THE IRON TRAPDOOR
The Hayfork Minister, who had laboured with equal determination to save
the crop of a true-blue Presbyterian and to make me a good Churchman,
evidently knew his way about the precincts of the Grange. He stepped
through a gap in the hedge, jumped a half-dry ditch, and wound his way
through the scattering brambles and underbrush as if he had been in his
own garden plot.
No coward, the Hayfork! It took me all my time to keep up with him,
and I am a good jumper, too--nearly as good as Elsie.
We went down the side of the Moat Backwater. It is a curious place.
It is not, you understand, the Brom Water itself. That comes down from
the hills and wimples away across the plain, full of good fish, both
trout and salmon, according to their season. But the Moat Backwater
connects the pond or little loch which lies in front of the windows of
the Grange with the Brom. Whether the connection is absolutely
natural, or whether it was originally made by the hand of man, I cannot
tell. Neither, so far as I know, can anybody else. But in some places
it certainly looks like the latter.
At any rate, whenever the Brom is in flood, it "backs up," as it were,
into the Backwater, and so runs into the pond. It fills the Moat
itself like a tide, and I believe on a few occasions it has even been
known to overflow the greensward where the clumps of lilies are, right
up to the steps of the front door!
There is, of course, always some water in the Lane, which trenches the
meadows and runs canalwise through the fringing woods. But at ordinary
times the water in the Lane, as much of it as there is, finds its way
toward the Brom, owing to the feeding of the Grange Pond by local
streamlets. But in times of rain the current runs the other way. Then
the Backwater runs brown and turgid into the pond till the lilies tug
at their green anchor chains and the Moat itself is lipping full of
black, peaty water from the hills.
To-day as we plunged into the shadow of the woods along the side of the
Backwater, it held no more water than a burn in the summer
heats--little and still clear, the minnows and troutlets balancing and
darting, joggling each other rudely from beneath favourite stones, or
shouldering into well-situated holes in the bank, like people
scrambling for seats at a play. Then a few yards farther on would come
a deep brown pool with a curious greenish opal sheen lying like a scum
on the surface, for all the world like two-coloured silk. This was the
reflection of the leaves above. Very dense they were, so that the
light could hardly filter through between. Along the burnside it was
generally lighter. But the trees clustered deep and thick about the
pools, as I suppose they do all the world over, whenever they get the
chance.
"The water is lower than I have ever seen it!" I said, as it might be,
just for something to say. But Mr. Ablethorpe did not answer a word.
I could see him looking eagerly about him, evidently searching for
something he had seen before, but for the moment could not find again.
I could not for the life of me imagine what it could be, nor yet why he
had been so keen to have me with him. It was not that he was afraid.
That was plain enough. For he had been this way before, and that quite
recently. I knew by his spying this way and that for landmarks. And I
knew quite certain that it was not just that I might give him a hand
with old Caleb Fergusson's harvest that he had asked me off from my
home work, or home play, whichever it might be.
All at once he stopped, sat down on a log, pulled out his knife and
began to whittle at a branch of oak. Whatever it was he was looking
for, he had either found it, or decided to give up the search.
We were sitting on a fallen tree trunk, close to the edge of the
Backwater, and the pool beneath us was almost dry. The Lane ran out of
sight, getting smaller and smaller in what I have heard called
"perspective"--that is, straight as if ruled on paper with a straight
edge.
Then the Hayfork Minister asked me if I saw anything particular about
the water. I told him what I have just written, but I could not for
the life of me remember the word "perspective." He understood all
right, though.
"Good," he said, "and does that suggest nothing else to the bold and
inquiring mind of my friend Joseph?"
After looking awhile I answered that it seemed to me as if somebody had
cut the canal with spades just as Tim O'Hara and Mike Whelan did the
ditching and draining on my father's forage parks the winter before
last.
"Right again, Joe!" he said, pleasedlike, and rumpled up my hair in a
way I don't let anybody do--except Elsie, who does as she likes,
whether I like it or no. I pulled away my head angrily. But the
Hayfork Minister never minded.
"I can't tell you whether this has been dug out with a spade or not,"
he said, putting a point on the oaken cudgel with his big "gully" knife
(think of a minister with a knife like that!), "but this I can tell
you, that the hand of man has been here or hereabouts!"
And with that he leaned over the edge right among the weeds and began
scraping away at the bank. It was coated over pretty regularly with a
greyish mud which had come down with the last emptying of the pond.
This was done periodically, with the avowed purpose of clearing out the
Moat and Backwater. Mr. Ball saw to it, under the personal
superintendence of Mr. Stennis. And all that day the mad people at the
Grange were kept within doors, and the policies were strictly guarded.
For the scour of the water escaping down the channel brought with it
multitudes of fish--not very large, it is true, but sufficient to be a
temptation to every boy within miles. Such, however, was the terror
inspired by the inhabitants of Deep Moat Grange, and especially by Daft
Jeremy, that those who were bold enough to come at all, rather braved
the dangers of the Duke's keepers at the infall of the Backwater into
the Brom, than dared to set a foot within those woodland shadows where
they knew not what terrors might lurk.
The Hayfork Minister went on knocking off big flakes of dried mud with
the point of his stick. Then, whistling softly, he started to polish
something with vigour. At first I could not in the least see what he
was after, but soon a good big square of reddish metal was laid bare.
It was not upright in the bank, but leaned a little back, was very deep
set, and I could see that it had been intended to slide in grooves. At
the time I had no idea as to why it had been put there. But now I know
that it must have been constructed for purposes of irrigation.
There was, in fact, an old vegetable garden and orchard, still partly
enclosed with crumbling walls, not two hundred yards off through the
woods. And there is little doubt that it had been the intention of
some former travelled master of the Grange to cultivate his table
vegetables and fruits on the system of Southern Europe.
All, however, was now desolate.
Yet the iron plate in the bank, though mud-covered and rusty, had not
stuck altogether. Indeed, looking at it closely, it was not difficult
to see that it had recently been used. With the Hayfork Minister at
one end of the oak branch, and myself at the other, we soon made it
budge with a smothered heave-ho! and revealed a regularly bricked
tunnel leading apparently into the bowels of the earth.
"That is where you are to go, my son!" said Mr. Ablethorpe.
"Me!"
Mr. Ablethorpe nodded, and scraping away some leaves behind the fallen
tree on which we had been sitting together, he disinterred a coil of
stout cord, not thick, but very strong, with a red thread running
through it. "This has served," he said, "for heavier weights in more
dangerous places!"
And without more ado he proceeded to knot it about my waist, as if he
had been accustomed to nothing else all his life. But I objected.
Indeed, I had reason. For suppose Mad Jeremy, or Aphra Orrin, or Mr.
Stennis himself were to come while I was up there--what then?
"You leave that to me, Joe," said the Hayfork Minister; "there is not
one of them that would dare to touch me--no, nor you--while you are in
my company."
This was good enough to hear, and, in its way, comforting. But,
somehow, at such a time the mind craves for proofs more absolute. Or
to be somewhere else. Particularly the latter.
I think Mr. Ablethorpe saw something of my dismay on my face, for
immediately he stopped what he was doing, put his hand on my shoulder,
and said, "Joe, would I send you into any danger I would not be ready
to share myself?"
"No, I believe not, sir!" said I. For though he worried me like fun
about being the right sort of Churchman, he was a rare good sort
himself, man and Churchman, too. At least I know about the first, and
as for the Churchman, I am willing to take that on trust.
"Well, now," said he, "that's settled. In you go!"
"But what am I to do when I get in there?" I asked. For I had thought
that he was going to give me a proper explanation of everything--the
whys and the wherefores, and all about it.
"You are to crawl, Joe," he said, "because you can get in and I cannot,
Joseph! That's the worst of going in for athletics at school, Joe--it
makes you grow such a whopping size afterwards when you stop them. So
you are to crawl up there for me, and as soon as you find anything, you
are to give the rope a tug, and I will pull you out! For it isn't so
easy as it looks to crawl backward down a hole of that size."
"But suppose," I faltered, my imagination rampant, and my voice failing
me at the same moment, "suppose--that I should come on--on poor Harry
Foster--with--with his throat cut--oh, what should I do?"
"You won't--more's the pity," he answered, quite coolly. "If Harry had
been in there, and you and I sitting here, we should have known it long
ere this. No such luck! Still, what you may _find_, is quite worth
the trial. We shall at least learn something!"
Now I don't think that, since the visit Elsie and I paid to Deep Moat
Grange, I was quite so eager to "learn something" as I had been. But
it was no use being a coward with the Hayfork Minister.
"In you go, Joe," he said, lowering me by the rope to the black mouth
of the passage, "in with you, eel! And if you find anything portable,
gave a tug, and if you want to come out _very_ suddenly, give two tugs."
I was halfway in as he said these words, and I instantly gave two tugs,
but he only said, "Now, no monkey tricks, Joe. This is serious. Up
with you. Remember I am here!"
I was not at all likely to forget it. But I had much rather he had
been head foremost up that narrow tunnel, and I out in the green aisles
of the forest waiting for him with a rope in my hands.