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By this time the mice had had time to think. Several of them spoke at once.
“Yes, but—” they began.
“But what?” asked the chairwoman sharply.
“You say, ‘the very person’,” pronounced the secretary, speaking for all. “But is that true? From all one hears, Miss Bianca has been bred up to complete luxury and idleness. Will she have the necessary courage, the necessary nerve? This Norwegian, whoever he is, won’t know to get in touch with her, she will have to get in touch with him. Has she even the necessary wits? Brilliant as your plan undoubtedly is, I for one have the gravest doubts of its practicalness.”
“That remains to be seen,” said the chairwoman. She had indeed some doubts herself; but she also had great faith in her own sex. In any case, she wasn’t going to be led into argument. “Is there anyone,” she called briskly, “from the embassy here with us now?”
For a moment all waited; then there was a slight scuffling at the back as though someone who didn’t want to was being urged by his friends to step forward, and finally a short, sturdy young mouse tramped up towards the platform. He looked rough but decent. No one was surprised to learn (in answer to the chairwoman’s questioning) that he worked in the pantry.
“I suppose you, Bernard, have never seen Miss Bianca either?” said the chairwoman kindly.
“Not me,” mumbled Bernard.
“But you could reach her?”
“I dare say,” admitted Bernard – shuffling his big feet.
“Then reach her you must, and without delay,” said the chairwoman. “Present the compliments of the meeting, explain the situation, and bid her instantly seek out the bravest mouse in Norway, and dispatch him back here to the Moot-house.”
Bernard shuffled his feet again.
“Suppose she doesn’t want, ma’am?”
“Then you must persuade her, my dear boy,” said the chairwoman. “If necessary, bully her! – What’s that you have on your chest?”
Bernard squinted self-consciously down. His fur was so thick and rough, the medal scarcely showed.
“The Tybalt Star, ma’am …”
“For Gallantry in the Face of Cats,” nodded the chairwoman. “I believe I remember the incident … A cat nipped on the tail, was it not, thus permitting a nursing mother of six to regain her hole?”
“She was my sister-in-law,” muttered Bernard, flushing.
“Then I can’t believe you’re not a match for Miss Bianca!” cried the chairwoman.
With that (after several votes of thanks), the meeting broke up; and Bernard, feeling important but uneasy, set off back to the embassy.
At least his route to the Boy’s schoolroom presented no difficulties. There was a small service lift running directly up from the pantry itself, used to carry such light refreshments as glasses of milk, chocolate biscuits, and tea for the Boy’s tutor. Bernard waited till half-past eight, when the last glass of milk went up (hot), and went up with it by clinging to one of the lift-ropes. As soon as the flap above opened he nipped out and slipped into the nearest shadow to wait again. He waited a long, long time; he heard the Boy put to bed in an adjoining room, and a wonderful rustle of satin as the Boy’s mother came to kiss him goodnight. (Bernard was of course waiting with his eyes shut; nothing draws attention to a mouse like the gleam of his eyes.) Then at last all was still, and forth he crept for a good look round.
In one respect at least rumour had not lied. There in an angle of the great room, on a low stool nicely out of floor draughts, stood a porcelain pagoda.
Chapter Two (#ulink_a24e608f-1e2c-5783-a55a-ee567a6323f1)
MISS BIANCA (#ulink_a24e608f-1e2c-5783-a55a-ee567a6323f1)
IT WAS THE most exquisite residence Bernard had ever seen, or indeed could ever have imagined. Its smooth, gleaming walls were beautifully painted with all sorts of small flowers – violets, primroses and lilies-of-the-valley – and the roof rose in tier upon tier of curly gilded eaves, from each corner of which hung a golden bell. Round about was a pleasure-ground, rather like a big birdcage, fenced and roofed with golden wires, and fitted with swings, seesaws and other means of gentle relaxation. Bernard’s eyes felt as big as his ears as he diffidently approached – and he himself felt a very rough, plain mouse indeed.
“Miss Bianca!” he called softly.
From inside the pagoda came the faintest of rustling sounds, like silk sheets being pulled over someone’s head; but nobody appeared.
“Don’t be afraid, Miss Bianca!” called Bernard. “I’m not burglars, I am Bernard from the pantry with a most important message.”
He waited again. One of the golden bells, as though a moth had flown past, tinkled faintly. Then again there was a rustling, and at last Miss Bianca came out.
Her loveliness took Bernard’s breath away. She was very small, but with a perfect figure, and her sleek, silvery-white coat had all the rich softness of ermine. But her chiefest point of beauty was her eyes. The eyes of most white mice are pink: Miss Bianca’s were deep brown. In conjunction with her snowy head, they gave her the appearance of a powdered beauty of the court of Louis the Fifteenth.
Round her neck she wore a very fine silver chain.
Bernard took two steps back, then one forward, and politely pulled his whiskers.
“Are you calling?” asked Miss Bianca, in a very low, sweet voice.
“Well, I was—” began Bernard.
“How very nice!” exclaimed Miss Bianca. “If you wouldn’t mind swinging on that bell-pull, the gate will open. Are there any ladies with you?”
Bernard muttered something about the chairwoman, but too hoarsely to be understood. Not that it mattered: Miss Bianca’s beautiful manners smoothed all social embarrassment. As soon as he was inside she began to show him round, naming every painted flower on the porcelain walls, and inviting him to try for himself each swing and seesaw. “Pretty, isn’t it?” she said modestly. “Though nothing, I believe, compared with Versailles … Would you care to see the fountain?”
Bernard nodded dumbly. As yet he hadn’t even noticed the fountain; it was in fact a staggering six inches high, made of pink and green Venetian glass. Miss Bianca sat down on a hidden spring, and at once a jet of water shot up out of the pink rosette on top. “There is a way of making it stay,” she explained, “but I’m afraid I know nothing about machinery!” She rose, and the jet subsided. Bernard would have liked to have a go himself, but he was only too conscious that time was passing, and that as yet his message was undelivered.
Indeed it was hard to know where to begin. It was such a jump from Venetian glass fountains to the Prisoners’ Aid Society. Moreover, though he no longer thought Miss Bianca affected, in fact he liked her very much, he couldn’t for the life of him see her doing anything more strenuous than swinging on a gilt swing. And the turn the conversation next took fairly curled his whiskers!
“I see you’ve been decorated,” said Miss Bianca politely. (She was naturally familiar with medals, and orders and ribbands.) “May I ask what it is for?”
“Gallantry in the Face of Cats,” muttered Bernard. First to his chagrin, then to his astonishment, she burst into musical laughter.
“In the face of cats? How very droll! I dote on cats!” laughed Miss Bianca. “Or rather,” she added sentimentally, “on one particular cat … a most beautiful Persian, white as I am myself, belonging to the Boy’s mother. I used to play in his fur; I’m told we made rather a pretty picture … Alas, he is no more,” sighed Miss Bianca, “but for his sake all cats will ever be dear to me!”
Bernard was absolutely speechless. He didn’t disbelieve Miss Bianca; he could, just, imagine some pampered lap-cat fat enough and drowsy enough to have lost all natural instincts. But what an appealing thought – a mouse going out into the world alone, on a mission of danger, not afraid of cats!
“My poor playfellow! Ah me!” sighed Miss Bianca tenderly.
“Look here, you’ve got to promise—” began Bernard; and gave up. There was a dreamy look in her eyes which warned him, though he didn’t know much about women, that it was the wrong moment to run cats down. Instead, he attempted to console her.
“You’ve got all this,” he pointed out, looking round at the swings and the seesaws and the fountain.
“And how trifling it seems!” sighed Miss Bianca. “How trifling it must seem, especially, to you, compared with the real and earnest life of a pantry!”
Bernard drew a deep breath. Now or never, he thought!
“Would you like to do something real and earnest too, Miss Bianca?”
She hesitated. Her lovely eyes were for a moment veiled. Then one small pink hand crept up to finger the silver chain.
“No,” said Miss Bianca decidedly. “I’m so fond, you see, of the Boy. And he is so attached to me, how many times have I not heard him call me his only friend! I feel so long as I do my duty to the Boy, my existence, however frivolous it may appear, is in fact quite earnest enough.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” said Bernard glumly. (They should have sent the chairwoman, he thought, not him. The chairwoman could talk about duty quite wonderfully.) “All the same,” he persisted, “you’re not with the Boy all the time. You’re not with him now, for instance.” (There was considerable point in this; it is at night that mice most want to be up and doing, and are most bored by inactivity.) “Actually, now that you’ve no longer your, h’m, playfellow, I really don’t see how you occupy yourself.”
“Well, as a matter of fact,” said Miss Bianca modestly, “I write.”
Bernard gaped. He had never met a writer before! Though he was terribly afraid of wasting time, he couldn’t help asking What.
“Poetry,” confessed Miss Bianca.
How Bernard’s heart leapt!
For so was the Norwegian prisoner a poet!
What a wonderful, fortunate coincidence! The very thing to make Miss Bianca change her mind! Without giving himself time to think, and without any transition, Bernard blurted it all out – all about the Prisoners’ Aid Society, all about the great enterprise, all about Miss Bianca’s part in it, all about everything.
The result was exactly what might have been expected. Miss Bianca fainted clean away.
Desperately Bernard slapped her hands, fanned her face, leapt to the hidden spring, turned on the fountain, with incredible agility leapt again and caught a drop of water before it subsided, sprinkled Miss Bianca’s forehead. (Oh for the chairwoman, he thought!) Seconds passed, a long minute, before the dark eyelashes fluttered and Miss Bianca came to.
“Where am I?” she murmured faintly.
“Here, in your own porcelain pagoda,” reassured Bernard. “I am Bernard from the pantry—”
“Go away!” shrieked Miss Bianca.
“If you’ll only listen quietly—”
“I won’t hear any more!” cried Miss Bianca. “I don’t want anything to do with you! Go away, go away, go away!”
Greatly daring, Bernard caught both her hands and pressed them between his own. The action seemed to steady her. She stopped trembling.
“Dear, dearest Miss Bianca,” said Bernard fervently, “if I could take your place, do you think I wouldn’t? To spare you the least inconvenience, I’d walk into cat baskets! But I can’t travel by Diplomatic Bag, I can’t get to Norway in twenty-four hours. Nor can anyone else. You, and you alone, can be this poor chap’s saviour.”
At least she was listening, and at least she didn’t push Bernard away. She even left her hands in his.
“And a poet!” went on Bernard. “Only consider, dear Miss Bianca – a poet like yourself! How can you bear to think of him, alone in a deep dark dungeon, when one word from you—”
“Is that really all?” whispered Miss Bianca. “Just one word?”
“Well, of course you’ve got to say it to the right mouse,” admitted Bernard honestly. “And to find him I dare say you’ll have to go into pretty rough quarters. I tell you my blood boils when I think of it—”
“Why?” whispered Miss Bianca. “Why does your blood boil?”
“Because you’re so beautiful!” cried Bernard recklessly. “It’s not fair to ask you to be brave as well! You should be protected and cherished and loved and honoured, and I for my part ask nothing better than to lie down and let you walk on me!”
Miss Bianca rested her head lightly against his shoulder.
“You give me such a good opinion of myself,” she said softly, “perhaps I could be brave as well …”
Poem by Miss Bianca, written that night
“Though timid beats the female heart,
Tempered by only Cupid’s fires,
The touch of an heroic hand
With unaccustomed bravery inspires.”
M.B.
Chapter Three (#ulink_767dc9aa-7908-5c0c-ae96-bcd1025f53a2)
IN NORWAY (#ulink_767dc9aa-7908-5c0c-ae96-bcd1025f53a2)
THREE DAYS LATER, Miss Bianca was in Norway.
The journey, as usual, had given her not the least trouble. She travelled as usual in the Diplomatic Bag, where she amused herself by reading secret documents while the great aeroplane flew smoothly and swiftly over mountain and forest, river, and finally, sea. (To be accurate, there was a slight bumpiness of the mountain part, but Miss Bianca was too absorbed in a very Top Secret to notice.) Precisely twenty-four hours after departure she was reinstalled in her porcelain pagoda in the Boy’s new schoolroom in Oslo, the capital of Norway.
It was then her mission really began; with, in Miss Bianca’s opinion, far too much left to her own initiative. She was simply to seek out the bravest mouse in Norway! Without the slightest idea where he was to be found – or indeed where any mice were to be found! For Miss Bianca’s life had been so remarkably sheltered, she really didn’t know anything at all about how other mice lived. Except for Bernard, she had never even spoken to one.
Except for Bernard … Miss Bianca’s thoughts flew to him so readily, she felt quite angry with herself. Now that the excitement of their midnight meeting was past, she couldn’t help recognising that good and brave as Bernard was, he was also completely undistinguished. Yet how kind and resourceful, when she fainted! How understanding, when she came to, of all her doubts and fears! And how lost in admiration, how absolutely overcome, when she finally accepted her heroic task!
“I must be worthy,” thought Miss Bianca. And mentally added – “Of the Prisoners’ Aid Society.”
So the very first night in her new quarters, she set out.
No one knew she was so slim that she could squeeze between the gilded palings of her pleasure-ground. Certainly the Boy didn’t know it. But she could.
The door of the new schoolroom didn’t quite fit. In the morning no doubt someone would see to it; in the meantime, Miss Bianca slipped under. Outside, immediately, she still felt pretty well at home – all embassies being much of a muchness. There was first a broad corridor, then a broad landing, then a grand staircase leading down to a great grand entrance hall. (Miss Bianca, who had an eye for carpets, even recognised everywhere familiar patterns.) But she hadn’t so far encountered any other mouse. “The pantry!” thought Miss Bianca – remembering Bernard again. “But where on earth are the pantries?”
However sheltered, all women have certain domestic instincts. Miss Bianca was pretty sure she ought to get lower down.
She also knew about service lifts. Passing from the entrance hall into the dining room, and observing a gap in its panelling (left open by a careless footman), up Miss Bianca ran to investigate. There inside, sure enough, were the proper ropes. “Obviously connected with the pantry,” thought Miss Bianca, climbing on. When after two or three minutes nothing happened, she boldly ran down – quite enjoying the easy exercise, and quite confident of finding herself in a pantry below.
Actually this particular service lift ran straight down to the embassy cellars. Which was fortunate as it turned out, though Miss Bianca didn’t immediately think so.
For what a sight, as she emerged, met her eyes!
Remember it was well after midnight, it must have been nearly two o’clock in the morning, the hour at which mice feel themselves most secure. In the embassy cellar there was evidently some kind of bachelor party going on. At least fifty Norwegian mice were gathered there – singing and shouting and drinking beer. The most part wore sea boots and stocking caps; some had gold earrings in their ears, some a patch over one eye. Some had a wooden leg. It was in fact the most piratical-looking party imaginable, and how any one of them ever got into an embassy, Miss Bianca really couldn’t imagine.
Never had she felt more uncomfortable. It is always trying to enter a room full of strangers – and such strangers! What a racket they made! The singing and shouting almost deafened her ears, there wasn’t a moment of repose. (Miss Bianca had frequently assisted, from the Boy’s pocket, at diplomatic soirées. There, always, was a moment of repose; in fact sometimes the moments ran into each other and made hours of repose.) Even if she shouted she couldn’t have made herself heard, and Miss Bianca had never shouted in her life! She stood utterly at a loss, trembling with dismay; until at last a mouse nearby turned and saw her, and immediately uttered a long, low whistle. It was vulgar, but it did the trick. Head after head turned in Miss Bianca’s direction; and so spectacular was her fair beauty, silence fell at last like a refreshing dew.
“Forgive me for joining you uninvited,” said Miss Bianca nervously, “but I am a delegate from the Prisoners’ Aid Society, seeking the bravest mouse in Norway, on behalf of a Norwegian poet imprisoned in our parts.”
Simply as she spoke, it was with a touching grace. Several mice at once cuffed each other for want of respect to the lady. Several tankards were kicked under benches. One of the soberest of the seafarers, who looked as though he might be a petty officer, stepped forward and touched his cap.
“Anyone from the Prisoners’ Aid, ma’am,” he said forthrightly, “finds all here ready and willing at the first tide. Just pick your chap, and he’ll put himself under orders.”
“How splendid!” said Miss Bianca, greatly encouraged. “Though how can I pick, stranger as I am? You must tell me, who is the bravest.”
