Never had I longed so eagerly to walk, as I did that evening when all three cousins ran out of the room in pursuit of their missing brother. I had not really been anxious before, for Harold, although only nine years old, was well able to take care of himself, and I had only regretted that he would probably get into trouble again with father for disobedience. It never entered my head that he could possibly be hidden in the house, far less that he should be in the oak chest, which for all I knew was locked up.
The housemaid coming in just then, I begged her to carry me up to the tower-room, putting aside for the moment the fear I had always had, before my cousins came, of trusting myself to any one but father.
When we reached our den the children were standing by the chest, which was open, and was empty.
"He has been here," said Rupert; "see how the things are pressed down."
"I don't believe he could get in," said I; "it isn't long enough."
But my doubts were silenced by Kathleen stooping and lifting from one corner a handkerchief stained with blood, which was still wet.
"This is Harold's!" she cried. "Whatever has happened to him!"
"His nose has been bleeding," said Jack, promptly; "you know it often does. It would be enough to make a mummy's nose bleed to be shut up in that old chest. I wish I had never told him what a splendid place it would be to hide in. It seems I'm always to be at the bottom of the mischief. We shouldn't have gone in that boat if I had not suggested fishing, and Edric would still have had five fingers on each hand if I hadn't fired the gun. Now poor old Harold will get into a scrape for hiding so long, just because I went and showed him how the spring of the chest worked, after I had ferreted it out myself. Halloa, what are you about, Rupert? Don't kill me; I didn't mean any harm."
Rupert had suddenly sprung at Jack, and seizing him by the arm almost screamed out—
"Spring, did you say? Then it can't be opened from the inside."
In another moment Rupert had flung out the few odds and ends of old clothing which were in the bottom of the chest, and sprang into it; as he did so, his heels made a strange, hollow sound, which caught my attention. He was rather tall for his age, and had to double himself up in a way that would have delighted the heart of his gymnasium master before he could say—
"Now shut it down, quick, and I'll see if I can open it; but mind you undo the spring directly I give three knocks."
Of course, he could do nothing; the box could only be opened from the outside by pressing the springs. We were glad enough to reply, to his signal, and release the prisoner. Then we all stood with puzzled faces looking at the open chest.
"What have you been up to?" said a cheery voice, and never were we more relieved to see my mother. She listened gravely and quietly to our account.
"If he has really been in that box, and the handkerchief certainly seems to prove it, then some one must have got him out. Perhaps one of the servants did. Let us go and inquire. You had better all come downstairs; you look as white as the miller. There's nothing much to be frightened at, after all. If Harold were able to get out of the chest, he certainly was not smothered. As to his nose bleeding, you know that won't hurt him. Perhaps he is asleep in bed; have you looked?"
"We've ransacked every room in the house, and the servants have not seen him since six o'clock."
Ten o'clock came, and with his usual punctuality father sounded the gong for prayers. He insisted on doing it with the outer doors wide open, so that if Harold were within earshot, he would be reminded that it was bedtime. I had never been up to evening prayers before; and as I lay with my hands clasped, I looked out for a moment to the calm summer sky. There was a glorious moon, which made a path of silver among the rhododendron bushes. It all looked very beautiful, and my heart joined with delight in the words of thanksgiving which father was speaking. Then he went on to pray that we might all be guarded through the night; I thought of Harold, and said, Amen. I had said my prayers night and morning ever since I was old enough to know Who it was to whom I owed everything, but I am sure I had never really prayed before. A change came over me that evening; God seemed nearer to me, I seemed nearer to Him, and I realised fully for the first time that He was my loving Father and King.
My eyes were closed for a moment in earnest, silent prayer; when I opened them again—could it possibly be fancy?—I thought I saw a figure going swiftly down the rhododendron path.
"The ghost!" I cried, not waiting till the family were off their knees; "there's Jack's ghost again!"
Father ran out of the window; but, of course, as he had not seen the mysterious visitor when he came before, he did not know which way he went, and turned to the left. That gave the man a start; and although I called out to father which way to go, he did not succeed in finding any one.
We all waited in intense excitement till father came back; and then the finishing touch to our evening was given by our young coachman coming in with a broad grin on his face, without even waiting to knock at the door.
"If you please, mum, Master Harold's sitting on my bed. I think he's summat light-headed, for he keeps on asking how he got there, and declares that he was in the oak chest and couldn't get out. Do you mind coming to see him, mum?"
Robert had been out all the evening with my parents, and had only had time to attend to the horse and put the carriage away when the gong sounded for prayers, so he had not been in his room, which was above the coach-house, since he dressed at four o'clock. Rupert and Kathleen did a dance of delight round the table; while Jack, who was still attired in his dressing-gown, had to content himself with playing the castanets with his fingers and whistling.
"What a funny go," he cried, when his brother and sister had dropped breathless into the one big armchair. "Listen! What do you say to my ghost being the one who rescued him? If so, he must have left Robert's room when you saw him, Edric. Oh dear, what a thing it is to feel like a bottle of ginger beer, and yet have to behave as if you were as flat as ditch water, owing to your stupid foot." Then, with his usual sensitiveness, Jack felt that he had said something which might hurt me, and hastened to mend it.
"That's my own fault, isn't it, Edric? And that's just why it's harder to bear. Virtue is its own reward, they say, and so is wickedness. Here he comes! 'I've waited long for you, my man; Oh, welcome safe to land,'" he sang, gently, as Harold came in, holding mother's hand and looking rather bewildered.
"Now, young man," said father, "give an account of yourself. What do you mean by disobeying me and going out of the house when you promised not, and harrowing the hearts of your brothers and sister and all your relations?"
"Please, uncle, I didn't go out of the house," said Harold, earnestly.
Chapter IX tailpiece
Chapter X headpiece
"Curiouser and curiouser," quoted Jack, from Alice in Wonderland; but we were all too astonished to laugh at his droll face. "I specs he walked in his sleep."
Harold looked angrily at his elder brother. "I promised I would not go out of the house, and I didn't."
"Coach-house doesn't count, I suppose," remarked Rupert, who was, I fancy, a little annoyed by the uneasiness we had all felt.
"Don't tease him, my boy," said father, kindly; "let him tell his story in his own fashion."
Thus encouraged, Harold sat down, and told us that he had got into the oak chest to hide.
"I thought, of course, that you would hear me when I called, but you didn't seem to come into that room at all."
"We did go there," said Kathleen; "but you know there is no place to hide there but the cupboard, and that had been left wide open by Rupert when he hid there at the beginning of the game. So we just ran up the stairs, put our heads in and saw that the room and cupboard were empty, and then ran off to what we thought were more likely places."
"Then that's why I did not hear your footsteps. The wood must be fearfully thick. I lay still till I began to feel suffocated, and then I tried to get out. I tried and tried, I pushed with my hands, then I lay on my back and pressed with my knees and kicked with my feet. It wasn't a bit of good, I only hurt myself and got more choky. Then my nose began to bleed, and I gave up trying, and lay with my face to the side of the chest. Oh, it was horrible, auntie! I thought that I should die; and I wondered how long you would be before you found me, and what poor father and mother would say when they heard about it."
"There, there, don't pile it on," said Jack, rubbing his hand across his eyes; "tell us how you got out, that's what we want to know. Anyone could get in and be choked; but it's a regular Maskelyne and Cooke's dodge to get out again instead."
"I can't tell you, I don't remember anything till I woke up in bed in a strange room. I know now it was Robert's. Your new man gave me a sandwich and something out of a little bottle, and I——"
"My new man?" repeated father, with his eyes wide open. "Why, I haven't one in the place that has been here less than five years."
"Oh! perhaps I made a mistake," said Harold, rather wearily; "I didn't know his face, so I thought he must be a stranger. He had a white coat on like a coachman, and——"
"Hurrah!" cried Jack, "my mysterious stranger went to the rescue. Could he talk English, Harold? Was he very furious?"
"He was very kind; but he didn't speak once, I remember. He bathed my face with water out of Robert's basin, and I noticed that he kept looking out of the window. Then I heard a noise like a bell; and he went to the window, stood there a minute, then he waved his hand to me, and unlocked the door and went."
"Why had he locked the door?"
"How can I tell?"
"How did you see all this in the dark?"
"The moon shone right in at the window. I don't know who the man was, if uncle says he was not one of the servants; but I'm very tired, and don't want to talk any more."
So we all were; but I am afraid if there had been any one sleeping in my little room I should have talked all night about our mysterious stranger.
The next morning things went on much as usual, till Kathleen and Rupert came to carry me upstairs. Then you would have laughed if you could have heard all the wild guesses we made as to the identity of our strange visitor.
"Let's have a good look at that chest," said Rupert, when Kathleen had declared she had done with it for the present.
"Your heels made a very queer sound in it last night, Rupert," I said. "Only for pity's sake let somebody sit on the edge of it whilst it is open. I don't want you to be guillotined or smothered."
Harold perched himself in such a manner that the lid could not possibly fall, and dangled his legs against the side. It was a wonderful old chest, and we have it still in our house. It is made of black oak, is just five feet long, and about two feet wide.
"I know," said Rupert, presently, springing out of the box. "Where's the foot rule?"
"What's the joke now?" said Harold. "Are you going to measure it to see if there's room for the mysterious stranger to hide in?"
"That's it," exclaimed Rupert, disdaining to answer his brother's remark. "That's it. There's a false bottom to it. Look! it measures twenty inches inside and twenty-five outside. Let's break it open; we shall find a treasure, perhaps. No wonder my heels rattled when I got in last night."
"If it rattles," said Jack, sagaciously, "there isn't much inside. But let's see if we can open it."
They pushed and knocked in turns, but it was useless; they only grew tired and cross.
For once my studious life gave me an advantage over them. I remembered that in all the wonderful tales I had read of hidden chambers and secret drawers, there was no force required to open them. I reminded my cousins of this. "There's some little trick about it; some panel or hidden spring. You will be more likely to find it just when you least expect."
"Get along, you stupid old thing," said Harold, losing patience; "I'm sick of you." As he spoke he sprang from his perch and administered a kick to the obstinate box. Kathleen was holding the lid on the opposite side, and saw the bottom of the box move.
"Look, look," she cried, "it is opening!"
It did not spring up, it merely stood just enough away from the box for Rupert to put his fingers under it and lift it out bodily. A low groan of disappointment escaped us all. They had pulled my chair close to the chest, and I was able to look into it as well, and certainly shared in the groan. I can't say what we had expected. It may have been gold, it may have been treasures of another kind. Most certainly we none of us had expected to see a few packets of papers, yellow with age, and covered with dust.
So engrossed had we been that we had not noticed a step in the room; and when Rupert raised himself from the chest with a bundle of papers in his hand, declaring he would take them to uncle, my blood seemed to stand still and my heart almost to jump into my mouth when a voice, with a strong French accent, said—
"Not too fast, young gentleman; those papers belong to me."
"NOT TOO FAST, YOUNG GENTLEMAN; THOSE PAPERS BELONG TO ME.""NOT TOO FAST, YOUNG GENTLEMAN; THOSE PAPERS BELONG TO ME."
By the side of my couch, almost touching me, stood the man whom we had named Jack's Ghost!
Chapter XI headpiece
"Are you better, now?" said the stranger, laying his hand on Harold's shoulder.
"Yes, thank you," replied Harold, jerking himself away, while Rupert gave expression to what we all felt and thought.
"I wish you'd go about like other people, instead of sneaking up the sides of walls." As he spoke he went to the window. "Uncle George!" he shouted at the top of his voice. An answer came from a distance. "Make haste up here, there's a man who wants to see you."
"I pity him if he is in your den," father called out merrily, after about two minutes during which time we had all been perfectly silent, Kathleen and Harold keeping a strict guard over the chest by sitting on it.
It seemed to me a fearful time before father's footstep sounded on the stairs. I almost expected to see the stranger bolt out of the window, but he did not. He stood as still as if he had been cut in marble, until the door opened, and father entered with some joke on his lips which was never uttered.
The mysterious stranger took his hat from his head, and father gazed at him for one brief second, then held out both his hands.
"FATHER GAZED AT HIM FOR ONE SECOND, THEN HELD OUT BOTH HIS HANDS.""FATHER GAZED AT HIM FOR ONE SECOND, THEN HELD OUTBOTH HIS HANDS."
"What! you, Joe?"
"Yes, I, George."
The words meant little enough, but the tone spoke volumes, and, to our terrible distress, the stranger dropped on the oak chest and was convulsed with sobs.
"Right about face, quick march," whispered Jack, hopping off as well as he could. "Look after the baggage."
The baggage meaning me, Rupert and Kathleen seized me with a rapidity which would have terrified me a month back; and in less time than it takes to write, we had made our retreat in disorder, and the enemy were left in possession.
"Never no more," said Jack, whom we found resting on one of the landings, "will I pass my days in that den. I shan't have nerve enough to face a cricket-ball when I get back to school. To think that the ghost, the mysterious stranger, the rescuer of my beloved brother, should be called Joe, and be on speaking terms with my uncle! After that, no more mysteries for me. I mean to live in the dining-room, and devote myself to bread and butter."
"That's all providing that father will let you," I said.
"No, it isn't. He will have to let me. I feel like the poultry in the farmer's yard, who declared 'twas hard that their nerves should be shaken, and their rest be marred by the visit of Mr. Ghost. Oh, I'll go to Brighton, if uncle likes; but pass the rest of my days in the tower-room, I won't."
A burst of laughter restored Jack's good temper, and then we all went into the dining-room and told mother about everything. I'm a good deal older now than I was then, but I have not yet got out of the way of wanting to rush off to tell mother everything. Happy are the youngsters who have such a mother as I have, and who try all their lives never to do or say anything that they would be afraid or ashamed to tell her. Let me see, I said "rush off," did I not? and I meant it; though at the time I am speaking about, I was dependent on other people's rushing instead of my own.
Mother was nearly as excited as we were about the stranger, only she seemed to know a little more about him.
"Your father had a half-brother named Joseph," she said; "his mother was a Frenchwoman, and when she died her little boy was sent by your grandfather to stay with her relations in France."
"But why has father never mentioned him?" I asked.
"There was some unhappiness about him, dear, and you know your father never speaks about anything like that. He bears it all, and says nothing. Take care, Edric! what are you going to do?"
"Take hold of me, mother."
Slowly and carefully I drew my legs round, and then, leaning on her arm, with Rupert on the other side of me I put them to the ground. Of course, it was but a poor attempt at walking, but still, it was an attempt, and mother seemed utterly amazed. Nothing ever happens just as one has expected and planned it; I had so often gone through that little scene in my mind, and yet I had not the least intention of acting it that day.
"Well done, my darling, well done! How came you to think of trying that? Why, you will walk as well as I do some day."
"It is all Kathleen's doing," I said, still standing propped up by their arms, and wondering at the peculiar feeling in my feet. "She had seen a child cured in Australia by doing a few exercises daily. She had watched very carefully, and was sure she could do me good if I would only persevere. So she has made me do them twice every day, for half an hour, for five weeks."
"But that was what the doctor ordered for you, darling; and you cried and said the woman hurt you, so we had to leave it off."
"I know, mother," I said, colouring, for I was ashamed of myself now; "but in those days I did not really feel as if I cared to move about. I would rather not walk at all than be hurt as that woman hurt me. Now, Kathleen is different; she has not hurt me once, and yet she would not let me off a minute before the half-hour."
"Mary! Mary!" said father's voice, "I want you for a moment." He pushed the door open and stood transfixed.
"What! Edric trying to walk? This is a day of surprises. Whose doing is that?"
"Kathleen's," I said, making a sign to mother that I wanted to go back to my couch again. Father came into the room and looked gravely at me.
"Do you know, laddie," he said, seriously. "I have found out that there is one thing in this world which always brings a reward, and that is unselfishness. It's your mother that's unselfish, not I. If it had not been for her, I should never have consented to have your cousins here. I hated the thought of it, and only consented to please her. Wow see the reward we have got, far beyond what I, at least, deserve; my little helpless laddie is going to try to be like other children, and my half-brother is restored to his inheritance. Come and see him, Mary; I'll tell you all about it presently, children."
Chapter XI tailpiece
Chapter XII headpiece
We spent the rest of that day in a state of effervescence. No one seemed to be able to settle down to anything; and we were so excited that even dinner had little attraction, especially as we were told that father and mother and the strange gentleman had driven off to Colchester.
"So we shall dine here, then," said Rupert, with a look at Jack, who had fixed himself in an armchair in a most determined attitude; "unless you prefer going up to the tower-room."
"Never again," said Jack, gravely; "uncle says we've done him good, and when he comes back I mean to ask for our reward. 'Tis a very good den that we live in, to laugh, or to talk, or to play in; but to hide or to think, or to be quite alone, 'tis the very worst den that ever was known."
"Bravo, Jack! poor old Hudibras wouldn't know his own lines if he were here. Give us some more of that sort of thing to make the time pass till uncle comes home. I'm just burning with curiosity."
A glass of cold water down his back, under pretence of extinguishing him, ended in the aggressor being put out himself.
It seemed a long day in spite of all the fun we managed to get in one way or another; but "be the day weary, be the day long, at length it ringeth to evensong," and about seven o'clock we heard the horse's feet in the yard, and my parents came in alone. Even then we had, of course, to wait a short time before they were ready to tell us what we were longing to hear.
"Now I'll tell you all about the mysterious stranger," said father, at last. "But I am tired, and you must not interrupt me. You will have plenty of time to ask questions another day. It is just fifteen years since my half-brother Joe was in this room. His mother died when he was about three years old, and at her request your grandfather sent the little fellow over to Normandy to be brought up by his mother's brother. This brother was a very rich man, and when my father married again he offered to adopt Joe, bring him up as his own son, and leave him all he possessed, if my father would consent. He would not, however, do this, and insisted on Joe returning home at once, so one of my first recollections is being carried about by my big brother Joe. As I got older I used to spend most of my days in the tower-room, where Joe was always busy with some carpentering, or work of one kind or another. Your grandfather was a severe man, very harsh in his management of children, and Joe often resented what he considered his unkindness. That oak chest, which was nearly the cause of your death the other night, Harold, was the cause of our separation. One day the French count came to stay with our father, and Joe, who was really very fond of him, owing to having spent his early years with him, wanted to go back with him; but our father would not consent. Joe tells me now that he distinctly heard the Frenchman say, 'Well, I've made my will in his favour, and I shall leave it with you. I've made you executor, and when I am dead you will let the boy come over to Normandy. It's a pity you won't let him go back with me, for there are people who would like to oust him out of his property if they could.'
"Years passed away, and one day, when Joe had been imprisoned in the tower-room for some naughtiness, he ran away, climbing down by those very steps that he climbed up yesterday, and which he had made when quite a youngster, to be able to get in or out of his play-room as he liked. I said your grandfather was a harsh man; and when he heard of Joe's flight, he knew of course he had gone to Normandy, and he made a solemn vow that Joe should never enter the house again. I was about twelve then, and old enough to see that, however harsh my father might be, he really loved his elder son. He was never the same again, and one morning we found him struck by paralysis. He recovered consciousness before he died, and seemed anxious to tell us something, but he could neither write nor speak distinctly, though I fancy he wanted to say something about Joe. My mother and I lived alone here, writing occasionally to Normandy, but never expecting to see Joe again. One day, fifteen years ago, I was sitting writing, when a servant came to say that a stranger had called, and had pushed past her, saying he wanted to go to the tower-room. Running upstairs quickly, I found your Uncle Joe kneeling at the oak chest, which stood open. I was angry at his impertinence, and seizing him by the collar as he knelt, I shook him violently and reproached him with killing our father, and then coming into the house in that fashion. He was pale with anger; but he is a noble character, in spite of all his faults. He remembered that we were brothers, and would not strike me. 'I came to see if I could find the Count D'Arcy's will,' he said; 'a cousin of his claims the estate, and I have nothing to prove that he made me his heir. I know the Count gave it to our father.' 'And I know that our father forbade you to enter the house while he was alive. I shall not allow it now he is dead. Go!' I replied, pointing to the door. He went, and I have never seen him till to-day."
"What has he been doing all these years?" I asked, unable to restrain my curiosity any longer.
"He has been working hard and making a name for himself at Rouen, while the Count's cousin has been squandering the estate. From time to time, he tells me, he has come over to England, stayed at the Watermill, with the old woman who nursed him as a baby, and made occasional visits to the tower-room in search of the will which was to restore him to his rights, going and coming always by means of those steps."
"Whatever made him think of that place?" said Jack, finding that my interruption was unreproved.
"He says that he remembered your grandfather telling some one that there was a false bottom in the oak chest which made a splendid hiding-place. He had tried several times to get it open, but he had never succeeded. The last time he tried was on that evening when he heard from old Jane that we had gone to Colchester. When he opened the lid of the chest he found Harold inside quite unconscious and almost suffocated. Of course, he knew the ways of the house; so he carried him to the coachman's room, where he stayed with him till the gong sounded for prayers."
"Then they were his footmarks we saw in the mud," cried Rupert. "What a joke. Don't you tell him I said they were nineteens. What is he like? Is he very cross?"
"Here he comes, so you can judge for yourselves," said mother, opening the door to admit our new-found uncle, who turned out to be just as jolly as any boys could wish.
* * * * *
Years passed by. Uncle Joe, by means of the will, which was hidden in the oak chest, came into possession of a beautiful little estate in Normandy, where we all spent many happy days with our French cousins, for he had married a Frenchwoman. I saywe, because, thanks to my cousins' good influence on mind and body, I became as strong as any one could expect, and was able to enjoy school life in a quiet way, though never fit for rough games, and always rather sensitive about the slight hump on my back.
Never shall I forget my grief when those first holidays were over, and father and mother and I stood at the door to wave our farewells.
"God bless you, children," said father; "you've done us all good."
"Then you don't wish the savages had never come, uncle," shouted Jack, with a merry smile.
"No, no, no!" replied father; and then the carriage went out of sight, though the sounds of the Australian "cooee" reached us for some minutes afterwards.
THE END.
LONDON: KNIGHT, PRINTER, MIDDLE STREET, ALDERSGATE, E.C.