The Wouldbegoods (8 page)

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s not a church,’ said Noel, ‘because there’s no churchyard. Perhaps it’s a tower of mystery that covers the entrance to a subterranean vault with treasure in it.’

Dicky said, ‘Subterranean fiddlestick!’ and ‘A waterworks, more likely.’

Alice thought perhaps it was a ruined castle, and the rest of its crumbling walls were concealed by ivy, the growth of years.

Oswald could not make his mind up what it was, so he said, ‘Let’s go and see! We may as well go there as anywhere.’

So we got down out of the church tower and dusted ourselves, and set out.

The Tower of Mystery showed quite plainly from the road, now that we knew where to look for it, because it was on the top of a hill. We began to walk. But the tower did not seem to get any nearer. And it was very hot.

So we sat down in a meadow where there was a stream in the ditch and ate the ‘snack’. We drank the pure water from the brook out of our hands, because there was no farm to get milk at just there, and it was too much fag to look for one – and, besides, we thought we might as well save the sixpence.

Then we started again, and still the tower looked as far off as ever. Denny began to drag his feet, though he had brought a walking-stick which none of the rest of us had, and said –

‘I wish a cart would come along. We might get a lift.’

He knew all about getting lifts, of course, from having been in the country before. He is not quite the white mouse we took him for at first. Of course when you live in Lewisham or Blackheath you learn other things. If you asked for a lift in Lewisham, High Street, your only reply would be jeers. We sat down on a heap of stones, and decided that we would ask for a lift from the next cart, whichever way it was going. It was while we were waiting that Oswald found out about plantain seeds being good to eat.

When the sound of wheels came we remarked with joy that the cart was going towards the Tower of Mystery. It was a cart a man was going to fetch a pig home in. Denny said –

‘I say, you might give us a lift. Will you?’

The man who was going for the pig said –

‘What, all that little lot?’ but he winked at Alice, and we saw that he meant to aid us on our way. So we climbed up, and he whipped up the horse and asked us where we were going. He was a kindly old man, with a face like a walnut shell, and white hair and beard like a jack-in-the-box.

‘We want to get to the tower,’ Alice said. ‘Is it a ruin, or not?’

‘It ain’t no ruin,’ the man said; ‘no fear of that! The man wot built it he left so much a year to be spent on
repairing of it! Money that might have put bread in honest folks’ mouths.’

We asked was it a church then, or not.

‘Church?’ he said. ‘Not it. It’s more of a tombstone, from all I can make out. They do say there was a curse on him that built it, and he wasn’t to rest in earth or sea. So he’s buried half-way up the tower – if you can call it buried.’

‘Can you go up it?’ Oswald asked.

‘Lord love you! Yes; a fine view from the top they say. I’ve never been up myself, though I’ve lived in sight of it, boy and man, these sixty-three years come harvest.’

Alice asked whether you had to go past the dead and buried person to get to the top of the tower, and could you see the coffin.

‘No, no,’ the man said; ‘that’s all hid away behind a slab of stone, that is, with reading on it. You’ve no call to be afraid, missy. It’s daylight all the way up. But I wouldn’t go there after dark, so I wouldn’t. It’s always open, day and night, and they say tramps sleep there now and again. Anyone who likes can sleep there, but it wouldn’t be me.’

We thought that it would not be us either, but we wanted to go more than ever, especially when the man said –

‘My own great-uncle of the mother’s side, he was one of the masons that set up the stone slab. Before then it was thick glass, and you could see the dead man lying inside, as he’d left it in his will. He was lying there in a glass coffin with his best clothes – blue satin and silver, my uncle said, such as was all the go in his day, with his
wig on, and his sword beside him, what he used to wear. My uncle said his hair had grown out from under his wig, and his beard was down to the toes of him. My uncle he always upheld that that dead man was no deader than you and me, but was in a sort of fit, a transit, I think they call it, and looked for him to waken into life again some day. But the doctor said not. It was only something done to him like Pharaoh in the Bible afore he was buried.’

Alice whispered to Oswald that we should be late for tea, and wouldn’t it be better to go back now directly. But he said –

‘If you’re afraid, say so; and you needn’t come in anyway – but I’m going on.’

The man who was going for the pig put us down at a gate quite near the tower – at least it looked so until we began to walk again. We thanked him, and he said –

‘Quite welcome,’ and drove off.

We were rather quiet going through the wood. What we had heard made us very anxious to see the tower – all except Alice, who would keep talking about tea, though not a greedy girl by nature. None of the others encouraged her, but Oswald thought himself that we had better be home before dark.

As we went up the path through the wood we saw a poor wayfarer with dusty bare feet sitting on the bank.

He stopped us and said he was a sailor, and asked for a trifle to help him to get back to his ship.

I did not like the look of him much myself, but Alice said, ‘Oh, the poor man, do let’s help him, Oswald.’ So we held a hurried council, and decided to give him the milk sixpence. Oswald had it in his purse, and he had
to empty the purse into his hand to find the sixpence, for that was not all the money he had, by any means. Noel said afterwards that he saw the wayfarer’s eyes fastened greedily upon the shining pieces as Oswald returned them to his purse. Oswald has to own that he purposely let the man see that he had more money, so that the man might not feel shy about accepting so large a sum as sixpence.

The man blessed our kind hearts and we went on.

The sun was shining very brightly, and the Tower of Mystery did not look at all like a tomb when we got to it. The bottom storey was on arches, all open, and ferns and things grew underneath. There was a round stone stair going up in the middle. Alice began to gather ferns while we went up, but when we had called out to her that it was as the Pig-man had said, and daylight all the way up, she said –

‘All right. I’m not afraid. I’m only afraid of being late home,’ and came up after us. And perhaps, though not downright manly truthfulness, this was as much as you could expect from a girl.

There were holes in the little tower of the staircase to let light in. At the top of it was a thick door with iron bolts. We shot these back, and it was not fear but caution that made Oswald push open the door so very slowly and carefully.

Because, of course, a stray dog or cat might have got shut up there by accident, and it would have startled Alice very much if it had jumped out on us.

When the door was opened we saw that there was no such thing. It was a room with eight sides. Denny says it
is the shape called octogenarian; because a man named Octagius invented it. There were eight large arched windows with no glass, only stonework, like in churches. The room was full of sunshine, and you could see the blue sky through the windows, but nothing else, because they were so high up. It was so bright we began to think the pig-man had been kidding us. Under one of the windows was a door. We went through, and there was a little passage and then a turret-twisting stair, like in the church, but quite light with windows. When we had gone some way up this, we came to a sort of landing, and there was a block of stone let into the wall – polished – Denny said it was Aberdeen graphite, with gold letters cut in it. It said –

and a verse of poetry:

‘How horrid!’ Alice said. ‘Do let’s get home.’

‘We may as well go to the top,’ Dicky said, ‘just to say we’ve been.’

And Alice is no funk – so she agreed; though I could see she did not like it.

Up at the top it was like the top of the church tower, only octogenarian in shape, instead of square.

Alice got all right there; because you cannot think much about ghosts and nonsense when the sun is shining bang down on you at four o’clock in the afternoon, and you can see red farm roofs between the trees, and the safe white roads, with people in carts like black ants crawling.

It was very jolly, but we felt we ought to be getting back, because tea is at five, and we could not hope to find lifts both ways.

So we started to go down. Dicky went first, then Oswald, then Alice – and H.O. had just stumbled over the top step and saved himself by Alice’s back, which nearly upset Oswald and Dicky, when the hearts of all stood still, and then went on by leaps and bounds, like the good work in missionary magazines.

For, down below us, in the tower where the man whose beard grew down to his toes after he was dead was buried, there was a noise – a loud noise. And it was like a door being banged and bolts fastened. We tumbled over each other to get back into the open sunshine on the top of the tower, and Alice’s hand got jammed between the edge of the doorway and H.O.’s boot; it was bruised black and blue, and another part bled, but she did not notice it till long after.

We looked at each other, and Oswald said in a firm voice (at least, I hope it was) –

‘What was that?’

‘He
has
waked up,’ Alice said. ‘Oh, I know he has. Of course there is a door for him to get out by when he wakes. He’ll come up here. I know he will.’

Dicky said, and his voice was not at all firm (I noticed that at the time), ‘It doesn’t matter, if he’s
alive
.’

‘Unless he’s come to life a raving lunatic,’ Noel said, and we all stood with our eyes on the doorway of the turret – and held our breath to hear.

But there was no more noise.

Then Oswald said – and nobody ever put it in the Golden Deed book, though they own that it was brave and noble of him – he said –

‘Perhaps it was only the wind blowing one of the doors to. I’ll go down and see, if you will, Dick.’

Dicky only said –

‘The wind doesn’t shoot bolts.’

‘A bolt from the blue,’ said Denny to himself, looking up at the sky. His father is a sub-editor. He had gone very red, and he was holding on to Alice’s hand. Suddenly he stood up quite straight and said –

‘I’m not afraid. I’ll go and see.’

This
was afterwards put in the Golden Deed book. It ended in Oswald and Dicky and Denny going. Denny went first because he said he would rather – and Oswald understood this and let him. If Oswald had pushed first it would have been like Sir Lancelot refusing to let a young knight win his spurs. Oswald took good care to go second himself, though. The others never understood this. You don’t expect it from girls; but I did think Father would have understood without Oswald telling him, which of course he never could.

We all went slowly.

At the bottom of the turret stairs we stopped short. Because the door there was bolted fast and would not yield to shoves, however desperate and united.

Only now somehow we felt that Mr Richard Ravenal was all right and quiet, but that someone had done it
for a lark, or perhaps not known about anyone being up there. So we rushed up, and Oswald told the others in a few hasty but well-chosen words, and we all leaned over between the battlements, and shouted, ‘Hi! You there!’

Then from under the arches of the quite-downstairs part of the tower a figure came forth – and it was the sailor who had had our milk sixpence. He looked up and he spoke to us. He did not speak loud, but he spoke loud enough for us to hear every word quite plainly. He said –

‘Drop that.’

Oswald said, ‘Drop what?’

He said, ‘That row.’

Oswald said, ‘Why?’

He said, ‘Because if you don’t I’ll come up and make you, and pretty quick too, so I tell you.’

Dicky said, ‘Did you bolt the door?’

The man said, ‘I did so, my young cock.’

Alice said – and Oswald wished to goodness she had held her tongue, because he saw right enough the man was not friendly – ‘Oh, do come and let us out – do, please.’

While she was saying it Oswald suddenly saw that he did not want the man to come up. So he scurried down the stairs because he thought he had seen something on the door on the top side, and sure enough there were two bolts, and he shot them into their sockets. This bold act was not put in the Golden Deed book, because when Alice wanted to, the others said it was not
good
of Oswald to think of this, but only
clever
. I think sometimes, in moments of danger and disaster, it
is as good to be clever as it is to be good. But Oswald would never demean himself to argue about this.

When he got back the man was still standing staring up. Alice said –

‘Oh, Oswald, he says he won’t let us out unless we give him all our money. And we might be here for days and days and all night as well. No one knows where we are to come and look for us. Oh, do let’s give it him
all
.’

She thought the lion of the English nation, which does not know when it is beaten, would be ramping in her brother’s breast. But Oswald kept calm. He said –

‘All right,’ and he made the others turn out their pockets. Denny had a bad shilling, with a head on both sides, and three halfpence. H.O. had a halfpenny. Noel had a French penny, which is only good for chocolate machines at railway stations. Dicky had tenpence-halfpenny, and Oswald had a two-shilling piece of his own that he was saving up to buy a gun with. Oswald tied the whole lot up in his handkerchief, and looking over the battlements, he said –