CHAPTER XVII

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      With the full darkness a whole army of horrors crept nearer. He felt sure of this, though he could actually see nothing. The house was surrounded, the courtyard crowded. Outside, on the stairs, in the other rooms, even on the roof itself, waited dreadful things ready to catch him, to tear off his wings, to make him prisoner for ever and ever.

      The possibility that something had happened to the governess now became a probability. Imperceptibly the change was wrought; he could not say how or when exactly; but he now felt almost certain that the effort to keep her out of the way had succeeded. If this were true, the boy's only hope lay in his wings, and he pulled them out to their full length and kissed them passionately, speaking to the strong red feathers as if they were living little persons.

      "You must save me! You will save me, won't you?" he cried in his anguish. And every time he did this and looked at them he gained fresh hope and courage.

      The problem where he was to fly to had not yet insisted on a solution, though it lay always at the back of his mind; for the final flight of escape without a guide had never been even a possibility before.

      Lying there alone in the darkness, waiting for the sound of the voice so longed-for, he found his thoughts turning again to the moon, and the strange words of the song that had puzzled him the night before. What in the world did it all mean? Why all this about the moon? Why was it a cruel moon, and why should it attract and persuade and entice him? He felt sure, the more he thought of it, that this had all been a device to draw him to the window—and perhaps even farther.

      The darkness began to terrify him; he dreaded more and more the waiting, listening things that it concealed. Oh, when would the governess call to him? When would he be able to dash through the open window and join her in the sky?

      He thought of the sunlight that had flooded the yard all day—so bright it seemed to have come from a sun fresh made and shining for the first time. He thought of the exquisite flowers that grew in the fields just beyond the high wall, and the night smells of the earth reached him through the window, wafted in upon a wind heavy with secrets of woods and fields. They all came from a Land of Magic that after to-night might be for ever beyond his reach, and they went straight to his heart and immediately turned something solid there into tears. But the tears did not find their natural expression, and Jimbo lay there fighting with his pain, keeping all his strength for the one great effort, and waiting for the voice that at any minute now might sound above the tree-tops.

      But the hours passed and the voice did not come.

      How he loathed the room and everything in it. The ceiling stretched like a white, staring countenance above him; the walls watched and listened; and even the mantelpiece grew into the semblance of a creature with drawn-up shoulders bending over him. The whole room, indeed, seemed to his frightened soul to run into the shape of a monstrous person whose arms were outstretched in all directions to prevent his escape.

      His hands never left his wings now. He stroked and fondled them, arranging the feathers smoothly and speaking to them under his breath just as though they were living things. To him they were indeed alive, and he knew when the time came they would not fail him. The fierce passion for the open spaces took possession of his soul, and his whole being began to cry out for freedom, rushing wind, the stars, and a pathless sky.

      Slowly the power of the great, open Night entered his heart, bringing with it a courage that enabled him to keep the terrors of the House at a distance.

      So far, the boy's strength had been equal to the task, but a moment was approaching when the tension would be too great to bear, and the long pent-up force would rush forth into an act. Jimbo realised this quite clearly; though he could not exactly express it in words, he felt that his real hope of escape lay in the success of that act. Meanwhile, with more than a child's wisdom, he stored up every particle of strength he had for the great moment when it should come.

      A light wind had risen soon after sunset, but as the night wore on it began to fail, dropping away into little silences that grew each time longer. In the heart of one of these spells of silence Jimbo presently noticed a new sound—a sound that he recognised.

      Far away at first, but growing in distinctness with every dropping of the wind, this new sound rose from the interior of the house below and came gradually upon him. It was voices faintly singing, and the tread of stealthy footsteps.

      Nearer and nearer came the sound, till at length they reached the door, and there passed into the room a wave of fine, gentle sound that woke no echo and scarcely seemed to stir the air into vibration at all. The door had opened, and a number of voices were singing softly under their breath.

      And after the sounds, creeping slowly like some timid animal, there came into the room a small black figure just visible in the faint starlight. It peered round the edge of the door, hesitated a moment, and then advanced with an odd rhythmical sort of motion. And after the first figure came a second, and after the second a third; and then several entered together, till a whole group of them stood on the floor between Jimbo and the open window.

      Then he recognised the Frightened Children and his heart sank. Even they, he saw, were arrayed against him, and took it for granted that he already belonged to them.

      Oh, why did not the governess come for him? Why was there no voice in the sky? He glanced with longing towards the heavens, and as the children moved past, he was almost certain that he saw the stars through their bodies too.

      Slowly they shuffled across the floor till they formed a semicircle round the bed; and then they began a silent, impish dance that made the flesh creep. Their thin forms were dressed in black gowns like shrouds, and as they moved through the steps of the bizarre measure he saw that their legs were little more than mere skin and bone. Their faces—what he could see of them when he dared to open his eyes—were pale as ashes, and their beady little eyes shone like the facets of cut stones, flashing in all directions. And while they danced in and out amongst each other, never breaking the semicircle round the bed, they sang a low, mournful song that sounded like the wind whispering through a leafless wood.

      And the words stirred in him that vague yet terrible fear known to all children who have been frightened and made to feel afraid of the dark. Evidently his sensations were being merged very rapidly now into those of the little boy in the night-nursery bed.

      "There is Someone in the Nursery

       Whom we never saw before;

       —Why hangs the moon so red?—

       And he came not by the passage,

       Or the window, or the door;

       —Why hangs the moon so red?—

       And he stands there in the darkness,

       In the centre of the floor.

       —See, where the moon hangs red!—

      Someone's hiding in the passage

       Where the door begins to swing;

       —Why drive the clouds so fast?—

       In the corner by the staircase

       There's a dreadful waiting thing:

       —Why drive the clouds so fast?—

       Past the curtain creeps a monster

       With a black and fluttering wing;

       —See, where the clouds drive fast!—

      In the chilly dusk of evening;

       In the hush before the