The Box of Delights

  Other books by John Masefield

  The Midnight Folk

  Note on the Text

  The text of this edition is based on a proof copy preceding the first English edition, corrected from the manuscript (held at The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin) by Dr Philip W. Errington. A few short passages which were deleted to accommodate the original illustrations have been restored, in addition to some sections present in the manuscript that failed to appear in print through error. The spelling of words has been made consistent, and rendered in modern usage (‘to-day’ becomes ‘today’, for example).

  The Box of Delights first published in Great Britain 1935

  This edition published 2008

  by Egmont UK Limited

  239 Kensington High Street

  London W8 6SA

  Text copyright © 1935, 1957 The Estate of John Masefield

  This text, newly corrected from the manuscript by

  Philip W. Errington, copyright © 2008 The Estate of John Masefield

  The moral rights of the illustrator have been asserted

  ISBN 978 1 4052 3253 1

  eISBN 978 1 7803 1139 5

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Typeset by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford on Avon, Warwickshire

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Group

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  To My Wife

  Contents

  Cover

  Title page

  Other books by John Masefield

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter I

  A wandering Showman dreads to hear

  Red Riding Hood’s Attackers near

  Chapter II

  The Wolf Pack hunts him through the snow.

  Where shall the ’nighted Showman go?

  Chapter III

  Has a Dark Midnight in the Past

  A Way, or is tonight his last?

  Chapter IV

  What is this Secret? Who can learn

  The Wild Wood better than from Herne?

  Chapter V

  In dark of Cellars underneath

  Blood-hungry Sea-Wolves snap their Teeth

  Chapter VI

  The Oak-Tree-Lady with the Ring

  Gives Kay the Marvel of the Spring

  Chapter VII

  Kay dares the Cockatrice’s Bite.

  Maria once more sees the Light

  Chapter VIII

  Blackness of hidden Caves, and Men

  Black as their Caves, at Sins agen

  Chapter IX

  The Spider in the Web declares

  Why he his cruel Net prepares

  Chapter X

  The Sea-Wolves, snapping Teeth at Kay,

  Bid him Beware of Yesterday

  Chapter XI

  O Greatness, hear, O Brightness, hark,

  Leave us not Little, nor yet Dark

  Chapter XII

  Ring, blessed Bells, for Christmas Morn,

  Joy in Full Measure, Hope new-born

  About the Publisher

  Chapter I

  As Kay was coming home for the Christmas holidays, after his first term at school, the train stopped at Musborough Station. An old man, ringing a hand-bell, went along the platform, crying ‘Musborough Junction . . . Change for Tatchester and Newminster.’

  Kay knew that he had to change trains there, with a wait of forty minutes. He climbed down on to the platform in the bitter cold and stamped his feet to try to get warmth into them. The old man, ringing the hand-bell, cried, ‘All for Condicote and Tatchester . . . All for Yockwardine and Newminster go to Number Five Platform by the subway.’

  As the passengers set off towards the subway-entrance, Kay put his fingers into his pocket for his ticket: it was not there. ‘Did I drop it in the carriage?’ he wondered. He went back to the carriage. ‘Stand back, master, please,’ a porter said. ‘We’re going to shift the train.’

  ‘Please, I think I’ve dropped my ticket in the carriage.’

  ‘Oh . . . one minute, then,’ the porter said, opening the door. ‘Which seat were you sitting at, master?’

  ‘Here,’ Kay said. He looked under the seat and in what he called ‘the crink’ between the back and the seat: there was no ticket there.

  ‘I don’t seem to see it,’ the porter said. ‘Had you it when they punched tickets at Blunafon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, you’d better explain at the subway. We’ve got to shunt this train.’

  The train presently moved away; Kay went to the bench where he had left his bag; he began to rummage through all his pockets. He felt that the ticket-collector who was watching him at the subway gate was beginning to think him a suspicious character.

  An Irish terrier came up to Kay, sniffed at him and wagged the stump of his tail. ‘Good boy,’ Kay said. ‘Nice old boy, then,’ and rumpled his head for him, which made the dog bounce about with delight. Still, he could not find the ticket.

  Two men, who had been standing near the subway-entrance watching the people go out, moved up to the bench and sat down upon it. Kay had noticed them, for he had been told that detectives often stand near ticket-collectors, watching for escaping murderers. He had thought, ‘Probably those are two men from the Yard, after somebody.’ Now he thought, ‘Supposing they arrest me, for not having a ticket?’

  ‘Well,’ one of the men said, ‘he’s diddled us. He’s simply not on the train. Here’s the description sent: “Travelling first class. In appearance like a French cavalry colonel, with waxed moustaches, very smart and upright, height five feet eight, age about forty to forty-five.” He’s hopped off the train where it slowed down somewhere; depend upon it.’

  ‘We’d better telephone at once that he wasn’t on the train.’

  ‘Asses that we are,’ the other cried suddenly. ‘Oh silly chumps and fatheads . . . Of course . . . he got under a seat in a first class carriage and he’s been shunted out and away. Quick, quick . . . we may get him yet in the shunting yard . . .’

  ‘Of course, that’s it,’ the other said. ‘Lively, then.’

  At once, the two men ran off, past the subway-entrance and away along the platform in the direction in which the train had gone.

  Now that the men were running, it seemed to Kay that some dogs, which he had not before noticed, were running with them. ‘They are Alsatian dogs,’ he thought, ‘but they seem thicker in the shoulder than most Alsatians . . .

  ‘Why, of course,’ he exclaimed. ‘They are Police Dogs, and they are going to be put on the scent. Oh I do wish I knew what the criminal had done.’

  As he watched, one of the men paused in his run to signal with his hand to a man on Number Five Platform, who signalled back with a real pair of handcuffs and then ran out of the station.

  ‘I say,’ Kay said to himself, ‘I’ve never been so near to detectives before. Oh I do wish I could find this ticket.’

  The Irish terrier was at his feet again, begging to have his head rumpled, which Kay did for him. Then he noticed that the owner of the dog was standing near him.

  He was a little old man in a worn grey overcoat. He had travelled there in the end coach of Kay’s train. Since leaving the train he had been at the platform end securing a big case in a cover of green baize. This he now carried in his hand.

  ‘Ah, young Master,’ the old man said, ‘I see that my Barney Dog has m
ade friends with you at first sight. That’s the time that likings are made. And you are looking for your ticket, which, lo, is on the platform, dropped at your feet.’

  ‘Why, so it is,’ Kay said, picking it up. ‘So it is. Thank you ever so much.’

  ‘You must have slipped it out as you rumpaged,’ the man said.

  Kay noticed that the man had very bright eyes, alert as a bird’s or squirrel’s.

  ‘We must be moving along, young Master,’ he said, ‘or they’ll be wondering if we’ve got no tickets.’

  ‘Could I give you a hand, please, to help you carry your case?’ Kay asked. He noticed that it was an awkward load for a little old man.

  ‘No, I thank you, Master,’ the old man said. ‘But if you would be so kind as to steady her when I swing her; then I could get her to my back, which is where she rides a-triumph. Only I do date from pagan times and age makes joints to creak. Or doesn’t it?’

  ‘I should think it does,’ Kay said.

  ‘Now, I’m going to swing,’ the old man said, ‘and keep it, you, young Master, from rolling me over, if you will be so gracious.’ He swung his bundle up to his shoulder; and, indeed, if Kay had not been there to steady it, the load might have pulled him over; he had a frail little old withered body, ‘like the ghost of ninepence,’ as he said.

  Kay walked with him through the subway to Number Five Platform, and there helped him to set down his bundle at a seat. After this, he went into the refreshment room and bought some biscuits for Barney, for which the old man was grateful. After this, as there was still half an hour to wait before the Condicote train came in, he tried to get to the shunting yard, to find out if the detectives had caught the criminal and what it was that the criminal had done.

  He was not allowed inside the shunting yard. The young porter who headed him off at the gates told him that no one was allowed in. Kay asked if the detectives had found the criminal under one of the seats. ‘What, just now?’ the porter asked. ‘Yes; they got him. He was under one of the seats dressing up as a Duchess. In another minute, he’d have finished, so that not even the Prime Minister would have told the difference.’

  ‘What had he done?’ Kay asked.

  ‘Done?’ the porter said. ‘Er, he was a bad one. He had a row with his father-in-law, and he got a big sharp knife and cut the poor old man up, put him through the mincer and sold him to the dog’s-meat man. The dog’s-meat man wouldn’t have noticed it, only one of the buttons stuck in a dog’s throat and the lady who owned the dog complained, and then it all came out, and it’s thought it isn’t the first man he put through the mincer, it’s a habit that’s been growing on him for years.’

  ‘What will be done to him?’ Kay asked.

  ‘He’ll get the rope,’ the porter said. ‘Madame Tussaud’s are offering any money already for the mincer he did the deed with.’

  ‘I say,’ Kay said, ‘couldn’t you let me peep in and just see him where he is, with the detectives?’

  ‘Oh, they’ve gone, gone a long while,’ the porter said. ‘They’d a special car and went off at once to London with an armed guard.’

  Kay was thrilled with the story, but as he walked back to the platform he wondered whether the porter had been telling the truth. He bought a newspaper but could find nothing at all about any such crime. While he was searching through the newspaper, the train came in. He got into a carriage and was soon on his way home.

  When he had been taken to school in September he had gone by car. He was now returning home through a country quite new to him by a railway line over which he had never before travelled. The train passed out of the meadows into a hilly land beautiful with woodlands and glens. In spite of the bitter cold Kay was much interested in this new country. Some of the hills had old camps on them. On the headlands there were old castles; in the glens there were churches which looked like forts. He took from his bag a cycling map of the countryside. By this he picked out the hills, castles and churches as the train went past them. Soon all the land to the left of the railway was a range of low wooded hills of the most strange shapes. He read the name on the map – Chester Hills. ‘What a wonderful place,’ he said to himself. ‘I do wish that I could come here to explore.’

  While he was looking through the window at these hills he heard a scratching at the door leading into the train’s corridor and glancing in that direction he saw that the Irish terrier, Barney, was standing on his hind legs looking at him through the glass. He went to him, opened the door and patted him, and after a minute the dog went scuttering off down the train. ‘I suppose,’ he said to himself, ‘that the old man is in the train somewhere. I’d forgotten all about him in thinking about the murderer.’ The train drew up at a station.

  ‘Hope-under-Chesters,’ he read. ‘Then that little river is the Yock. And that is Chesters camp. It must be a Roman camp, from the name. And that is Hope Cross. There must have been a battle there, for it’s marked with crossed swords. And the map shows a lake only a couple of miles away.’

  He stared at the hills. It was a grim winter morning, threatening a gale. Something in the light, with its hard sinister clearness, gave mystery and dread to those hills. ‘They look just the sort of hills,’ Kay said to himself, ‘where you might come upon a Dark Tower, and blow a horn at the gate for something to happen.’

  The train was about to start; the whistle had blown and the station-master had waved his flag, when there came cries from the ticket-office, of ‘Hold-on. Wait half a minute.’ Two men rushed across the platform and scrambled into Kay’s carriage just as the train moved off.

  The men took the further corner-seats; they panted a little, and looked at Kay. Both were in the black clothes of theological students. ‘They didn’t give us much time,’ one of them said.

  ‘The news has only just come through,’ the other said. Both were youngish men (about twenty-three, Kay thought). Somehow, he didn’t like the men, nor their voices. They made in some foreign tongue one or two remarks, which Kay judged to be about himself. After this, as the train went on, they spoke to him. One of them, who was a pale, eager-looking man, with foxy hair, said, ‘Going home for the holidays, ha-ha, what?’ and when Kay said, ‘Yes, please, sir,’ the other said, ‘And very seasonable weather, too: we are to have snow, it seems. And no doubt you enjoy snowballing, and tobogganing and making snowmen?’

  Kay said that he did: he began to like this other man, who had a round, rosy, chubby face, with fair hair; and yet there was something about him . . . Kay couldn’t quite put it into words . . . he had a kind of a . . . sort of a . . . It was more in his eyes than in anything else.

  ‘And are you going far, may I ask?’ the chubby man asked.

  ‘I’m going to Condicote,’ Kay said.

  ‘Ah, indeed . . . Condicote Junction,’ the chubby man said . . . ‘And I wonder if, in the Christmas holidays, you will ever do card-tricks?’

  ‘If you please, sir, I do not know any.’

  ‘But you are of a studious turn, I see, ha-ha, what? With your maps and food-for-the-mind,’ the foxy-faced man said. ‘I wonder if I might try to teach you a simple trick, since we are to be fellow-travellers.’

  Kay said that it would be very kind, but that he was afraid that he would be stupid at it.

  ‘I see that you will be very clever at it,’ the foxy man said. ‘Don’t you think, Tristan, that he has the face of one certain to be clever at card-tricks; what?’

  ‘The very face,’ the other said.

  ‘Just the facial angle and the Borromean Index,’ the foxy one went on. ‘Now let me see if I have my cards. I usually carry cards, because I am much alone, and find the games of Patience a great mental solace. Ah yes, I have my old companions.’

  He produced a little packet of green-backed cards in a dull red leather case.

  ‘Let nothing tempt you into playing cards with strangers in a train or ship or anywhere,’ the chubby man said.

  ‘I am inclined to agree with you, Lancelot,’ the foxy ma
n said, ‘but there will be no harm in showing him one of the tricks by which sharpers deceive the unwary. Let me show you the commonest trick. It is often known as “spotting-the-lady”.’

  He dealt out three cards, one of which was the Queen of Clubs, the other two low hearts. ‘See there,’ he said. ‘Mark them well. I twist them and shift them and lo, now, which is the Lady?’

  ‘That one,’ Kay said.

  ‘So it is; so it is,’ the man said. ‘What it is to have young eyes, Gawaine, is it not?’

  ‘It was not his young eyes, but your clumsy dealing,’ the other said.

  ‘Ha,’ the foxy-faced man said, ‘I lack practice, I see. I must give myself some incentive. I will back my skill. Now, then; prepare: if you beat me this time, you shall have sixpence, for, indeed, I must be put upon my mettle.

  ‘Watch now the whirling cards,

  They shift, they lift, they dive.

  Twiddle. Twiddle. Twiddle.

  Pussycat and fiddlestrings.

  ‘Can you tell the Lady, this time?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kay said. ‘Here she is.’

  ‘And here is your sixpence,’ the man said. ‘And yet I thought I was discreet. But you have an eye like a lynx. Now may I try once again? You are too young, you are too sharp; there is no getting round you. Now, no denial: if I beat you this time you shall give me half-a-crown for the Poor Box or next Sunday’s collection.’