And with this as his last word on the subject, Mr. Godfrey mounted aloft to grease the gudgeons of Batty Thomas unassisted. Hilary Thorpe, dissatisfied but recognising an immovable obstacle when she met one, wandered vaguely about the belfry, scuffing up the dust of ages with her square-toed, regulation-pattern school shoes and peering at the names which bygone rustics had scrawled upon the plastered walls. Suddenly, in a remote corner, something gleamed white in a bar of sunlight. Idly she picked it up. It was a sheet of paper, flimsy and poor in quality and ruled in small, faint squares. It reminded her of the letters she occasionally received from a departed French governess and, when she examined it, she saw that it was covered with writing in the very same purple ink that she associated with “Mad’m’selle,” but the hand was English — very neat, and yet somehow not the hand of a well-educated person. It had been folded in four and its under side was smeared with fine dust from the floor on which it had lain, but it was otherwise fairly clean.
“Mr. Godfrey!”
Hilary’s voice was so sharp and excited that Jack Godfrey was quite startled. He very nearly fell off the ladder, adding thereby one more to Batty Thomas’ tale of victims.
“Yes, Miss Hilary?”
“I’ve found such a funny thing here. Do come and look at it.”
“In one moment, Miss Hilary.”
He finished his task and descended. Hilary was standing in a splash of sunshine that touched the brazen mouth of Tailor Paul and fell all about her like Danae’s shower. She was holding the paper where the light could catch it.
“I found this on the floor. Do listen to it. It’s absolutely loony. Do you think Potty Peake could have written it?”
Mr. Godfrey shook his head.
“I couldn’t say, I’m sure, Miss Hilary. He’s queer, is Potty, and he did use to come up here one time, before Rector locked up the trap-door chain. But that don’t look to me like his writing.”
“Well, I don’t think anybody but a lunatic could have written it. Do read it. It’s so funny.” Hilary giggled, being of an age to be embarrassed by lunacy.
Mr. Godfrey set down his belongings with deliberation, scratched his head and perused the document aloud, following the lines with a somewhat grimy forefinger.
“I thought to see the fairies in the fields, but I saw only the evil elephants with their black backs. Woe! how that sight awed me! The elves danced all around and about while I heard voices calling clearly. Ah! how I tried to see — throw off the ugly cloud — but no blind eye of a mortal was permitted to spy them. So then came minstrels, having gold trumpets, harps and drums. These played very loudly beside me, breaking that spell. So the dream vanished, whereat I thanked Heaven. I shed many tears before the thin moon rose up, frail and faint as a sickle of straw. Now though the Enchanter gnash his teeth vainly, yet shall he return as the Spring returns. Oh, wretched man! Hell gapes, Erebus now lies open. The mouths of Death wait on thy end.”
“There, now,” said Mr. Godfrey, astonished. “That’s a funny one, that is. Potty it is, but, if you follow me, it ain’t Potty neither. Potty ain’t no scholar. This here, now, about Ereebus — what do you take that to mean?”
“It’s a kind of an old name for hell,” said Hilary.
“Oh, that’s what it is, is it? Chap that wrote this seems to have got that there place on his mind, like. Fairies, too, and elephants. Well, I don’t know. Looks like a bit of a joke, don’t it now? Perhaps—” (his eye brightened with an idea) “perhaps somebody’s been copying out something out of a book. Yes, I wouldn’t wonder if that’s what that is. One of them old-fashioned books. But it’s a funny thing how it got up here. I’d show it to Rector, Miss Hilary, that’s what I’d do. He knows a lot of books, and maybe he’d know where it come from.”
“That’s a good idea. I will. But it’s awfully mysterious, isn’t it? Quite creepy. Can we go up the tower now, Mr. Godfrey?”
Mr. Godfrey was quite willing, and together they climbed the last long ladder, stretching high over the bells and leading them out by way of a little shelter like a dog-kennel on to the leaded roof of the tower. Leaning against the wind was like leaning against a wall. Hilary pulled off her hat and let her thick bobbed hair blow out behind her, so that she looked like one of the floating singing angels in the church below. Mr. Godfrey had no eyes for this resemblance; he thought Miss Hilary’s angular face and straight hair rather unattractive, if the truth were known. He contented himself with advising her to hold tight by the iron stays of the weathercock. Hilary paid no attention to him, but advanced to the parapet, leaning over between the pierced battlements to stare out southward over the Fen. Far away beneath her lay the churchyard, and, while she looked, a little figure, quaintly foreshortened, crawled beetle-like from the porch and went jogging down the path. Mrs. Venables, going home to lunch. Hilary watched her struggle with the wind at the gate, cross the road and enter the Rectory garden. Then she turned and moved to the east side of the tower, and looked out along the ridged roofs of the nave and chancel. A brown spot in the green churchyard caught her eye and her heart seemed to turn over in her body. Here, at the north-east angle of the church, her mother lay buried, her grave not yet turfed over; and now it looked as though, before long, the earth would have to be opened up again to let the husband join his wife. “Oh, God!” said Hilary, desperately, “don’t let Dad die — You can’t — You simply can’t.”
Beyond the churchyard wall lay a green field, and in the middle of the field there was a slight hollow. She knew that hollow well. It had been there now for over three hundred years. Time had made it shallower, and in three hundred years more it might disappear altogether, but there it still was — the mark left by the great pit dug for the founding of Tailor Paul.
Jack Godfrey spoke close beside her.
“Time I was getting along now, Miss Hilary.”
“Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Are you ringing a peal to-morrow?”
“Yes, Miss Hilary. We’re going to have a try at Stedman’s. They’re difficult to ring, are Stedman’s, but very fine music when you get them going proper. Mind your head. Miss Hilary. A full peal of 5,040 we’re going to give them — that’s three hours. It’s a fortnit thing as Will Thoday’s all right again, because neither Tom Tebbutt nor young George Wilderspin is what you might call reliable in Stedman’s, and of course, Wally Pratt’s no good at all. Excuse me one minute. Miss Hilary, while I gathers up my traps. But to my mind, there’s more interest, as you might say, in Stedman’s than in any other method, though it takes a bit of thinking about to keep it all clear in one’s head. Old Hezekiah don’t so much care about it, of course, because he likes the tenor rung in. Triples ain’t much fun for him, he says, and it ain’t to be wondered at. Still, he’s an old man now, and you couldn’t hardly expect him to learn Stedman’s at his age, and what’s more, if he could, you’d never get him to leave Tailor Paul. Just a moment, Miss Hilary, while I lock up this here counterpoise. But give me a nice peal of Stedman’s and I ask no better. We never had no Stedman’s till Rector come, and it took him a powerful long time to learn us to ring them. Well I mind the trouble we had with them. Old John Thoday — that’s Will’s father, he’s dead and gone now — he used to say, ‘Boys,’ he said, ‘it’s my belief the Devil himself couldn’t get no sense out of this dratted method.’ And Rector fined him sixpence for swearing, like it says in they old rules. Mind you don’t slip on the stair. Miss Hilary, it’s terrible worn. But we learned Stedman to rights, none the more for that, and to my mind it’s a very pretty method of ringing. Well, good morning to you. Miss Hilary.”;