out of doors with his cigar, continued to read the document before
him, although it was one he had read twenty times before. It was an
inventory of church goods, dated the 6th year of Edward VI.--to be
exact, the 15th May, 1552. By a royal order of that year, all Church
goods, saving only what sufficed for the barest necessities of
Divine Service, were collected and deposited in safe hands, there to
await further instructions. The instructions, which had not been long
delayed, had consisted in a curt order for seizure. Everyone who cares
for such matters, knows and laments the grievous spoliation of those
times.
Mr. Batchel's document, however, proved that the Churchwardens of the
day were not incapable of self-defence. They were less dumb than sheep
before the shearers. For, on the copy of the inventory of which he
had become possessed, was written the Commissioners' Report that "at
Stoneground did John Spayn and John Gounthropp, Churchwardens, declare
upon their othes that two gilded senseres with candellstickes, old
paynted clothes, and other implements, were contayned in a chest which
was robbed on St. Peter's Eve before the first inventorye made."
Mr. Batchel had a shrewd suspicion, which the reader will not
improbably share, that John Spayne and his colleague knew more
about the robbery than they chose to admit. He said to himself
again and again, that the contents of the chest had been carefully
concealed until times should mend. But from the point of view of
the Churchwardens, times had not mended. There was evidence that
Stoneground had been in no mood to tolerate censers in the reign of
Mary, and it seemed unlikely that any later time could have re-admitted
the ancient ritual. On this account, Mr. Batchel had never ceased to
believe that the contents of the chest lay somewhere near at hand, nor
to hope that it might be his lot to discover it.
Whenever there was any work of the nature of excavation or demolition
within a hundred yards of the Church, Mr. Batchel was sure to be
there. His presence was very distasteful in most cases, to the workmen
engaged, whom it deprived of many intervals of leisure to which they
were accustomed when left alone. During a long course of operations
connected with the restoration of the Church, Mr. Batchel's vigilance
had been of great advantage to the work, both in raising the standard
of industry and in securing attention to details which the builders
were quite prepared to overlook. It had, however, brought him no nearer
to the censers and other contents of the chest, and when the work was
completed, his hopes of discovery had become pitifully slender.
Mr. Wardle, notwithstanding his general contempt for antiquarian
pursuits, was polite enough to give Mr. Batchel's hobbies an occasional
place in their conversation, and in this way was informed of the
"stolen" goods. The information, however, gave him no more than a very
languid interest.
"Why can't you let the things alone?" he said, "what's the use of them?"
Mr. Batchel felt it all but impossible to answer a man who could say
this; yet he made the attempt.
"The historic interest," he said seriously, "of censers that were used
down to the days of Edward VI. is in itself sufficient to justify----"
"Etcetera," said his friend, interrupting the sentence which even Mr.
Batchel was not sure of finishing to his satisfaction, "but it takes so
little to justify you antiquarians, with your axes and hammers. What
can you do with it when you get it, if you ever do get it?"
"There are two censers," Mr. Batchel mildly observed in correction,
"and other things."
"All right," said Wardle; "tell me about one of them, and leave me to
do the multiplication."
With this permission, Mr. Batchel entered upon a general description of
such ancient thuribles as he knew of, and Wardle heard him with growing
impatience.
"It seems to me," he burst in at length, "that what you are making all
this pother about is a sort of silver cruet-stand, which was thin
metal to begin with, and cleaned down to the thickness of egg-shell
before the Commissioners heard of it. At this moment, if it exists,
it is a handful of black scrap. If you found it, I wouldn't give a
shilling for it; and if I would, it isn't yours to sell. Why can't you
let the things alone?"
"But the interest of it," said Mr. Batchel, "is what attracts me."
"It's a pity you can't take an interest in something less
uninteresting," said Wardle, petulantly; "but let me tell you what I
think about your censers and all the rest of it. Your Churchwardens
lied about them, but that's all right; I'd have done the same myself.
If their things couldn't be used, they were not going to have them
abused, so they put them safely out of the way, your's and everybody's
else."
"I was not proposing to abuse them," interrupted Mr. Batchel.
"Were you proposing to use them?" rejoined Wardle. "It's one thing or
the other, to my mind. There are people who dig out Bishops and steal
their rings to put in glass cases, but I don't know how they square
the police; and it's the same sort of thing you seem to be up to. Let
the things alone. You're a Prayer Book man, and just the sort the
Churchwardens couldn't stomach. You talk fast enough at the Dissenters
because they want to collar your property now. Why can't you do as you
would be done by?"
Mr. Batchel thought it useless to say any more to a man in so
unsympathetic an attitude, or to enter upon any defence of the
antiquarian researches to which his friend had so crudely referred.
He did not much like, however, to be anticipated in a theory of the
"robbery" which he felt to be reasonable and probable. He had hoped to
propound the same theory himself, and to receive a suitable compliment
upon his penetration. He began, therefore, somewhat irritably, to make
the most of conjectures which, at various times, had occurred to him.
"Men of that sort," he said, "would have disposed of the censers to
some one who could go on using them, and in that case they are not here
at all."
"Men of that sort," answered Wardle, "are as careful of their skins
as men of any other sort, and besides that, your Stoneground men have
a very good notion of sticking to what they have got. The things are
here, I daresay, if they are anywhere; but they are not yours, and you
have no business to meddle with them. If you would spend your time in
something else than poking about after other people's things, you'd get
better value for it."
This brief conversation, in which Mr. Batchel had scarcely been allowed
the part to which he felt entitled, was in one respect satisfactory.
It supported his belief that the censers lay somewhere within reach.
In other respects, however, the attitude of Wardle was intolerable. He
was evidently out of all sympathy with the quest upon which Mr. Batchel
was set, and, for their different reasons, each was glad to drop the
subject.
During the next two or three days, the matter of the censers was not
referred to, if only for lack of opportunity. Wardle was a kind of
visitor for whom there was always a welcome at Stoneground, and the
welcome was in his case no less cordial on account of his brutal
frankness of expression, which, on the whole, his host enjoyed. His
pungent criticisms of other men were vastly entertaining to Mr.
Batchel, who was not so unreasonable as to feel aggrieved at an
occasional attack upon himself.
A guest of this unceremonious sort makes but small demands upon his
host. Mr. Wardle used to occupy himself contentedly and unobtrusively
in the house or in the garden whilst his host followed his usual
avocations. The two men met at meals, and liked each other none the
less because they were apart at most other times. A great part of Mr.
Wardle's day was passed in the company of the gardener, to whose
talk his own master was but an indifferent listener. The visitor and
the gardener were both lovers of the soil, and taught each other a
great deal as they worked side by side. Mr. Wardle found that sort of
exercise wholesome, and, as the gardener expressed it, "was not frit to
take his coat off."
The gardening operations at this time of year were such as Mr. Wardle
liked. The over-crowded shrubberies were being thinned, and a score or
so of young shrubs had to be moved into better quarters. Upon a certain
morning, when Mr. Batchel was occupied in his study, some aucubas were
being transplanted into a strip of ground in front of the house, and
Wardle had undertaken the task of digging holes to receive them. It
was this task that he suddenly interrupted in order to burst in upon
his host in what seemed to the latter a repulsive state of dirt and
perspiration.
"Talk of discoveries," he cried, "come and see what I've found."
"Not the censers, I suppose," said Mr. Batchel.
"Censers be hanged," said Wardle, "come and look."
Mr. Batchel laid down his pen, with a sigh, and followed Wardle to the
front of the house. His guest had made three large holes, each about
two feet square, and drawing Mr. Batchel to the nearest of them, said
"Look there."
Mr. Batchel looked. He saw nothing, and said so.
"Nothing?" exclaimed Wardle with impatience. "You see the bottom of the
hole, I suppose?"
This Mr. Batchel admitted.
"Then," said Wardle, "kindly look and see whether you cannot see
something else."
"There is apparently a cylindrical object lying across the angle of
your excavation," said Mr. Batchel.
"That," replied his guest, "is what you are pleased to call nothing.
Let me inform you that the cylindrical object is a piece of thick lead
pipe, and that the pipe runs along the whole front of your house."
"Gas-pipe, no doubt," said Mr. Batchel.
"Is there any gas within a mile of this place?" asked Wardle.
Mr. Batchel admitted that there was not, and felt that he had made a
needlessly foolish suggestion. He felt safer in the amended suggestion
that the object was a water-pipe.
An ironical cross-examination by Mr. Wardle disposed of the amended
suggestion as completely as he had disposed of the other, and his host
began to grow restive. "If this sort of discovery pleases you," he
said testily, "I will not grudge you your pleasure, but, to quote your
own words, why can't you let it alone?"
"Have you any idea," said Mr. Wardle, "of the value of this length of
piping, at the present price of lead?"
Even Mr. Wardle could hardly have suspected his host of knowing
anything so preposterous as the price of lead, but he felt himself
ill-used when Mr. Batchel disclaimed any interest in the matter, and
returned to his study.
Wardle had a commercial mind, which elsewhere was the means of securing
him a very satisfactory income, and on this account, his host, as
he resumed his work indoors, excused what he regarded as a needless
interruption.
He little suspected that his friend's commercial mind was to do him the
great service of putting him in possession of the censers, and then to
do him a disservice even greater.
Had any such connexion so much as suggested itself, Mr. Batchel would
more willingly have answered to the summons which came an hour later,
when the gardener appeared at the window of the study, evidently
bursting with information. When he had succeeded in attracting his
master's attention, and drawn him away from his desk, it was to say
that the whole length of pipe had been uncovered, and found to issue
from a well on the south side of the house.
The discovery was at least unexpected, and Mr. Batchel went out, even
if somewhat grudgingly, to look at the place. He came upon the well,
close by the window of his dining-room. It had been covered by a stone
slab, now partially removed. The narrow trench which Wardle and the
gardener had made in order to expose the pipe, extended eastwards to
the corner of the house, and thence along the whole length of the
front, probably to serve a pump on the north side, where lay the yard
and stables. The pipe itself, Mr. Wardle's prize, had been withdrawn,
and there remained only a rusted chain which passed from some anchorage
beneath the soil, over the lip of the well. Mr. Batchel inferred that
it had carried, and perhaps carried still, the bucket of former times,
and stooped down to see whether he could draw it up. He heard, far
below, the light splash of the soil disturbed by his hands; but before
he could grasp the chain, he felt himself seized by the waist and held
back.
The exaggerated attentions of his gardener had often annoyed Mr.
Batchel. He was not allowed even to climb a short ladder without having
to submit to absurd precautions for his safety, and he would have been
much better pleased to have more respect paid to his intelligence, and
less to his person. In the present instance, the precaution seemed so
unnecessary that he turned about angrily to protest, both against the
interference with his movements, and the unseemly force used.
It was at this point that he made a disquieting discovery. He was
standing quite alone. The gardener and Mr. Wardle were both on the
north side of the house, dealing with the only thing they cared
about--the lead pipe. Mr. Batchel made no further attempt to move the
chain; he was, in fact, in some bodily fear, and he returned to his
study by the way he had come, in a disordered condition of mind.
Half an hour later, when the gong sounded for luncheon, he was slowly
making his way into the dining-room, when he encountered his guest
running downstairs from his room, in great spirits. "A trifle over two
hundredweight!" he exclaimed, as he reached the foot of the staircase,
and seemed disappointed that Mr. Batchel did not immediately shake
hands with him upon so fine a result of the morning's work. Mr.
Batchel, needless to say, was occupied with other recollections.
"I suppose it is unnecessary to ask," said he to his guest as he
proceeded to carve a chicken, "whether you believe in ghosts?"
"I do not," said Wardle promptly, "why should I?"
"Why not?" asked Mr. Batchel.
"Because I've had the advantage of a commercial education," was the
reply, "instead of learning dead languages and soaking my mind in
heathen fables."
Mr. Batchel winced at this disrespectful allusion to the University
education of which he was justly proud. He wanted an opinion, however,
and the conversation had to go on.
"Your commercial education," he continued, "allows you, I daresay, to
know what is meant by a hypothetical case."
"Make it one," said Wardle.
"Assuming a ghost, then, would it be capable of exerting force upon a
material body?"
"Whose?" asked Wardle.
"If you insist upon making it a personal matter," replied Mr. Batchel,
"let us say mine."
"Let me have the particulars."
In reply to this, Mr. Batchel related his experience at the well.
Mr. Wardle merely said "Pass the salt, I need it."
Undeterred by the scepticism of his friend, Mr. Batchel pressed the
point, and upon that, Mr. Wardle closed the conversation by observing
that since, by hypothesis, ghosts could clank chains, and ring bells,
he was bound to suppose them capable of doing any silly thing they
chose. "A month in the City, Batchel," he gravely added, "would do you
a world of good."
As soon as the meal was over, Mr. Wardle went back to his gardening,
whilst his host betook himself to occupations more suited to his
tranquil habits. The two did not meet again until dinner; and during
that meal, and after it, the conversation turned wholly upon politics,
Mr. Wardle being congenially occupied until bed-time in demonstrating
that the politics of his host had been obsolete for three-quarters of
a century. His outdoor exercise, followed by an excellent dinner, had
disposed him to retire early; he rose from his chair soon after ten.
"There is one thing," he pleasantly remarked to his host, "that I am
bound to say in favour of a University education; it has given you a
fine taste in victuals." With this compliment, he said "good-night,"
and went up to bed.
Mr. Batchel himself, as the reader knows, kept later hours. There were
few nights upon which he omitted to take his walk round the garden when
the world had grown quiet, even in unfavourable weather. It was far
from favourable upon the present occasion; there was but little moon,
and a light rain was falling. He determined, however, to take at least
one turn round, and calling his terrier Punch from the kitchen, where
he lay in his basket, Mr. Batchel went out, with the dog at his heel.
He carried, as his custom was, a little electric lamp, by whose aid he
liked to peep into birds' nests, and make raids upon slugs and other
pests.
They had hardly set out upon their walk when Punch began to show signs
of uneasiness. Instead of running to and fro, with his nose to the
ground, as he ordinarily did, the terrier remained whining in the rear.
Shortly, they came upon a hedgehog lying coiled up in the path; it
was a find which the dog was wont to regard as a rare piece of luck,
and to assail with delirious enjoyment. Now, for some reason, Punch
refused to notice it, and, when it was illuminated for his especial
benefit, turned his back upon it and looked up, in a dejected attitude,
at his master. The behaviour of the dog was altogether unnatural, and
Mr. Batchel occupied himself, as they passed on, in trying to account
for it, with the animal still whining at his heel. They soon reached
the head of the little path which descended to the Lode, and there Mr.
Batchel found a much harder problem awaiting him, for at the other end
of the path he distinctly saw the outline of a boat.
There had been no boat on the Lode for twenty years. Just so long ago
the drainage of the district had required that the main sewer should
cross the stream at a point some hundred yards below the Vicar's
boundary fence. There, ever since, a great pipe three feet in diameter
had obstructed the passage. It lay just at the level of the water, and
effectually closed it to all traffic. Mr. Batchel knew that no boat
could pass the place, and that none survived in the parts above it. Yet
here was a boat drawn up at the edge of his garden. He looked at it
intently for a minute or so, and had no difficulty in making out the
form of such a boat as was in common use all over the Fen country--a
wide flat-bottomed boat, lying low in the water. The "sprit" used for
punting it along lay projecting over the stern. There was no accounting
for such a boat being there: Mr. Batchel did not understand how it
possibly could be there, and for a while was disposed to doubt whether
it actually was. The great drain-pipe was so perfect a defence against
intrusion of the kind that no boat had ever passed it. The Lode,
when its water was low enough to let a boat go under the pipe, was
not deep enough to float it, or wide enough to contain it. Upon this
occasion the water was high, and the pipe half submerged, forming an
insuperable obstacle. Yet there lay, unmistakeably, a boat, within ten
yards of the place where Mr. Batchel stood trying to account for it.
These ten yards, unfortunately, were impassable. The slope down to the
water's edge had to be warily trodden even in dry weather. It was steep
and treacherous. After rain it afforded no foothold whatever, and to
attempt a descent in the darkness would have been to court disaster.
After examining the boat again, therefore, by the light of his little
lamp, Mr. Batchel proceeded upon his walk, leaving the matter to be
investigated by daylight.
The events of this memorable night, however, were but beginning. As
he turned from the boat his eye was caught by a white streak upon
the ground before him, which extended itself into the darkness and
disappeared. It was Punch, in veritable panic, making for home, across
flower-beds and other places he well knew to be out of bounds. The
whistle he had been trained to obey had no effect upon his flight;
he made a lightning dash for the house. Mr. Batchel could not help
regretting that Wardle was not there to see. His friend held the
coursing powers of Punch in great contempt, and was wont to criticise
the dog in sporting jargon, whose terms lay beyond the limits of Mr.
Batchel's vocabulary, but whose general drift was as obvious as it was
irritating. The present performance, nevertheless, was so exceptional
that it soon began to connect itself in Mr. Batchel's mind with the
unnatural conduct to which we have already alluded. It was somehow
proving to be an uncomfortable night, and as Mr. Batchel felt the rain
increasing to a steady drizzle he decided to abandon his walk and to
return to the house by the way he had come.
He had already passed some little distance beyond the little path which
descended to the Lode. The main path by which he had come was of course
behind him, until he turned about to retrace his steps.
It was at the moment of turning that he had ocular demonstration of the
fact that the boat had brought passengers. Not twenty yards in front
of him, making their way to the water, were two men carrying some kind
of burden. They had reached an open space in the path, and their forms
were quite distinct: they were unusually tall men; one of them was
gigantic. Mr. Batchel had little doubt of their being garden thieves.
Burglars, if there had been anything in the house to attract them,
could have found much easier ways of removing it.
No man, even if deficient in physical courage, can see his property
carried away before his eyes and make no effort to detain it. Mr.
Batchel was annoyed at the desertion of his terrier, who might at least
have embarrassed the thieves' retreat; meanwhile he called loudly upon
the men to stand, and turned upon them the feeble light of his lamp. In
so doing he threw a new light not only upon the trespassers, but upon
the whole transaction. No response was made to his challenge, but the
men turned away their faces as if to avoid recognition, and Mr. Batchel
saw that the nearest of them, a burly, square-headed man in a cassock,
was wearing the tonsure. He described it as looking, in the dim, steely
light of the lamp, like a crown-piece on a door-mat. Both the men, when
they found themselves intercepted, hastened to deposit their burden
upon the ground, and made for the boat. The burden fell upon the ground
with a thud, but the bearers made no sound. They skimmed down to the
Lode without seeming to tread, entered the boat in perfect silence, and
shoved it off without sound or splash. It has already been explained
that Mr. Batchel was unable to descend to the water's edge. He ran,
however, to a point of the garden which the boat must inevitably pass,
and reached it just in time. The boat was moving swiftly away, and
still in perfect silence. The beams of the pocket-lamp just sufficed to
reach it, and afforded a parting glimpse of the tonsured giant as he
gave a long shove with the sprit, and carried the boat out of sight. It
shot towards the drain-pipe, then not forty yards ahead, but the men
were travelling as men who knew their way to be clear.
It was by this time evident, of course, that these were no
garden-thieves. The aspect of the men, and the manner of their
disappearance, had given a new complexion to the adventure. Mr.
Batchel's heart was in his mouth, but his mind was back in the 16th
century; and having stood still for some minutes in order to regain his
composure, he returned to the path, with a view of finding out what the
men had left behind.
The burden lay in the middle of the path, and the lamp was once more
brought into requisition. It revealed a wooden box, covered in most
parts with moss, and all glistening with moisture. The wood was so far
decayed that Mr. Batchel had hopes of forcing open the box with his
hands; so wet and slimy was it, however, that he could obtain no hold,
and he hastened to the house to procure some kind of tool. Near to the
cupboard in which such things were kept was the sleeping-basket of the
dog, who was closely curled inside it, and shivering violently. His
master made an attempt to take him back into the garden; it would be
useful, he thought, to have warning in case the boat should return. The
prospect of being surprised by these large, noiseless men was not one
to be regarded with comfort. Punch, however, who was usually so eager
for an excursion, was now in such distress at being summoned that his
master felt it cruel to persist. Having found a chisel, therefore, he
returned to the garden alone. The box lay undisturbed where he had left
it, and in two minutes was standing open.