Mistress Masham's Repose Page 15

  CHAPTER XXIII

  THE door was battle-ax proof. It was laid together in two plies of wood, the grain of one ply being horizontal and of the other vertical, so that no ax could split it. In its early days, when it had first been set on its hinges by some feudatory of William the Conqueror’s, it had been secured by an enormous bar of wood, the size of a yule log, which had run in two wide tunnels left in the masonry of the wall. When this bar had become worm-eaten, somewhere in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the village blacksmith had constructed a wrought-iron lock to take its place. This was still there, locked. Miss Brown had removed the key, which weighed two pounds three ounces. There were, from the same period, some handsome iron bolts. These offered no difficulty, because they had only to be drawn, if one happened to be on the outside. Since the days of Elizabeth, various other people had done their best for the security of the hold. Under the Regency, somebody had fixed iron bars, like the bars for windows, but these could be shifted like the bolts. Under Queen Victoria somebody else had put on the kind of chain which people have for front doors. Under King Edward, an expert had come down from the Bank of England, and had provided a circular lock which nobody on earth could open, unless he knew the key word for the combination, which happened to be “Mnemosyne.” (One of the dukes had won the Derby with a horse of that name; the bookies had called it “N or M.”) Under King George V, an American gentleman had sold the reigning duke a ten-shilling lock by Yale. Under King George VI, the whole affair had been provided with strips of antigas and black-out paper, by means of which it could be stuck together. The door was shut.

  Now the ignorant Amaryllis, who probably knows nothing about anything except cricket bats, may have come to the conclusion that our Professor was an inefficient old person. Because he knew so much about everything at large, it may have been thought that he would not have known anything about housebreaking. Well then, to be absolutely frank, he did not. But, and this is where he differed from many well-known cricket bats, he had a brain. He had used it before when discovering the origins of the People. Now, as he stood outside the dungeon, his skull could almost be seen to swell and rise like a football being inflated. His white hair stood on end like a thunder-stricken cat’s, when stroked; his eyes sank into their sockets with the effort of concentration; the veins on the side of his temples throbbed like a frog’s heart beating; the temples themselves lifted like a cockchafer’s wing cases, when about to fly.

  The door shook on its hinges.

  “Exactly,” said the Professor. “Now here we have a door. Pray stand in front, most erudite Schoolmaster, to assist my meditations.”

  The Lilliputians fell back in awe, not of his size but of his mental powers, and the Schoolmaster stepped forward solemnly to do his best, feeling proud that he had lived to see that day.

  “When,” said the Professor, stroking his beard with majesty and glaring upon the lock, “is a door not a door? This is the conundrum which we, among others, and not for the first time, are called upon to determine. Hic labor, hoc opus est.”

  While he was thinking, the People tried to imagine a way in which they could take advantage of their size, in opening it. For instance, if the Professor had lifted one of them up, the latter could have put his small arm into the Elizabethan keyhole, and might have been able to shift the wards, if they had not been too stiff. But there was no way in which their smallness could help them in dealing with the combination lock, which was opened by the secret word, and the Yale lock was also beyond them, because the box part was inside, so that there was no hope of unscrewing it. They were talking these matters over in whispers, when the Professor lifted his hand for silence. He had thought.

  “When,” he repeated, “is a door not a door?”

  “Tibi ipsi, non mihi,” said the Schoolmaster reverently, meaning “I will buy it.”

  “When it is off its hinges.”

  All were struck by the justice of this. The old gentleman might have gone on to point out that most locks and bolts are really a kind of bluff, that fox hunters who are confronted by a chained gate have only to lift it from the other end, and that the human race will generally be fascinated by a padlock as if it were a rattlesnake, instead of going round another way, or climbing through the window. He only said: “Produce a poker.”

  The hinges were of wrought iron, and had been made by the same blacksmith who had made the ornamental lock. They were T hinges, with hasps like the fleur-de-lis, and they had been put outside the door, so that the prisoners could not get at them. The result was that the rescuers could. They were old and rust-eaten.

  Luckily there was an abandoned poker in one of the outer cellars, and the Lilliputians brought it between them, carrying it as keepers at the zoo carry an outsize in boa constrictors.

  The Professor set to work with bangs and wrenches; the ancient hinges gave out showers of powdered rust; the bolts began to fall off one by one; and the other helpers stood to watch the Titan’s effort, with miniscule anxiety.

  In the Drawing Room, the Vicar was thinking private thoughts. Why, he wondered, should we only sell the mannikins to Olympia? Once we have caught a sufficient number of them, say a barrelful, I will take half a dozen to London in a cigar box, with holes in the lid. I will go in the Rolls, or at any rate I will go first class, for the Clergy are expected to set an example to the lower orders. Then I will call, not only at the Olympia offices, but also on Lord George Sanger, Barnum and Bailey, and the rest of them. This will be even better than taking them to Hollywood. I will show my specimens and sell the barrel to each of these in turn, without telling the others. After all, they are commercial people, probably of low moral character, and one has to meet guile with guile. It is a sad thing, but there it is. When in Rome one must do as the Romans do. And by the way perhaps it would be wiser not to mention the treble sales to dear Miss Brown? She is a woman, and might not understand; besides, if I do not tell her about them, I shall not need to share. She will have quite enough by getting a share in the first sale, indeed she will have more money than any unmarried woman could possibly want, and I know that her requirements are few. It would be a pity to spoil her simple nature. M-m-m-m-m. Besides, I daresay I might need to leave the country till the fuss blows over, after selling the same article to three separate firms, and it would be useful to leave Miss Brown behind, to handle the business of delivery. She might desire to leave the country also, if she knew about my laughable deception. I understand that women’s prisons are extremely comfortable, and I daresay the climate of Bermuda might not suit her. M-m-m-m-m. Palm Beach, Bermuda, Honolulu? I must order travel leaflets from the shipping companies.

  Miss Brown was also thinking privately. If, she thought, if—if an accident were to happen to Maria? I don’t mean any violence, of course, not premeditated, but if some little accident did happen so that she—well—was very ill—or even—even if she died? Quite by accident, naturally. We should all regret her. And if the Vicar were to be involved in it, so that he felt—well—almost as if he had been guilty of—of a murder? If he should attempt to swindle me of what I’ve rightly earned? They say that blackmail is a stronger bond than matrimony ... But there, murders never happen nowadays. Such thoughts are merely day dreams. And if we found the missing parchment afterward, and altered it in favor of ourselves?

  The Vicar startled her from the reverie.

  “Come,” said he, finishing his sherry quickly. “We have been patient long enough. Obstinacy is one thing, mere naughtiness is another. We must have obedience: it is written in the catechism. Maria must be made to speak.”

  “Now?” asked Miss Brown eagerly.

  They rose and went downstairs.

  The last bolt fell from the top hinge in a little cataract of worm-eaten wood. The Professor took a firm grip of the battered iron and began to heave the door ajar. It creaked and grated on the flagstones, opened an inch or two, then stuck. The ill-treated flanges of the locks on the other edge were bending in their sockets, splintering t
he old wood of the frame, and shedding screws. He took the hinge again and dragged the door half open. They did not wait to widen it, but squeezed their way inside. The Lilliputians ran between his feet without thinking about being trodden on. They cried: “Maria! You are saved!”

  There she was in the beam of the torch, handcuffed to the wall, looking furious. All the thanks they got was: “Why didn’t you come before?” Then she said defiantly: “I did not tell.” Then she burst into tears.

  They found that she was covered with bruises, not because she had been spanked, for she had escaped that last indignity, but because she had struggled so hard in being dragged downstairs that the action had developed into a rough-house. As a matter of fact, if she had not struggled, they quite likely might have spanked her then and there—they were so furious about her feat with the water jug—but the rough-house had put them out of breath. So you see it is always best to go down fighting, and if anybody ever tries to beat you, you should fight them till you die.

  She had a splendid black eye.

  “Right!” said the Professor. “That’s quite enough of that.”

  He was so angry that he was almost shaking.

  They told her how proud they were of her courage in not telling, and how much they owed to her. They found the keys on a nail by the fireplace, and unlocked her chains. They asked if she were really hurt, or hungry, or ill. They begged her not to cry.

  “To begin with,” said the Professor, “I shall take her to my cottage. Not one night shall she stay at Malplaquet, until this matter has been settled. I shall revive her with cowslip wine and bread and butter. Here, have my handkerchief. And then—”

  He raised his fists to the heavens.

  “And then I shall get on my tricycle and go to find the Lord Lieutenant or the Chief Constable, I am not sure which, and I will see to it that these monsters are made to pay for their outrage, to the last drop of their inky blood! What a heaven-sent opportunity! Do you realize that with these handcuffs and these bruises we can probably get her guardians removed and actually sent to prison, which is the only hope for the people of Lilliput? Otherwise they would always have had the legal right to sell you, and Maria could hardly have kept your secret forever.

  “I must say this is an excellent development,” added the Professor, restored to the best of humors by the idea. “I trust you are seriously injured, my dear child? Can you walk?”

  “Yes, I am quite safe really. They didn’t hurt me.”

  “Good. We shall walk to the cottage at once. I suppose you wouldn’t like to be carried? I learned rather a good lift when I was a boy scout?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well, you must please yourself. And let me see. Is there anything we ought to arrange with the People?”

  The Schoolmaster asked: “Do you intend to call the Constable this Evening?”

  “Yes. The sooner the better. The quicker we have these villains under lock and key, the better it will be for all.”

  “Should she be guarded while Y’r Honour is away?”

  “No. I will lock the door. I trust that this will answer. I always hide the key under my pot of pink geraniums, a highly secret spot, known only to myself. Yes, h’m. Besides, they will not know that she is gone, or, should they find she is, will not know where to look for her. Forward to safety! But hark, what noise was that?”

  They were in the passage, within reach of freedom. The Professor disentangled the torch from his whiskers and pointed it toward the cellar door—the other one, which blocked the end of the passage. Even as he pointed, it was softly closed. Something suspiciously like a chuckle, though muffled by the wood, echoed beneath the vaulted ceiling of the corridor, while on the outward side, the bolts creaked home.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  MR. HATER leaned against the outer door with a long sigh, which whistled between his pursy lips as if he were letting off steam. “Got them!” he said. “The floor was crawling with the creatures.”

  Miss Brown lifted the candle to his face and examined it without a word.

  “At least fifty. Say at one thousand pounds apiece. I think we may at last allow Maria her supper!”

  She held the candle closer.

  “And the Professor?”

  “We can let him out as soon as the small people are secured.”

  “Are you deaf?”

  “Deaf, Miss Brown?”

  “He has found your ward handcuffed to the wall in a dungeon, and he intends to visit the police. You heard him tell them. The Society of Prevention, Mr. Hater, may have a word to say.”

  “Well, we cannot keep him locked in there forever. Besides, when we have sold the minnikins ...”

  “Did you observe that he and they appeared to be acquainted?”

  “Good heavens! You mean a prior claim? But no, they live on our land, not on his. They are the property of the landlord. He has no right, whatever their acquaintance ...”

  “The landlord is Maria.”

  “But, my dear lady, do I understand that you suggest ... It would be impossible to keep them locked in there perpetually ... The difficulty of feeding ...”

  “Why do it?”

  “Impossible! We cannot ... It would be ... wicked. Unfriendly critics might consider that it was tantamount to murder. Besides, even if we did starve them till they died, what of the risk? It is unthinkable.”

  “Cook has been told that she is with her aunt, and not one living person knows the whereabouts of the Professor.”

  “But the dungeon is a room still visited by antiquarians!”

  “We can put off their visits, for a month or two.”

  “Miss Brown, we could not, no, we must not, dream of such a thing. We are Christians. We must not be selfish. Besides, if we kept the big ones locked up, how could we get the little ones out?”

  “Sir Isaac Newton bored a hole, to let his kittens through the door.”

  “Ingenious. M-m-m-m-m. You mean, to bore a hole and place some wire rat trap on the outer side, to catch them. Yes. Meanwhile, the Professor and Maria stay inside....”

  “The informer and his evidence.”

  “It was you who suggested the handcuffs.”

  “No, it was you.”

  “It means imprisonment for both, whoever it was, if the Society for Prevention should be set upon us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Miss Brown, we must resist temptation. The idea is far too dangerous. Murder will out. Not, of course, that we should be intending murder, for it is not our duty to feed the Professor for the rest of his life; but we must think of the construction which others might put upon it. No, Miss Brown, we must manage things more carefully. We will bore the hole as you suggest, collect the little men, give food and water to the captives through the aperture, and proceed to make our sale. Once we have cashed the checks—that is, the check—we will set off for Florida, or for some luxury hotel among the Azores, by airplane. When there, we can safely cable Cook to let them out. But murder, no! I am amazed that you should mention such a thing.”

  Miss Brown puddled the hot candle grease with a fat finger while she thought. Finally she said: “You must fetch a brace and bit from the Vicarage, also a rat trap. Or a bird cage.”

  It was noticeable that she no longer called him “Mr. Hater,” in her respectful way, but spoke to him as an equal, or as an inferior.

  Meanwhile, in the cellarage, the Professor was trying King Charles’s ax on the door. It proved to be of crossply like the other, and would not split. The hinges were on the wrong side. They were trapped.

  He went back to the dungeon, where Maria was sitting up and taking notice. He had used too much of his brain on the subject of doors and bruises, and was beginning to feel peevish. He wanted to go home and read books.

  “Well, here we are.”

  Maria said cheerfully: “I must say it is nicer than being alone.”

  “It may be nicer for you, but it is not nicer for me. I like to be alone. Why did we start this fuss in th
e first place? Scampering about with axes. I had left a bloater for my supper.”

  “It will have to keep.”

  He swung the torch round the walls.

  “There must be some way out. Where is the back door? Where are the windows? What an inconvenient house!”

  “There is a small red window there, behind the rack.”

  “Then we must simply break it, and climb through.”

  “It is six inches wide, and has some iron bars.”

  “Why?”

  “To prevent us climbing through it, I suppose.”

  “How very inconsiderate! They might have known that we should need it. Nobody thinks of anybody but themselves. And where am I supposed to sleep?”

  “Y’r Honour and Miss,” said the Schoolmaster, “the Dimensions of this Window, if I may be permitted an Observation, would not preclude the Passage of my Companions, suppose the Glass to be broken. Once liberated, we might make our Way toward the other Aspect of the Cellar Door, and draw the Bolts.”

  “Dear me. Of course!”

  “Even if you can’t get it open,” said Maria, “you could bring us some food. I have been feeling rather hungry for the last two days. Miss Brown and the Vicar will not want to come in while they know we have an ax, so I suppose they mean to let starve, unless you can get us something.”

  “Just let them come,” said the Professor.

  He gave Maria the torch to hold, and broke the glass with the ax in question, as if the former were the Vicar.

  Then the People had to be lifted to the stone ledge, one by one. They went silently and seriously, without looking back, so that the prisoners could see that they had realized the gravity of the situation, and were determined to do their best.

  The dungeon window faced a coal shaft, between the Boilerhouse and the Armory. When they had climbed up that, they found themselves in the open air, under the pared fingernail of a moon, which was almost slenderer than themselves.