ON THE CHURCH TOWER
On the morning following the expedition to Donisbro’, Lady Frederica
received an apologetic note from Herr Felsbaden, Sydney’s music-master,
regretting his inability to give Miss Lisle her lesson that day, owing to
a severe cold. If convenient to Lady Frederica and Miss Lisle, he would
come to the Castle on Friday afternoon instead.
The note was sent in to Miss Osric, when Lady Frederica had glanced
through it over her early cup of tea, and governess and pupil read it
together.
Sydney was looking pale and heavy-eyed this morning, Miss Osric saw, and
guessed that Lord St. Quentin had said something to distress the girl. It
was a bright sunny morning, with that exhilaration in the air which only
a perfect winter’s day has the power to give.
“Suppose, as you have no master coming this morning, we go out for
a walk as soon as we have read a little, Sydney dear?” Miss Osric
suggested. “It is such a lovely morning, and you look tired. I think the
air would do you good.”
“I have a little headache,” Sydney owned, and they set out for their walk
at about 10.30.
The frost was thick in the park, and every little twig upon the great
bare trees outlined clearly against a sky of pale cloudless blue. Sydney
wondered why she did not feel the old exhilaration that a morning such as
this would have once awakened in her, even in smoky London.
But if she could not enjoy the perfect morning, they soon met somebody
who could!
As they passed the gate of the Vicarage, Mr. Seaton came out, holding
Pauly by the hand. The child was in a state of absolutely wild delight,
dancing and jumping by his father’s side, and his eyes glittering like
two stars under the tangle of red hair.
“Going up the great big ’normous tower!” he informed Sydney, as she
stooped to kiss him. “Going to walk miles and miles and miles up ladders,
almost to the sky!”
The Vicar laughed and shook hands with both the girls.
“I have to give some orders about new bell-ropes; ours were rotten, and
I’ve had them taken down,” he explained. “And it was an old promise I
should take this monkey up the tower next time I had to go there. Do you
two feel inclined, I wonder, to come with us, and walk ‘miles and miles
and miles up ladders, almost to the sky’?”
Sydney looked at the tower, standing grey and tall outlined sharply
on the blue, and then at Miss Osric. “Should you like it? It would be
lovely, I think.”
“We should like to go up very much indeed, if Mr. Seaton doesn’t mind
the bother of us,” said Miss Osric, and the four went on together to
Lislehurst Church at the farther end of the village.
The church itself had been rebuilt in the eighteenth century, when the
black oak panelling had been removed as “dirty-looking” and replaced by
whitewash, and relieved at intervals by the St. Quentin Arms painted on
it in the gaudiest colours. At the same time, the few bits of exquisite
stained glass which had survived a visit from the “root and branch” men
of the Commonwealth days had been taken away to make room for a complete
set of crudely coloured windows, which vexed the soul of Mr. Seaton
whenever his eyes fell upon them. But the old tower had been left intact,
and was considered by the learned to be one of the finest specimens of
fourteenth century architecture left in England.
There was a tradition that the saintly Bishop Ken had once climbed it,
and had pronounced the view from the top to be “a foretaste of Heaven.”
Sydney, when she saw the perpendicular ladders tied together, which those
who went beyond the belfry chamber were compelled to climb, doubted
privately the probability of anyone so old and frail as the non-juring
Bishop had grown when he came to Blankshire, having strength or breath to
reach the summit!
“You are not frightened, are you?” asked the Vicar, when he had given his
orders to the man awaiting him in the belfry chamber, now emptied of its
dangling ropes. “Don’t try it, if you feel in the least bit nervous, for
it _is_ a stiffish climb!”
To be quite honest, Sydney did not particularly like the look of the many
ladders to be scaled, but she would have died sooner than own her fears.
After all, this was not so very much more difficult than going up the
ladders in that oast-house in Kent, where they had gone to see the
men stamp out a hop-pocket, when the whole family had spent that happy
fortnight in a Kentish farm-house last summer. Only then Hugh had been
there to help her, and pull her up that awkward step where two rungs had
gone from the ladder. Her back was to the Vicar, but Miss Osric saw the
sudden wistfulness in the girl’s grey eyes.
“Well, come on, if you really don’t feel nervous,” Mr. Seaton said. “Oh,
Hiram,” as the old clerk came stumbling down the ladders at the sound of
their voices, “you here? That’s just as well. Now you can go up in front
and get the little tower door open for the ladies.”
“Gentleman up the tower now, sir,” Hiram said, touching his battered hat.
“All right; he won’t interfere with us,” the Vicar said. “Now, Miss
Lisle, will you go first, and take Hiram’s hand where the ladders cross.
Miss Osric, you next. Then Pauly. Hold tight, you little monkey, or I’ll
take you down again! I’ll bring up the rear, and then if anybody slips,
I’ll catch them.”
The procession started, Mr. Seaton keeping a firm grip of his small son’s
blouse the whole time, and calling at intervals directions to the others.
Up, up they went, clinging to the ladders set perpendicularly against
the rough grey walls, worn with the lapse of time. Higher and higher
still they went, till Sydney and Miss Osric felt as though they had been
climbing for hours instead of minutes.
The elders had no breath for speech, but little Pauly chattered
unceasingly. “Did these funny stairs go right up into Heaven? Would there
be angels at the top of the tower? Would there be stars? Would there be
at least a hole through which Pauly might look into Heaven when he came
so near it?”
Sydney could hear his shrill little voice talking on, and his father’s
grave tones answering him now and then. As they came higher the echoes
caught up the two voices and made the old tower ring with them in a way
that sounded strange and very eerie, Sydney thought.
“Getting tired, Miss Lisle?” called the Vicar cheerily, as she set foot
on the highest ladder.
His words must have been heard by “the gentleman” of whom old Hiram had
spoken, for a square of blue and sunshine opened suddenly above her, and,
as she toiled up the final rungs, a hand, whose touch was certainly
familiar, grasped hers, and swung her over that last awkward step, where
she seemed to hang over a yawning black gulf for a moment, before landing
upon terra firma outside the tower.
“Hugh!” She had forgotten everything for the moment, except the joy of
seeing him again, but in an instant, like a bitter wind, her cousin’s
words swept back upon her—“I forbid you to have anything to do with that
young man.”
Hugh could not think why she withdrew her hand, and went back to the
little low tower door with a cloud on the face that had been so bright a
minute since. “How slow the others are in getting up!” she said.
Hugh watched her uneasily, as she gave her hand to Miss Osric and helped
her through the doorway; then proceeded to the same office for little
Pauly. Surely it was very unlike Sydney to have nothing to say to him,
to be absorbed in these comparative strangers, when he was at her elbow.
Surely her manner had changed with extraordinary speed since yesterday.
She on her part had been rapidly considering the situation. It was
plainly impossible to go down the tower again the very minute after she
had come up it. What excuse could she make that had the slightest sound
of reason? None, she was quite aware. Plainly the only thing that she
could do was to obey her cousin’s order in the spirit though not in the
letter.
She was rather pale, but her voice was steady as she bent over little
Pauly, devoting herself to answering his many questions.
Mr. Seaton talked to Miss Osric and to Hugh, who answered him a little
absently. His eyes were fixed on Sydney. The Vicar looked from one to the
other in a rather puzzled way from time to time, as he did the honours of
the splendid view that lay before them.
Glimpses of the Castle showed through its encircling trees, but in
summer, Mr. Seaton said, when all the leaves were out, it was completely
hidden.
He pointed out in succession the quaint little villages, dotted at
intervals about the valley, with some interesting comment upon each.
There was Loam, which boasted the finest chancel-screen in the county.
Miss Lisle and Miss Osric ought to see it one of these bright days: it
was most distinctly worth the trouble of a visit. That tiny church, with
a tower that looked as though some giant had sat upon it long ago, was
Marston. Did Mr. Chichester remember a humorous account in the papers
two or three years back, of a famous “kill” which had taken place in
Marston churchyard, when the fox had taken refuge in one of the old stone
box tombs, and held the narrow entry, worn by age and weather in the
stone, for full an hour?
Styles and Hurstleigh lay out yonder; it was in Hurstleigh that the Manor
stood, which a loyal lady of the Civil Wars had defended against General
Ireton, till relieved by her husband just as the little garrison were
reduced to the last straits.
At another time Sydney would have been immensely interested in the story,
but to-day somehow she could not care even to see the place where Madam
Courtenay caught the first glimpse of the scarlet mantled horsemen,
riding to her succour only just in time.
She could not put herself to-day into the place of the cavalier lady and
rejoice with her; she could only feel herself, Sydney Lisle, behaving in
a horrid, stiff, unkind way to the brother Hugh, who kept looking at her
with those troubled, questioning eyes.
Miss Osric was the only member of the party who really enjoyed Mr.
Seaton’s explanations, for little Pauly thought them dull to the last
degree. He wanted to know several things, and no one would attend to
his shrill questions. Sydney was looking where Mr. Seaton pointed, with
unseeing eyes, and his father took no notice of various impatient tugs
at his hand. Pauly wanted dreadfully to know why the sky had gone away
again, instead of being quite near as he had expected, and whether mother
and the angels would hear him if he were to call up to them very loudly,
now this minute, and whether a big man, who was big enough to lean over
the stone parapet of the tower which his own head barely reached, could
see “In Memory of Rose” on the white marble cross in the churchyard down
below.
Hugh, to pacify him, looked over, and pronounced that he could see “no
end of crosses.”
But this by no means satisfied Pauly. Hugh must see that special grave
where Daddy took him every Sunday, after service.
“Tell me where to look,” Hugh said; “but you keep still, young man, if
you please. Don’t you go trying to lean over!”
He stared down. “Is your cross a tall one, near a tree?” he asked
presently. Pauly gave a bound of delight.
“Yes, that’s where ‘In memorwy of Wose’ is. Do you see the lovely holly
on the grave? I stuck lots in the tin, I did weally, and my fingers was
all bleedy after. I didn’t mind. Boys don’t mind being bleedy. ’Spect
that big girl that you keep on looking at would mind. Girls cwy when
they’re bleedy, don’t they? Do you cwy? I s’pose not,’cause you’re a big
man. Did you see my lovely holly? No, you won’t see where you are. Oh,
look! You can see my lovely holly this side of the tower as well.”
“I say—stand still!” Hugh said sharply, turning his head round. Pauly,
in a state of wild excitement, was climbing up the three-foot parapet as
nimbly as a cat. “Get down!” Hugh shouted, springing to his feet, and
darting over to the child. He spoke too late.
Pauly had reached the top, and was kneeling on it, peering down upon
his “lovely holly.” “Oh, I can see it! I can see my holly!” he screamed
joyfully, clinging and laughing.
Whether the height turned him giddy, or he lost his balance by leaning
too far, no one knew. There was only time for a cry of horror, and a
frantic grasp into emptiness upon Hugh’s part. The child had fallen from
the parapet!
The poor father staggered backward, his hand to his head—the two girls
clung together, speechless; only Hugh was able to look over. The next
moment he was shaking Mr. Seaton fiercely by the shoulder.
“Quick, sir! Down and cut the belfry ropes. Please God, we’ll save him
yet!”
The Vicar, scarcely able to believe his ears, looked over.
Some nine feet down the tower, at each corner, a large projecting
gargoyle served the purpose of a water-spout, and it was on one of these
little Pauly had fallen—the creature’s stone ear having caught his blouse
as he bumped against it in his fall. He was lying on his back across the
gargoyle’s neck, his legs and head swinging into space, his frock hitched
half across the hideous head. He was still at the moment, but how long
would he remain so? Below him was a drop of seventy feet.
Hugh flung off his coat, and put his leg over the parapet. “Hurry with
the ropes; I’ll go to him.”
“No, no, not you!” the Vicar cried. “I must.”
But Hugh was already letting himself down. “Quick with the ropes!” was
all he said.
[Illustration: “‘Quick with the ropes!’ was all he said.”
(Page 128)]
Sydney and Miss Osric looked at one another. “The belfry ropes are gone!”
Before they had finished speaking, Mr. Seaton was tearing in a
neck-or-nothing fashion down the ladders. It was well for him that
he was forced to act, and not wait to think. Ropes must be got, and
immediately, for what ladder would be long enough? He did not even cast
one glance back at the tower as he rushed through the churchyard in
search of a rope.
There was nothing that Miss Osric and Sydney had the power to do but wait
and pray. They clung to one another silently, with set, white faces,
as Hugh commenced his difficult and dangerous descent, with one eye on
the little figure, which might move and be dashed from its precarious
resting-place at any moment. Was the child stunned? Hugh almost hoped he
might be. Any movement must almost certainly be fatal to his balance.
But as the young man felt carefully his third step in that perilous
climb, there was a quiver in the dark blue bundle on the gargoyle, and
a scared little face was uplifted to his. The hearts of the girls above
stood still.
Hugh was struggling desperately for a foothold which it seemed impossible
to find. Would the child move, or look down? Should he do so, nothing
could save him.
“It’s all right, old chap!” Hugh called in his cheeriest tone. “You
just keep still where you are. Yes, that’s right; now look at me. I’m
coming down to take you up again. No, don’t try and sit up—you can see me
splendidly from where you are.”
His voice broke off, as he all but lost both hold and footing. He
regained it with a frantic struggle and descended another step. “Look at
me, Pauly!”
Pauly’s round eyes gazed up wonderingly. Hugh neared the gargoyle, and
set his teeth for a mighty effort.
Pauly was a particularly large and strong boy for not quite five years
old, and, even on firm ground, would be no joke to lift in one hand. But
the thing must be done. Hugh strengthened his hold with his right hand,
and took an anxious downward glance. Some of the village men were trying
to join ladders, but they were far too short. Mr. Seaton was running
frantically up the road beyond the churchyard, with a coil of rope on his
arm. In the clear air Hugh could see his upturned face, dead white, with
eyes staring wildly.
He could not possibly get through the churchyard and up the tower in less
than ten minutes—Hugh thought he would probably take longer. It was not
therefore possible to risk leaving Pauly on the gargoyle till he himself
should have the help of a rope.
He took the firmest grip he could of the roughened stonework of the tower
with feet and right hand, and loosed cautiously the other, reaching with
it towards the blue bundle on the gargoyle. “Steady, Pauly, keep quite
still, old chap!”
With a struggle that brought beads of perspiration out upon his forehead
and nearly sent him flying into space, he grasped the child, and raised
him slowly from his resting-place; then stepped down on to the gargoyle,
and stood there, clasping Pauly closely, and leaning back against the
wall with closed eyes.
He was too physically exhausted with the terrible anxiety and effort
of the last few minutes to make any further movement then. Besides, it
was now a necessity to wait for the rope. The upward climb would be
impossible when burdened by the well-grown boy.
He had to concentrate all his powers on keeping steady on the slender
foothold, which was all the gargoyle afforded, and waiting for the help
which Mr. Seaton would bring.
It seemed hours before a shout from above came down cheerily to him, and
a rope end struck him on the shoulder. “Now, Pauly,” he said, “hold on
round my neck for all you’re worth, there’s a good little chap!”
He took a firm grip of the child’s blouse in his teeth, and, steadying
himself with infinite difficulty, fastened the rope beneath his own arms,
in the strongest knots that he could make. Then, using his hands as a
trumpet, he called “Ready!”
His left arm was round Pauly, his right grasped the rope above his head.
“Now hold tight, little chap, and don’t be frightened!”
Pauly carried out this order by taking as good a grip as the hair-cutter
allowed of Hugh’s head, and it was in this position that the two were
at length hauled over the parapet by the united strength of the Vicar,
Hiram, and the Vicarage gardener, whom Mr. Seaton had met while searching
for a rope.
Mr. Seaton wrung Hugh’s hand in silence, and held his son to him, in
silence also. No one seemed to have much voice for speech just then; even
Pauly was subdued and shaken by his fall, though he had escaped with
nothing worse than grazed knees.
The descent from the tower was very quiet and sober. A strong shudder
went through the party as they passed the belfry chamber and thought
about the awful moment when they had realised that the ropes were gone.
His father carried Pauly, and Hugh went in front of Sydney and Miss
Osric, and gave them his hand where the ladders turned. He and Sydney
never spoke the whole way down.
They were in the churchyard at last, and Pauly was demanding to be
shown “the funny little step where me and him was standing.” The Vicar,
shivering, hushed him, and turned to Hugh. “You’ll come in and lunch with
me?” he said, a little huskily, his hand upon the young man’s shoulder.
“Thank you, I will,” Hugh answered gravely.
“And, Sydney, we must hurry back,” Miss Osric suggested. “I am sure it is
getting late.”
Sydney moved a step away; then took a sudden resolution.
She went to Hugh and held out her hand. “Good-bye, Hugh. _Please_
understand,” she said very low.
Hugh took the little gloved hand in his, and read rightly the trouble in
her eyes.
“It’s all right—don’t you bother, Syd,” he said. “I understand.”