Читать книгу Young Tom, or Very Mixed Company - Forrest Reid - Страница 5

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With the four precious red volumes under his arm he hurried down the road, eager to display them at home. But when he reached the church, a squat little grey stone building with a square tower, he paused. The door was wide open, and he remembered he had never been inside on a weekday, when it must be more interesting, or at any rate different. On Sundays he had to sit in a pew from which he could see little except the upper parts of the congregation, and the whole of Mr. Sabine in his white surplice. Even the stained-glass window was at the opposite side from where he and Daddy and Mother sat, so that he had never been able to examine it closely. This was his chance, for though somebody of course must be inside, it would only be Mrs. Fallon, James-Arthur’s mother.

He swung himself over the low, moss-lined wall, and crossed the grass between green graves and dark cypress-trees. Sure enough, Mrs. Fallon emerged at that very moment, carrying a bucket of slops, which she emptied on to the grass. She was obviously not expecting visitors, for her petticoats were extremely tucked up, revealing quite a lot of grey woollen stocking above two stout black boots, large enough to have been James-Arthur’s own. Also her head was tied up, like a dumpling, in a blue duster with white spots.

“Good morning, Mrs. Fallon,” Tom said, approaching her from behind, so that Mrs. Fallon, who had neither heard nor seen him, jumped.

“Good gracious, Master Tom! You give me quite a turn!”

“Sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to. May I go in to the church, Mrs. Fallon—just for a few minutes—unless you’ve finished and want to lock up?”

But Mrs. Fallon hadn’t finished. “You’re welcome, dear,” she told him, “and if it’s the tower, the door’s not locked, you’ve only to push it.”

Tom thanked her. “It was really the window I was thinking of,” he explained, “but I’d like to go up the tower too.”

“You’ll not be fiddling with the bell-rope, then, will you, like a good boy?”

He promised, and went in, followed by Mrs. Fallon, who had refilled her bucket from a tap beside the porch.

He went straight to the stained-glass window, through which the sun was pouring, casting warm splashes of coloured light on the whitewashed pillars and on the floor and opposite wall. The window showed an old man wading across a river, carrying a small boy on his shoulders. The man, with his white beard and his staff, Tom knew to be Saint Christopher, and the small boy to be Christ. He also knew that Christ was growing heavier and heavier all the time, though of course the artist could not show this in his picture.

He admired the window for several minutes, trying to remember how the story had ended: then he drew closer that he might read the tablet below, which said that it had been put up by loving grandparents in memory of their grandson, Ralph Seaford, who had died at the age of ten years, and was buried with his parents and infant sister in the churchyard outside.

“It’s all very sad, isn’t it?” Mrs. Fallen called out cheerfully from the chancel steps, where she was on her knees scrubbing them. But it did not sadden Tom; he only wondered if Ralph Seaford had been fond of the story of Saint Christopher; which in turn led him to wonder what kind of boy he had been. At any rate the old people must have thought a lot of him....

Speculating as to whether Granny in similar circumstances would have put up a window to him, he crossed the church, and passing behind the pulpit opened the door leading to the tower. It was not a high tower, and a narrow, winding flight of stone steps soon brought him to a kind of loft, or small square room, in the middle of which the bell-rope hung down stiffly like a giant’s pigtail. There were little windows—or rather slits in the wall, for they had no glass—which let in a certain amount of light; and far above, in the dusk beneath the rafters, he could see the bell itself.

The tower and the bell reminded him of a poem which had got Althea into endless trouble while they had been learning it. This was because she could never say “bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells,” without giggling; and that was only seven times, and once or twice it came oftener. Miss Sabine used to get furious, and Tom, too, had thought Althea very silly: for the repetitions were part of the tune, and the tune was part of the poem. He himself liked it, and had even tried to sing it. Unsuccessfully, it is true; because for some strange reason it wasn’t that kind of music. He could sing it a little in his mind, but he couldn’t sing either it or The Raven out aloud; though when nobody was listening he could and often did sing Annabel Lee. All these poems, he was well aware, had been chosen to please him; but that was Althea’s own fault, because she either never would, or never could, say what she liked....

He gazed up at the bell, hanging motionless and silent beneath the dark rafters framing the roof; and while he did so, slowly it began to take life—the life of a great sleeping, dreaming bat. Yet it was iron—an iron bell—

Every sound that floats

From the rust within their throats

Is a groan.

Tom felt a sudden desire to awaken just one of those groans, but he remembered his promise to Mrs. Fallon, so instead began to repeat the poem, at first into himself, but presently in a chant that grew louder and louder.

And the people—ah, the people—

They that dwell up in the steeple,

All alone....

They are neither man nor woman—

They are neither brute nor human—

They are Ghouls:

And their king it is who tolls;

And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls

A paean from the bells!

And his merry bosom swells

With the paean of the bells!

And he dances and he yells;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the paean of the bells—

Of the bells:

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells—

Of the bells, bells, bells—

To the sobbing of the bells;

Keeping time, time, time,

As he knells, knells, knells,

In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells—

Of the bells, bells, bells:

To the tolling of the bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells—

Bells, bells, bells—

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

The potent magic of that Runic Rhyme had by this time created a kind of intoxication through which he distinctly saw a queer little ancient face surmounted by a pointed cap peeping down at him. It was old, old, old; and it peeped, peeped, peeped—peeping down. It was king of all the people; they that dwelt up in the steeple——But at night?

Tom ceased; suddenly silent at the interruption of another voice.

“Come down, Master Tom. Whatever are you doing up there?”

“Nothing,” he shouted in reply. “Just looking.”

“Well, it’s a queer kind of looking you can hear all over the church. Come along now: I’ve finished, and I want to lock up.”

Mrs. Fallon’s tones, though primarily expostulatory, were also distinctly curious; and when he joined her at the foot of the staircase she inspected him with a hint of suspicion in her eye. “You’ve been up there these twenty minutes or more,” she told him; “and there’s not a thing to be seen unless it would be a few bats, and you don’t see them except when they’re flying out at night.”

“There weren’t any bats,” Tom admitted. “I mean, I didn’t notice any. But it’s so dark under the roof there might be hundreds.”

“What were you doing then?” Mrs. Fallon persisted. “Not writing your name, I hope—which is what I’ve known to be done.... Names and dates—Roberts and Sarahs—with maybe a heart drew round them, or some such foolery; as if a church was a filling place for the like of that.”

“Still, people get married in church,” Tom reminded her. “Anyhow, I didn’t write anything: I was just looking at the bell and—thinking.”

He gathered up his books, which he had left in one of the pews, and followed by Mrs. Fallon, walked on down the aisle. In the porch he managed to give her yet another surprise, though all he said was; “Could I have the keys, Mrs. Fallon? I mean, would you lend them to me? I’ll bring them back to you first thing to-morrow.”

Mrs. Fallon gasped—or pretended to. “Well——!” Then she recovered. “And what might you be wanting with the keys, if I may ask?”

“I’d like to come back here by myself. I’ll promise not to touch anything or do any harm, and I’ll leave them in with you to-morrow morning.”

Mrs. Fallon had already thrust the three keys—one large and two smaller—into a capacious pocket, as if she feared he might grab them and run. “Keys!” she said severely. “What would Mr. Sabine think? It’s him you’d better be asking for the keys if you want them. Run along home now, like a good boy, and don’t be talking your nonsense.”