She said, "Of course you may. Now put on your boots and go for a good
long walk. And I'll tell you what--I'll put you up a snack, and you can
have an egg to your tea to make up for missing your dinner. Now don't go
clattering about the stairs and passages, there's good children. See if
you can't be quiet this once, and give the good gentleman a chance with
his copying."
She went off. Her bark is worse than her bite. She does not understand
anything about writing books, though. She thinks Albert's uncle copies
things out of printed books, when he is really writing new ones. I
wonder how she thinks printed books get made first of all. Many servants
are like this.
She gave us the "snack" in a basket, and sixpence to buy milk with. She
said any of the farms would let us have it, only most likely it would be
skim. We thanked her politely, and she hurried us out of the front door
as if we'd been chickens on a pansy bed.
(I did not know till after I had left the farm gate open, and the hens
had got into the garden, that these feathered bipeds display a great
partiality for the young buds of plants of the genus _viola_, to which
they are extremely destructive. I was told that by the gardener. I
looked it up in the gardening book afterwards to be sure he was right.
You do learn a lot of things in the country.)
We went through the garden as far as the church, and then we rested a
bit in the porch, and just looked into the basket to see what the
"snack" was. It proved sausage rolls, and queen cakes, and a Lent pie in
a round tin dish, and some hard-boiled eggs, and some apples. We all ate
the apples at once, so as not to have to carry them about with us. The
church-yard smells awfully good. It is the wild thyme that grows on the
graves. This is another thing we did not know before we came into the
country.
Then the door of the church tower was ajar, and we all went up; it had
always been locked before when we had tried it.
We saw the ringer's loft where the ends of the bell-ropes hang down with
long, furry handles to them like great caterpillars, some red, and some
blue and white, but we did not pull them. And then we went up to where
the bells are, very big and dusty among large dirty beams; and four
windows with no glass, only shutters like Venetian blinds, but they
won't pull up. There were heaps of straws and sticks on the window
ledges. We think they were owls' nests, but we did not see any owls.
Then the tower stairs got very narrow and dark, and we went on up, and
we came to a door and opened it suddenly, and it was like being hit in
the face, the light was so sudden. And there we were on the top of the
tower, which is flat, and people have cut their names on it, and a
turret at one corner, and a low wall all round, up and down, like castle
battlements. And we looked down and saw the roof of the church, and the
leads, and the church-yard, and our garden, and the Moat House, and the
farm, and Mrs. Simpkins's cottage, looking very small, and other farms
looking like toy things out of boxes, and we saw cornfields and meadows
and pastures. A pasture is not the same thing as a meadow, whatever you
may think. And we saw the tops of trees and hedges, looking like the map
of the United States, and villages, and a tower that did not look very
far away standing by itself on the top of a hill.
Alice pointed to it, and said:
"What's that?"
"It's not a church," said Noel, "because there's no church-yard. Perhaps
it's a tower of mystery that covers the entrance to a subterranean vault
with treasure in it."
Dicky said, "Subterranean fiddlestick!" and "A water-works, more
likely."
Alice thought perhaps it was a ruined castle, and the rest of its
crumbling walls were concealed by ivy, the growth of years.
Oswald could not make his mind up what it was, so he said: "Let's go and
see! We may as well go there as anywhere."
So we got down out of the church tower and dusted ourselves, and set
out.
The Tower of Mystery showed quite plainly from the road, now that we
knew where to look for it, because it was on the top of a hill. We began
to walk. But the tower did not seem to get any nearer. And it was very
hot.
So we sat down in a meadow where there was a stream in the ditch and ate
the "snack." We drank the pure water from the brook out of our hands,
because there was no farm to get milk at just there, and it was too much
fag to look for one--and, besides, we thought we might as well save the
sixpence.
Then we started again, and still the tower looked as far off as ever.
Denny began to drag his feet, though he had brought a walking-stick
which none of the rest of us had, and said:
"I wish a cart would come along. We might get a lift."
He knew all about getting lifts, of course, from having been in the
country before. He is not quite the white mouse we took him for at
first. Of course when you live in Lewisham or Blackheath you learn other
things. If you asked for a lift in Lewisham, High Street, your only
reply would be jeers. We sat down on a heap of stones, and decided that
we would ask for a lift from the next cart, whichever way it was going.
It was while we were waiting that Oswald found out about plantain seeds
being good to eat.
When the sound of wheels came we remarked with joy that the cart was
going towards the Tower of Mystery. It was a cart a man was going to
fetch a pig home in. Denny said:
"I say, you might give us a lift. Will you?"
The man who was going for the pig said:
"What, all that little lot?" but he winked at Alice, and we saw that he
meant to aid us on our way. So we climbed up, and he whipped up the
horse and asked us where we were going. He was a kindly old man, with a
face like a walnut shell, and white hair and beard like a
jack-in-the-box.
"We want to get to the tower," Alice said. "Is it a ruin, or not?"
"It ain't no ruin," the man said; "no fear of that! The man wot built it
he left so much a year to be spent on repairing of it! Money that might
have put bread in honest folks' mouths."
We asked was it a church then, or not.
"Church?" he said. "Not it. It's more of a tombstone, from all I can
make out. They do say there was a curse on him that built it, and he
wasn't to rest in earth or sea. So he's buried half-way up the tower--if
you can call it buried."
"Can you go up it?" Oswald asked.
"Lord love you! yes; a fine view from the top, they say. I've never been
up myself, though I've lived in sight of it, boy and man, these
sixty-three years come harvest."
Alice asked whether you had to go past the dead and buried person to get
to the top of the tower, and could you see the coffin.
"No, no," the man said; "that's all hid away behind a slab of stone,
that is, with reading on it. You've no call to be afraid, missy. It's
daylight all the way up. But I wouldn't go there after dark, so I
wouldn't. It's always open, day and night, and they say tramps sleep
there now and again. Any one who likes can sleep there, but it wouldn't
be me."
We thought that it would not be us either, but we wanted to go more than
ever, especially when the man said:
"My own great-uncle of the mother's side, he was one of the masons that
set up the stone slab. Before then it was thick glass, and you could see
the dead man lying inside, as he'd left it in his will. He was lying
there in a glass coffin with his best clothes--blue satin and silver, my
uncle said, such as was all the go in his day, with his wig on, and his
sword beside him, what he used to wear. My uncle said his hair had grown
out from under his wig, and his beard was down to the toes of him. My
uncle he always upheld that that dead man was no deader than you and me,
but was in a sort of fit, a transit, I think they call it, and looked
for him to waken into life again some day. But the doctor said not. It
was only something done to him like Pharaoh in the Bible afore he was
buried."
Alice whispered to Oswald that we should be late for tea, and wouldn't
it be better to go back now directly. But he said:
"If you're afraid, say so; and you needn't come in anyway--but I'm going
on."
The man who was going for the pig put us down at a gate quite near the
tower--at least it looked so until we began to walk again. We thanked
him, and he said:
"Quite welcome," and drove off.
We were rather quiet going through the wood. What we had heard made us
very anxious to see the tower--all except Alice, who would keep talking
about tea, though not a greedy girl by nature. None of the others
encouraged her, but Oswald thought himself that we had better be home
before dark.
As we went up the path through the wood we saw a poor wayfarer with
dusty bare feet sitting on the bank.
He stopped us and said he was a sailor, and asked for a trifle to help
him to get back to his ship.
I did not like the look of him much myself, but Alice said, "Oh, the
poor man, do let's help him, Oswald." So we held a hurried council, and
decided to give him the milk sixpence. Oswald had it in his purse, and
he had to empty the purse into his hand to find the sixpence, for that
was not all the money he had, by any means. Noel said afterwards that he
saw the wayfarer's eyes fastened greedily upon the shining pieces as
Oswald returned them to his purse. Oswald has to own that he purposely
let the man see that he had more money, so that the man might not feel
shy about accepting so large a sum as sixpence.
The man blessed our kind hearts and we went on.
The sun was shining very brightly, and the Tower of Mystery did not look
at all like a tomb when we got to it. The bottom story was on arches,
all open, and ferns and things grew underneath. There was a round stone
stair going up in the middle. Alice began to gather ferns while we went
up, but when we had called out to her that it was as the pig-man had
said, and daylight all the way up, she said:
"All right. I'm not afraid. I'm only afraid of being late home," and
came up after us. And perhaps, though not downright manly truthfulness,
this was as much as you could expect from a girl.
There were holes in the little tower of the staircase to let light in.
At the top of it was a thick door with iron bolts. We shot these back,
and it was not fear but caution that made Oswald push open the door so
very slowly and carefully.
Because, of course, a stray dog or cat might have got shut up there by
accident, and it would have startled Alice very much if it had jumped
out on us.
When the door was opened we saw that there was no such thing. It was a
room with eight sides. Denny says it is the shape called octagenarian;
because a man named Octagius invented it. There were eight large arched
windows with no glass, only stone-work, like in churches. The room was
full of sunshine, and you could see the blue sky through the windows,
but nothing else, because they were so high up. It was so bright we
began to think the pig-man had been kidding us. Under one of the windows
was a door. We went through, and there was a little passage and then a
turret-twisting stair, like in the church, but quite light with windows.
When we had gone some way up this, we came to a sort of landing, and
there was a block of stone let into the wall--polished--Denny said it
was Aberdeen graphite, with gold letters cut in it. It said:
"Here lies the body of Mr. Richard Ravenal.
Born 1720. Died 1779."
and a verse of poetry:
"Here lie I, between earth and sky,
Think upon me, dear passers-by,
And you who do my tombstone see
Be kind to say a prayer for me."
"How horrid!" Alice said. "Do let's get home."
"We may as well go to the top," Dicky said, "just to say we've been."
And Alice is no funk--so she agreed; though I could see she did not like
it.
Up at the top it was like the top of the church tower, only octagenarian
in shape, instead of square.
Alice got all right there; because you cannot think much about ghosts
and nonsense when the sun is shining bang down on you at four o'clock in
the afternoon, and you can see red farm-roofs between the trees, and the
safe white roads, with people in carts like black ants crawling.
It was very jolly, but we felt we ought to be getting back, because tea
is at five, and we could not hope to find lifts both ways.
So we started to go down. Dicky went first, then Oswald, then Alice--and
H. O. had just stumbled over the top step and saved himself by Alice's
back, which nearly upset Oswald and Dicky, when the hearts of all stood
still, and then went on by leaps and bounds, like the good work in
missionary magazines.
For, down below us, in the tower where the man whose beard grew down to
his toes after he was dead was buried, there was a noise--a loud noise.
And it was like a door being banged and bolts fastened. We tumbled over
each other to get back into the open sunshine on the top of the tower,
and Alice's hand got jammed between the edge of the doorway and H. O.'s
boot; it was bruised black and blue, and another part bled, but she did
not notice it till long after.
We looked at each other, and Oswald said in a firm voice (at least, I
hope it was):
"What was that?"
"He _has_ waked up," Alice said. "Oh, I know he has. Of course there is
a door for him to get out by when he wakes. He'll come up here. I know
he will."
Dicky said, and his voice was not at all firm (I noticed that at the
time), "It doesn't matter, if he's _alive_."
"Unless he's come to life a raving lunatic," Noel said, and we all stood
with our eyes on the doorway of the turret--and held our breath to hear.
But there was no more noise.
Then Oswald said--and nobody ever put it in the Golden Deed book, though
they own that it was brave and noble of him--he said:
"Perhaps it was only the wind blowing one of the doors to. I'll go down
and see, if you will, Dick."
Dicky only said:
"The wind doesn't shoot bolts."
"A bolt from the blue," said Denny to himself, looking up at the sky.
His father is a sub-editor. He had gone very red, and he was holding on
to Alice's hand. Suddenly he stood up quite straight and said:
"I'm not afraid. I'll go and see."
_This_ was afterwards put in the Golden Deed book. It ended in Oswald
and Dicky and Denny going. Denny went first because he said he would
rather--and Oswald understood this and let him. If Oswald had pushed
first it would have been like Sir Launcelot refusing to let a young
knight win his spurs. Oswald took good care to go second himself,
though. The others never understood this. You don't expect it from
girls; but I did think father would have understood without Oswald
telling him, which of course he never could.
We all went slowly.
At the bottom of the turret stairs we stopped short. Because the door
there was bolted fast and would not yield to shoves, however desperate
and united.
Only now somehow we felt that Mr. Richard Ravenal was all right and
quiet, but that some one had done it for a lark, or perhaps not known
about any one being up there. So we rushed up, and Oswald told the
others in a few hasty but well-chosen words, and we all leaned over
between the battlements, and shouted, "Hi! you there!"
Then from under the arches of the quite-down-stairs part of the tower a
figure came forth--and it was the sailor who had had our milk sixpence.
He looked up and he spoke to us. He did not speak loud, but he spoke
loud enough for us to hear every word quite plainly. He said:
"Drop that."