Читать книгу Boycotted, and Other Stories - Talbot Baines Reed - Страница 9

Mr. Jolliffe appeared on the scene as usual at ten o’clock, and read prayers. After which, advising us all to get a good night, and announcing that to-morrow being Christmas Day, we should not breakfast till nine, he trotted off to his quarters and left us.

We were all pretty ready to take his advice, for what with a sixteen-mile run across country in the afternoon, and our big dinner in the evening, the thought of bed seemed rather a comfortable prospect.

One or two of the fellows, however, fellows whom no exertion ever seemed to weary, protested against going to bed at ten o’clock, and took good care that those who did shouldn’t sleep. We were used to that, and had to put up with it, and it must have been close upon the stroke of Christmas Day before they finally condescended to turn in and leave us in peace.

One by one the candles went out, the talk and the laughter gradually subsided, and even the grunts and twitches of the doughty heroes as they first gave themselves over to slumber died away in the darkness. For the first time since we rose that morning, a dead silence reigned in Jolliffe’s.

In fact, as I lay awake and tried to get to sleep the silence seemed unnaturally profound. The tick of the big clock down in the hall struck on the ear with almost a thud, and the light breeze outside moaned among the ventilators and played chromatic scales through the keyhole in a fashion quite disturbing. I wished that wind would shut up, and that the clock would run down. How was a fellow to get to sleep with such a row going on?

And yet, next moment, the utter silence of the place disturbed me even more than the wind and the clock. Why, I actually seemed to hear the winking of my own eyes as I lay there. I wished some one would snore, or breathe hard, or roll over in his bed. But no, in all those thirty beds there was neither sound nor motion.

Nothing is so unpleasant as listening for sounds in a dead silence. I half wished—

Hullo! what was that? Rain on the window! Why can’t rain drop straight instead of tapping at a fellow’s window? It sounded like some one wanting to come in. I knew it was only rain; but supposing it had been somebody—a thief, for instance, or—or—Bubbles come to look after his legs!

I do not know what evil genius put the thought of Bubbles into my head. But once in, I could not get it out. Downstairs before the big fire I had laughed as loud as any one, and been as sure as sure could be that Fergus’s story was all an invention of his fertile imagination. But, somehow, now that the lights were out, and the fellows all asleep, and the wind was moaning outside, and I lay sleepless on my bed, it did not seem so utterly preposterous.

Not that I believed in ghosts. Oh dear no. I hoped I was not such a fool as that, but supposing—

That rain again at the window! Why couldn’t it stop startling a fellow in that way? Yes, supposing Fergus’s story had been founded on fact, what a dreadful end to a boy Bubbles’s end must have been!

“And they do say,”—the words seemed to echo in my ears—“that every Christmas Eve he re-visits Ferriby, and tries to get down the chimney in search of his lost legs.”

Ugh! Why did not some of the fellows wake up? How unnaturally still they all were! I would have given all my pocket-money to two of them to start another steeplechase that moment over the beds. In fact, I had half a mind to—

As I reached this point a sudden noise made my blood run cold, and froze me to my bed.

It did not seem to be in the dormitory, or on the stairs outside, or in the quadrangle below. None of my companions appeared to have heard it, for they all slept on quietly, and the silence which followed was doubly as intense as that which had gone before. What could it be?

I do not fancy I was a particularly cowardly boy, but somehow that sound terrified me. I could neither move nor call out. All I could do was to lie and listen.

There it was again! this time not so sudden, but far more distinct. There was no mistaking it now. As sure as I lay there, it was something on the roof! It sounded like something crawling slowly and by fits and starts along the gutter just above the dormitory. Sometimes it seemed to spring upwards, as though attempting to reach a higher position, and then sullenly slip down and proceed on its crawling way.

Yes, without doubt Fergus had told the truth!

Suddenly a voice in a loud whisper at the other end of the dormitory exclaimed—

“Listen! I say, listen!”

It was Lamb’s voice. There was at least some comfort in knowing that I was not the only one awake.

With a desperate effort I sat up in my bed and replied—

“Oh, Lamb, what is it?”

His only reply was a gasp, as the noises recommenced. The body, whatever it was, seemed to have dragged itself forward, so as to be now just over our heads. The ceiling above us went right up into the roof, and I could distinctly hear a rustling sound against the tiles, followed by an occasional upward leap, sometimes almost wild in its eagerness. How could I mistake these sounds? The chimney was immediately above us, and it was towards this goal, as I well knew, that the hapless and legless Bubbles was destined fruitlessly to aspire. At last one bound more frantic than the rest, followed by a sudden clatter of displaced tiles, unloosed my tongue, and I fairly cried out—

“Oh!”

Half a dozen fellows were on the alert in an instant.

“Who’s that called out?” cried one. “I’d like to scrag him.”

“What’s the row, whoever it is?” demanded Fergus.

“Hush! Listen!” was all I could reply.

There must have been something in my voice which bespoke my horror, for a dead silence ensued.

But not for long. Once more the dull, dragging sound, interrupted by the spasmodic and fruitless leaps!

A shudder went round the dormitory at the sound. They knew as well as I did what it meant.

“It’s the ghost!” faltered Sparrow’s trembling voice; and no one contradicted him. Fergus himself, like one suddenly confronted with a spirit of his own raising, seemed the most terrified of the lot, and I could hear him gasping as he sat petrified in his bed.

“Can’t some one strike a light?” Lamb said presently.

All very well, but the matches were on the table, and to secure them one would have to get out of bed. No one seemed quite inclined for that.

As we lay endeavouring to screw up our courage to the necessary pitch, the sound once more recommenced, with a violent motion towards the edge of the roof. The moon at the same moment broke out from behind the clouds and shot its pale light in at the big windows. There was a momentary pause above us, and then, casting a sudden shadow across the dormitory floor, a dim white figure, as of a body without limbs, floated down outside the window. The moon once more was obscured, and we were left motionless and horrified in utter silence and darkness! What would come next?

How long we might have remained in suspense I can’t say, had not Lamb and another fellow, by a combined effort of heroism, dashed arm in arm from bed and secured the matches. They were in the act of striking a light (one match had broken, and another had had no head)—they were in the act of striking a light when Lamb, who was close to the window, suddenly exclaimed—“Look!”

There was such terror in his tone that we knew only too well what he had seen. But where!

“Where?” I managed to gasp.

“There, down in the quad,” he replied, pointing out of the window, but looking another way.

Curiosity is sometimes greater than fear, and for all my terror I could not resist the impulse to steal up to the window and look out. And others did the same.

It was as Lamb had said. There in the quadrangle below, moving restlessly to and fro, and swaying itself upward, as if in supplication, was the white form, erect but helpless. For a long time we gazed without a word. At last, one more hardy than the rest said—“What can it be?”

What a question! What could it be but—Bubbles! Still, when the question was once asked, it did occur to one or two of us that possibly we might have jumped to a conclusion too hastily. It’s wonderful how hardy a fellow will get when he’s got twenty fellows clustering round him.

“He’s alive, anyhow,” said one. “Call out to him, some one,” suggested another. “You’re nearest the window, Fraser,” said another. Fraser was vice-captain of the second fifteen, and always touchy whenever his pluck was called in question.

“I’m not afraid,” he said, in a voice which was hardly quite steady. And as he spoke he threw up the window, and called out hurriedly, and in rather deferential tones—“Who are you down there?”

I don’t suppose Fraser ever did a pluckier thing than ask that question. We listened, all ears, for the reply. But none came. Only a faint moan, as the apparition swayed uneasily towards us, and even seemed to try to raise itself in our direction; but never a word we heard, and we closed the window again as much in the dark as to its identity as ever.

What could we do? We couldn’t go to bed with Bubbles’s or anybody’s ghost wandering about in the quadrangle below us, that was evident. But how were we to solve the mystery, unless indeed—

It was a terrible alternative, but the only one. We thought of it a good bit before any one proposed it. At last Fraser himself said—

“Who’s game to come down into the quad?”

Fraser was on his mettle, or he would never have been so mad. At first a dead silence was the only answer to his challenge. Then Lamb said—

“I don’t mind.”

If he didn’t mind, why should he nearly choke saying so? However, he broke the ice, and others followed. I considered myself as good a man as Lamb any day (it was only my own opinion), and I wasn’t going to be outdone by him now. So I volunteered. And one or two others who considered themselves as good as I volunteered too, until the forlorn hope numbered a dozen.

“Come along,” said Fraser, who had armed himself with a lighted candle and led the way.

I think those who stayed behind felt a little dismayed when the last of us glided from the door and left them behind.

Still, as far as happiness of mind was concerned, they would not have gained much had they been of our party. For we descended the staircase in rather depressed spirits, starting at every creak, and—some of us—wishing twenty times we were safe back in the dormitory. But there was no drawing back now.

What a noise the bars of the big door made as we unfastened them, and what an ominous shriek the lock gave as we turned the key! Our one hope was that the ghost would have taken fright and vanished before we reached the quadrangle. But no! As we stepped out into the damp breezy night the first thing that met our eyes was the distant, restless figure of Bubbles!

By one consent we halted, and as we did so a gust of wind extinguished our leader’s candle! What was to be done? I glanced up, and saw the lights twinkling at the far distant dormitory window. Oh, whatever possessed me to come on this wild errand!

“Now then, you fellows!” It was Fraser’s voice, and more like himself too. “Now then, stick all together and—”

“Better get a light first,” suggested some one. “Will you run back to the dormitory and get the matches?” asked our leader.

Nothing more was said about the light.

We advanced a few yards, and then halted again.

“Better speak to him, I think,” said Lamb.

“All right,” said Fraser. “Now then, who are you? What’s your name there?”

His voice sounded loud and startling in the night air; but it was wasted breath. Never a word spoke Bubbles, but moaned as he struggled restlessly on the ground where he lay.

Fraser’s spirits were rising every moment. “Oh, hang it!” he exclaimed. “I don’t believe it’s a ghost at all.”

So saying, he made a further advance to within a few yards of the apparition.

If it wasn’t a ghost, it was the most unearthly thing in the dark I ever saw as it lay there. We were still too far off to see it clearly, but it looked like some bloated creature without legs trying its hardest to rise on the feet that were not there.

“Do you hear?” shouted Fraser once more. “Why can’t you speak and tell us who you are?”

The creature gave a long sigh by way of answer, but no more.

Fraser advanced another step, and we were preparing to follow, when the ghost slowly rose on end and made a sudden bound towards him!

In an instant we were back in the house, rushing pellmell up the stairs, and looking neither this way nor that till we were safe back in the dormitory with our companions.

We passed the remainder of that night dressed, and with candles burning, and it was not till morning broke that we dared once more look out of the window.

And then we discovered the mystery of Bubbles’s ghost.

A small half-exhausted balloon, about five feet high, lay on the grass below, with enough gas in it still to toss about restlessly in the breeze, and now and then even to rise on end and drag its little car a few inches.

Where it came from and who it belonged to we never discovered. Probably some toy balloon let up by Christmas Eve revellers, who little thought it would alight on the roof of Jolliffe’s, and after flopping about there for some minutes would finally tumble into the court below, and there act the part of Bubbles to a handful of scared schoolboys.

However, all’s well that ends well, and among the many amusements which made that day a Merry Christmas to us all there was none over which we laughed more than “Bubbles’s Ghost.”