father stamping around like an “enraged hippopotamus” (very apt), or shaken her head at her mother’s “screaming hysterics,” but neither of these were at all amusing, in the circumstance.

She folded her brother’s letter and put it back in her pocket, biting her lip in consternation. What should she do? Write and tell them that it was just village gossip and didn’t bear repeating? They would likely believe her, for even her brother thought that she was too old, too unattractive, and too confirmed a spinster to win a husband (“The idea of your being married is quite preposterous”). She narrowed her eyes. It would serve Bertram right if she wrote to the family and told them that it was all quite true. Whoever this Mr. Morris was, his facts were accurate. She was engaged to Mr. Heelis and they would be married—someday, when it was convenient—and everyone would just have to get used to the idea.

She sighed heavily. But what would be the point of such a letter? It could only cause another family row, even worse than the one over her engagement to Norman. She could not imagine a time when her parents would agree that it was “convenient” for her to marry anybody, let alone a country lawyer who had no standing in the London society in which they moved.

But she also could not imagine writing them a letter in which she denied her engagement. She hated lying and dissembling and pretending that everything was one way, when it was another way altogether. But that’s what her life in London had become, hadn’t it? Nothing but pretense and make-believe. Sometimes it seemed that she could be her own true self only in this little village. If only she could stay here forever, hidden away from the rest of the ugly world!

But she couldn’t. This was only a respite, a temporary retreat—and now that the villagers had got wind of her engagement, it wasn’t even that. She sighed again and thrust her hands into her pockets. “Come on, Rascal,” she said, and picked up the pace.

“I’m coming,”
the little dog said, hurrying to keep up with her.
“But where are we going?”
For Miss Potter had now turned aside from the way back to Hill Top. They were headed in quite a different direction, along a path that struck off cross-country, in the direction of Claife Heights.

For a moment, Beatrix did not answer. And then she said, partly to herself and partly to her companion, “I am in the mood to take a long walk this morning.”

Beatrix loved to tramp through the fields and woodlands of the Land Between the Lakes, and walking had always helped her to solve her problems. But this time, her dilemma seemed too immense, too irresolvable. She doubted she could ever find an answer.

Will Heelis arrived at Tower Bank House not long after breakfast. He found the captain, in his official capacity as justice of the peace for Claife Parish, conferring with Constable Braithwaite in the library. The constable wore his usual blue serge uniform with the polished brass buttons, and both men wore very serious expressions.

“It’s Baum,” the captain said to Will. “He fell off Oat Cake Crag. He’s at Raven Hall just now, in a very bad way. Dr. Butters saw him last night, and woke me on his way back to Hawkshead to tell me about it.” With that, he related the story, as the doctor had told it to him and as he had just told it to the constable.

“So that’s why he wasn’t at the meeting last night,” Will said. “Any idea how he happened to fall off that crag? Or what the devil he was doing up there in the first place?” In his frequent rambles around the countryside, Will himself had climbed the lookout often. But he was fit and lean. Fred Baum was an extremely stout fellow who preferred to ride rather than walk, and the cigars he smoked gave him an incessant wheeze. In Will’s opinion, he wasn’t in any kind of trim to go climbing up the rocks.

The constable, baffled, echoed his thought. “Surprises me that Mr. Baum would want to climb t’ crag,” he said. “He wud’ve been huffin’ an’ puffin’. Must’ve had a ver’ good reason to go up there.”

The captain agreed. “Braithwaite and I are going to Lakeshore Manor to talk to the servants, Will. On the way, we’ll stop at Raven Hall to see if Baum is awake and able to tell us anything. We’re taking my motor car. It’s an official visit, but perhaps you would care to come along.”

“I would indeed,” Will replied, and they set off.

Captain Woodcock’s teal-blue Rolls-Royce had caused quite a sensation in the village when he first began driving it some four years before. Some of the villagers had been thrilled, but others had grumbled that the captain’s motor was only the first of many to come. Their narrow lanes would soon be jammed with those fast, noisy,
dangerous
vehicles, frightening the horses, raising the dust, and rattling the windows. There wouldn’t be a scrap of peace or a patch of safety left in the world.

They were right about the traffic. It wasn’t long before motor cars had begun coming across on the ferry, and down from Ambleside and up from Newby Bridge, lumbering through Near and Far Sawrey at the incredible speed of ten miles an hour, trailing a cloud of thick dust and an appalling clatter that sent dogs and cats and chickens and children flying in panic. In fact, it wasn’t at all unusual to see as many as five or six motor cars in a single day, and one or two more idled beside the road with a punctured tyre or a broken water hose.

Now, Will sat in the front seat beside the captain whilst the constable sat in the back, holding his tall blue hat in his lap lest the wind blow it off. They rattled along the road to Far Sawrey, then turned up the lane that zigged and zagged through the trees to the top of Claife Heights, to that medieval-looking fortress, Raven Hall.