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Page 23

For nearly an hour he lay awake, wondering. Certainly he had not been
the victim of hallucination. He was in perfect health, and in full
possession of all his faculties. Indeed his faculties were
particularly alive; he had been thinking of something else altogether
when the raps first forced themselves upon his consciousness, and
afterwards he had listened to them for several minutes with close and
critical attention. No explanation of the strange phenomenon suggested
itself in spite of endless theories and speculations. Could it be
mice? But mice only gnawed and scuttled about; they did not rap. It
was more like crackling than anything else; the noise produced by
thousands of faint discharges. No, it was inexplicable, and he
wondered more and more.

Gradually he fell asleep. How long he slept he didn't know, but he
awoke with a sensation of cold. Instinctively he put out his hand to
pull the coverings closer over him, and found that they seemed to have
slipped down somehow, leaving his chest exposed. Then, warm again, he
dozed off once more and dreamt that he was at the pool of Daphnis with
Lubin. How cool and blue the water looked, and how lovely the plunge
would be! But when he was stripped the weather suddenly changed; a
chill wind sprang up which made his teeth chatter; and then Lubin--who
somehow wasn't Lubin but had unaccountably turned into Mr
Buskin--insisted on throwing him into the water, which now looked cold
and black. He struggled furiously, and awoke shivering.

There was not a rag upon him. Again he stretched out his hand to feel
for the clothes, but they had disappeared. Instinctively he threw
himself out of bed and flung open the shutters. The moon had set, and
the first faint gleams of approaching dawn filtered into the room,
showing, to his amazement, the bedclothes drawn completely away from
the mattress and hanging over the rail at the foot, so as to be quite
out of the reach of his hand as he had lain there. What on earth was
the matter with the bed? Was it bewitched? Who had uncovered him in
that unceremonious way, leaving him perished with cold? No wonder he
had dreamt of that chilly wind, numbing his body as he stood naked by
the pool. Had he by any chance kicked the coverlet off in his sleep,
as he engaged in that dream-struggle with the absurdly impossible
Buskin-Lubin who had attempted to pitch him into the dark water?
Clearly not; for that would not account for the sheet and blanket
being dragged so carefully out of the range of his hands, and hung
over the foot-rail so that they touched the floor.

Such were the thoughts that flashed through his mind as he stood
motionless by the window, with wide open eyes, in the chill morning
light. Suddenly a rending, bursting noise was heard in the ceiling.
The crack widened into a chasm, and then, with a heavy thud, down fell
a confused mass of old bricks, crumbling mortar, and rotten,
worm-eaten wood full on the mattress he had just relinquished,
scattering pulverised rubble in all directions, and covering the bed
with a layer of horrible dust and _d�bris_.

Chapter the Sixth

Had her very life depended on it, old Martha would have been totally
unable to give any coherent account of what she felt, said, or did,
when she came into Master Austin's room that morning at half-past
seven with his hot water. She thought she must have screamed, but such
was her bewilderment and terror she really could not remember whether
she did or no. But she never had any doubt as to what she saw. Instead
of a fair white bed with Austin lying in it, she was confronted by the
sight of a gaping hole in the roof, something that looked like a
rubbish heap in a brickfield immediately underneath, and the long
slender form of Austin himself wrapped in a comfortable wadded
dressing-gown fast asleep upon the sofa. "Bless us and save us!" she
ejaculated under her breath. "And to think that the boy's lived
through it!"

Austin, roused by her entrance, yawned, stretched himself, and lazily
opened his eyes. "Is that you already, Martha?" he said. "Oh, how
sleepy I am. Is it really half-past seven?"

"But what does it all mean--how it is you're not killed?" cried
Martha, putting down the jug, and finding her voice at last. "The good
Lord preserve us--here's the house tumbling down about our ears and
never a one of us the wiser. And the man was to 'ave come this very
day to see to that blessed roof. Come, wake up, do, Master Austin, and
tell me how it happened."

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Sun 21st Dec 2025, 4:42

Austin and His Friends by Frederic H. Balfour