Kitabı oku: «The Vast Abyss», sayfa 4
“La! Master Tom, how you startled me. Not gone to the office?”
“No, Mary. I’m going away for good with Uncle Richard.”
“Oh, I am glad! No, I ain’t – I’m sorry. But when?”
“This morning – almost directly.”
“My! I’ll go and tell cook.”
Tom reached his room, packed up his things as if in a dream, and bore the box down-stairs, his cousin having left the house some time. Then, still as if in a dream, he found himself in the breakfast-room, and heard Mary told to whistle for a cab.
Ten minutes later his uncle’s Gladstone was on the roof side by side with the modest old school box; and after saying good-bye to all, they were going down the steps.
“Jump in first, Tom,” said Uncle Richard, “and let’s have no silly crying about leaving home.”
Tom started, and stared at his uncle with his eyes wonderfully dry then, but the next moment they were moist, for two female figures were at the area gate waving their handkerchiefs; and as the boy leaned forward to wave his hand in return, mingled with the trampling of the horse, and the rattle of the wheels, there came his uncle’s voice shouting Charing Cross to the cabman from the kerb, and from the area gate —
“Good-bye, Master Tom, good-bye!”
“Why, the boy’s wet-eyed!” said Uncle Richard in a peculiarly sneering voice. “What a young scoundrel you must have been, sir, to make those two servants shout after you like that! There, now for a fresh home, boy, and the beginning of a new life, for your dear dead mother’s sake.”
“Uncle!” gasped Tom, with the weak tears now really showing in his eyes, for there was a wonderful change in his companion’s voice, as he laid a firm hand upon his shoulder.
“Yes, Tom, your uncle, my boy. I never quarrel with my brother James or his wife, but I don’t believe quite all that has been said about you.”
All thought of running away to seek his fortune faded out of Tom Blount’s brain, as he sat there with his teeth pressed together, staring straight away between the horse’s ears, trying hard to be firm.
But after long months of a very wretched life it was stiff work to keep his feelings well within bounds.
Chapter Seven
“Now, Tom, cloak-room; come along. I’ve got some tackle to take down with us. Only ten minutes before we start. Here, porter, luggage – quick!”
A man came forward with a barrow, and after taking the luggage from the cab, followed to the cloak-room, from whence sundry heavy, peculiar-looking packages and a box were handed out and trundled to the train; and in a few minutes, with his heart beating wildly, and a feeling of excitement making him long to jump up and shout aloud, Tom sat there watching the houses and trees seem to glide more and more swiftly past the windows as the speed increased. For to him it was like being suddenly freed from prison; and instead of the black cloud which had been hanging before his eyes – the blank curtain of the future which he had vainly tried to penetrate – he was now gazing mentally ahead along a vista full of bright sunshine and joy.
There were two other passengers in the carriage, who, like his uncle, were soon absorbed in their papers, and not a word was spoken until these two got out at the first stopping-place, twenty miles from town; and as soon as the porter had given the door that tremendous unnecessary bang so popular with his fraternity, and the train was speeding on again, Uncle Richard threw down his paper with a loud “Hah!” and turned to his nephew.
“Well, Tom,” he said, “I don’t know what I am to do with you now I have got you. You don’t want to go on with the law?”
“Oh no, sir, I am too stupid,” said Tom quickly.
“Why do you say ‘sir,’ my boy? Will not uncle do for your mother’s brother?”
“Uncle James told me always to say ‘sir,’ sir – uncle I mean.”
“Ah, but I’m not your Uncle James, and I like the old-fashioned way. Well, as you are too stupid for the law, I suppose I must try you with something easier – say mathematics.”
Tom looked at him aghast.
“A nice pleasant subject, full of calculations. But we shall see. I suppose you will not mind helping me?”
“I shall be glad to, uncle.”
“That’s right; but you don’t know yet what I want you to do. You will have to take your coat off sometimes, work hard, put on an apron, and often get dirty.”
“Gardening, uncle? Oh, I shall like that.”
“Yes; gardening sometimes, but in other ways too. I do a deal of tinkering now and then.” Tom stared.
“Yes, I mean it: with tin and solder, and then I try brass and turning. I have a regular workshop, you know, with a small forge and anvil. Can you blow bellows?”
Tom stared a little harder as he gazed in the clear grey eyes and the calm unruffled countenance, in which there was not the dawn of a smile.
“I never tried,” said Tom, “but I feel sure I could.”
“And I feel sure you cannot without learning; some of the easiest-looking things are the hardest, you know. Of course any one can blow forge bellows after a fashion, but it requires some pains to manage the blast aright, and not send the small coal and sparks flying over the place, while the iron is being burned up.”
“Iron burned up?” said Tom.
“To be sure. If I put a piece in the forge, I could manage the supply of oxygen so as to bring it from a cherry heat right up to a white, while possibly at your first trial you would burn a good deal of the iron away.”
“I did not know that,” said Sam.
“And I suppose there are a few other little things you do not know, my boy. There’s a deal to learn, Tom, and the worst or best of it is, that the more you find out the more you realise that there is no end to discovery. But so much for the blacksmith’s work.”
“But you are not a blacksmith, uncle.”
“Oh yes, I am, Tom, and a carpenter too. A bad workman I know, but I manage what I want. Then there is my new business too at the mill.”
“Steam mill, uncle?”
“Oh no, nor yet water. It’s a regular old-fashioned flour-mill with five sails. How shall you like that business?”
Tom looked harder at his uncle.
“Well, boy, do I seem a little queer? People down at Furzebrough say I am.”
“No, sir,” said Tom, colouring; “but all this does sound a little strange. Do you really mean that you have a windmill?”
“Yes, Tom, now. My very own, my boy. It was about that I came up yesterday – to pay the rest of the purchase-money, and get the deeds. Now we can set to work and do what we like.”
Tom tried hard, but he could not help looking wonderingly at his uncle, of whom he had previously hardly seen anything. He knew that he had been in India till about a year before, and that his mother had once spoken of him as being eccentric. Now it appeared that he was to learn what this eccentricity meant.
“Did you learn any chemistry when you were at school, Tom?” said his uncle, after a pause.
“Very little, uncle. There were some lectures and experiments.”
“All useful, boy. You know something about physics, of course?”
“Physics, uncle?” faltered Tom, as he began to think what an empty-headed fellow he was.
“Yes, physics; not physic – salts and senna, rhubarb and magnesia, and that sort of thing; but natural science, heat and light, and the wonders of optics.”
Tom shook his head.
“Very little, uncle.”
“Ah, well, you’ll soon pick them up if you are interested, and not quite such a fool as your uncle made out. Do you know, Tom, that windmill has made me think that I never could have been a lawyer.”
Tom was silent. Things seemed to be getting worse.
“Four times have I had to come up to town and see my lawyer, who had to see the seller’s lawyer over and over again – the vendor I ought to have said. Now I suppose you wouldn’t have thought that I was a vendee, would you?”
“Oh yes, I know that,” said Sam. “You would be if you bought an estate.”
“Come, then, you do know something, my lad. But it has been a tiresome business, with its investigation of titles and rights of usance, and court copyhold fines, and – Bother the business, it has taken up no end of time. But there, it’s all over, and you and I can go and make the dust fly and set the millstones spinning as much as we like. Thumpers they are, Tom, three feet in diameter. I wish to goodness they had been discs of glass instead of stone.”
“Do you, uncle?” said Tom, for his companion was evidently waiting for an answer.
“Yes; we could have tried some fine experiments with them, whereas they will be useless and unsalable I expect.”
To Tom’s great relief the conversation reverted to his life at Gray’s Inn and Mornington Crescent, for the impression would keep growing upon him that what people said about his uncle’s queerness might have some basis. But this opinion was soon shaken as they went on, for he was questioned very shrewdly about his cousin and all that had passed between them, till all at once his companion held out his hand.
“Shake hands, Tom, my boy. We are just entering Furzebrough parish, and I want to say this: – You came to me with an execrable character – ”
“Yes, uncle; I’m very sorry.”
“Then I’m not, my lad. For look here: I have been questioning you for the last hour, and I have observed one thing – in all your statements about your cousin, who is an abominably ill-behaved young whelp, you have never once spoken ill-naturedly about him, nor tried to run him down. I like this, my lad, and in spite of all that has been said, I believe that you and I will be very good friends indeed.”
“Thank you, uncle,” said Tom, huskily. “I mean to try.”
“I know that, or I wouldn’t have brought you home. There, there, look! quick! before it runs behind that fir clump, that’s the old madman’s windmill.”
Tom turned sharply to the window, and caught sight of a five-sailed windmill some five miles away, on a long wooded ridge.
“See it?”
“Yes, uncle; I just caught sight of it.”
“That’s right; and in five minutes, when we are out of the cutting, you can see Heatherleigh in the opening between the two fir-woods.”
“That’s your house, uncle?”
“Yes, my lad – that’s my house, where I carry on all my diabolical schemes, and perform my incantations, as old Mother Warboys says. You didn’t know what a wicked uncle you had.”
“No, sir,” said Tom, smiling.
“Oh, I’m a dreadful wretch; and you did not know either, that within five-and-thirty miles of London as the crow flies, there is as much ignorance and superstition as there was a couple of hundred years or so ago, when they burnt people for being witches and wizards, and the like. There, now look; you can just see Heatherleigh there. No; too late – it’s gone.”
Tom felt puzzled. One minute he was drawn strongly towards his uncle, the next he felt uneasy, for there was something peculiar about him. Then he grew more puzzled as to whether the eccentricity was real or assumed. But he soon had something else to think of, for five minutes after a run through a wild bit of Surrey, that looked gloriously attractive with its sandy cuttings, commons, and fir-trees, to a boy who had been shut up closely for months in London, his uncle suddenly cried, “Here we are!” and rose to get his umbrella and overcoat out of the rack.
“Let’s see, Tom,” he said; “six packages in the van, haven’t we? Mind that nothing is left behind.”
The train was slackening speed, and the next minute they were standing on the platform of a pretty attractive station, quite alone amongst the fir-trees. The station-master’s house was covered with roses and clematis, and he and the porters were evidently famous gardeners in their loneliness, for there was not a house near, the board up giving the name of the station as Furzebrough Road.
“Shall I take the luggage, sir?” said a man, touching his hat; and at the same moment Tom caught sight of a solitary fly standing outside the railings.
“Yes; six packages. By the way, Mr Day, did a box come down for me?”
This to the station-master, who came up as the train glided off and disappeared in a tunnelled sandhill a hundred yards farther.
“Yes, sir; very heavy box, marked ‘Glass, with care.’ Take it with you?”
“Yes, and let it be with care. Here, I’ll come and pay the rates. Tom, my lad, see that the things are all got to the fly.”
Tom nodded; and as his uncle disappeared in the station-master’s office, he went to where the two porters were busy with a barrow and the luggage.
They were laughing and chatting with the flyman, and did not notice Tom’s approach, so that he winced as he heard one of the porters say —
“Always some fresh contrapshum or another. Regular old lunatic, that’s what he is.”
“What’s he going to do with that old mill?” said the other.
“Shoot the moon they – Is this all, sir?” said the flyman, who caught sight of Tom.
The boy nodded, and felt indignant as well as troubled, for he had learned a little about public opinion concerning his uncle.
“Be careful,” he said; “some of those things are glass.”
“All right, sir; we’ll be careful enough. Look alive, Jem. Where will you have the box as come down by’s mornin’s goods?”
“On the footboard. Won’t break us down, will it?”
“Tchah! not it. On’y about a hundredweight.”
By the time the luggage was stowed on and about the fly, Uncle Richard came out, and expressed his satisfaction.
“Rather a lonely place in winter, Tom,” he said, as he entered the stably-smelling old fly.
“Yes, but very beautiful,” replied Tom. “Have we far to go?”
“Three miles, my lad, to the village, and a quarter of a mile further to the house.”
It was a very slow ride, along sandy lanes, through which, as soon as there was the slightest suggestion of a hill, the horse walked; but everything looked lovely on this bright summer day. High banks where ferns clustered, plantations of fir, where brilliantly-plumaged pheasants looked up to see them pass, and every now and then rabbits scuttled up the steep sandy slopes, showing their white cottony tails before they disappeared amongst the bracken, or dived into a hole. Wild-flowers too dotted the sides of the lane, and as Tom sat gazing out of the window, drinking in the country sweets, his uncle nodded and smiled.
“Will it do, my boy?” he said.
“Do!” cried Tom, ecstatically; “it’s lovely!”
“Humph! yes. Sun shines – don’t rain.”
In due time they reached and passed through a pretty flowery village, dotted about by the sides of a green, and with several houses of a better class, all looking as if surrounded by large gardens and orchards. Then, all at once, Tom’s companion exclaimed —
“Here’s the mill!” and he had hardly glanced at the tall round brick tower, with its wooden movable cap, sails, and fan, all looking weather-beaten and dilapidated, when his uncle exclaimed – “Here we are!” and down on a slope, nearly hidden in trees, he saw the red-tiled gables of a very attractive old English house, at whose gate the fly stopped.
“Drive in, sir?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll have the boxes in the stable-yard. Pull up at the door first. But ring, and the gardener will come to help.”
The gate was swung back and the fly was led in, now, between two wide grassy borders, with the soft, sandy gravel making hardly a sound beneath the wheels. This drive wound in and out, so that a couple of minutes had elapsed before they came in sight of the front of the house, with its broad porch and verandah.
“Welcome to Heatherleigh, Tom – our home,” said his uncle. “Ah, here’s Mrs Fidler.”
This was as a very grim, serious-looking, grey-haired woman appeared in the porch.
“Back again, Mrs F.,” cried Uncle Richard cheerily. “Here, this is my nephew, who has come to stay. Get my telegram?”
“Oh yes, sir, and everything’s ready, sir.”
Just then a sun-browned man, with a blue serge apron rolled up and tucked in round his waist, came up, touched his hat, and looked at the luggage.
“Morning, David. The box and portmanteau for indoors. The boxes to be very carefully placed in the coach-house. Glass, mind. Here, driver, give your horse some hay and water; David will see to it, while you go round to the kitchen for a crust of bread-and-cheese. Mind and be careful with those packages.”
“Oh yes, sir, certainly,” said the man; and he led the horse on amongst the shrubs; while as Tom followed his uncle into the prettily-furnished museum-like hall, he thought to himself —
“I wonder whether uncle knows how they laugh at him behind his back.”
“Dinner at two, Mrs Fidler, I suppose?” said Uncle Richard just then.
“Yes, sir, precisely, if you please,” was the reply.
“That’s right. Here, Tom, let’s go and see if they have smashed the glass in the packages.”
Uncle Richard led the way out through a glass door, and across a velvety lawn, to a gate in a closely-clipped yew hedge. This opened upon a well-gravelled yard, where the rusty-looking old fly was standing, with its horse comfortably munching at the contents of its nose-bag, and David the gardener looking on with a pail of water at his feet.
“Why, David, how was it that the horse was not put in the stable and given a feed?”
“He’s having his feed, sir,” said the gardener. “Them’s our oats. The driver said he’d rather not take him out, because the harness do give so, sir, specially the traces; so he had the nose-bag pretty well filled, and the horse have been going at ’em, sir, tremenjus.”
“Boxes all right?”
“Yes, sir; I don’t think we’ve broke anything; but that big chest did come down pretty heavy.”
“What?” cried his master; and he hurried into the coach-house to examine the packing-case. “Humph! I hope they have not broken it,” he muttered; “I won’t stop to open it now. Come, Tom, we’ll just walk round the garden, so that you may see my domain, and then I’ll show you your room.”
The domain proved to be a fairly extensive garden in the most perfect order, and Tom stared at the tokens of abundance. Whether he was gazing at fruit or flowers, it was the same: the crop looked rich and tempting in the extreme.
“We won’t stop now, my lad. Let’s go and see if Mrs F. has put your room ready.”
Uncle Richard led the way, with Tom feasting his eyes upon the many objects which filled him with wonder and delight; and even then it all seemed to be so dreamlike, that he half expected to wake up and find that he had been dozing in the hot office in Gray’s Inn.
But it was all real, and he looked with delight at the snug little room, whose window opened upon the garden, from which floated scents and sounds to which he had long been a stranger.
“Look sharp and wash your hands, boy, the dinner-bell will ring in ten minutes, I see, and Mrs Fidler is very particular. Will your room do?”
“Do, uncle!” cried Tom, in a tone which meant the extreme of satisfaction.
“That’s right. You see they’ve brought up your box. Come down as soon as you are ready.”
He went out and closed the door; and, with his head in a whirl, Tom felt as if he could do nothing but stand there and think; but his uncle’s words were still ringing in his ears, and hurriedly removing the slight traces of his journey, he took one more look from his window over the soft, fresh, sloping, far-stretching landscape of garden, orchard, fir-wood, and stream far below in the hollow, and then looked round to the right, to see standing towering up within thirty yards, the windmill, with its broken sails and weatherworn wooden cap.
He had time for no more. A bell was being rung somewhere below, and he hurried down, eager to conform to his uncle’s wishes.
“This way, Tom,” greeted him; and his uncle pointed to the hat-pegs. “You’d better take to those two at the end, and stick to them, for Mrs Fidler’s a bit of a tyrant with me – with us it will be now. Place for everything, she says, and everything in its place – don’t you, old lady?”
“Yes, sir,” said the housekeeper, who was just inside the little dining-room door, in a stiff black silk dress, with white bib and apron, and quaint, old-fashioned white cap. “It saves so much trouble, Master Tom, especially in a household like this, where your uncle is always busy with some new contrivance.”
“Quite right,” said Uncle Richard. “So take your chair there, Tom, and keep to it. What’s for dinner? We’re hungry.”
Mrs Fidler smiled as she took her place at the head of the table, and a neat-looking maid-servant came and removed the covers, displaying a simple but temptingly cooked meal, to which the travellers did ample justice.
But Tom was not quite comfortable at first, for Mrs Fidler seemed to be looking very severely at him, as if rather resenting his presence, and sundry thoughts of his being an interloper began to trouble the lad, as he wondered how things would turn out. Every now and then, too, something was said which suggested an oddity about his uncle, which would give rise to all sorts of unpleasant thoughts. Still nothing could have been warmer than his welcome; and every now and then something cropped up which made the boy feel that this was not to be a temporary place of sojourning, but his home for years to come.
“There,” exclaimed Uncle Richard, when they rose from the table, “this is a broken day for you, so you had better take your cap and have a good look round at the place and village. Tea at six punctually. Don’t be late, or Mrs Fidler will be angry.”
“I don’t like to contradict you, sir,” said the housekeeper, smiling gravely; “but as Master Tom is to form one of the household now, he ought, I think, to know the truth.”
“Eh? The truth? Of course. What about?”
“Our way of living here, Master Tom,” said the housekeeper, turning to him. “I should never presume to be angry with your uncle, sir; I only carry out his wishes. He is the most precise gentleman I ever met. Everything has to be to the minute; and as to dusting or moving any of the things in his workshop or labour atory, I – ”
“Oh!” exclaimed Uncle Richard, grinding his teeth and screwing up his face. “My good Mrs Fidler, don’t!”
“What have I done, sir?” exclaimed the housekeeper.
“Say workshop, and leave laboratory alone.”
“Certainly, sir, if you wish it.”
“That’s right. Well, Tom, what are you waiting for?”
“I thought, if you wouldn’t mind, I should like to help you unpack the boxes.”
“Oh, by all means, boy. Come along; but I’m going to have a look over the windmill first – my windmill, Mrs Fidler, now. All settled.”
“I’m very glad you’ve got over the bother, sir.”
“Oh, dear me, no,” said Uncle Richard, laughing; “it has only just began. Well, what is it?”
“I didn’t speak, sir.”
“No, but you looked volumes. What have they been saying now?”
“Don’t ask me, sir, pray,” said the housekeeper, looking terribly troubled. “I can’t bear to hear such a good man as you are – ”
“Tut! stuff, woman. Nothing of the kind, Tom. I’m not a good man, only an overbearing, nigger-driving old indigo planter, who likes to have his own way in everything. Now then, old lady, out with it. I like to hear what the fools tattle about me; and besides, I want Tom here to know what sort of a character I have in Furzebrough.”
“I – I’d really rather not say, sir. I don’t want to hear these things, but people will talk to David and cook and Jenny, and it all comes to me.”
“Well, I want to hear. Out with it.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t ask me, sir.”
“Can’t help it, Mrs Fidler. Come.”
“Bromley the baker told cook, sir, that if you were going to grind your own flour, you might bake your own bread, for not a loaf would he make of it.”
“Glad of it. Then we should eat bread made of pure wheat-meal without any potatoes and ground bones in it. Good for us, eh, Tom?”
“Better, uncle,” said the boy, smiling.
“Well, what next?”
“Doctor told David out in the lane that he was sure you had a bee in your bonnet.”
“To be sure: so I have; besides hundreds and thousands in the hives. Go on.”
“And Jane heard down the village that they’re not going to call it Pinson’s mill any more.”
“Why should they? Pinson’s dead and gone these four years. It’s Richard Brandon’s mill now.”
“Yes, sir, but they’ve christened it Brandon’s Folly.”
“Ha, ha! So it is. But what is folly to some is wisdom to others. What next? Does old Mother Warboys say I am going to hold wizards’ sabbaths up in the top storey, and ride round on the sails o’ windy nights?”
“Not exactly that, sir,” said Mrs Fidler, looking sadly troubled and perplexed; “but she said she was sure you would be doing something uncanny up there, and she hoped that no evil would descend upon the village in consequence, for she fully expected that we should be smitten for your sins.”
“Did she tell you this?”
“No, sir; she said it to Mr Maxted.”
“Told the vicar?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what did he say?”
“She says he insulted her, sir, and that she’ll never go into his church any more. She’s been telling every one so – that he called her a silly, prejudiced old woman.”
“Is that all?”
“It’s all I can remember, sir.”
“And enough too. Look here, Tom, you had, I think, better call David, and tell him to put the pony in and drive you back to the station. I’m sure you would rather go back to your uncle James, and be happy with your cousin Sam.”
Tom smiled.
“You can’t want to stay here.”
“Are you going up to the mill now, uncle?” said Tom, with a quaint look.
“Oh yes, directly, if you are going to risk it. Ready?”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Then come on.”
