Major Vigoureux Part 10

"It seems to be--yes, it certainly is--a pump." Miss Gabriel's voice had begun to shake by this time, but she steadied it. "For the moment I--I half thought it might be a man."

"I would to heaven it were!" said Mrs. Pope, fervently.

"My dear Charlotte!"

"My dear Elizabeth, I mean it. And, what's more, I wouldn't care who he was. A pump? What earthly use is a pump? It must be Mumford's then, if it is a pump."

"It can't be."

"Why not?"

"For the simple reason that Mumford's is on the other side of the road."

"Then we _are_ on the other side of the road, as I have been maintaining all along."

"Would you mind walking round it?... Yes, you are right. It is Mumford's pump, for I have just bruised my wrist against the handle.

Can you find the trough?"

"The astonis.h.i.+ng thing to me," announced Mrs. Pope, groping her way with trepidation, "is that n.o.body shows a light. I don't like to call people unfeeling; but really, with folks in distress out at sea, and the guns firing, I wouldn't have believed such callousness."

They made the circuit of Mumford's pump, and a.s.sured themselves--for what the knowledge was worth--that it really was a pump, and Mumford's.

But this cost them dear, for at the end of the circuit, or rather of a circuit and a half, they had lost all sense of their compa.s.s bearings.

"And after all," Mrs. Pope began afresh, her mind working sympathetically in a circle, "I don't understand what Mumford's pump is doing on the wrong side of the road."

"Don't be a ninny, Charlotte! Of course, it's not on the wrong side of the road."

"But you said it was." (Pause.) "You really did say so, Elizabeth, for I remember it distinctly." (Another pause, and a sigh.) "For my part, I never pretended to have what they call the b.u.mp of locality."

The poor lady prattled on, more and more querulously, and to the increasing exasperation of Miss Gabriel, who on the whole believed that they were making for home, yet could not shake off a haunting suspicion that they were moving in a direction precisely opposite. Moreover, the behaviour of Mumford's pump troubled her more than she cared to confess, even to herself. It stood on the right of the road as you went towards St. Hugh's; but they had encountered it upon the left.

Therefore, either they had been walking off the road, though in the right direction, or--terrible thought!--somewhere or somehow they had turned right about-face, and were walking away from St. Hugh's....

As a matter of fact, they were bending away from the road in a line which would lead them past the rear of their own back gardens. Their feet no longer trod the causeway. They were on turf, and, so far as they could feel it in the darkness, the turf seemed to be mounting in a fairly stiff slope. Miss Gabriel stooped to feel the gra.s.s with the palm of her hand, and just at that moment her ears caught the faint note of a bell, some way ahead.

She stood erect, with a little cry of dismay.

"That settles it. We have turned round!"

"Why, what makes you think so?"

"Listen to that bell! Can't you hear it?"

"Of course, I hear it?" Mrs. Pope apparently was nettled by the question. "But I don't see----"

"The church bell--we are walking straight towards Old Town."

"It don't sound to me like the church bell."

"That's because of the fog. Nothing sounds natural in a fog.... The Vicar is having it rung to alarm the people in Old Town. I heard him say this very night that it used to be the custom when a wreck went ash.o.r.e.... Besides, what other bell could it be? There is no other bell."

Mrs. Pope was silent, though unconvinced. She did not suggest the garrison bell, for even to her scattered intelligence it was a thing incredible that they should at this moment be rounding the slope of Garrison Hill, at the back of St. Hugh's.

"Anything might happen in a fog like this; and if I don't wake up to find myself over the cliffs, it's no thanks"--bitterly--"to them we might have relied on. But I don't believe it's the church bell, not if you went on your bended knees."

"Then, what do you say to this?" announced Miss Gabriel, triumphantly.

Mrs. Pope would reserve her opinion until she saw what Miss Gabriel had hold of.

"Railings," said Miss Gabriel. "We are at the corner of Church Lane, and here's the railing close alongside of us. Now we have only to keep by the railing and feel our way--if you'll follow me--and we must find the churchyard gate. The man ringing the bell will certainly have a lantern, and will take us home."

"I don't fancy churchyards at this time of night," said Mrs. Pope; "and what's more, I never did."

"You must make up your mind to one, then; that is, unless you prefer to wait here till morning."

They advanced, feeling their way by the rails, Mrs. Pope close behind Miss Gabriel's heels. The bell continued tolling, not far away; yet somehow after three minute's progress they appeared to be no nearer to it.

"Church Lane was never so long as all this," a.s.serted Mrs. Pope, coming to a desperate halt; "and you needn't try to persuade me."

"It does seem a long way," Miss Gabriel conceded; "but no doubt the fog magnifies things."

"You had the same tale just now, about the church bell. For my part, I don't believe in your church bell, and--listen!"

"Eh?"

"It has stopped ringing!"

So it had. It was too much, perhaps, to say that Miss Gabriel's blood ran cold, there in the darkness, as Mrs. Pope clutched and clung to her; but certainly her heart sunk.

"All the better," she said, bravely, clenching her jaw that her teeth might not be heard to chatter. "Whoever was ringing the bell will be returning this way presently, and we can ask his help."

But here inspiration came to Mrs. Pope.

"It's my belief," she said, "we are not in Church Lane at all, but in the churchyard; and these rails don't belong to Church Lane, but to old Bonaday's grave."

"My dear Charlotte! When we've been following them for at least two hundred yards!"

"My dear Elizabeth, that's just it. We've been following round and round them, and at this rate there's no reason why ever we should stop, in this world."

"You don't say.... But, after all, there's an easy way of proving if you are right. You walk to the left, feeling round them, and I'll walk to the right, and then, if it really is Bonaday's grave, we shall meet."

"Oh, but I couldn't! Elizabeth, if you leave me--if once I lose hold of you--I shall die next moment."

"Then there's only one thing to be done. We must stay here and cry out at the top of our voices, and both together."

"Yes, yes.... Why didn't we think of it before?"

"For," argued Miss Gabriel, "a bell doesn't ring of itself; and if we can hear the bell, very likely the man who was ringing it can hear us."