Short Stories 1927-1956 (88 page)

A:B:O.

A:B:O.
*

I looked up over the top of my book at the portrait of my great-grandfather and listened in astonishment to the sudden peal of the bell, which clanged and clanged in straggling decisive strokes until, like a dog gone back to his kennel, it slowed, slackened and fell silent again. A bell has an unfriendly tongue; it is a router of wits, a messenger of alarms. Even in the quiet of twilight it may resemble a sour virago’s din. At a late hour, when the world is snug in night-cap and snoring is the only harmony, it is the devil’s own discordancy. I looked over my book at my placid ancestor, I say, and listened on even after the sound had been stilled.

To tell the truth, I was more than inclined to pay no heed to the
summons
, and, secure in the kind warmth and solitude of my room, to ignore so rude a remembrancer of the world. Before I could decide either way, yet again the metal tongue clattered, as icily as a martinet. It pulled me to my feet. Then, my tranquillity, my inertia destroyed, it was useless and profitless to take no heed. I vowed vengeance. I would pounce sourly upon my visitor, thought I. I would send him back double-quick into the
darkness
of the night, and, if this were some timid feminine body (which God forefend), an antic and a grimace would effectually put such an one to route.

I rose, opened the door, and slid cautiously in my slippers to the bolted door. There I paused to climb up on a chair in an endeavour to spy out on the late-comer from the fanlight, to take his size, to analyse his intentions, but standing there even on tiptoe I could see not so much as the crown of a hat. I clambered down and, after a dismal rattling of chain and shooting of bolts, flung open the door.

Upon my top step (eight steps run down from the door to the garden and two more into the street) stood a little boy. A little boy with a ready tongue in his head, I perceived by the smirk at the corner of his mouth; a little boy of spirit too, for the knees of his knickerbockers were patched. This I
perceived
by the light of a lamp-post which stands over against the doctor’s house. Grimaces were wasted on this sturdy youngster in his red flannel neckerchief. I eyed him with pursed lips.

‘Mr Pelluther?’ said the little boy, his fists deep in the pockets of his jacket.

‘Who asks for Mr Pelluther?’ said I pedagogically.

‘Me,’ said the little boy.

‘What does me want with Mr Pelluther at so untoward an hour, eh, my little man? What the gracious do you mean by making clangour with my bell and waking the stars when all the world’s asleep, and fetching me out of the warmth to this windy doorstep? I have a mind to pull your ear.’

Such sudden eloquence somewhat astonished the little boy. His ‘boyness’ seemed, I fancied, to leave him in the lurch; he was at school out of season; he retrogressed a few steps.

‘Please sir, I’ve got a letter for Mr Pelluther, the gentleman said,’ he turned his back on me, ‘but as he ain’t here I’ll take it back.’ He skipped down the step and at the bottom lustily set to whistling the
Marseillaise.

My dignity was hurt, and a coward. ‘Come, come, my little man,’ I called, ‘I myself am Mr Pelluther.’

‘Le
jour
de
gloire
…’ whistled the little boy.

‘Give me the letter,’ said I peremptorily.

‘I’ve got to give it into the gentleman’s own hands,’ said the little boy.

‘Come, give me the letter,’ said I persuasively.

‘I’ve got to give it into the gentleman’s own hands,’ said the little boy doggedly, ‘and you don’t see a corner of the envelope.’

‘Come, my boy, here’s a sixpence.’

He eyed me suspiciously. ‘Chestnuts,’ said he, retiring a step or two.

‘See, a silver sixpence for the honest messenger,’ said I.

‘Honest be blowed!’ said he. ‘Put it on the step and go behind the door. I’ll come up for the tanner and put the letter on the step. Catch a weasel?’

I wanted the letter; I trusted my boy; so I put the sixpence on the top step and retired behind the door. He was true to his word. With a wary eye and a whoop of triumph he made the exchange. He doubled his fist on the
sixpence
and retired into the garden. I came like a felon out of the stocks for my letter.

The letter was addressed simply ‘Pelluther’, in uncommon careless
handwriting
, so careless indeed that I hardly recognized the scholarly
penmanship
of my friend Dugdale. Forgetful of the messenger, who yet lingered upon my garden path, I shut the door and bustled into my study. I was
reminded
of his presence and of my discourtesy by a rattling shower of stones upon the panels of my door and by the sound of the
Marseillaise
startling the distant trees of the quiet square.

‘Dear, dear me,’ said I, perching my spectacles most unskilfully. Indeed, I was not a little perturbed by this untimely letter. For only a few hours ago I had walked and smoked with dear old Dugdale in his own pleasant garden, in his own gentle twilight. For twilight seems to soothe to sleep the flowers of my old friend’s garden with gentler hands than she can have vouchsafed even to the gardens of Solomon.

I opened my letter in trepidation, only a little reassured of Dugdale’s safety by the superscription written in his own handwriting. This is the burden of the letter – ‘Dear Friend Pell. I am writing, in a fever. Come at once –
Antiquities!
–
the lumber – a mere scrawl – Come at once, or I begin without you. R.D.’

‘Antiquities’ was the peak of the climax of this summons – the golden word. All else might be meaningless; as indeed it was. ‘Come at once.
Antiquities!’

I bustled into my coat and was pelting at perilous speed down my eight steps before the
Marseillaise
had ceased to echo from the adjacent houses. Isolated wayfarers no doubt imagined me to be a doctor, bent on enterprise of life or death. Truly an unvenerable appearance was mine, but Dugdale was itching to begin, and haste spelt glory.

His white house lay not a mile distant, and soon the squeal of his gate upon its hinges comforted my heart and gave my lungs pause. Dugdale
himself
, also, the noise brought flying down into his drive to greet me. He was without his coat. Under his arm was clumsily tucked a spade, his cheeks were flushed with excitement. Even his firm lips, children of science, were trembling, and his grey eyes, wives of the microscope, were agog behind the golden-rimmed spectacles set awry on his magnificent nose.

I squeezed his left hand and thus together we hurried up the steps. ‘Have you begun?’ said I.

‘Just on the move when you came round the corner,’ said he. ‘Who would believe it, Old Roman, or Druidical, God knows.’

Excitement and panting made me totter and I was dismayed at the thought of my digestion. We hurried down the passage to his study, which was in great disorder and filled with a vexing dust, hardly reminiscent of his admirable housemaid, and with a most unpleasant mouldy odour, of damp paper I conjecture.

Dugdale seized a ragged piece of parchment which lay upon the table and pressed it into my hand. He sank back into his well-worn leather
arm-chair
, the spade resting against his knee, and energetically set to polishing his glasses.

I looked fixedly at him. He flourished his long forefinger at me fussily, shaking his head, eager for me to get on.

Rudely scrawled upon the chart was a diagram rectangular in shape with divers scrawls in red ink, and crazy figures. I drove my brains into the open, with vain threats and cudgelling; no, I could make nothing of it. A small chest or coffer upon the floor, of a curious workmanship, overflowing with dusty and stained papers and parchments, betrayed whence the chart had come.

I looked at Dugdale. ‘What does it mean?’ said I, a little disappointed, for
many a trick of the foolish and of the fraudulent has sent me on an idle errand in search of ‘antiquities’.

‘My garden,’ said Dugdale, sweeping his hand towards the window, then triumphantly pointing to the chart in my hand. ‘I have studied it. My uncle, the antiquarian; it
is
genuine. I have had suspicions, ah! yes, every one of yours; I’m not blind. It may be anything. I dig at once. Come and help or go to the —’

He shouldered his spade, in which action he shivered a precious little porcelain cup upon a cabinet. He never so much as blinked at the calamity. He slackened not an inch his triumphant march to the door. Well, what is a five pound note in one’s pocket to a sixpence discovered in a gutter?

I caught up the pick and another shovel. ‘Bravo, Pelluther,’ said he, and we strutted off arm and arm into the pleasant and spacious garden which lay at the back of the house. I felt proud as a drummer-boy.

In the garden Dugdale whipped out of his pocket a yard measure, and having lighted a wax candle stuck it with its own grease in a recess of the wall. After which he knelt down upon the mould with transparent
sedateness
and studied the chart by the candle-light, very clear and conspicuous in the darkness.

‘Yew tree ten yards N. by seven E. three – semicir – um – square. It’s mere A.B.C., ’pon my word.’

He darted away to the bottom of the garden. I followed in a canter by the path between the darkened roses. All was blackness except where the candle-light bleached the old bricks of Dugdale’s wall and glittered upon the dewy trees. At the squat old yew tree he beckoned me. I had repeatedly beseeched him to fell the ugly thing – but he would not.

‘Hold the reel,’ said he, with trembling fingers offering me the
yard-measure
. Away he went. ‘Ten yards by how much?’

‘Five, I think,’ said I.

‘Spellicans,’ said Dugdale, and bustled away to the house for the chart. His shirt-sleeves winked between the bushes. He fetched back with him the chart and another candlestick.

‘Do wake up Pelluther, wake up! Oh, “seven”, wake up?’

I was shivering with excitement and my teeth sounded like a skeleton swaying in the wind. He measured the yards and marked the place on the soil with his spade.

‘Now then to work,’ said he, and set the example by a savage slash at a pensive
Gloire
de
Dijon.

Exceedingly solemn, yet gurgling with self-conscious laughter, I also began to pick and dig. The sweat was cold upon my forehead after a quarter of an hour’s hard labour. I sat on the grass and panted.

‘City dinners, orgies,’ muttered Dugdale, slaving away like a man in search of his soul.

‘No wind, thank goodness. See that flint flash? Good exercise!
Centenarians
and all the better for it. I am no chicken either. Phugh! the place is black as a tiger’s throat. I’ll swear someone’s been here before. Thumb that time! – bless the blister!’

Even in my own abject condition I had time to be amazed at his sinewy strokes and his fanatical energy. He was sexton, and I the owl! Exquisitely, suddenly, Dugdale’s pick struck heavily and hollowly.

‘Oh God!’ said he scrambling like a rat out of the hole. He leaned heavily on his pick and peered at me with round eyes. A great silence was over the place. I seemed to hear the metallic ring of the pick cleaving its way to the stars. Dugdale crept very cautiously and extinguished the candle with damp fingers.

‘Eh, now,’ whispered he, ‘you and I, old boy, d’ye hear. In the hole – it’s desecration, it’s as glum a trade as body-snatching. Hush! who’s that?’

His hand pounced on my shoulder. We craned our necks. A plaintive howl grew out of the silence and faded into the silence. A black cat leapt the fence and disappeared with a flutter of leaves.

‘That black beast!’ said I, gazing into the wormy hole. ‘I would like to wait – and think.’

‘No time,’ said Dugdale, doubtfully bold. ‘The hole must be filled up before dawn or Jenkinson will make enquiries. Tut, tut, what’s that noise of thumping. Oh, yes, all right!’ He clapped his hand on his chest, ‘Now, Rattie, like mice!’

Rattie had been my nickname a very long time ago.

We set to work again, each tap of pick or shovel chased a shiver down my spine. And after great labour we excavated a metallic chest.

‘Pell, you’re a brick – I told you so!’ said Dugdale.

We continued to gaze at our earthly spoil. One strange and inexplicable discovery we made was this: a thickly rusted iron tube ran out from the top of the chest into the earth, and thence by surmise we traced it to the trunk of the dwarfed yew tree; and, with the light of our candles eventually
discovered
its termination imbedded in a boss between two gnarled encrusted branches a few feet up. We were unable to drag out the chest without first disinterring the pipe.

I eyed it with perplexity.

‘Come and get a saw,’ said, Dugdale. ‘It’s strange, eh?’

He turned a mottled face to me. The air seemed to be slightly
phosphorescent
. Whether he had suspicions that I should force open the lid in his absence I know not. At any rate, I willingly accompanied him to the
tool-house
. We brought back a handsaw, Dugdale greased it plentifully with the
candle, and I held the pipe while he sawed. What the purpose or use of the pipe might be I puzzled my brains in vain to discover.