by Forrest Reid
He gazed up at the bell, hanging motionless and silent beneath the dark rafters framing the roof; and while he did so, slowly it began to take life—the life of a great sleeping, dreaming bat. Yet it was iron—an iron bell—
Every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
Tom felt a sudden desire to awaken just one of those groans, but he remembered his promise to Mrs. Fallon, so instead began to repeat the poem, at first into himself, but presently in a chant that grew louder and louder.
And the people—ah, the people—
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone. . . .
They are neither man nor woman—
They are neither brute nor human—
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells!
And he dances and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells—
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells—
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells—
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells—
Bells, bells, bells—
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
The potent magic of that Runic Rhyme had by this time created a kind of intoxication through which he distinctly saw a queer little ancient face surmounted by a pointed cap peeping down at him. It was old, old, old; and it peeped, peeped, peeped—peeping down. It was king of all the people; they that dwelt up in the steeple—— But at night?
Tom ceased; suddenly silent at the interruption of another voice.
“Come down, Master Tom. Whatever are you doing up there?”
“Nothing,” he shouted in reply. “Just looking.”
“Well, it’s a queer kind of looking you can hear all over the church. Come along now: I’ve finished, and I want to lock up.”
Mrs. Fallon’s tones, though primarily expostulatory, were also distinctly curious; and when he joined her at the foot of the staircase she inspected him with a hint of suspicion in her eye. “You’ve been up there these twenty minutes or more,” she told him; “and there’s not a thing to be seen unless it would be a few bats, and you don’t see them except when they’re flying out at night.”
“There weren’t any bats,” Tom admitted. “I mean, I didn’t notice any. But it’s so dark under the roof there might be hundreds.”
“What were you doing then?” Mrs. Fallon persisted. “Not writing your name, I hope—which is what I’ve known to be done. . . . Names and dates—Roberts and Sarahs—with maybe a heart drew round them, or some such foolery; as if a church was a fitting place for the like of that.”
“Still, people get married in church,” Tom reminded her. “Anyhow, I didn’t write anything. I was just looking at the bell and—thinking.”
He gathered up his books, which he had left in one of the pews, and followed by Mrs. Fallon, walked on down the aisle. In the porch he managed to give her yet another surprise, though all he said was, “Could I have the keys, Mrs. Fallon? I mean, would you lend them to me? I’ll bring them back to you first thing to-morrow.”
Mrs. Fallon gasped—or pretended to. “Well——!” Then she recovered. “And what might you be wanting with the keys, if I may ask?”
“I’d like to come back here by myself. I’ll promise not to touch anything or do any harm, and I’ll leave them in with you to-morrow morning.”
Mrs. Fallon had already thrust the three keys—one large and two smaller—into a capacious pocket, as if she feared he might grab them and run. “Keys!” she said severely. “What would Mr. Sabine think? It’s him you’d better be asking for the keys if you want them. Run along home now, like a good boy, and don’t be talking your nonsense.”
CHAPTER FOUR
MRS. FALLON no doubt spoke metaphorically; nevertheless, for a good part of the way, Tom obeyed her literally, having suddenly remembered that Mother had specially asked him not to be late, as Daddy would be coming home for lunch. He strongly suspected that he was late, and when, hot and breathless, he burst into the dining-room, suspicion became certainty. He was later even than he had feared. “How often——” But at sight of his flushed face, shining eyes, and the four crimson volumes he dumped down triumphantly on the table between her and Daddy, Mother checked the well-known formula of rebuke at word two. “It’s my prize,” Tom said, and she looked nearly as pleased as he did himself.
“What—four books!” she cried, “Well, I never!”
“It’s really only one book,” he explained excitedly—“in four series. She had a whole lot of books for me to choose from—Tom Brown’s Schooldays, King Solomon’s Mines—oh, heaps and heaps!”
Mother laughed. “So you chose this I If ever there was a little ‘curiosity of natural history’, I fancy I could name him without much difficulty. . . . No, dear,” she hastily added, “I don’t mean that, and I’m sure they’re most interesting.” She turned to the inscription in the first volume and read it aloud, while Daddy took possession of the second.
“It’s a prize,” Tom whispered to Mary, who had come in, bringing his lunch, which she set before him with a cautionary, “Mind the plate, Master Tom, it’d burn you.”
Automatically he advanced an experimental finger, and then began to eat—a somewhat complicated performance, since while doing so he had at the same time to keep a watchful eye on Daddy and Mother, so as not to miss any impression the prize might be producing upon them. Mother’s impressions, it is true, were conveyed audibly, by little exclamations and occasional comments and citations, but Daddy required closer observation because he remained silent.
“Who was Frank Buckland?” Mother presently asked. “Or should I say who is he?”
“He was a naturalist,” Daddy replied.
“Yes, I gathered that much myself; but I thought you might know a little more.”
“So I do,” Daddy answered. “He was Government Inspector of Fisheries, and a popular writer—a kind of journalist-naturalist. It was he who started Land and Water, a weekly paper of the same type as The Field.”
“Miss Sabine says he was like Darwin,” Tom put in, but Daddy received this with a non-committal “Hm-m . . . ! Darwin was a scientist of the same school as Huxley, and Frank Buckland certainly wasn’t that. He was the old-fashioned type of field-naturalist, much more like White of Selborne. . . . But he was a well-known figure in his day, friends with all the keepers in the Zoo, who sometimes sent him smaller animals when they were sick, to be nursed back to health. For that matter, what with monkeys and other pets, his own house must have been very like a zoo in miniature.”
“Wasn’t he married?” Mother asked, which seemed to Tom an irrelevant question.
“Your mother is thinking of the zoo, Tom. . . . I don’t re-member whether he was married or not, but if he was, we’ll hope the lady shared his tastes, for I’ve an idea there was an aquarium too.”
“I’m going to keep an aquarium,” Tom announced, and Mother sighed.
“Yes, I thought that would be the next thing. If you do, you’ll keep it either in the garden or the yard. All those creatures sooner or later develop wings, or at any rate become amphibious, and I’m not going to have a lot of nasty insects flying and crawling all over the house.”
“Only the beetles get wings,” Tom assured her, “and I’m n
ot going to keep beetles; because Max Sabine did, and they killed his sprickleys and ate bits out of them.”
“Horrid!” Mother shuddered. “I can’t think why boys invariably want to do unpleasant things.”
“But it was the beetles,” Tom expostulated; and the remark about boys somehow switched his thoughts back to Mrs. Fallon and the stained-glass window. “Who was Ralph Seaford?” he asked.
Mother gazed at him in unfeigned astonishment “What on earth put Ralph Seaford into your head?
Daddy, too, looked perplexed; so he had to tell them of his visit to the church, and even then got no satisfactory answer. “Ralph Seaford was just a little boy,” Mother said. “The Seaford grave is in the churchyard: you must have seen it often.”
“Yes, but what happened to his father and mother? Why didn’t they put up the window?”
“His father and mother were dead. They were killed in a climbing accident—out in Switzerland. The rope broke, or something. . . . I’m not quite sure what happened.”
“I can’t say I remember any question of a rope breaking,” Daddy put in. “It was never really known what happened. They had done the same climb several times with a guide, and it was not considered a particularly dangerous one. . . . This time they did it alone, and it was supposed that one of them may have slipped, and the other fallen in attempting a rescue. Something of the kind at any rate. . . . The boy, Ralph, was only a year or two old at the time, so his grandparents took him to live with them at Tramore.”
“At Granny’s house?” Tom exclaimed in surprise. “Did you know them?”
Daddy shook his head. “The old people were still living when we first came here, but they both died within that year: Doctor Macrory says they never got over the loss of their grandson. . . .
“After that,” Daddy went on reminiscently, “some people called Dickson came to Tramore, but only for six months or so; and the house then stood vacant till Granny took it.”
“Against everybody’s advice,” Mother supplemented.
“Why?” Tom asked; for he liked both the house and the grounds round it; and now the knowledge that it had once belonged to the Seafords lent it an additional interest.
“For one reason, because it’s far too big for her,” Mother replied. “Certainly nothing would induce me to live in a house with a lot of locked-up empty rooms—and servants don’t like it either.”
But Daddy thought Granny was right. “It’s not really such a big house,” he said, “and she pays remarkably little for it: the garden alone is worth the rent.”
Mother disagreed. “It doesn’t come to so little by the time you’ve paid the wages of two maids and a man Especially if you’re a person like Granny, who gives them all far too much.”
Daddy laughed. “Possibly. . . . But if it pleases her, that surely is the main thing. Can you imagine her living happily in a poky little villa with no garden to speak of, and one maid to look after everything?”
“I can imagine her living perfectly happily with us,” Mother said, “and it’s what I’ve always wanted her to do.”
Daddy shrugged his shoulders. “I think it’s much wiser to let people decide these matters for themselves. They’re naturally the best judges of what suits them.”
“Not always; and it’s really only because she hates the idea of parting with any of her possessions. Of course, there wouldn’t be room for all her furniture and china and things here——”
“There certainly wouldn’t.”
“But at least she’d have company. . . . Which reminds me,” she went on, turning to Tom, “that she wants you to spend a few days with her, now you’ve got your holidays.”
At this sudden and unexpected development, Tom’s face grew rather glum. “Days!” he echoed without enthusiasm. He had already made several plans which could only be carried out at home—including this brand-new plan of an aquarium.
“I thought you were so fond of Granny!” Mother reproached him.
“But there’s nothing to do there,” he responded dolefully “Granny never does anything, and there’s nobody else. . . . Besides,” he added, “I can’t very well leave the dogs.”
It was a perfectly genuine excuse, and he couldn’t see why Mother should look displeased, yet she did. “Of course the dogs are a great deal more important than Granny,” she said; and since this mild sarcasm elicited no denial; “Surely you can go for a week-end at least! How would you like to be left all alone by yourself from morning till night!”
“I’d like it all right,” was Tom’s artless rejoinder, which, though it made Mother look graver still, drew a characteristic chuckle from Daddy.
A moment’s reflection, however, suggested that a week-end meant primarily Sunday, and after all, it didn’t much matter where you were on Sundays, so he changed his mind and asked, “When?”
Mother’s face cleared. She made a rapid calculation. “Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. You could go on Friday or Saturday.”
Here Daddy intervened. “He can’t go on Friday. I called to see Mr. Pemberton this morning, and he wants him to sit for an examination on Friday.”
“An examination!” Mother cried. “When he’s not even at school yet!”
“This is for the boys who will be going after the summer. It gives him some idea of how much they know and in what form to put them. . . . In the present case, the very highest, I should think, judging from those four splendid volumes now before us!”
Glancing at Mother, Tom saw that though Daddy had spoken jestingly some such idea had crossed her own mind, therefore he hastened to nip any hopes she might be entertaining in the bud. “There’ll be far older boys than me there,” he told her; but instead of corroborating this, Daddy questioned it. “Most of them will be younger,” he declared. “Some only eight or nine, and you’re eleven. Anyhow, I should think you’d be graded according to your ages.”
Tom at once switched on to another track. “Does it matter if I don’t do well?” he asked; and was relieved when Daddy answered, “Not in the least,” before Mother had quite time to get out, “Of course it matters.” Unfortunately she also said: “I’m sure you will do well.”
He sighed, for that was just the difficulty. And Miss Sabine would be surer still. He looked up to find Mother’s eyes fixed upon him with an odd expression, half amused, and to that extent reassuring. Daddy had ceased to be interested and had taken a sheaf of papers from his pocket.
“Well, we needn’t discuss what is still in the future,” Mother concluded, rising from the table. “And don’t look as if all the cares of the world were on your shoulders: Daddy has just told you it doesn’t matter how you do. I don’t quite know why—but there it is.” She passed behind him, laughed, and stooping down, kissed him on the top of his head.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE cares of the world, however, slipped from him like Christian’s Burden, as he left Daddy to his papers and went out into the garden. The more immediate care was to find a suitable place for an aquarium. As for the aquarium itself, there was an old bath up in the loft which he thought might do, so he went round to the yard and climbed the ladder to have a look at it. He knew, of course, that to be really satisfactory an aquarium ought to be made of glass. He had seen a picture of one, and it stood on a kind of trestle, and was square, with glass sides through which you could see all that was going on within. Max Sabine had used a goldfish-bowl, but that would be much too small for what he wanted. Anyhow, he hadn’t got one, so the bath would have to do.
He dragged it out now from its corner for inspection, and removed a festoon of cobwebs. The enamel inside was cracked, and the outside was coated with rust, but that didn’t matter so long as it didn’t leak, and he could see no holes when with some difficulty he tilted it up against the light. He had already evolved a plan which seemed quite practicable. He would dig a trench beside the shrubbery, just deep enough to contain the bath, and in this way turn it into a little pond, with the upper rim of the bath flush with the soil,
or perhaps an inch or two above it. . . . Only he wished it was deeper. Then it would be exactly like a natural pool, with the grass growing round it.
All this would require to be done very neatly and accurately, the sods cut out and the edges trimmed with a sharp spade. The best way would be to place the bath upside down on the grass, and get somebody to sit on it to keep it from moving while he cut round it: after that the rest should be easy.
Unfortunately, he would have to ask William to help him to get it down. And William would grumble, being made that way. But if he let him grumble for a while, and didn’t answer back, in the end he might do what was wanted. Tom had reached this point when a sudden doubt arose in his mind. It had nothing to do with the construction of the aquarium; that was all settled; but when it was made, wouldn’t the dogs use it? They had got into the habit of taking it for granted that whatever he did was done for them, and Barker, especially, could never resist water in any shape or form. In imagination, Tom could see him now, slopping about in the middle of the aquarium, perhaps lying down in it, and at any rate scaring all its legitimate inhabitants to death. Stray cats, too, from Denny’s farm, where there were swarms of them, might fish in it at night. The glen was their usual hunting-ground, but he was sure they visited the garden as well; in fact he had often heard them; and fish were to cats what water was to Barker. . . .
He wished he knew some other boy who was interested in aquariums and would help him. As it was, there was only Max Sabine, his enemy, whom he disliked more than ever after what. Althea had told him, though he had always known he was slimy and treacherous. If only James-Arthur wasn’t kept so busy at the farm he would have been the very person. . . .