THE SEA-ROKE
It was all quite easy. She had taken off her coat and hat in
Gracie's room; Joey made her way there--hurried into her things,
and ran downstairs. She only met one servant; the place was in a
dozy, Sunday-afternoon condition. She got out at a side door, and,
avoiding the front drive, where she thought she might be seen and
stopped, she darted away over well-kept lawns, crossed the ha-ha
at a jump, and landed in the park. Here she slightly slackened her
headlong pace--nobody would see her among the trees--and began to
compose her letter of apology to Cousin Greta. She supposed she was
being dreadfully rude, and it was a rudeness which would be horribly
difficult to explain, without complaining of Gracie--naturally an
unspeakable idea.
She had only got as far as "Dear Cousin Greta,--I hope I was not very
rude, but ..." when she cleared the park, and crossed the straight
marsh road. She had decided to go by the fields, in case somebody
should be sent after her. If she kept in a line with the road, even
at a distance of half a mile or so on the sea-ward side, she would be
quite safe, she thought. She gave a glance around her to make sure of
the lie of the land; it was all quite easy, for the October afternoon
was clear, and a peculiar transparent luminosity lay on the glittering
horizon. Then she plunged forward, concocting her letter to Cousin
Greta as she went. It must certainly be written and sent off to-night,
for there was no question about it, she had been disgracefully rude.
Only she couldn't go on being a nuisance to people who didn't want her
and invited her out only from a sense of duty.
"DEAR COUSIN GRETA,--I hope I was not very rude, but I found I
had to get back earlier than I expected, and ... and ... I didn't
want to disturb you as you were lying down."
Joey didn't know that in the struggle to compose that difficult letter
of apology to Cousin Greta she had diverged a little from the straight
line that she had fixed for herself, and was bearing down farther from
the road with every step she took. The letter took a great deal of
pumping out; one had to try and be truthful, and at the same time no
telltale. When politeness had to come in as well, it made each sentence
most terribly difficult, and Joey wrestled with that letter in much
affliction of spirit, and went farther and farther out of her way
without ever seeing where she was going.
The bit about not wanting to disturb Cousin Greta was not absolutely
true, because Joey had been really glad she had been lying down; still,
perhaps it might pass--one couldn't say one was glad anyway.
"It was very kind of you to have me out," Joe went on; "thank you
most awfully. About my going back to Redlands alone. I always go
about alone at home, unless one of the others happens to be with
me, so I hope you won't mind that. I'm not a kid, you know.
"Your affectionate cousin,
"JOEY."
Joey finished the letter in her mind, and said it over to herself. It
wouldn't take long to write down, that was one comfort--and she hoped
it would make Cousin Greta understand she wasn't quite the ill-mannered
girl she had seemed. And as she finished saying it and got it finally
off her chest, she knew suddenly that she was very cold, and that a
clammy white wall was surrounding her on every side, that beneath her
feet was green bogginess, and of the road or any landmark there was not
so much as a trace.
Joey had heard of the sea-roke in books, but that didn't make her very
clear about it now she met it. She couldn't think how such a thick,
dead-white fog could have come up without her noticing it; but here
it was, that was very certain. She began to wish that she had kept to
the high road, or left the composition of that difficult letter till
she got back to Redlands. However, the roke was here, and she was on
the Deeps and not the road; there was nothing for it but to keep as
straight on as possible--or better still, turn to her left and strike
the road.
Joey settled that would be the wisest thing to do, even if it took her
out of her way at first; she turned to the left and went as straight as
she could.
The road seemed to take a very long time to be reached; Joey couldn't
think how she could have come so far from it. She stumbled on and on,
finding the ground very quaggy, and walking exceedingly difficult. And
then she jumped back only just in time, for she had all but walked
into one of those deep ditches with slanting sides that drain the
Deeps at intervals, and are a very real danger, with their thick ooze
of mud below the water, and their slippery banks. Joey knew that she
had crossed no ditch on her way down from the road; she began to feel
a little pricking of uneasiness. She was very, very tired; her legs
ached, and she seemed to herself to have walked miles and miles through
this cold, clammy, white wall. And if she couldn't strike the road;
how much farther might she not have to go? And was all this struggling
getting her any nearer to Redlands?
Joey was not a nervous person, but she sat down at the side of the dyke
to try and get her bearings, with rather a sinking heart. She had just
remembered that in a fog you tend to wander in a circle; could she have
been doing that all this long time when she hoped that she was at least
getting on a little?
"What a bally nuisance!" she said aloud. Of course one couldn't
acknowledge, even to oneself, that it was anything worse than that.
"I suppose I had better wait till the fog lifts," she said, wondering
whether it were the close, white wall or the sinking sensation under
her belt that made her voice so hollow. And just as she said it there
came a little breeze, and the roke lifted for a minute, hanging around
like cotton-wool clouds that wanted to settle on the earth and couldn't
quite make up their minds to do so; and Joey saw, some thirty yards
away from her--not the road--there was no sign of that--but a narrow
plank bridge that crossed the dyke and, straight in a line with it, the
mysterious Round Tower.
Joey did not waste a minute. She ran for her life, and was over
the bridge before the roke came down again--baffling, clinging,
frightening. But the tower was so near, and there was no dyke between;
she had seen that. She ran straight on in the white darkness, and fell
breathlessly against the rough wall of the tower five minutes later.
The roke was thicker than ever after that momentary lifting, but Joey
didn't care now. There was shelter and safety in the tower, and she
felt as though having reached it was the next best thing to being safe
at Redlands. Noreen had told her it really was a good four miles from
the College, but it seemed comfortingly close when one remembered that
night on the leads.
Joey felt her way round it until she came to a narrow door standing at
least three feet above the ground. She felt the ledge on which the door
opened with her fingers, scrambled up to it, and tried the door. It
was fastened, but she carried a strong pocket-knife, and inserting the
stoutest blade into the chink, she forced back the bolt which secured
it on the inside, and opened the door. Then, with a delightful thrill
of mystery, she scrambled through into the tower.
It was black-dark inside, not white-dark as it was out; for the one
narrow window on this ground floor was shuttered. Joey longed for an
electric torch. She stumbled on a cautious step or two; then, growing
bolder, walked on three or four more, with hands outstretched. Her
hands came into contact with a narrow shelf, and on it, joy! she felt a
match-box. Joey struck a match, feeling as though all her troubles were
over.
The flash gave her a rough notion of grey walls and an iron ladder
running up almost perpendicularly to the right of her, and it showed
something else as well--a lantern that stood upon the same shelf where
she had found the matches. Joey seized upon it, as a shipwrecked
mariner might on a spar, and lit it. Holding it in her hand, she felt
strong enough to face anything; it was the darkness which had been so
frightening.
Holding the lantern on high she set out to explore her refuge; after
all, for whatever reason, it was rather exciting to find oneself in the
mysterious Round Tower at last.
The floor above was so high that the rays of her lantern could not
reach it, but she was sure there was another floor because of the
ladder, which obviously must lead somewhere. Joey thought she would go
up it presently and see for herself, but at present the ground floor
of the tower presented attractions. It was strewn with a quantity of
loose stones and débris of all kinds, except in one place--one can
hardly say corner in a round tower--where it would seem to have been
swept smooth. Joey, having wandered round the loose-jointed grey walls,
examining them with interest, came to the place where the débris was
comparatively scanty, and held her lantern down to light the place.
A voice came up to her from below the floor, a rather thin, peevish
voice that sounded exceedingly tired, and had a curious accent.
"You are at least two hours earlier than you said you would be; how can
you then expect me to be ready?"
Joey quite jumped--the voice was so entirely unexpected. Then she
realised that she must be taken for somebody else.
"I can't be anyone you expected two hours later, because I didn't know
myself about walking home and this old fog," she said. "Do tell me, are
you down a trap-door, or what?"
A square of floor lifted with some difficulty, and a head appeared--the
head of a pale, unhealthy-looking young man, with large, startled, blue
eyes.
"I say, I hope I didn't frighten you coming in like this," Joey said
politely. "But the fog--the sea-roke, I think they call it, is so
beastly, and I couldn't find my way back."
The young man came altogether out from the trap-door. Joey didn't think
much of his nerves; his hands were trembling and he looked as though
Gavin could have knocked him down quite easily.
"Do you live here?" Joey asked, as he did not speak. "I hope you don't
mind my coming in like this; but Noreen, one of the Redlands girls,
tells me that the Deeps are really rather dangerous when the roke is
about."
The young man seemed to recover his breath.
"You are a Redlands young lady, are you? Surely your mistress does not
know that you are wandering about the Deeps alone?"
"Miss Conyngham? No, I don't suppose she does," Joey said easily. "I
didn't know myself till it happened, but of course I ought to have come
by the road."
[Illustration: "I HOPE I DIDN'T FRIGHTEN YOU COMING IN LIKE THIS," JOEY
SAID POLITELY]
"It would be _much_ safer," the young man said impressively. He did not
answer Joey's question about living in the tower; but proceeded to tell
her story upon story of accidents happening on the Deeps to people who
strayed there in the fog or the dark. Joey thought his stories were
a little like the _Cautionary Tales_; from his account the sea-roke
perpetually lay in wait, in company with horrid oozy spots where people
disappeared with no trace left to tell how they had died. His stories
were so interesting that Joey forgot her desire to explore, and sat by
his side on a great block of fallen stone, listening with all her ears,
and foreseeing a thrilling time in Blue Dorm this evening. She was so
absorbed that she never noticed the lightening of the roke, until a
long, narrow bar of sunshine fell through a chink in the shutters of
the window, making the red glow of the lantern look pale and unnatural.
Then she jumped up in a hurry, and held out her hand. The post went
out at six on Sundays, and she still had four miles to walk before she
could write that apology to Cousin Greta. She must go at once now it
would be safe to cross the piece of marsh-land to the road. She held
out her hand to the young man.
"Good-bye," she said. "You've been a brick to me, and I've enjoyed your
stories most awfully. I've had no end of a good time here, and it's
jolly thrilling, when you haven't done it, to know you might have been
drowned so easily, isn't it? It's been a topping afternoon. Thanks ever
so."
She shook hands with the young man, whose easily scared breath seemed
to have departed again, for he gasped and said nothing.
Joey turned her back upon the Round Tower and turned her face in the
direction of the road, now plainly to be seen. It was not till she
had reached it that it struck her that she had been rather stupid not
to ask leave to come again, and bring her friends. But perhaps now
the young man was used to her, he wouldn't mind if three or four of
them turned up one afternoon, and asked for some more of his stories,
and permission to explore? Joey settled in her own mind that she
would share the privilege with Noreen and Gabrielle at least. But one
couldn't go back to ask leave, with the thought of the six o'clock post
and that letter of apology still to be written for it.
Joey covered the ground at her best pace, never looking back; reached
the road quite successfully and, by dint of running most of the way,
arrived, panting, at the side door of Redlands, just as the gong
sounded for five o'clock tea.