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The New Forest Spy, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 10. Alarming Sounds |
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_ CHAPTER TEN. ALARMING SOUNDS The thoughts of Godfrey Boyne occupied so much position in Waller's brain that he at once concluded something must be wrong with him, and rushing upstairs two at a time, and making sure that he was not followed, he continued the rest of his way in the darkness as silently as he could, pausing to listen at the top of the attic stairs, and then cautiously creeping to and trying the door of his den. All was perfectly still there, and he found the door fastened from within. "False alarm," he said to himself; and he crept down again to make his way to the kitchen, from which, as he drew nearer, there came faint hysterical cries and a most unpleasant smell of burning. Hurrying into the kitchen, Waller found that the cries came from Bella, who was lying upon her back upon the shred hearthrug in front of the kitchen fire, while Martha was trying to bring her fellow-servant round from a fainting fit, and causing the horrible stench by burning the dried wing of a goose close to the girl's nostrils and making her sneeze violently. "Oh dear! Oh dear!" cried Bella, uttering a sob, and then giving vent to a tremendous sneeze. "Bless the King!" said Martha Gusset quietly. "Sneeze again, dear; it'll do you no end of good." The advice came rather late, for the girl's face was already wrinkling up for another nervous convulsion that seemed stronger than the last. "Bless the King!" said the cook again, "There, there, dear: you will be better soon." "What's the matter, Martha?" said Waller anxiously, and with a horrible dread upon him that all had been found out. "She's had a fright, my dear. I don't quite know yet what it all means. She thinks she's seen something, but I daresay it's only one of them owls." "Oh, no, no, no, no!" sobbed Bella, "it was something dreadful-- something dreadful!" "Well, well, then, my dear, tell us what it is," said Martha, in her most motherly way, "and it will do you good." "Oh, it was dreadful!" moaned Bella. "I remembered that I had forgotten to shut the window in master's chamber, which I opened this afternoon to let the sun in and get the room aired, and without stopping to fetch a light I went up in the dark, and then--and then--Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!" "Take another sniff of the feathers, my dear, and have a good sneeze, and that will relieve you." "Oh, do a-done, cook, and throw the nasty thing behind the fire. I was just coming out again into the gallery, when I heard something horrid." "Heard?" cried Waller excitedly. "Then you didn't see it?" "No, Master Waller. I only heard it walking. Somewhere up by your room--I mean your den, as you call it. And then all in the dark there come _bumpity bump_ all down the stairs, and I shruck and shruck again, and ran for my life." "My!" said cook. "Was it as bad as that? But what was it, my dear?" "Oh, I don't know, cook. Something dreadfully horrid, and it was dragging a dead body all down the stairs, and knocking the back of the head hard on every step." "Fancy!" said Martha, with an emphatic sniff. "It's all stuff, and nonsense. No such thing could have happened. It was all because you went up in the dark." From feeling startled, and in dread of his secret being known, a rapid change came over Waller; half-suspecting what must have occurred, and finding it covered by the girl's superstitious notions, added to which there were the feathers, the sneezes, and the cook's blessings upon his Majesty King George the Third, the boy's risible faculties were so bestirred that he burst into a roar of laughter. The effect was almost magical. Bella, who had been lying stretched out upon her back, tapping the floor with her heels occasionally in her paroxysms, suddenly started bolt upright, to exclaim in an indignant voice-- "Yes, it's all very fine for you to laugh, Master Waller!" "Well, who wouldn't laugh at such nonsense?" said the boy. "But it isn't nonsense, nor it isn't stuff, cook. You may laugh, sir, but there's something walks up and down there in the dead of the night, and I heard it only last night, too, and told cook." Martha Gusset slowly bent her head by way of acquiescence, and made as if to throw the goose-wing, with which she had been fanning herself, behind the fire, but altered her mind, and put it on the chimneypiece with the bright brass candlesticks. "Up and down where?" asked Waller. "Oh, I don't know, sir; but it was somewhere in the roof." "Bah!" cried Waller, contemptuously. "And pray what did cook say?" he went on, as he gave a glance at the comfortable-looking dame. "Said she was a silly goose, my dear," cried the lady of the kitchen, with something like a snort, "and that she mustn't eat so much for supper. I telled her, Master Waller, that she might go up and down the stairs and passages in the dead of the night for a hundred years, and she'd never see anything uglier than herself." "Ah, you wait," said Bella. "Did you hear or see anything, cook?" said Waller tentatively. "I always go to bed to sleep, my dear." "But I mean this evening, just now?" "No, my dear. I had had my tea, and was having a comfortable nap over the fire." "Why, Bella," said Waller, laughing, "you must have heard one of those big bouncing rats that make their nests in the ivy, and come in through the windows in the night." "Ah, you may sneer at me, Master Waller, but I wouldn't sleep up there alone of a night for crowns of gold. It was just as I said. It was just like one of those horrid things you see in the old books in master's library, dragging dead bodies down the stairs." "Rat dragging a dead sparrow," said Waller, and he hurried out of the kitchen to make his way out into the hall, where, consequent upon her fright, Bella had not lit the lamp, and then cautiously upstairs to the top attic, where he softly tried the door. He found it still fastened, and uttered a low signal agreed upon between the boys. This was responded to by the click of the lock, and as Waller entered his fugitive guest went on tiptoe back to the old chair on which he passed so much of his time, and there was just faint light enough coming through the window to show that he was softly rubbing his back. "What's the matter?" said Waller. "Fell down and hurt myself--all down those stairs. Made a big lump on my head." "Why, what were you doing?" "Oh, I waited till it was growing dark, and then I felt that I must get out of this room, if only for a few moments, just to breathe the air in that big passage. But the steps were so horribly polished with wax that I went down from top to bottom." "Oh!" said Waller. "Then I suppose you don't know that you frightened one of our maids." "Did I? I think I did hear somebody shriek." "You did; and if you do things like that again, all will be found out. I shall get into terrible trouble, and you will be caught, and you know what that means." "Yes," said Godfrey sadly; "I know what that means." "Well, then, I don't mean to trust you any more," said Waller, "and I shall keep that door locked until I feel it's safe. As soon as I can get you out, we will go off into the woods. I only hope our maid won't talk about it, but I am afraid she will." There was cause for Waller's fear, for the very next day Bella told the gardener all about her alarm, and that night when he went down to the village shop, Joe Hanson made a small audience of the village people open their eyes widely, stare, and feel, as they told one another, a curious creepy sensation right down their backs. One of the gardener's audience was Tony Gusset, a man who did not work much at shoe-making or mending, but when he did he thought a great deal, and after this occasion he mused much over what Bella had heard. Then he put that and that together, and thought of a certain reward of a hundred pounds for the taking, dead or alive, of any one of the French spies who had sought refuge in the forest; and that reward haunted the village constable and kept him awake all night. The next day, too, Bella's, fright was food for reflection, and he mixed up with it the appearance of certain soldiers who had been billeted in the next village. Tony Gusset thought very slowly, and he reasoned a good deal as well, and it resulted in his asking himself this question: If a man knew where the spies were and showed them to the soldiers, how much would he get, and how much would the soldiers want for their share? _ |
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