Chapter Two - Digma And Her Aunt
It was so sudden, and so horribly unlike anything that had ever happened to Digma even in a nightmare, that she let out a scream. Instantly Aunt Andrea's hand was over her mouth. "None of that!" she hissed in Digma's ear. "If you start making a noise your father'll hear it. And you know what a fright might do to him."
As Digma said afterwards, the horrible meanness of getting at a girl in that way, almost made her sick. But of course she didn't scream again.
"That's better," said Aunt Andrea. "Perhaps you couldn't help it. It is a shock when you first see someone vanish. Why, it gave even me a turn when the guinea-pig did it the other night."
"Was that when you yelled?" asked Digma.
"Oh, you heard that, did you? I hope you haven't been spying on me?"
"No, I haven't," said Digma indignantly. "But what's happened to Paul?"
"Congratulate me, my dear girl," said Aunt Andrea, rubbing her hands. "My experiment has succeeded. The little boy's gone - vanished - right out of the world."
"What have you done to him?"
"Sent him to - well - to another place."
"What do you mean?" asked Digma.
Aunt Andrea sat down and said, "Well, I'll tell you all about it. Have you ever heard of old Mr. Lefay?"
"Wasn't he a great-uncle or something?" said Digma.
"Not exactly," said Aunt Andrea. "He was my godfather. That's him, there, on the wall."
Digma looked and saw a faded photograph: it showed the face of an old man in a wide-brimmed hat. And she could now remember that she had once seen a photo of the same face in an old drawer, at home, in the country. She had asked her father who it was and Father had not seemed to want to talk about the subject much. It was not at all a nice face, Digma thought, though of course with those early photographs one could never really tell.
"Was there - wasn't there - something wrong about him, Aunt Andrea?" she asked.
"Well," said Aunt Andrea with a chuckle, "it depends what you call wrong. People are so narrow-minded. He certainly got very queer in later life. Did very unwise things. That was why they shut him up."
"In an asylum, do you mean?"
"Oh no, no, no," said Aunt Andrea in a shocked voice. "Nothing of that sort. Only in prison."
"I say!" said Digma. "What had he done?"
"Ah, poor man," said Aunt Andrea. "He had been very unwise. There were a good many different things. We needn't go into all that. He was always very kind to me."
"But look here, what has all this got to do with Paul? I do wish you'd -"
"All in good time, my girl," said Aunt Andrea. "They let old Mr. Lefay out before he died and I was one of the very few people whom he would allow to see him in his last illness. He had got to dislike ordinary, ignorant people, you understand. I do myself. But he and I were interested in the same sort of things. It was only a few days before his death that he told me to go to an old bureau in his house and open a secret drawer and bring him a little wooden box that I would find there.
The moment I picked up that box I could tell by the pricking in my fingers that I held some great secret in my hands. He gave it me and made me promise that as soon as he was dead I would burn it, unopened, with certain ceremonies. That promise I did not keep."
"Well, then, it was jolly rotten of you," said Digma.
"Rotten?" said Aunt Andrea with a puzzled look. "Oh, I see. You mean that little girls ought to keep their promises. Very true: most right and proper, I'm sure, and I'm very glad you have been taught to do it. But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little girls - and servants - and men - and even people in general, can't possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digma. Women like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my girl, is a high and lonely destiny."
As she said this she sighed and looked so grave and noble and mysterious that for a second Digma really thought she was saying something rather fine. But then she remembered the ugly look she had seen on her aunt's face the moment before Paul had vanished: and all at once she saw through Aunt Andrea's eloquent words. "All it means," she said to herself, "Is that she thinks she can do anything she likes to get anything she wants."
"Of course," said Aunt Andrea, "I didn't dare to open the box for a long time, for I knew it might contain something highly dangerous. For my godfather was a very remarkable man. The truth is, he was one of the last mortals in this country who had fairy blood in him. (He said there had been two others in his time. One was a duke and the other was a charman.) In fact, Digma, you are now talking to the last woman (possibly) who really had a fairy godfather. There! That'll be something for you to remember when you are an old woman yourself."
"I bet he was a bad fairy," thought Digma; and added out loud. "But what about Paul?"
"How you do harp on that!" said Aunt Andrea. "As if that was what mattered! My first task was of course to study the box itself. It was very ancient. And I knew enough even then to know that it wasn't Greek, or Old Egyptian, or Harappan, or Mesopotamian, or Mayan. It was older than any of those nations. Ah - that was a great day when I at last found out the truth. The box was Atlantean; it came from the lost island of Atlantis. That meant it was centuries older than any of the stone-age things they dig up in Europe. And it wasn't a rough, crude thing like them either.
For in the very dawn of time Atlantis was already a great city with palaces and temples and learned women."
She paused for a moment as if she expected Digma to say something. But Digma was disliking her aunt more every minute, so she said nothing.
"Meanwhile," continued Aunt Andrea, "I was learning a good deal in other ways (it wouldn't be proper to explain them to a child) about magic in general. That meant that I came to have a fair idea what sort of things might be in the box. By various tests I narrowed down the possibilities.
I had to get to know some - well, some devilish strange people, and go through some very unpleasant experiences. That was what turned my head grey. One doesn't become a sorceress without work and sacrifice. My health broke down in the end. But I got better. And at last I actually knew."
Although there was not really the least chance of anyone overhearing them, she leaned forward and almost whispered as she said, "The Atlantean box contained something that had been brought from another world when our world was only just beginning."
"What?" asked Digma, who was now interested in spite of herself.
"Only dust," said Aunt Andrea. "Fine, dry dust. Nothing much to look at. Not much to show for a lifetime of toil, you might say. Ah, but when I looked at that dust (I took jolly good care not to touch it) and thought that every grain had once been in another world - I don't mean another planet, you know; they're part of our world and you could get to them if you went far enough - but a really Other World - another nature, another universe - somewhere you would never reach even if you travelled through the space of this universe for ever and ever - a world that could be reached only by magic - well!" Here Aunt Andrea made her knuckles crack like fireworks.
"I knew," she went on, "that if only you could get it into the right form, that dust would draw you back to the place it had come from. But the difficulty was to get it into the right form. My earlier experiments were all failures. I tried them on guinea-pigs. Some of them only died. Some exploded like little bombs -"
"It was an awfully cruel thing to do," said Digma who had once had a guinea-pig of her own.
"How you do keep getting off the point!" said Aunt Andrea. "That's what the creatures were for. I'd bought them myself. Let me see - where was I? Ah yes. At last I succeeded in making the rings: the yellow rings. But now a new difficulty arose. I was pretty sure, now, that a yellow ring would send any creature that touched it into the Other Place. But what would be the good of that if I couldn't get them back to tell me what they had found there?"
"And what about them?" said Digma. "A nice mess they'd be in if they couldn't get back!"
"You will keep on looking at everything from the wrong point of view," said Aunt Andrea with a look of impatience. "Can't you understand that the thing is a great experiment? The whole point of sending anyone into the Other Place is that I want to find out what it's like."
"Well, why didn't you go yourself then?"
Digma had hardly ever seen anyone so surprised and offended as her aunt did at this simple question. "Me? Me?" she exclaimed. "The girl must be mad! A woman at my time of life, and in my state of health, to risk the shock and the dangers of being flung suddenly into a different universe? I never heard anything so preposterous in my life! Do you realize what you're saying? Think what another world means - you might meet anything, anything."
"And I suppose you've sent Paul into it then," said Digma. Her cheeks flamed red with anger. "And all I can say," she added, "even if you are my aunt - is that you've behaved like a coward, sending a boy to a place you're afraid to go to yourself."
"Silence, madam!" said Aunt Andrea, bringing her hand down on the table. "I will not be talked to like that by a little, dirty, schoolgirl. You don't understand. I am the great scholar, the sorceress, the adept, who is doing the experiment. Of course I need subjects to do it on. Bless my soul, you'll be telling me next that I ought to have asked the guinea-pigs' permission before I used them! No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice. But the idea of my going myself is ridiculous. It's like asking a general to fight as a common soldier. Supposing I got killed, what would become of my life's work?"
"Oh, do stop jawing," said Digma. "Are you going to bring Paul back?"
"I was going to tell you, when you so rudely interrupted me," said Aunt Andrea, "that I did at last find out a way of doing the return journey. The green rings draw you back."
"But Paul hasn't got a green ring."
"No," said Aunt Andrea with a cruel smile.
"Then he can't get back," shouted Digma. "And it's exactly the same as if you'd murdered him.
"He can get back," said Aunt Andrea, "if someone else will go after him, wearing a yellow ring herself and taking two green rings, one to bring herself back and one to bring him back."
And now of course Digma saw the trap in which she was caught: and she stared at Aunt Andrea, saying nothing, with her mouth wide open. Her cheeks had gone very pale.
"I hope," said Aunt Andrea presently in a very high and mighty voice, just as if she were a perfect aunt who had given one a handsome tip and some good advice, "I hope, Digma, you are not given to showing the white feather. I should be very sorry to think that anyone of our family had not enough honour and chivalry to go to the aid of - er - a gentleman in distress."
"Oh shut up!" said Digma. "If you had any honour and all that, you'd be going yourself. But I know you won't. Alright. I see I've got to go. But you are a beast. I suppose you planned the whole thing, so that he'd go without knowing it and then I'd have to go after him."
"Of course," said Aunt Andrea with her hateful smile.
"Very well. I'll go. But there's one thing I jolly well mean to say first. I didn't believe in magic till today. I see now it's real. Well if it is, I suppose all the old fairy tales are more or less true. And you're simply a wicked, cruel sorceress like the ones in the stories. Well, I've never read a story in which people of that sort didn't get their come-uppance in the end, and I bet you will too. And serve you right."
Of all the things Digma had said this was the first that really went home. Aunt Andrea started and there came over her face a look of such horror that, horrible though she was, Digma could almost feel sorry for him. But a second later she smoothed it all away and said with a rather forced laugh, "Well, well, I suppose that is a natural thing for a child to think - brought up among men, as you have been. Old husbands' tales, eh? I don't think you need worry about my danger, Digma. Wouldn't it be better to worry about the danger of your little friend? He's been gone some time. If there are any dangers over there - well, it would be a pity to arrive a moment too late."
"A lot you care," said Digma fiercely. "But I'm sick of this jaw. What have I got to do?"
"You really must learn to control that temper of yours, my girl," said Aunt Andrea coolly. "Otherwise you'll grow up like your Uncle Len. Now. Attend to me."
She got up, put on a pair of white cotton gloves, and walked over to the tray that contained the rings.
"They only work," she said, "if they're actually touching your skin. Wearing gloves, I can pick them up - like this - and nothing happens. If you carried one in your pocket nothing would happen: but of course you'd have to be careful not to put your hand in your pocket and touch it by accident. The moment you touch a yellow ring, you vanish out of this world. When you are in the Other Place I expect - of course this hasn't been tested yet, but I expect - that the moment you touch a green ring you vanish out of that world and - I expect - reappear in this. Now. I take these two greens and drop them into your right-hand pocket. Remember very carefully which pocket the greens are in. G for green and R for right. G.R. you see: which are the first two letters of green. One for you and one for the little boy. And now you pick up a yellow one for yourself. I should put it on your finger - if I were you. There'll be less chance of dropping it." Then she added carelessly, "Oh, and you might bring back my guinea-pig if you find it."
Digma had almost picked up the yellow ring when she suddenly checked herself.
"Look here," she said. "What about Father? Supposing he asks where I am?"
"The sooner you go, the sooner you'll be back," said Aunt Andrea cheerfully.
"But you don't really know whether I can get back."
Aunt Andrea shrugged her shoulders, walked across to the door, unlocked it, threw it open, and said, "Oh very well then. Just as you please. Go down and have your dinner. Leave the little boy to be eaten by wild animals or drowned or starved in the other world or lost there for good, if that's what you prefer. It's all one to me. Perhaps before tea time you'd better drop in on Mr. Plummer and explain that he'll never see his son again; because you were afraid to put on a ring."
"Just like you! By Juno," said Digma, "don't I just wish I was big enough to punch your head!"
Then she buttoned up her waistcoat, took a deep breath, and picked up the ring. And she thought then, as she always thought afterwards too, that she could not decently have done anything else.