Rodney Stone by Arthur Conan Doyle (affordable ebook reader txt) 📗

side that would dare.  But I had no pride of that sort.  I was quite of the same way of thinking as the others, and would as soon have thought of passing my night at Jacob’s gibbet on Ditchling Common as in the haunted house of Cliffe Royal.  Still, I could not bring myself to desert Jim; and so, as I say, I slunk about the house with so pale and peaky a face that my dear mother would have it that I had been at the green apples, and sent me to bed early with a dish of camomile tea for my supper.

England went to rest betimes in those days, for there were few who could afford the price of candles.  When I looked out of my window just after the clock had gone ten, there was not a light in the village save only at the inn.  It was but a few feet from the ground, so I slipped out, and there was Jim waiting for me at the smithy corner.  We crossed John’s Common together, and so past Ridden’s Farm, meeting only one or two riding officers upon the way.  There was a brisk wind blowing, and the moon kept peeping through the rifts of the scud, so that our road was sometimes silver-clear, and sometimes so black that we found ourselves among the brambles and gorse-bushes which lined it.  We came at last to the wooden gate with the high stone pillars by the roadside, and, looking through between the rails, we saw the long avenue of oaks, and at the end of this ill-boding tunnel, the pale face of the house glimmered in the moonshine.

That would have been enough for me, that one glimpse of it, and the sound of the night wind sighing and groaning among the branches.  But Jim swung the gate open, and up we went, the gravel squeaking beneath our tread.  It towered high, the old house, with many little windows in which the moon glinted, and with a strip of water running round three sides of it.  The arched door stood right in the face of us, and on one side a lattice hung open upon its hinges.

“We’re in luck, Roddy,” whispered Jim.  “Here’s one of the windows open.”

“Don’t you think we’ve gone far enough, Jim?” said I, with my teeth chattering.

“I’ll lift you in first.”

“No, no, I’ll not go first.”

“Then I will.”  He gripped the sill, and had his knee on it in an instant.  “Now, Roddy, give me your hands.”  With a pull he had me up beside him, and a moment later we were both in the haunted house.

How hollow it sounded when we jumped down on to the wooden floor!  There was such a sudden boom and reverberation that we both stood silent for a moment.  Then Jim burst out laughing.

“What an old drum of a place it is!” he cried; “we’ll strike a light, Roddy, and see where we are.”

He had brought a candle and a tinder-box in his pocket.  When the flame burned up, we saw an arched stone roof above our heads, and broad deal shelves all round us covered with dusty dishes.  It was the pantry.

“I’ll show you round,” said Jim, merrily; and, pushing the door open, he led the way into the hall.  I remember the high, oak-panelled walls, with the heads of deer jutting out, and a single white bust, which sent my heart into my mouth, in the corner.  Many rooms opened out of this, and we wandered from one to the other—the kitchens, the still-room, the morning-room, the dining-room, all filled with the same choking smell of dust and of mildew.

“This is where they played the cards, Jim,” said I, in a hushed voice.  “It was on that very table.”

“Why, here are the cards themselves!” cried he; and he pulled a brown towel from something in the centre of the sideboard.  Sure enough it was a pile of playing-cards—forty packs, I should think, at the least—which had lain there ever since that tragic game which was played before I was born.

“I wonder whence that stair leads?” said Jim.

“Don’t go up there, Jim!” I cried, clutching at his arm.  “That must lead to the room of the murder.”

“How do you know that?”

“The vicar said that they saw on the ceiling—Oh, Jim, you can see it even now!”

He held up his candle, and there was a great, dark smudge upon the white plaster above us.

“I believe you’re right,” said he; “but anyhow I’m going to have a look at it.”

“Don’t, Jim, don’t!” I cried.

“Tut, Roddy! you can stay here if you are afraid.  I won’t be more than a minute.  There’s no use going on a ghost hunt unless—Great Lord, there’s something coming down the stairs!”

I heard it too—a shuffling footstep in the room above, and then a creak from the steps, and then another creak, and another.  I saw Jim’s face as if it had been carved out of ivory, with his parted lips and his staring eyes fixed upon the black square of the stair opening.  He still held the light, but his fingers twitched, and with every twitch the shadows sprang from the walls to the ceiling.  As to myself, my knees gave way under me, and I found myself on the floor crouching down behind Jim, with a scream frozen in my throat.  And still the step came slowly from stair to stair.

Then, hardly daring to look and yet unable to turn away my eyes, I saw a figure dimly outlined in the corner upon which the stair opened.  There was a silence in which I could hear my poor heart thumping, and then when I looked again the figure was gone, and the low creak, creak was heard once more upon the stairs.  Jim sprang after it, and I was left half-fainting in the moonlight.

But it was not for long.  He was down again in a minute, and, passing his hand under my arm, he half led and half carried me out of the house.  It was not until we were in the fresh night air again that he opened his mouth.

“Can you stand, Roddy?”

“Yes, but I’m shaking.”

“So am I,” said he, passing his hand over his forehead.  “I ask your pardon, Roddy.  I was a fool to bring you on such an errand.  But I never believed in such things.  I know better now.”

“Could it have been a man, Jim?” I asked, plucking up my courage now that I could hear the dogs barking on the farms.

“It was a spirit, Rodney.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I followed it and saw it vanish into a wall, as easily as an eel into sand.  Why, Roddy, what’s amiss now?”

My fears were all back upon me, and every nerve creeping with horror.

“Take me away, Jim!  Take me away!” I cried.

I was glaring down the avenue, and his eyes followed mine.  Amid the gloom of the oak trees something was coming towards us.

“Quiet, Roddy!” whispered Jim.  “By heavens, come what may, my arms are going round it this time.”

We crouched as motionless as the trunks behind us.  Heavy steps ploughed their way through the soft gravel, and a broad figure loomed upon us in the darkness.

Jim sprang upon it like a tiger.

“You’re not a spirit, anyway!” he cried.

The man gave a shout of surprise, and then a growl of rage.

“What the deuce!” he roared, and then, “I’ll break your neck if you don’t let go.”

The threat might not have loosened Jim’s grip, but the voice did.

“Why, uncle!” he cried.

“Well, I’m blessed if it isn’t Boy Jim!  And what’s this?  Why, it’s young Master Rodney Stone, as I’m a living sinner!  What in the world are you two doing up at Cliffe Royal at this time of night?”

We had all moved out into the moonlight, and there was Champion Harrison with a big bundle on his arm,—and such a look of amazement upon his face as would have brought a smile back on to mine had my heart not still been cramped with fear.

“We’re exploring,” said Jim.

“Exploring, are you?  Well, I don’t think you were meant to be Captain Cooks, either of you, for I never saw such a pair of peeled-turnip faces.  Why, Jim, what are you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid, uncle.  I never was afraid; but spirits are new to me, and—”

“Spirits?”

“I’ve been in Cliffe Royal, and we’ve seen the ghost.”

The Champion gave a whistle.

“That’s the game, is it?” said he.  “Did you have speech with it?”

“It vanished first.”

The Champion whistled once more.

“I’ve heard there is something of the sort up yonder,” said he; “but it’s not a thing as I would advise you to meddle with.  There’s enough trouble with the folk of this world, Boy Jim, without going out of your way to mix up with those of another.  As to young Master Rodney Stone, if his good mother saw that white face of his, she’d never let him come to the smithy more.  Walk slowly on, and I’ll see you back to Friar’s Oak.”

We had gone half a mile, perhaps, when the Champion overtook us, and I could not but observe that the bundle was no longer under his arm.  We were nearly at the smithy before Jim asked the question which was already in my mind.

“What took you up to Cliffe Royal, uncle?”

“Well, as a man gets on in years,” said the Champion, “there’s many a duty turns up that the likes of you have no idea of.  When you’re near forty yourself, you’ll maybe know the truth of what I say.”

So that was all we could draw from him; but, young as I was, I had heard of coast smuggling and of packages carried to lonely places at night, so that from that time on, if I had heard that the preventives had made a capture, I was never easy until I saw the jolly face of Champion Harrison looking out of his smithy door.

p. 33CHAPTER III.
THE PLAY-ACTRESS OF ANSTEY CROSS.

I have told you something about Friar’s Oak, and about the life that we led there.  Now that my memory goes back to the old place it would gladly linger, for every thread which I draw from the skein of the past brings out half a dozen others that were entangled with it.  I was in two minds when I began whether I had enough in me to make a book of, and now I know that I could write one about Friar’s Oak alone, and the folk whom I knew in my childhood.  They were hard and uncouth, some of them, I doubt not; and yet, seen through the golden haze of time, they all seem sweet and lovable.  There was our good vicar, Mr. Jefferson, who loved the whole world save only Mr. Slack, the Baptist minister of Clayton; and there was kindly Mr. Slack, who was all men’s brother save only of Mr. Jefferson, the vicar of Friar’s Oak.  Then there was Monsieur Rudin, the French Royalist refugee who lived over on the Pangdean road, and who, when the news of a victory came in, was convulsed with joy because we had beaten Buonaparte, and shaken with rage because we had beaten the French, so that after the Nile he wept for a whole day out of delight and then for another one out of fury, alternately clapping his hands and stamping his feet.  Well I remember his thin, upright figure and the way in which he jauntily twirled his little cane; for cold and hunger could not cast him down, though we knew that he had his share of both.  Yet he was so proud and had such a grand manner of talking, that no one dared to offer him a cloak or a meal.  I can see his face now, with a flush over each craggy cheek-bone when the butcher made him the present of some ribs of beef.  He could not but take it, and yet whilst he was stalking off he threw a proud glance over his shoulder at the butcher, and he said, “Monsieur, I have a dog!”  Yet it was Monsieur Rudin and not his dog who looked plumper for a week to come.

Then I remember Mr. Paterson, the farmer, who was what you would now call a Radical, though at that time some called him a Priestley-ite, and some a Fox-ite, and nearly everybody a traitor.  It certainly seemed to me at the time to be very wicked that a man should look glum when he heard of a British victory; and when they burned his straw image at the gate of his farm, Boy Jim and I were among those who lent a hand.  But we were bound to confess that he was game, though he might be a traitor, for down he came, striding into the midst of us with his brown coat and his buckled shoes, and the fire beating upon his grim, schoolmaster face.  My word, how he rated us, and how glad we were at last to sneak