The Vast Abyss. George Manville Fenn
“Have we far to go?”
“Three miles, my lad, to the village, and a quarter of a mile further to the house.”
It was a very slow ride, along sandy lanes, through which, as soon as there was the slightest suggestion of a hill, the horse walked; but everything looked lovely on this bright summer day. High banks where ferns clustered, plantations of fir, where brilliantly-plumaged pheasants looked up to see them pass, and every now and then rabbits scuttled up the steep sandy slopes, showing their white cottony tails before they disappeared amongst the bracken, or dived into a hole. Wild-flowers too dotted the sides of the lane, and as Tom sat gazing out of the window, drinking in the country sweets, his uncle nodded and smiled.
“Will it do, my boy?” he said.
“Do!” cried Tom, ecstatically; “it’s lovely!”
“Humph! yes. Sun shines—don’t rain.”
In due time they reached and passed through a pretty flowery village, dotted about by the sides of a green, and with several houses of a better class, all looking as if surrounded by large gardens and orchards. Then, all at once, Tom’s companion exclaimed—
“Here’s the mill!” and he had hardly glanced at the tall round brick tower, with its wooden movable cap, sails, and fan, all looking weather-beaten and dilapidated, when his uncle exclaimed—“Here we are!” and down on a slope, nearly hidden in trees, he saw the red-tiled gables of a very attractive old English house, at whose gate the fly stopped.
“Drive in, sir?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll have the boxes in the stable-yard. Pull up at the door first. But ring, and the gardener will come to help.”
The gate was swung back and the fly was led in, now, between two wide grassy borders, with the soft, sandy gravel making hardly a sound beneath the wheels. This drive wound in and out, so that a couple of minutes had elapsed before they came in sight of the front of the house, with its broad porch and verandah.
“Welcome to Heatherleigh, Tom—our home,” said his uncle. “Ah, here’s Mrs. Fidler.”
This was as a very grim, serious-looking, grey-haired woman appeared in the porch.
“Back again, Mrs. F.,” cried Uncle Richard cheerily. “Here, this is my nephew, who has come to stay. Get my telegram?”
“Oh yes, sir, and everything’s ready, sir.”
Just then a sun-browned man, with a blue serge apron rolled up and tucked in round his waist, came up, touched his hat, and looked at the luggage.
“Morning, David. The box and portmanteau for indoors. The boxes to be very carefully placed in the coach-house. Glass, mind. Here, driver, give your horse some hay and water; David will see to it, while you go round to the kitchen for a crust of bread-and-cheese. Mind and be careful with those packages.”
“Oh yes, sir, certainly,” said the man; and he led the horse on amongst the shrubs; while as Tom followed his uncle into the prettily-furnished museum-like hall, he thought to himself—
“I wonder whether uncle knows how they laugh at him behind his back.”
“Dinner at two, Mrs. Fidler, I suppose?” said Uncle Richard just then.
“Yes, sir, precisely, if you please,” was the reply.
“That’s right. Here, Tom, let’s go and see if they have smashed the glass in the packages.”
Uncle Richard led the way out through a glass door, and across a velvety lawn, to a gate in a closely-clipped yew hedge. This opened upon a well-gravelled yard, where the rusty-looking old fly was standing, with its horse comfortably munching at the contents of its nose-bag, and David the gardener looking on with a pail of water at his feet.
“Why, David, how was it that the horse was not put in the stable and given a feed?”
“He’s having his feed, sir,” said the gardener. “Them’s our oats. The driver said he’d rather not take him out, because the harness do give so, sir, specially the traces; so he had the nose-bag pretty well filled, and the horse have been going at ’em, sir, tremenjus.”
“Boxes all right?”
“Yes, sir; I don’t think we’ve broke anything; but that big chest did come down pretty heavy.”
“What?” cried his master; and he hurried into the coach-house to examine the packing-case. “Humph! I hope they have not broken it,” he muttered; “I won’t stop to open it now. Come, Tom, we’ll just walk round the garden, so that you may see my domain, and then I’ll show you your room.”
The domain proved to be a fairly extensive garden in the most perfect order, and Tom stared at the tokens of abundance. Whether he was gazing at fruit or flowers, it was the same: the crop looked rich and tempting in the extreme.
“We won’t stop now, my lad. Let’s go and see if Mrs. F. has put your room ready.”
Uncle Richard led the way, with Tom feasting his eyes upon the many objects which filled him with wonder and delight; and even then it all seemed to be so dreamlike, that he half expected to wake up and find that he had been dozing in the hot office in Gray’s Inn.
But it was all real, and he looked with delight at the snug little room, whose window opened upon the garden, from which floated scents and sounds to which he had long been a stranger.
“Look sharp and wash your hands, boy, the dinner-bell will ring in ten minutes, I see, and Mrs. Fidler is very particular. Will your room do?”
“Do, uncle!” cried Tom, in a tone which meant the extreme of satisfaction.
“That’s right. You see they’ve brought up your box. Come down as soon as you are ready.”
He went out and closed the door; and, with his head in a whirl, Tom felt as if he could do nothing but stand there and think; but his uncle’s words were still ringing in his ears, and hurriedly removing the slight traces of his journey, he took one more look from his window over the soft, fresh, sloping, far-stretching landscape of garden, orchard, fir-wood, and stream far below in the hollow, and then looked round to the right, to see standing towering up within thirty yards, the windmill, with its broken sails and weatherworn wooden cap.
He had time for no more. A bell was being rung somewhere below, and he hurried down, eager to conform to his uncle’s wishes.
“This way, Tom,” greeted him; and his uncle pointed to the hat-pegs. “You’d better take to those two at the end, and stick to them, for Mrs. Fidler’s a bit of a tyrant with me—with us it will be now. Place for everything, she says, and everything in its place—don’t you, old lady?”
“Yes, sir,” said the housekeeper, who was just inside the little dining-room door, in a stiff black silk dress, with white bib and apron, and quaint, old-fashioned white cap. “It saves so much trouble, Master Tom, especially in a household like this, where your uncle is always busy with some new contrivance.”
“Quite right,” said Uncle Richard. “So take your chair there, Tom, and keep to it. What’s for dinner? We’re hungry.”
Mrs. Fidler smiled as she took her place at the head of the table, and a neat-looking maid-servant came and removed the covers, displaying a simple but temptingly cooked meal, to which the travellers did ample justice.
But Tom was not quite comfortable at first, for Mrs. Fidler seemed to be looking very severely at him, as if rather resenting his presence, and sundry thoughts of his being an interloper began to trouble the lad, as he wondered how things would turn out. Every now and then, too, something was said which suggested an oddity about his uncle, which would give rise to all sorts of unpleasant thoughts. Still nothing could have been warmer than his welcome; and every now and then something cropped up which made the boy feel that this was not to be a temporary place of sojourning, but