A TRAGICAL AFTERNOON.
Once out of sight of Libbie, Di bounded upstairs, three steps at a time,
flinging herself down outside the door, breathless with speed and
suppressed laughter.
“Oh! I’m glad you’ve come,” said Andrew, “it’s been quite horrid waiting
up here alone, with all that horrible noise going on all round.”
“It sounds rather eerie, doesn’t it?” said Di.
“Yes, really I do think it is rather dangerous,” began Andrew, “I--”
“Then run away,” said Di, “only leave me your tools.”
“No, I didn’t mean to say that,” said Andrew, “only--”
“Now, look here, be sensible,” broke in Di, “just hold this chair
steady, whilst I stand up on it. I want to have a good look at this
door. Here’s the candle and matches, just light it, and hand it up to
me, when I’m safe on the chair.”
From her exalted position and aided by the light of the tallow dip,
which Di had abstracted from Polly’s box in the scullery, she proceeded
to make a careful inspection of the door and doorway.
The labours of many generations of undisturbed spiders had resulted in
layers upon layers of cobwebs, which hung in grey misty folds all about
the panels and locks, and cracks, and hinges, of the long dis-used door.
These were easily swept away, but when removed, an unwelcome fact became
apparent.
“Oh! I say,” cried Di, in dismay, “they’ve walled up the door!”
Not only the keyhole but every hairbreadth of space all round the door
had been filled in with solid cement. Yes, even between the floor and
the lowest panel of the door, there was a thick seam of plaster.
“Oh, the old fiends!” cried Di, jumping off her chair and stamping with
rage, “Old wretches, whoever they were! I wonder if Mrs. Busson ever saw
this.”
As a matter of fact, she had not. Otherwise, she would not have been so
anxious to keep the knowledge of that room’s existence from her little
guests.
“We are done, hopelessly done,” cried Di, “one might as well try to open
a sealed up vault as that door.”
“Are you quite sure of it?” asked Andrew, with a look of relief on his
face which was not apparent in that dim light.
His prolonged nearness to that uncomfortable rumbling noise had entirely
quenched Andrew’s ardour for forcing an entrance into the forbidden
room, and he was quite ready to abandon the undertaking without further
ceremony.
Not so Di, however.
“Of course, we _won’t_ be done,” she said.
“But if we can’t help it,” began Andrew.
“But we will help it, we won’t be beaten,” she said, “I’ve thought of
something,” she went on, with sudden inspiration. “Hand up your tools,
Andrew, I’ve got an idea.”
Snatching the gimlet from Andrew, Di went on her knees. With a will, she
set to work to bore a hole in one of the lower panels of the door.
“Do you see what I’m doing?” she asked, without raising her head from
her work. “I’m going to drill a hole.”
“Oh! Just big enough to peep through, I suppose,” said Andrew, thinking
this was a splendid idea.
“Big enough, you booby, to put our hands through first of all, and then
our bodies afterwards,” retorted Di.
“O-oh!” was all Andrew found to say. He was quite determined that it
should be Di’s hand that went in first.
For some time, Di worked away laboriously with the gimlet.
Then she paused. “I can’t get on with this,” she said, “I must try
something else. Go half-way down the stairs, Andrew, and stand there and
listen if you can hear me at work. It won’t do to attract Libbie’s
attention. Go quietly.”
“It’s all right,” reported Andrew, returning from executing Di’s orders.
“I couldn’t hear a sound, not from you, at least, but there’s no end of
a row going on downstairs. Libbie must have some friends to help her,
for they are jawing no end in the brew-house.”
“So much the better,” said Di; “now I’m going to do something
desperate.”
Therewith, seizing the hammer, Diana wrapt her handkerchief carefully
round the head.
“That’ll deaden the sound,” she said. Then taking one of the knives, she
stuck the point into the panel, upon which she had already been
operating, and then dealt a blow with the hammer on the handle of the
knife with all her might.
“Hurrah! Andrew, the wood is beginning to give,” she said, “with another
blow or two, we’ll do it.”
“Oh! dear,” gasped Andrew. “I wonder what we shall find.”
“We shall know very soon now,” returned Di, “I hope this will settle the
business!”
Therewith she dealt another furious blow with the hammer.
There came a noise of splintering wood,--Di remembered that afterwards,
clearly enough, but what followed besides, she could never recall.
Her first impulse on feeling the panel yield to her blows, was to thrust
her hand and arm through the gaping slit, with a view to laying hands on
the gold or precious stones or stores of sweet-stuff, which must surely
be within her reach; her next was to draw her arm back again with all
speed and to rend, not the door but the air with piercing, frantic
shrieks.
And these shrieks were echoed by Andrew.
Anxious to secure his share in the booty, he had also thrust his
hand--and his face, too--through the broken panel, and was now dancing
and yelling like a maniac.
“Shut your eyes; shut your eyes, Andrew,” shrieked Di. “Libbie, Libbie,
Libbie! Come, come, come!”
Crash went at least a dozen bottles in the brew-house, then
helter-skelter up the stairs, came Libbie, followed by her visitor.
By this time, the narrow bit of passage, which turned abruptly away from
the head of the staircase was alive with clouds of angry bees, and a
stouter heart than Libbie’s would have quailed at the prospect of
encountering such a host. It was well for her, that her visitor, who was
none other than the severe Nanny of other days, kept her wits about her.
Nanny’s first step was to seize Andrew, who, with his hair full of
humming bees and his hands held tightly over his eyes, was running
aimlessly to and fro.
In a moment, Nanny had dragged off his jacket, which was all alive with
the infuriated creatures, and rolling it up tightly, she flung it back
into the enemy’s country.
“And now run as fast as ever you can,” she ordered Andrew, “and jump
into the rain-water tank, close by the back door.”
Andrew who was even more frightened than stung, promptly obeyed, howling
and yelling so loudly all the way, that in a few minutes all the farm
hands were running to know what had happened.
“There, however any of us came out of it alive, is what I never shall
understand,” was how Libbie always wound up
[Illustration: “In a moment Nanny had dragged off his jacket.”
_p. 158._]
the narration of that tragical afternoon’s doings. “When I come to think
over it now, I don’t seem able to remember nothing but pails of water on
all sides, water dashed here and there, for all the world as if there
had been a fire. And then oh! good me, the shovel-fulls of brimstone,
which well-nigh suffocated the life out of one. There, I do say, that
with all the humming and the buzzing about one, and all the _furious_
creatures as well, one felt for all the world as if one had been turned
into a bee-hive oneself, with just a pair of boots on.
“But oh! dear, dear! What a sight poor Miss Di was! Well, there, if all
the meddlesome-matties got their reward that way, the world would be
very soon rid of them, I’ll be bound.”