Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series
by Mrs. Henry Wood · English · Gutenberg #40963 · 709,467 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series
Author: Mrs. Henry Wood
Release date: October 7, 2012 [eBook #40963]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHNNY LUDLOW, SIXTH SERIES ***
JOHNNY LUDLOW
[Illustration]
JOHNNY LUDLOW
BY
MRS. HENRY WOOD
AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE," "THE CHANNINGS," ETC.
_SIXTH SERIES_
+London+
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1899
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN--
I.--MONTPELLIER-BY-SEA 1
II.--OWEN, THE MILKMAN 26
CARAMEL COTTAGE--
I.--EDGAR RESTE 54
II.--DISAPPEARANCE 76
III.--DON THE SECOND 101
A TRAGEDY--
I.--GERVAIS PREEN 126
II.--IN THE BUTTERY 152
III.--MYSTERY 178
IV.--OLIVER 204
IN LATER YEARS 230
THE SILENT CHIMES--
I.--PUTTING THEM UP 257
II.--PLAYING AGAIN 284
III.--RINGING AT MIDDAY 313
IV.--NOT HEARD 341
V.--SILENT FOR EVER 370
"God sent his Singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again."
LONGFELLOW.
JOHNNY LUDLOW
THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN
I.--MONTPELLIER-BY-SEA
"Let us go and give her a turn," cried the Squire.
Tod laughed. "What, all of us?" said he.
"To be sure. All of us. Why not? We'll start to-morrow."
"Oh dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Todhetley, dismay in her mild tones. "Children
and all?"
"Children and all; and take Hannah to see to them," said the Squire.
"You don't count, Joe: you will be off elsewhere."
"We could never be ready," said the Mater, looking the image of
perplexity. "To-morrow's Friday. Besides, there would be no time to
write to Mary."
"_Write to her!_" cried the Squire, turning sharply on his heel as he
paced the room in his nankeen morning-coat. "And who do you suppose is
going to write to her? Why, it would cause her to make all sorts of
preparation, put her to no end of trouble. A pretty conjurer you'd make!
We will take her by surprise: that's what we will do."
"But if, when we got there, we should find her rooms are let, sir?" said
I, the possibility striking me.
"Then we'll go into others, Johnny. A spell at the seaside will be a
change for us all."
This conversation, and the Squire's planning-out, arose through a letter
we had just received from Mary Blair--poor Blair's widow, if you have
not forgotten him, who went to his end through that Gazette of Jerry's.
After a few ups and downs, trying at this thing for a living, trying at
that, Mrs. Blair had now settled in a house at the seaside, and opened a
day-school. She hoped to get on in it in time, she wrote, especially if
she could be so fortunate as to let her drawing-room to visitors. The
Squire, always impulsive and good-hearted, at once cried out that _we_
would go and take it.
"It will be doing her a good turn, you see," he ran on; "and when
we leave I dare say she'll find other people ready to go in. Let's
see"--picking up the letter to refer to the address--"No. 6, Seaboard
Terrace, Montpellier-by-Sea. Whereabouts is Montpellier-by-Sea?"
"Never heard of it in my life," cried Tod. "Don't believe there is such
a place."
"Be quiet, Joe. I fancy it lies somewhere towards Saltwater."
Tod flung back his head. "Saltwater! A nice common place that is!"
"Hold your tongue, sir. Johnny, fetch me the railway guide."
Upon looking at the guide, it was found there; "Montpellier-by-Sea;" the
last station before getting to Saltwater. As to Saltwater, it might be
common, as Tod said; for it was crowded with all sorts of people, but it
was lively and healthy.
Not on the next day, Friday, for it was impossible to get ready in such
a heap of a hurry, but on the following Tuesday we started. Tod had left
on the Saturday for Gloucestershire. His own mother's relatives lived
there, and they were always inviting him.
"Montpellier-by-Sea?" cried the railway clerk in a doubting tone as we
were getting the tickets. "Let's see? Where is that?"
Of course that set the Squire exploding. What right had clerks to
pretend to issue tickets unless they knew their business? The clerk in
question coolly ran his finger down the railway list he had turned to,
and then gave us the tickets.
"It is a station not much frequented, you see," he civilly observed.
"Travellers mostly go on to Saltwater."
But for the train being due, and our having to make a rush for the
platform, the Squire would have waited to give the young man a piece of
his mind. "Saltwater, indeed!" said he. "I wonder the fellow does not
issue his edict as to where people shall go and where they shan't go."
We arrived in due time at our destination. It was written up as large as
life on a white board, "Montpellier-by-Sea." A small roadside station,
open to the country around; no signs of sea or of houses to be seen; a
broad rural district, apparently given over entirely to agriculture.
On went the whistling train, leaving the group of us standing by our
luggage on the platform. The Squire was staring about him doubtfully.
"Can you tell me where Seaboard Terrace is?"
"Seaboard Terrace?" repeated the station-master. "No, sir, I don't know
it. There's no terrace of that name hereabouts. For that matter there
are no terraces at all--no houses in fact."
The Squire's face was a picture. He saw that (save a solitary farm
homestead or two) the country was bare of dwelling-places.
"This is Montpellier-by-Sea?" he questioned at last.
"Sure enough it is, sir. Munpler, it's called down here."
"Then Seaboard Terrace must be _somewhere_ in it--somewhere about. What
a strange thing!"
"Perhaps the gentlefolks want to go to Saltwater?" spoke up one of the
two porters employed at the little station. "There's lots of terraces
there. Here, Jim!"--calling to his fellow--"come here a minute. He'll
know, sir; he comes from Saltwater."
Jim approached, and settled the doubt at once. He knew Seaboard Terrace
very well indeed; it was at Saltwater; just out at the eastern end of
it.
Yes, it was at Saltwater. And there were we, more than two miles off
it, on a broiling hot day, when walking was impracticable, with all our
trunks about us, and no fly to be had, or other means of getting on. The
Squire went into one of his passions, and demanded why people living at
Saltwater should give their address as Montpellier-by-Sea.
He had hardly patience to listen to the station-master's
explanation--who acknowledged that we were not the first travelling
party that had been deluded in like manner. Munpler (as he and the rest
of the natives persisted in calling it) was an extensive, straggling
rural parish, filled with farm lands; an arm of it extended as far
as Saltwater, and the new buildings at that end of Saltwater had
rechristened themselves Montpellier-by-Sea, deeming it more aristocratic
than the common old name. Had the Squire been able to transport the
new buildings, builders and all, he had surely done it on the spot.
Well, we got on to Saltwater in the evening by another train, and to
No. 6, Seaboard Terrace. Mary Blair was just delighted.
"If I had but known you were coming, if you had only written to me, I
would have explained that it was Saltwater Station you must get out at,
not Montpellier," she cried in deprecation.
"But, my dear, why on earth do you give in to a deception?" stormed the
Squire. "Why call your place Montpellier when it's Saltwater?"
"I do what other people do," she sighed; "I was told it was Montpellier
when I came here. Generally speaking, I have explained, when writing
to friends, that it is really Saltwater, in spite of its fine name. I
suppose I forgot it when writing to you--I had so much to say. The
people really to blame are those who named it so."
"And that's true, and they ought to be shown up," said the Squire.
Seaboard Terrace consisted of seven houses, built in front of the sea a
little beyond the town. The parlours had bay windows; the drawing-rooms
had balconies and verandahs. The two end houses, Nos. 1 and 7, were
double houses, large and handsome, each of them being inhabited by a
private family; the middle houses were smaller, most of them being let
out in lodgings in the season. Mary Blair began talking that first
evening as we sat together about the family who lived in the house next
door to her, No. 7. Their name was Peahern, she said, and they had been
so very, very kind to her since she took her house in March. Mr. Peahern
had interested himself for her and got her several pupils; he was much
respected at Saltwater. "Ah, he is a good man," she added; "but----"
"I'll call and thank him," interrupted the Squire. "I am proud to shake
hands with such a man as that."
"You cannot," she said; "he and his wife have gone abroad. A great
misfortune has lately befallen them."
"A great misfortune! What was it?"
I noticed a sort of cloud pass over Mary Blair's face, a hesitation in
her manner before she replied. Mrs. Todhetley was sitting by her on the
sofa; the Squire was in the armchair opposite them, and I at the table,
as I had sat at our tea-dinner.
"Mr. Peahern was in business once--a wholesale druggist, I believe; but
he made a fortune, and retired some years ago," began Mary. "Mrs.
Peahern has bad health and is a little lame. She was very kind to me
also--very good and kind indeed. They had one son--no other children; I
think he was studying for the Bar; I am not sure; but he lived in
London, and came down here occasionally. My young maid-servant, Susan,
got acquainted with their servants, and she gathered from their gossip
that he, Edmund Peahern, a very handsome young man, was in some way a
trouble to his parents. He was down at Easter, and stayed three weeks;
and in May he came down again. What happened I don't know; I believe
there was some scene with his father the day he arrived; anyway, Mr.
Peahern was heard talking angrily to him; and that night he--he died."
She had dropped her voice to a whisper. The Squire spoke.
"Died! Was it a natural death?"
"No. A jury decided that he was insane; and he was buried here in the
churchyard. Such a heap of claims and debts came to light, it was said.
Mr. Peahern left his lawyer to pay them all, and went abroad with his
poor wife for change of scene. It has been a great grief to me. I feel
so sorry for them."
"Then, is the house shut up?"
"No. Two servants are left in it--the two housemaids. The cook, who had
lived with them five and twenty years and was dreadfully affected at the
calamity, went with her mistress. Nice, good-natured young women are
these two that are left, running in most days to ask if they can do
anything for me."
"It is good to have such neighbours," said the Squire. "And I hope
you'll get on, my dear. How came you to be at this place at all?"
"It was through Mr. Lockett," she answered--the clergyman who had
been so much with her husband before he died, and who had kept up a
correspondence with her. Mr. Lockett's brother was in practice as a
doctor at Saltwater, and they thought she might perhaps do well if she
came to it. So Mary's friends had screwed a point or two to put her
into the house, and gave her besides a ten-pound note to start with.
* * * * *
"I tell you what it is, young Joe: if you run and reve yourself into
that scarlet heat, you shan't come here with me again."
"But I like to race with the donkeys," replied young Joe. "I can run
almost as fast as they, Johnny. I like to see the donkeys."
"Wouldn't it be better to ride a donkey, lad?"
He shook his head. "I have never had a ride but once," he answered:
"I've no sixpences for it. That once Matilda treated me. She brings me
on the sands."
"Who is Matilda?"
"Matilda at No. 7--Mr. Peahern's."
"Well, if you are a good boy, young Joe, and stay by me, you shall have
a ride as soon as the donkeys come back."
They were fine sands. I sat down on a bench with a book; little Joe
strained his eyes to look after the donkeys in the distance, cantering
off with some young shavers like himself on their backs, their
nursemaids walking quickly after them. Poor little Joe!--he had the
gentlest, meekest face in the world, with his thoughtful look and nice
eyes--waited and watched in quiet patience. The sands were crowded with
people this afternoon; organs were playing, dancing dolls exhibiting;
and vessels with their white sails spread glided smoothly up and down on
the sparkling sea.
"And will you really pay the sixpence?" asked the little fellow
presently. "They won't let me get on for less."
"Really and truly, Joe. I'll take you for a row in a boat some calm day,
if mamma will allow you to go."
Joe looked grave. "I don't _much_ like the water, please," said he,
timidly. "Alfred Dale went on it in a boat and fell in, and was nearly
drowned. He comes to mamma's school."
"Then we'll let the boats alone, Joe. There's Punch! He is going to set
himself up yonder: wouldn't you like to run and see him?"
"But I might miss the donkeys," answered Joe.
He stood by me quietly, gazing in the direction taken by the donkeys;
evidently they were his primary attraction. The other child, Mary, who
was a baby when her father died (poor Baked Pie, as we boys used to call
him at Frost's), was in Wales with Mrs. Blair's people. They had taken
the child for a few months, until she saw whether she should get along
at Saltwater.
But we thought she would get along. Her school was a morning school for
little boys of good parentage, all of whom paid liberal terms; and she
would be able to let her best rooms for at least six months in the year.
"There's Matilda! Oh, there's Matilda!"
It was quite a loud shout for little Joe. Looking up, I saw him rush to
a rather good-looking young woman, neatly dressed in a black-and-white
print gown and small shawl of the same, with black ribbons crossed on
her straw bonnet. Servants did not dress fine enough to set the Thames
on fire in those days. Joe dragged her triumphantly up to me. She was
one of the housemaids at No. 7.
"It's Matilda," he said; and the young woman curtsied. "And I am going
to have a donkey-ride, Matilda; Mr. Johnny Ludlow's going to give the
sixpence for me!"
"I know you by sight, sir," observed Matilda to me. "I have seen you go
in and out of No. 6."
She had a pale olive complexion, with magnificent, melancholy dark eyes.
Many persons would have called her handsome. I took a sort of liking for
the girl--if only for her kindness to poor little fatherless Joe. In
manner she was particularly quiet, subdued, and patient.
"You had a sad misfortune at your house not long ago," I observed to
her, at a loss for something to say.
"Oh, sir, don't talk of it, please!" she answered, catching her breath.
"I seem to have had the shivers at times ever since. It was me that
found him."
Up cantered the donkeys; and presently away went Joe on the back of
one, Matilda attending him. The ride was just over, and Joe beginning
to enlarge on its delights to me, when another young woman, dressed
precisely similar to Matilda, even to the zigzag white running pattern
on the prim gown, and the black cotton gloves, was seen making her way
towards us. She was nice-looking also, in a different way--fair, with
blue eyes, and a laughing, arch face.
"Why, there's Jane Cross!" exclaimed Matilda. "What in the world have
you come out for, Jane? Have you left the house safe?"
"As if I should leave it unsafe!" lightly retorted the one they had
called Jane Cross. "The back door's locked, and here's the key of the
front"--showing a huge key. "Why shouldn't I go out if you do, Matilda?
The house is none so lively a one now, to stop in all alone."
"And that's true enough," was Matilda's quiet answer. "Little master
Joe's here; he has been having a donkey-ride."
The two servants, fellow-housemaids, strolled off towards the sea,
taking Joe with them. At the edge of the beach they encountered Hannah,
who had just come on with our two children, Hugh and Lena. The maids sat
down for a gossip, while the children took off their shoes and stockings
to dabble in the gently rising tide.
And that was my introductory acquaintanceship with the servant-maids at
No. 7. Unfortunately it did not end there.
* * * * *
Twilight was coming on. We had been out and about all day, had dined as
usual at one o'clock (not to give unnecessary trouble), and had just
finished tea in Mrs. Blair's parlour. It was where we generally took
tea, and supper also. The Squire liked to sit in the open bay window
and watch the passers-by as long as ever a glimmer of daylight lasted;
and he could not see them so well in the drawing-room above. I was at
the other corner of the bay window. The Mater and Mary Blair were on
their favourite seat, the sofa, at the end of the room, both knitting.
In the room at the back, Mary held her morning school.
I sat facing towards the end house, No. 7. And I must here say that
during the last two or three weeks I had met the housemaids several
times on the sands, and so had become quite at home with each of them.
Both appeared to be thoroughly well-conducted, estimable young women;
but, of the two, I liked Jane Cross best; she was always so lively and
pleasant-mannered. One day she told me why No. 7 generally called her by
her two names--which I had thought rather odd. It appeared that when she
entered her place two years before, the other housemaid was named Jane,
so they took to call her by her full name, Jane Cross. That housemaid
had left in about a twelvemonth, and Matilda had entered in her place.
The servants were regarded as equals in the house, not one above the
other, as is the case in many places. These details will probably be
thought unnecessary and uncalled for, but you will soon see why I
mention them. This was Monday. On the morrow we should have been three
weeks at Saltwater, and the Squire did not yet talk of leaving. He was
enjoying the free-and-easy life, and was as fond as a child of picking
up shells on the sands and looking at Punch and the dancing dolls.
Well, we sat this evening in the bay window as usual, I facing No. 7.
Thus sitting, I saw Matilda cross the strip of garden with a jug in her
hand, and come out at the gate to fetch the beer for supper.
"There goes Jane Cross," cried the Squire, as she passed the window.
"Is it not, Johnny?"
"No, sir, it's Matilda." But the mistake was a very natural one, for
the girls were about the same height and size, and were usually dressed
alike, the same mourning having been supplied to both of them.
Ten minutes or so had elapsed when Matilda came back: she liked a gossip
with the landlady of the Swan. Her pint jug was brimful of beer, and she
shut the iron gate of No. 7 after her. Putting my head as far out at the
window as it would go, to watch her indoors, for no earthly reason but
that I had nothing else to do, I saw her try the front door, and then
knock at it. This knock she repeated three times over at intervals, each
knock being louder than the last.
"Are you shut out, Matilda?" I called out.
"Yes, sir, it seems like it," she called back again, without turning her
head. "Jane Cross must have gone to sleep."
Had she been a footman with a carriage full of ladies in court trains
behind him, she could not have given a louder or longer knock than she
gave now. There was no bell to the front door at No. 7. But the knock
remained unanswered and the door unopened.
"Matilda at No. 7 is locked out," I said, laughing, bringing in my head
and speaking to the parlour generally. "She has been to fetch the beer
for supper, and can't get in again."
"The beer for supper?" repeated Mrs. Blair. "They generally go out at
the back gate to fetch that, Johnny."
"Anyhow, she took the front way to-night. I saw her come out."
Another tremendous knock. The Squire put his good old nose round the
window-post; two boys and a lady, passing by, halted a minute to look
on. It was getting exciting, and I ran out. She was still at the door,
which stood in the middle of the house, between the sitting-rooms on
each side.
"So you have got the key of the street, Matilda!"
"I can't make it out," she said; "what Jane Cross can be about, or why
the door should be closed at all. I left it on the latch."
"Somebody has slipped in to make love to her. Your friend, the milkman,
perhaps."
Evidently Matilda did not like the allusion to the milkman. Catching a
glimpse of her face by the street lamp, I saw it had turned white. The
milkman was supposed to be paying court at No. 7, but to which of the
two maids gossip did not decide. Mrs. Blair's Susan, who knew them well,
said it was Matilda.
"Why don't you try the back way?" I asked, after more waiting.
"Because I know the outer door is locked, sir. Jane Cross locked it just
now, and that's why I came out this front way. I can try it, however."
She went round to the road that ran by the side of the house, and tried
the door in the garden wall. It was fastened, as she had said. Seizing
the bell-handle, she gave a loud peal--another, and another.
"I say, it seems odd, though," I cried, beginning to find it so. "Do you
think she can have gone out?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir. But--no; it's not likely, Master Johnny. I
left her laying the cloth for our supper."
"Was she in the house alone?"
"We are always alone, sir; we don't have visitors. Anyway, none have
been with us this evening."
I looked at the upper windows of the house. No light was to be seen in
any of them, no sign of Jane Cross. The lower windows were hidden from
view by the wall, which was high.
"I think she must have dropped asleep, Matilda, as you say. Suppose you
come in through Mrs. Blair's and get over the wall?"
I ran round to tell the news to our people. Matilda followed me slowly;
I thought, reluctantly. Even in the dim twilight, as she stood at our
gate in hesitation, I could see how white her face was.
"What are you afraid of?" I asked her, going out again to where she
stood.
"I hardly know, Master Johnny. Jane Cross used to have fits. Perhaps she
has been frightened into one now."
"What should frighten her?"
The girl looked round in a scared manner before replying. Just then I
found my jacket-sleeve wet. Her trembling hands had shaken a little of
the ale upon it.
"If she--should have seen Mr. Edmund?" the girl brought out in a
horrified whisper.
"Seen Mr. Edmund! Mr. Edmund who?--Mr. Edmund Peahern? Why, you don't
surely mean his ghost?"
Her face was growing whiter. I stared at her in surprise.
"We have always been afraid of seeing something, she and me, since last
May; we haven't liked the house at night-time. It has often been quite a
scuffle which of us should fetch the beer, so as not to be the one left
alone. Many a time I have stood right out at the back door while Jane
Cross has gone for it."
I began to think her an idiot. If Jane Cross was another, why, perhaps
she had frightened herself into a fit. All the more reason that somebody
should see after her.
"Come along, Matilda; don't be foolish; we'll both get over the wall."
It was a calm, still summer evening, almost dark now. All the lot of us
went out to the back garden, I whispering to them what the girl had said
to me.
"Poor thing!" said Mrs. Todhetley, who had a sort of fellow-feeling for
ghosts. "It has been very lonely for the young women; and if Jane Cross
is subject to fits, she may be lying in one at this moment."
The wall between the gardens was nothing like as high as the outer one.
Susan brought out a chair, and Matilda could have got over easily. But
when she reached the top, she stuck there.
"I can't go on by myself; I dare not," she said, turning her frightened
face towards us. "If Mr. Edmund is there----"
"Don't be a goose, girl!" interrupted the Squire, in doubt whether to
laugh or scold. "Here, I'll go with you. Get on down. Hold the chair
tight for me, Johnny."
We hoisted him over without damage. I leaped after him, and Susan,
grinning with delight, came after me. She supposed that Jane Cross had
slipped out somewhere during Matilda's absence.
The door faced the garden, and the Squire and Susan were the first
to enter. There seemed to be no light anywhere, and the Squire went
gingerly picking his way. I turned round to look for Matilda, who had
hung back, and found her with her hand on the trellis-work of the porch,
and the beer splashing over in her fear.
"I say, look here, Matilda; you must be a regular goose, as the Squire
says, to put yourself into this fright before you know whether there's
any cause for it. Susan says she has only stepped out somewhere."
She put up her hand and touched my arm, her lips the colour of chalk.
"Only last night that ever was, Mr. Johnny, as we were going up the
staircase to bed, we heard a sound in the room as we passed it. It was
just like a groan. Ask Jane Cross, else, sir."
"What room?"
"Mr. Edmund's; where he did it. She has heard him to-night, or seen him,
or something, and has fallen into a fit."
The kitchen was on the right of the passage. Susan, knowing the ways of
the house, soon lighted a candle. On a small round table was spread a
white cloth, some bread and cheese, and two tumblers. A knife or two had
seemingly been flung on it at random.
"Jane Cross! Jane Cross!" shouted the Squire, going forward towards the
front hall, Susan following with the candle. It was a good-sized hall;
I could see that, with a handsome well-staircase at this end of it.
"Halloa! What's this? Johnny! Susan!--all of you come here! Here's
somebody lying here. It must be the poor girl. Goodness bless my heart!
Johnny, help me to raise her!"
Still and white she was lying, underneath the opening of the staircase.
Upon lifting her head, it fell back in a curious manner. We both backed
a little. Susan held the candle nearer. As its light fell on the
upturned face, the girl shrieked.
"She is in a fit," cried Matilda.
"God help her!" whispered the Squire. "I fear this is something worse
than a fit. We must have a doctor."
Susan thrust the candlestick into my hand, and ran out at the back door,
saying she'd fetch Mr. Lockett. Back she came in a moment: the garden
gate was locked, and the key not in it.
"There's the front door, girl," stuttered the Squire, angry with her for
returning, though it was no fault of hers. He was like one off his head,
and his nose and cheeks had turned blue.
But there could be no more exit by the front door than by the back. It
was locked, and the key gone. Who had done these things? what strange
mystery was here? Locking the poor girl in the house to kill her!
Matilda, who had lighted another candle, found the key of the back gate
lying on the kitchen dresser. Susan caught it up, and flew away. It was
a most uncomfortable moment. There lay Jane Cross, pale and motionless,
and it seemed that we were helpless to aid her.
"Ask that stupid thing to bring a pillow or a cushion, Johnny! Ghosts,
indeed! The idiots that women are!"
"What else has done it? what else was there to hurt her?" remonstrated
Matilda, bringing up the second candle. "She wouldn't fall into a fit
for nothing, sir."
And now that more light was present, we began to see other features of
the scene. Nearly close to Jane Cross lay a work-basket, overturned, a
flat, open basket, a foot and a half square. Reels of cotton, scissors,
tapes, small bundles of work tied up, and such-like things lay scattered
around.
The Squire looked at these, and then at the opening above. "Can she have
fallen down the well?" he asked, in a low tone. And Matilda, catching
the words, gave a cry of dismay, and burst into tears.
"A pillow, girl! A pillow, or a cushion!"
She went into one of the sitting-rooms and brought out a sofa-cushion.
The Squire, going down on his knees, for he was not good at stooping,
told me to slip it under while he raised the head.
A sound of feet, a sudden flash of light from a bull's-eye, and a
policeman came upon the scene. The man was quietly passing on his beat
when met by Susan. In her excitement she told him what had happened, and
sent him in. We knew the man, whose beat lay at this end of Saltwater;
a civil man, named Knapp. He knelt down where the Squire had just been
kneeling, touching Jane Cross here and there.
"She's dead, sir," he said. "There can be no mistake about that."
"She must have fallen down the well of the staircase, I fear," observed
the Squire.
"Well--yes; perhaps so," assented the man in a doubtful tone. "But what
of this?"
He flung the great light in front of poor Jane Cross's dress. A small
portion of the body, where the gown fastened in front, had been torn
away, as well as one of the wristbands.
"It's no fall," said the man. "It's foul play--as I think."
"Goodness bless me!" gasped the Squire. "Some villains must have got in.
This comes of that other one's having left the front door on the latch."
But I am not sure that any of us, including himself, believed she could
be really dead.
Susan returned with speed, and was followed by Mr. Lockett. He was
a young man, thirty perhaps, pale and quiet, and much like what I
remembered of his brother. Poor Jane Cross was certainly dead, he
said--had been dead, he thought, an hour.
But this could scarcely have been, as we knew. It was not, at the very
utmost, above twenty-five minutes since Matilda went out to fetch the
beer, leaving her alive and well. Mr. Lockett looked again, but thought
he was not mistaken. When a young doctor takes up a crotchet, he likes
to hold to it.
A nameless sensation of awe fell upon us all. Dead! In that sudden
manner! The Squire rubbed up his head like a helpless lunatic; Susan's
eyes were round with horror; Matilda had thrown her apron over her face
to hide its grief and tears.
Leaving her for the present where she was, we turned to go upstairs. I
stooped to pick up the overturned basket, but the policeman sharply told
me to let all things remain as they were until he had time to look into
them.
The first thing the man did, on reaching the landing above, was to open
the room doors one by one, and throw his bull's-eye light into them.
They were all right, unoccupied, straight and tidy. On the landing of
the upper floor lay one or two articles, which seemed to indicate that
some kind of struggle had taken place there. A thimble here, a bodkin
there, also the bit that had been torn out of the girl's gown in front,
and the wristband from the sleeve. The balustrades were very handsome,
but very low; on this upper landing, dangerously low. These bedrooms
were all in order; the one in which the two servants slept, alone
showing signs of occupation.
Downstairs went Knapp again, carrying with him the torn-out pieces, to
compare them with the gown. It was the print gown I had often seen Jane
Cross wear, a black gown with white zigzag lines running down it.
Matilda was wearing the fellow to it now. The pieces fitted in exactly.
"The struggle must have taken place upstairs: not here," observed the
doctor.
Matilda, questioned and cross-questioned by the policeman, gave as
succinct an account of the evening as her distressed state allowed. We
stood round the kitchen while she told it.
Neither she nor Jane Cross had gone out at all that day. Monday was
rather a busy day with them, for they generally did a bit of washing.
After tea, which they took between four and five o'clock, they went
up to their bedroom, it being livelier there than in the kitchen, the
window looking down the side road. Matilda sat down to write a letter
to her brother, who lived at a distance; Jane Cross sat at the window
doing a job of sewing. They sat there all the evening, writing, working,
and sometimes talking. At dusk, Jane remarked that it was getting
blind man's holiday, and that she should go on downstairs and lay the
supper. Upon that, Matilda finished her letter quickly, folded and
directed it, and followed her down. Jane had not yet laid the cloth,
but was then taking it out of the drawer. "You go and fetch the beer,
Matilda," she said: and Matilda was glad to do so. "You can't go that
way: I have locked the gate," Jane called out, seeing Matilda turning
towards the back; accordingly she went out at the front door, leaving it
on the latch. Such was her account; and I have given it almost verbatim.
"On the latch," repeated the policeman, taking up the words. "Does that
mean that you left it open?"
"I drew it quite to, so that it looked as if it were shut; it was a
heavy door, and would keep so," was Matilda's answer. "I did it, not to
give Jane the trouble to open it to me. When I got back I found it shut
and could not get in."
The policeman mused. "You say it was Jane Cross who locked the back door
in the wall?"
"Yes," said Matilda. "She had locked it before I got downstairs. We
liked to lock that door early, because it could be opened from the
outside--while the front door could not be."
"And she had not put these things on the table when you went out for the
beer?"--pointing to the dishes.
"No: she was only then putting the cloth. As I turned round from taking
the beer-jug from its hook, the fling she gave the cloth caused the air
to whiffle in my face like a wind. She had not begun to reach out the
dishes."
"How long were you away?"
"I don't know exactly," she answered, with a moan. "Rather longer than
usual, because I took my letter to the post before going to the Swan."
"It was about ten minutes," I interposed. "I was at the window next
door, and saw Matilda go out and come back."
"Ten minutes!" repeated the policeman. "Quite long enough for some
ruffian to come in and fling her over the stairs."
"But who would do it?" asked Matilda, looking up at him with her poor
pale face.
"Ah, that's the question; that's what we must find out," said Knapp.
"Was the kitchen just as it was when you left it?"
"Yes--except that she had put the bread and cheese on the table. And the
glasses, and knives," added the girl, looking round at the said table,
which remained as we had found it, "but not the plates."
"Well now, to go to something else: Did she bring her work-basket
downstairs with her from the bedroom when she remarked to you that she
would go and put the supper on?"
"No, she did not."
"You are sure of that?"
"Yes. She left the basket on the chair in front of her where it had been
standing. She just got up and shook the threads from off her gown, and
went on down. When I left the room the basket was there; I saw it. And
I think," added the girl, with a great sob, "I think that while laying
the supper she must have gone upstairs again to fetch the basket, and
must have fallen against the banisters with fright, and overbalanced
herself."
"Fright at what?" asked Knapp.
Matilda shivered. Susan whispered to him that they were afraid at night
of seeing the ghost of Mr. Edmund Peahern.
The man glanced keenly at Matilda for a minute. "Did you ever see it?"
he asked.
"No," she shuddered. "But there are strange noises, and we think it is
in the house."
"Well," said Knapp, coughing to hide a comical smile, "ghosts don't tear
pieces out of gowns--that ever I heard of. I should say it was something
worse than a ghost that has been here to-night. Had this poor girl any
sweetheart?"
"No," said Matilda.
"Have you one?"
"No."
"Except Owen the milkman."
A red streak flashed into Matilda's cheeks. I knew Owen: he was Mrs.
Blair's milkman also.
"I think Owen must be your sweetheart or hers," went on Knapp. "I've
seen him, often enough, talking and laughing with you both when bringing
the afternoon's milk round. Ten minutes at a stretch he has stayed in
this garden, when he need not have been as many moments."
"There has been no harm: and it's nothing to anybody," said Matilda.
The key of the front door was searched for, high and low; but it could
not be found. Whoever locked the door, must have made off with the key.
But for that, and for the evidences of the scuffle above and the pieces
torn out of the gown, we should have thought Matilda's opinion was
correct: that Jane Cross had gone upstairs for her basket, and through
some wretched accident had pitched over the balustrades. Matilda could
not relinquish the notion.
"It was only a week ago that ever was--a week ago this very day--that
Jane Cross nearly fell over there. We were both running upstairs, trying
in sport which should get first into our bedroom; and, in jostling one
another on the landing, she all but overbalanced herself. I caught hold
of her to save her. It's true--if it were the last word I had to speak."
Matilda broke down, with a dreadful fit of sobbing. Altogether she
struck me as being about as excitable a young woman as one could meet in
a summer day's journey.
Nothing more could be made out of it this evening. Jane Cross had met
her death, and some evil or other must have led to it. The police took
possession of the house for the night: and Matilda, out of compassion,
was brought to ours. To describe the Mater's shock and Mary Blair's,
when they heard the news, would be beyond me.
All sorts of conjectures arose in the neighbourhood. The most popular
belief was that some person must have perceived the front door open,
and, whether with a good or a bad intention, entered the house; that he
must have stolen upstairs, met Jane Cross on the top landing, and flung
her down in a scuffle. That he must then have let himself out at the
front door and locked it after him.
Against this theory there were obstacles. From the time of Matilda's
leaving the house till her return, certainly not more than ten minutes
had elapsed, perhaps not quite as much, and this was a very short space
of time for what had been done in it. Moreover the chances were that I,
sitting at the next window, should have seen any one going in or out;
though it was not of course certain. I had got up once to ring the bell,
and stayed a minute or two away from the window, talking with Mary Blair
and the Mater.
Some people thought the assassin (is it too much to call him so?) had
been admitted by Jane Cross herself; or he might have been in hiding in
the garden before she locked the door. In short, the various opinions
would fill a volume.
But suspicion fell chiefly upon one person--and that was Thomas Owen the
milkman. Though, perhaps, "suspicion" is too strong a word to give to
it--I ought rather to say "doubt." These Owens were originally from
Wales, very respectable people. The milk business was their own; and,
since the father's death, which happened only a few months before, the
son had carried it on in conjunction with his mother. He was a young man
of three or four and twenty, with a fresh colour and open countenance,
rather superior in manners and education. The carrying out the milk
himself was a temporary arrangement, the boy employed for it being ill.
That he had often lingered at No. 7, laughing with the two young women,
was well known; he had also been seen to accost them in the street. Only
the previous day, he and Matilda had stayed talking in the churchyard
after morning service when everybody else had left it; and he had
walked up nearly as far as Seaboard Terrace with Jane Cross in the
evening. A notion existed that he had entered the house on the Monday
evening, for who else was it likely to have been, cried everybody.
Which was, of course, logic. At last a rumour arose--arose on the
Tuesday--that Owen had been _seen_ to leave the house at dusk on the
fatal evening; that this could be proved. If so, it looked rather black.
I was startled, for I had liked the man.
The next day, Wednesday, the key was found. A gardener who did up the
gardens of the other end house, No. 1, every Wednesday, was raking the
ground underneath some dwarf pines that grew close against the front
railings, and raked out a big door-key. About a dozen people came
rushing off with it to No. 7.
It was the missing key. It fitted into the door at once, locked and
unlocked it. When the villain had made his way from the house after
doing the mischief, he must have flung the key over amidst the pines,
thinking no doubt it would lie hidden there.
The coroner and jury assembled; but they could not make more of the
matter than we had made. Jane Cross had died of the fall down the
well-staircase, which had broken her neck; and it was pretty evident she
had been flung down. Beyond the one chief and fatal injury, she was not
harmed in any way; not by so much as a scratch. Matilda, whose surname
turned out to be Valentine, having got over the first shock, gave her
testimony with subdued composure. She was affected at parts of it, and
said she would have saved Jane Cross's life with her own: and no one
could doubt that she spoke the truth. She persisted in asserting her
opinion that there had been no scuffle, in spite of appearances; but
that the girl had been terrified in some way and had accidentally fallen
over.
When Matilda was done with, Thomas Owen took her place. He was all
in black, having dressed himself to come to the inquest and wearing
mourning for his father; and I must say, looking at him now, you'd never
have supposed he carried out milk-pails.
Yes, he had known the poor young woman in question, he readily said in
answer to questions; had been fond of chaffing with the two girls a bit,
but nothing more. Meant nothing by it, nothing serious. Respected both
of them; regarded them as perfectly well-conducted young women.--Was
either of them his sweetheart? Certainly not. Had not courted either of
them. Never thought of either of them as his future wife: should not
consider a servant eligible for that position--at least, his mother
would not. Of the two, he had liked Jane Cross the best. Did not know
anything whatever of the circumstances attending the death; thought it a
most deplorable calamity, and was never more shocked in his life than
when he heard of it.
"Is there any truth in the report that you were at the house on Monday
evening?" asked the coroner.
"There is no truth in it."
"I see him come out o' No. 7: I see him come out o' the side door in the
garden wall," burst forth a boy's earnest voice from the back of the
room.
"You saw me _not_ come out of it," quietly replied Thomas Owen, turning
round to see who it was that had spoken. "Oh, it is you, is it, Bob
Jackson! Yes, you came running round the corner just as I turned from
the door."
"You _were_ there, then?" cried the coroner.
"No, sir. At the door, yes; that's true enough; but I was not inside
it. What happened was this: on Monday I had some business at a
farmhouse near Munpler, and set out to walk over there early in the
evening. In passing down the side road by No. 7, I saw the two maids
at the top window. One of them--I think it was Jane Cross--called out
to ask me in a joking kind of way whether I was about to pay them
a visit; I answered, not then, but I would as I came back if they
liked. Accordingly, in returning, I rang the bell. It was not
answered, and I rang again with a like result. Upon that, I went
straight home to my milk books, and did not stir out again, as my
mother can prove. That is the truth, sir, on my oath; and the whole
truth."
"What time was this?"
"I am not quite sure. It was getting dusk."
"Did you see anything of the young women this second time?"
"Not anything."
"Or hear anything?--Any noise?"
"None whatever. I supposed that they would not come to the door to me
because it was late: I thought nothing else. I declare, sir, that this
is all I know of the matter."
There was a pause when he concluded. Knapp, the policeman, and another
one standing by his side, peered at Owen from under their eyebrows,
as if they did not put implicit faith in his words: and the coroner
recalled Matilda Valentine.
She readily confirmed the statement of his having passed along the side
road, and Jane Cross's joking question to him. But she denied having
heard him ring on his return, and said the door-bell had not rung at all
that night. Which would seem to prove that Owen must have rung during
the time she had gone out for the beer.
So, you perceive, the inquest brought forth no more available light, and
had to confess itself baffled.
"A fine termination this is to our pleasure," cried the Squire,
gloomily. "I don't like mysteries, Johnny. And of all the mysteries I
have come across in my life, the greatest mystery is this at No. 7."
THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN
II.--OWEN, THE MILKMAN
It was a grand sea to-day: one of the grandest that we had seen at
Saltwater. The waves were dancing and sparkling like silver; the blue
of the sky was deeper than a painter's ultramarine. But to us, looking
on it from Mrs. Blair's house in Seaboard Terrace, its brightness and
beauty were dimmed.
"For you see, Johnny," observed the Squire to me, his face and tone
alike gloomy--outward things take their impress from the mind--"with
that dreadful affair at the next door jaundicing one's thoughts, the sea
might as well be grey as blue, and the sky lowering with thunder-clouds.
I repeat that I don't like mysteries: they act on me like a fit of
indigestion."
The affair just was a mystery; to us, as to all Saltwater. More than a
week had elapsed since the Monday evening when it took place, and poor
Jane Cross now lay buried in the windy graveyard. On this said Monday
evening, the two servant maids, Jane Cross and Matilda Valentine (left
in the house, No. 7, Seaboard Terrace, during the absence of the family
abroad), had been pursuing their ordinary occupations. While Jane Cross
was laying the cloth for supper in the kitchen, Matilda went out to
fetch the usual pint of ale. On her return she could not get in. When
admittance was obtained, Jane Cross lay dead in the hall, having fallen
down the well of the staircase. Evidences of a scuffle on the upper
landing could be traced, making it apparent that the fall was not
accidental; that she had been flung down. Some doubt attached to Owen,
the milkman, partly from his previous intimacy with the girls, chiefly
because he had been seen leaving the back door of the house somewhere
about the time it must have occurred. What Owen said was, that he had
rung twice at the door, but his ring was not answered.
Matilda was to be pitied. The two young women had cared a good deal for
one another, and the shock to Matilda was serious. The girl, now staying
in our house, had worn a half-dazed look ever since, and avoided No. 7
as though it had the plague. Superstition in regard to the house had
already been rife in both the servants' minds, in consequence of the
unhappy death in it of their master's son, Edmund Peahern, some weeks
back: and if Matilda had been afraid of seeing one ghost before (as she
had been) she would now undoubtedly expect to see two of them.
On this same morning, as I stood with the Squire looking at the sea from
the drawing-room window of No. 6, Matilda came in. Her large dark eyes
had lost their former sparkle, her clear olive skin its freshness. She
asked leave to speak to Mrs. Todhetley: and the Mater--who sat at the
table adding up some bills, for our sojourn at Saltwater was drawing
towards its close--told her, in a kindly tone, to speak on.
"I am making bold to ask you, ma'am, whether you could help me to find a
place in London," began Matilda, standing between the door and the table
in her black dress. "I know, ma'am, you don't live in London, but a long
way off it; Mrs. Blair has told me so, Master Johnny Ludlow also: but
I thought perhaps you knew people there, and might be able to hear of
something."
The Mater looked at Matilda without answering, and then round at us.
Rather strange it was, a coincidence in a small way, that we had had a
letter from London from Miss Deveen that morning, which had concluded
with these lines of postscript: "Do you chance to know of any nice,
capable young woman in want of a situation? One of my housemaids is
going to leave."
Naturally this occurred to the Mater's mind when Matilda spoke. "What
kind of situation do you wish for?" she asked.
"As housemaid, ma'am, or parlour-maid. I can do my duty well in either."
"But now, my girl," spoke up the Squire, turning from the window, "why
need you leave Saltwater? You'd never like London after it. This is a
clear, fresh, health-giving place, with beautiful sands and music on
them all day long; London is nothing but smoke and fogs."
Matilda shook her head. "I could not stay here, sir."
"Nonsense, girl. Of course what has happened _has_ happened, and it's
very distressing; and you, of all people, must feel it so: but you will
forget it in time. If you don't care to go back to No. 7 before Mr. and
Mrs. Peahern come home----"
"I can never go back to No. 7, sir," she interrupted, a vehemence that
seemed born of terror in her subdued voice. "Never in this world. I
would rather die."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said the Squire, impatiently. "There's nothing the
matter with No. 7. What has happened in it won't happen again."
"It is an unlucky house, sir; a haunted house," she contended with
suppressed emotion. "And it's true that I would rather die outright than
go back to live in it; for the terror of being there would slowly kill
me. And so, ma'am," she added quickly to Mrs. Todhetley, evidently
wishing to escape the subject, "I should like to go away altogether from
Saltwater; and if you can help me to hear of a place in London, I shall
be very grateful."
"I will consider of it, Matilda," was the answer. And when the girl had
left the room the Mater asked us what we thought about recommending her
to Miss Deveen. We saw no reason against it--not but that the Squire put
the girl down as an idiot on the subject of haunted houses--and Miss
Deveen was written to.
The upshot was, that on the next Saturday Matilda bade farewell to
Saltwater and departed for Miss Deveen's, the Squire sarcastically
assuring her that _that_ house had no ghosts in it. We should be
leaving, ourselves, the following Tuesday.
But, before that day came, it chanced that I saw Owen, the milkman. It
was on the Sunday afternoon. I had taken little Joe Blair for a walk
across the fields as far as Munpler (their Montpellier-by-Sea, you
know), and in returning met Thomas Owen. He wore his black Sunday
clothes, and looked a downright fine fellow, as usual. There was
something about the man I could not help liking, in spite of the doubt
attaching to him.
"So Matilda Valentine is gone, sir," he observed, after we had exchanged
a few sentences.
"Yes, she went yesterday," I answered, putting my back against the
field fence, while young Joe went careering about in chase of a yellow
butterfly. "And for my part, I don't wonder at the girl's not liking to
stay at Saltwater. At least, in Seaboard Terrace."
"I was told this morning that Mr. and Mrs. Peahern were on their way
home," he continued.
"Most likely they are. They'd naturally want to look into the affair for
themselves."
"And I hope with all my heart they will be able to get some light out
of it," returned Owen, warmly. "I mean to do _my_ best to bring out the
mystery, sir; and I sha'n't rest till it's done."
His words were fair, his tone was genuine. If it was indeed himself
who had been the chief actor in the tragedy, he carried it off well.
I hardly knew what to think. It is true I had taken a bit of a fancy
to the man, according to my usual propensity to take a fancy, or the
contrary; but I did not know much about him, and not anything of
his antecedents. As he spoke to me now, his tone was marked, rather
peculiar. It gave me a notion that he wanted to say more.
"Have you any idea that you will be able to trace it out?"
"For my own sake I should like to get the matter cleared up," he added,
not directly answering my question. "People are beginning to turn the
cold shoulder my way: one woman asked me to my face yesterday whether I
did it. No, I told her, I did not do it, but I'd try and find out who
did."
"You are sure you heard and saw nothing suspicious that night when you
rang the bell and could not get in, Owen?"
"Not then, sir; no. I saw no light in the house and heard no noise."
"You have not any clue to go by, then?"
"Not much, sir, yet. But I can't help thinking somebody else has."
"Who is that?"
"Matilda."
"Matilda!" I repeated, in amazement. "Surely you can't suspect that
she--that she was a party to any deed so cruel and wicked!"
"No, no, sir, I don't mean that; the young women were too good friends
to harm one another: and whatever took place, took place while Matilda
was out of the house. But I can't help fancying that she knows, or
suspects, more of the matter than she will say. In short, that she is
screening some one."
To me it seemed most unlikely. "Why do you judge so, Owen?"
"By her manner, sir. Not by much else. But I'll tell you something that
I saw. On the previous Wednesday when I left the afternoon milk at that
tall house just beyond Seaboard Terrace, the family lodging there told
me to call in the evening for the account, as they were leaving the next
day. Accordingly I went; and was kept waiting so long before they paid
me that it was all but dark when I came out. Just as I was passing the
back door at No. 7, it was suddenly drawn open from the inside, and a
man stood in the opening, whispering with one of the girls. She was
crying, for I heard her sobs, and he kissed her and came out, and the
door was hastily shut. He was an ill-looking man; so far at least as his
clothes went; very shabby. His face I did not see, for he pulled his
slouching round hat well over his brows as he walked away rapidly, and
the black beard he wore covered his mouth and chin."
"Which of the maids was it?"
"I don't know, sir. The next day I chaffed them a bit about it, but
they both declared that nobody had been there but the watchmaker, Mr.
Renninson, who goes every Wednesday to wind up the clocks, and that it
must have been him I saw, for he was late that evening. I said no more;
it was no business of mine; but the man I saw go out was just about as
much like Renninson as he was like me."
"And do you fancy----"
"Please wait a minute, sir," he interrupted, "I haven't finished. Last
Sunday evening, upon getting home after service, I found I had left my
prayer-book in church. Not wishing to lose it, for it was the one my
father always used, I went back for it. However, the church was shut up,
so I could not get in. It was a fine evening, and I took a stroll round
the churchyard. In the corner of it, near to Mr. Edmund Peahern's tomb,
they had buried poor Jane Cross but two days before--you know the spot,
sir. Well, on the flat square of earth that covers her grave, stood
Matilda Valentine, the greatest picture of distress you can imagine,
tears streaming down her cheeks. She dried her eyes when she saw me, and
we came away together. Naturally I fell to talking of Jane Cross and the
death. 'I shall do as much as lies in my power to bring it to light,'
I said to Matilda; 'or people may go on doubting me to the end. And I
think the first step must be to find out who the man was that called in
upon you the previous Wednesday night.' Well, sir, with that, instead of
making any answering remark as a Christian would, or a rational being,
let us say, Matilda gives a smothered shriek and darts away out of the
churchyard. I couldn't make her out; and all in a minute a conviction
flashed over me, though I hardly know why, that she knew who was the
author of the calamity, and was screening him; or at any rate that she
had her suspicions, if she did not actually know. And I think so still,
sir."
I shook my head, not seeing grounds to agree with Owen. He resumed:
"The next morning, between nine and ten, I was in the shop, putting a
pint of cream which had been ordered into a can, when to my surprise
Matilda walked in, cool and calm. She said she had come to tell me that
the man I had seen leave the house was her brother. He had fallen into
trouble through having become security for a fellow workman, had had all
his things sold up, including his tools, and had walked every step of
the way--thirty miles--to ask her if she could help him. She did help
him as far as she could, giving him what little money she had by her,
and Jane Cross had added ten shillings to it. He had got in only
at dusk, she said, had taken some supper with them, and left again
afterwards, and that she was letting him out at the gate when I must
have been passing it. She did not see me, for her eyes were dim with
crying: her heart felt fit to break in saying farewell. That was the
truth, she declared, and that her brother had had no more to do with
Jane's death than she or I had; he was away again out of Saltwater the
same night he came into it."
"Well? Did you not believe her?"
"No, sir," answered Owen, boldly. "I did not. If this was true, why
should she have gone off into that smothered shriek in the churchyard
when I mentioned him, and rush away in a fright?"
I could not tell. Owen's words set me thinking.
"I did not know which of the two girls it was who let the man out that
Wednesday night, for I did not clearly see; but, sir, the impression on
my mind at the moment was, that it was Jane Cross. Jane Cross, and not
Matilda. If so, why does she tell me this tale about her brother, and
say it was herself?"
"And if it was Jane Cross?"
Owen shook his head. "All sorts of notions occur to me, sir. Sometimes
I fancy that the man might have been Jane's sweetheart, that he might
have been there again on the Monday night, and done the mischief in
a quarrel; and that Matilda is holding her tongue because it is her
brother. Let the truth be what it will, Matilda's manner convinces me of
one thing: that there's something she is concealing, and that it is half
frightening her wits out of her.----You are going to leave Saltwater, I
hear, sir," added the young man in a different tone, "and I am glad to
have the opportunity of saying this, for I should not like you to carry
away any doubt of me. I'll bring the matter to light if I can."
Touching his hat, he walked onwards, leaving my thoughts all in a
whirligig.
Was Owen right in drawing these conclusions?--or was he purposely giving
a wrong colouring to facts, and seeking craftily to throw suspicion
off himself? It was a nice question, one I could make neither top nor
tail of. But, looking back to the fatal evening, weighing this point,
sifting that, I began to see that Matilda showed more anxiety, more
terror, than she need have shown _before_ she knew that any ill had
happened. Had she a prevision, as she stood at the door with the jug of
ale in her hand, that some evil might have chanced? Did she leave some
individual in the house with Jane Cross when she went to the Swan to get
the ale?--and was it her brother? Did she leave OWEN in the house, and
was she screening him?
* * * * *
"Why, Matilda! Is it you?"
It was fourteen months later, and autumn weather, and I had just arrived
in London at Miss Deveen's. My question to Matilda, who came into my
dressing-room with some warm water to wash off the travelling dust, was
not made in surprise at seeing _her_, for I supposed she was still in
service at Miss Deveen's, but at seeing the change in her. Instead of
the healthy and, so to say, handsome girl known at Saltwater, I saw a
worn, weary, anxious-looking shadow, with a feverish fire in her wild
dark eyes.
"Have you been ill, Matilda?"
"No, sir, not at all. I am quite well."
"You have grown very thin."
"It's the London air, sir. I think everybody must get thin who lives in
it."
Very civilly and respectfully, but yet with an unmistakable air of
reticence, spoke she. Somehow the girl was changed, and greatly changed.
Perhaps she had been grieving after Jane Cross? Perhaps the secret of
what had happened (if in truth Matilda knew it) lay upon her with too
heavy a weight?
"Do you find Matilda a good servant?" I asked of Miss Deveen, later,
she and I being alone together.
"A very good servant, Johnny. But she is going to leave me."
"Is she? Why?"
Miss Deveen only nodded, in answer to the first query, passing over the
last. I supposed she did not wish to say.
"I think her so much altered."
"In what way, Johnny?"
"In looks: looks and manner. She is just a shadow. One might say she had
passed through a six months' fever. And what a curious light there is in
her eyes!"
"She has always impressed me with the idea of having some great care
upon her. None can mistake that she is a sorrowful woman. I hear that
the other servants accuse her of having been 'crossed in love,'" added
Miss Deveen, with a smile.
"She is thinner even than Miss Cattledon."
"And that, I daresay you think, need not be, Johnny! Miss Cattledon, by
the way, is rather hard upon Matilda just now: calls her a 'demon.'"
"A demon! Why does she?"
"Well, I'll tell you. Though it is only a little domestic matter, one
that perhaps you will hardly care to hear. You must know (to begin with)
that Matilda has never made herself sociable with the other servants
here; in return they have become somewhat prejudiced against her, and
have been ready to play her tricks, tease her, and what not. But you
must understand, Johnny, that I knew nothing of the state of affairs
below; such matters rarely reach me. My cook, Hall, was especially at
war with Matilda: in fact, I believe there was no love lost between
the two. The girl's melancholy--for at times she does seem very
melancholy--was openly put down by the rest to the assumption that she
must have had some love affair in which the swain had played her false.
They were continually worrying her on this score, and it no doubt
irritated Matilda; but she rarely retorted, preferring rather to leave
them and take refuge in her room."
"Why could they not let her alone?"
"People can't let one another alone, as I believe, Johnny. If they did,
the world would be pleasanter to live in than it is."
"And I suppose Matilda got tired at last, and gave warning?"
"No. Some two or three weeks ago it appears that, by some means or
other, Hall obtained access to a small trunk; one that Matilda keeps
her treasures in, and has cautiously kept locked. If I thought Hall
had opened this trunk with a key of her own, as Matilda accuses her of
doing, I would not keep the woman in my house another day. But she
declares to me most earnestly--for I had her before me here to question
her--that Matilda, called suddenly out of her chamber, left the trunk
open there, and the letter, of which I am about to tell you, lying, also
open, by its side. Hall says that she went into the room--it adjoins her
own--for something she wanted, and that all she did--and she admits this
much--was to pick up the letter, carry it downstairs, read it to the
other servants, and make fun over it."
"What letter was it?"
"Strictly speaking, it was only part of a letter: one begun but not
concluded. It was in Matilda's own hand, apparently written a long time
ago, for the ink was pale and faded, and it began 'Dearest Thomas Owen.
The----'"
"Thomas Owen!" I exclaimed, starting in my chair. "Why, that is the
milkman at Saltwater."
"I'm sure I don't know who he is, Johnny, and I don't suppose it
matters. Only a few lines followed, three or four, speaking of some
private conversation that she had held with him on coming out of church
the day before, and of some reproach that she had then made to him
respecting Jane Cross. The words broke suddenly off there, as if the
writer had been interrupted. But why Matilda did not complete the letter
and send it, and why she should have kept it by her all this time, must
be best known to herself."
"Jane Cross was her fellow-servant at Mr. Peahern's. She who was killed
by falling down the staircase."
"Yes, poor thing, I remembered the name. But, to go on. In the evening,
after the finding of this letter, I and Miss Cattledon were startled by
a disturbance in the kitchen. Cries and screams, and loud, passionate
words. Miss Cattledon ran down; I stayed at the top of the stairs. She
found Hall, Matilda, and one of the others there, Matilda in a perfect
storm of fury, attacking Hall like a maniac. She tore handfuls out of
her hair, she bit her thumb until her teeth met in it: Hall, though
by far the bigger person of the two, and I should have thought the
stronger, had no chance against her; she seemed to be as a very reed in
her hands, passion enduing Matilda with a strength perfectly unnatural.
George, who had been out on an errand, came in at the moment, and by his
help the women were parted. Cattledon maintains that Matilda, during the
scene, was nothing less than a demon; quite mad. When it was over, the
girl fell on the floor utterly exhausted, and lay like a dead thing,
every bit of strength, almost of life, gone out of her."
"I never could have believed it of Matilda."
"Nor I, Johnny. I grant that the girl had just cause to be angry. How
should we like to have our private places rifled, and their contents
exhibited to and mocked at by the world; contents which to us seem
sacred? But to have put herself into that wild rage was both unseemly
and unaccountable. Her state then, and her state immediately afterwards,
made me think--I speak it with all reverence, Johnny--of the poor people
in holy writ from whom the evil spirits were cast out."
"Ay. It seems to be just such a case, Miss Deveen."
"Hall's thumb was so much injured that a doctor had to come daily to it
for nine or ten days," continued Miss Deveen. "Of course, after this
climax, I could not retain Matilda in my service; neither would she
have remained in it. She indulged a feeling of the most bitter hatred
to the women servants, to Hall especially--she had not much liked them
before, as you may readily guess--and she said that nothing would induce
her to remain with them, even had I been willing to keep her. So she has
obtained a situation with some acquaintances of mine who live in this
neighbourhood, and goes to it next week. That is why Matilda leaves me,
Johnny."
In my heart I could not help being sorry for her, and said so. She
looked so truly, terribly unhappy!
"I am very sorry for her," assented Miss Deveen. "And had I known the
others were making her life here uncomfortable, I should have taken
means to stop their pastime. Of the actual facts, with regard to the
letter, I cannot be at any certainty--I mean in my own mind. Hall is a
respectable servant, and I have never had cause to think her untruthful
during the three years she has lived with me: and she most positively
holds to it that the little trunk was standing open on the table and
the letter lying open beside it. Allowing that it was so, she had, of
course, no right to touch either trunk or letter, still less to take the
letter downstairs and exhibit it to the others, and I don't defend her
conduct: but yet it is different from having rifled the lock of the
trunk and taken the letter out."
"And Matilda accuses her of doing that?"
"Yes: and, on her side, holds to it just as positively. What Matilda
tells me is this: On that day it chanced that Miss Cattledon had paid
the women servants their quarter's wages. Matilda carried hers to her
chamber, took this said little trunk out of her large box, where she
keeps it, unlocked it and put the money into it. She disturbed nothing
in the trunk; she says she had wrapped the sovereigns in a bit of
paper, and she just slipped them inside, touching nothing else. She was
shutting down the lid when she heard herself called to by me on the
landing below. She waited to lock the box but not to put it up, leaving
it standing on the table. I quite well remembered calling to the girl,
having heard her run upstairs. I wanted her in my room."
Miss Deveen paused a minute, apparently thinking.
"Matilda has assured me again and again that she is quite sure she
locked the little trunk, that there can be no mistake on that point.
Moreover, she asserts that the letter in question was lying at the
bottom of the trunk beneath other things, and that she had not taken
it out or touched it for months and months."
"And when she went upstairs again--did she find the little trunk open
or shut?"
"She says she found it shut: shut and locked just as she had left it;
and she replaced it in her large box, unconscious that any one had been
to it."
"Was she long in your room, Miss Deveen?"
"Yes, Johnny, the best part of an hour. I wanted a little sewing done
in a hurry, and told her to sit down there and then and do it. It was
during this time that the cook, going upstairs herself, saw the trunk,
and took the opportunity to do what she did do."
"I think I should feel inclined to believe Matilda. Her tale sounds the
more probable."
"I don't know that, Johnny. I can hardly believe that a respectable
woman, as Hall undoubtedly is, would deliberately unlock a
fellow-servant's box with a false key. Whence did she get the key to
do it? Had she previously provided herself with one? The lock is of
the most simple description, for I have seen the trunk since, and Hall
might possess a key that would readily fit it: but if so, as the woman
herself says, how could she know it? In short, Johnny, it is one
woman's word against another's: and, until this happened, I had deemed
each of them to be equally credible."
To be sure there was reason in that. I sat thinking.
"Were it proved to have been as Matilda says, still I could not keep
her," resumed Miss Deveen. "Mine is a peaceable, well-ordered household,
and I should not like to know that one, subject to insane fits of
temper, was a member of it. Though Hall in that case would get her
discharge also."
"Do the people where Matilda is going know why she leaves?"
"Mrs. and Miss Soames. Yes. I told them all about it. But I told them
at the same time, what I had then learnt--that Matilda's temper had
doubtlessly been much tried here. It would not be tried in their house,
they believed, and took her readily. She is an excellent servant,
Johnny, let who will get her."
I could not resist the temptation of speaking to Matilda about this, an
opportunity offering that same day. She came into the room with some
letters just left by the postman.
"I thought my mistress was here, sir," she said, hesitating with the
tray in her hand.
"Miss Deveen will be here in a minute: you can leave the letters. So you
are going to take flight, Matilda! I have heard all about it. What a
silly thing you must be to put yourself into that wonderful tantrum!"
"She broke into my box, and turned over its contents, and stole my
letter to mock me," retorted Matilda, her fever-lighted eyes taking a
momentary fierceness. "Who, put in my place, would not have gone into
a tantrum, sir?"
"But she says she did not break into it."
"As surely as that is heaven's sun above us, she _did it_, Mr. Johnny.
She has been full of spite towards me for a long time, and she thought
she would pay me out. I did but unlock the box, and slip the little
paper of money in, and I locked it again instantly and brought the key
away with me: I can never say anything truer than that, sir: to make a
mistake about it is not possible."
No pen could convey the solemn earnestness with which she spoke. Somehow
it impressed me. I hoped Hall would get served out.
"Yes, the wrong has triumphed for once. As far as I can see, sir, it
often does triumph. Miss Deveen thinks great things of Hall, but she is
deceived in her; and I daresay she will find her out sometime. It was
Hall who ought to have been turned away instead of me. Not that I would
stay here longer if I could."
"But you like Miss Deveen?"
"Very much indeed, sir; she is a good lady and a kind mistress. She
spoke very well indeed of me to the new family where I am going, and
I daresay I shall do well enough there.--Have you been to Saltwater
lately, sir?" she added, abruptly.
"Never since. Do you get news from the place?"
She shook her head. "I have never heard a word from any soul in it. I
have written to nobody, and nobody has written to me."
"And nothing more has come out about poor Jane Cross. It is still a
mystery."
"And likely to be one," she replied, in a low tone.
"Perhaps so. Do you know what Owen the milkman thought?"
She had spoken the last sentence or two with her eyes bent, fiddling
with the silver waiter. Now they were raised quickly.
"Owen thought that you could clear up the mystery if you liked, Matilda.
At least, that you possessed some clue to it. He told me so."
"Owen as good as said the same to me before I left," she replied, after
a pause. "He is wrong, sir: but he must think it if he will. Is he--is
he at Saltwater still?"
"For all I know to the contrary. This letter, that the servants here
got at, was one you were beginning to write to Owen. Did----"
"I would rather not talk of that letter, Mr. Johnny: my private affairs
concern myself only," she interrupted--and went out of the room like a
shot.
* * * * *
Had anyone told me that during this short visit of mine in London I
should come across the solution of the mystery of that tragedy enacted
at No. 7, I might have been slow to credit it. Nevertheless, it was to
be so.
Have you ever noticed, in going through life, that events seem to carry
a sequence in themselves almost as though they bore in their own hands
the guiding thread that connects them from beginning to end? For a time
this thread will seem to be lost; to lie dormant, as though it had
snapped, and the course of affairs it was holding to have disappeared
for good. But lo! up peeps a little end when least expected, and we
catch hold of it, and soon it grows into a handful; and what we had
thought lost is again full of activity and gradually works itself out.
Not a single syllable, good or bad, had we heard of that calamity at
Saltwater during the fourteen months which had passed since. The thread
of it lay dormant. At Miss Deveen's it began to steal up again: Matilda,
and her passion, and the letter she had commenced to Thomas Owen were to
the fore: and before that visit of mine came to an end, the thread had,
strange to say, unwound itself.
I was a favourite of Miss Deveen's: you may have gathered that from past
papers. One day, when she was going shopping, she asked me to accompany
her and not Miss Cattledon: which made that rejected lady's face all the
more like vinegar. So we set off in the carriage.
"Are we going to Regent Street, Miss Deveen?"
"Not to-day, Johnny. I like to encourage my neighbouring tradespeople,
and shall buy my new silk here. We have excellent shops not far off."
After a few intricate turnings and windings, the carriage stopped before
a large linendraper's, which stood amidst a colony of shops nearly a
mile from Miss Deveen's. George came round to open the door.
"Now what will you do, Johnny?" said Miss Deveen. "I daresay I shall be
half an hour in here, looking at silks and calico; and I won't inflict
that penalty on you. Shall the carriage take you for a short drive the
while, or will you wait in it?--or walk about?"
"I will wait in the street here," I said, "and come in to you when I am
tired. I like looking at shops." And I do like it.
The next shop to the linendraper's was a carver and gilder's: he had
some good pictures displayed in his window; at any rate, they looked
good to me: and there I took up my station to begin with.
"How do you do, sir? Have you forgotten me?"
The words came from a young man who stood at the next door, close to me,
causing me to turn quickly to him from gazing at the pictures. No, I had
not forgotten him. I knew him instantly. It was Owen, the milkman.
After a few words had passed, I went inside. It was a large shop, well
fitted up with cans and things pertaining to a milkman's business. The
window-board was prettily set off with moss, ferns, a bowl containing
gold and silver fish, a miniature fountain, and a rush basket of fresh
eggs. Over the door was his own name, Thomas Owen.
"You are living here, Owen?"
"Yes, sir."
"But why have you left Saltwater?"
"Because, Mr. Johnny, the place looked askance at me. People, in their
own minds, set down that miserable affair at No. 7 to my credit. Once or
twice I was hooted at by the street boys, asking what I had done with
Jane Cross. My mother couldn't stand that, and I couldn't stand it, so
we just sold our business at Saltwater, and bought this one here. And
a good change it has been, in a pecuniary point of view: this is an
excellent connection, and grows larger every day."
"I'm sure I am glad to hear it."
"At first, mother couldn't bear London: she longed for the country air
and the green fields: but she is reconciled to it now. Perhaps she'll
have an opportunity soon of going back to see her own old Welsh
mountains, and of staying there if it pleases her."
"Then I should say you are going to be married, Owen."
He laughed and nodded. "You'll wish me good luck, won't you, sir? She's
the only daughter at the next door, the grocer's."
"That I will. Have you discovered anymore of that mysterious business,
Owen?"
"At Saltwater? No, sir: not anything at all that could touch the matter
itself. But I have heard a good bit that bears upon it."
"Do you still suspect that Matilda could tell if she chose?"
"I suspect more than that, sir."
The man's words were curiously significant. He had a bit of fern in his
hand, and his fresh, open, intelligent face was bent downwards, as if he
wanted to see what the leaf was made of.
"I am not sure, sir. It is but suspicion at the best: but it's an
uncommonly strong one."
"Won't you tell me what you mean? You may trust me."
"Yes, I am sure I may," he said, promptly. "And I think I will tell
you--though I have never breathed it to mortal yet. I think Matilda did
it herself."
Backing away from the counter in my surprise, I upset an empty milk-can.
"Matilda!" I exclaimed, picking up the can.
"Mr. Johnny, with all my heart I believe it to have been so. I have
believed it for some time now."
"But the girls were too friendly to harm one another. I remember you
said so yourself, Owen."
"And I thought so then, sir. No suspicion of Matilda had occurred to me,
but rather of the man I had seen there on the Wednesday. I think she
must have done it in a sudden passion; not of deliberate purpose."
"But now, what are your reasons?"
"I told you, sir, as I daresay you can recall to mind, that I should
do what lay in my power to unravel the mystery--for it was not at all
agreeable to have it laid at my door. I began, naturally, with tracing
out the doings of that night as connected with No. 7. Poor Jane Cross
had not been out of doors that night, and so far as I knew had spoken to
no one save to me from the window; therefore of her there seemed nothing
to be traced: but of Matilda there was. Inquiring here and there, I bit
by bit got a few odds and ends of facts together. I traced out the exact
time, almost to a minute, that I rang twice at the door-bell at No. 7,
and was not answered; and the time that Matilda entered the Swan to get
the supper beer. Pretty nearly half an hour had elapsed between the
first time and the second."
"Half an hour!"
"Not far short of it. Which proved that Matilda must have been indoors
when I rang, though she denied it before the coroner, and it was taken
for granted that I had rung during her absence to fetch the beer. And
you knew, sir, that her absence did not exceed ten minutes. Now why did
not Matilda answer my ring? Why did she not candidly say that she had
heard the ring, but did not choose to answer it? Well, sir, that gave
rise to the first faint doubt of her: and when I recalled and dwelt on
her singular manner, it appeared to me that the doubt might pass into
grave suspicion. Look at her superstitious horror of No. 7. She never
would go into the house afterwards!"
I nodded.
"Two or three other little things struck me, all tending to strengthen
my doubts, but perhaps they are hardly worth naming. Still, make the
worst of it, it was only suspicion, not certainty, and I left Saltwater,
holding my tongue."
"And is this all, Owen?"
"Not quite, sir. Would you be so good as to step outside, and just look
at the name over the grocer's door?"
I did so, and read Valentine. "John Valentine." The same name as
Matilda's.
"Yes, sir, it is," Owen said, in answer to me. "After settling here we
made acquaintance with the Valentines, and by-and-by learnt that they
are cousins of Matilda's. Fanny--my wife that is to be--has often talked
to me about Matilda; they were together a good bit in early life; and
by dint of mentally sifting what she said, and putting that and that
together, I fancy I see daylight."
"Yes. Well?"
"Matilda's father married a Spanish woman. She was of a wild,
ungovernable temper, subject to fits of frenzy; in one of which fits
she died. Matilda has inherited this temper; she is liable to go into
frenzies that can only be compared to insanity. Fanny has seen her
in two only; they occur at rare intervals; and she tells me that she
truly believes the girl is mad--mad, Mr. Johnny--during the few minutes
that they last."
The history I had heard of her mad rage at Miss Deveen's flashed over
me. Temporarily insane they had thought her there.
"I said to Fanny one day when we were talking of her," resumed Owen,
"that a person in that sort of uncontrollable passion, might commit any
crime; a murder, or what not. 'Yes,' Fanny replied, 'and not unlikely to
do it, either: Matilda has more than once said that she should never die
in her bed.' Meaning----"
"Meaning what?" I asked, for he came to a pause.
"Well, sir, meaning, I suppose, that she might sometime lay violent
hands upon herself, or upon another. I can't help thinking that
something must have put her into one of these rages with Jane Cross,
and that she pushed or flung the poor girl over the stairs."
Looking back, rapidly recalling signs and tokens, I thought it might
have been so. Owen interrupted me.
"I shall come across her sometime, Mr. Johnny. These are things that
don't hide themselves for ever: at least, not often. And I shall tax
her with it to her face."
"But--don't you know where she is?"
"No, I don't sir. I wish I did. It was said that she came up to take
a situation in London, and perhaps she is still in it. But London's a
large place, I don't know what part of it she was in, and one might as
well look for a needle in a bundle of hay. The Valentines have never
heard of her at all since she was at Saltwater."
How strange it seemed;--that she and they were living so near one
another, and yet not to be aware of it. Should I tell Owen? Only for
half a moment did the question cross me. _No_: most certainly not. It
might be as he suspected; and, with it all, I could only pity Matilda.
Of all unhappy women, she seemed the unhappiest.
Miss Deveen's carriage bowled past the door to take her up at the
linendraper's. Wishing Owen good-day, I was going out, but drew back to
make room for two people who were entering: an elderly woman in a close
bonnet, and a young one with a fair, pretty and laughing face.
"My mother and Fanny, sir," he whispered.
"She is very pretty, very nice, Owen," I said, impulsively. "You'll be
sure to be happy with her."
"Thank you, sir; I think I shall. I wish you had spoken a word or two to
her, Mr. Johnny: you'd have seen how nice she is."
"I can't stay now, Owen. I'll come again."
Not even to Miss Deveen did I speak of what I had heard. I kept thinking
of it as we drove round Hyde Park, and she told me I was unusually
silent.
* * * * *
The thread was unwinding itself more and more. Once it had begun to
lengthen, I suppose it had to go on. Accident led to an encounter
between Matilda and Thomas Owen. Accident? No, it was this same thread
of destiny. There's no such thing as accident in the world.
During the visit to the linendraper's, above spoken of, Miss Deveen
bought a gown for Matilda. Feeling in her own heart sorry for the girl,
thinking she had been somewhat hardly done by in her house, what with
Hall and the rest of them, she wished to make her a present on leaving,
as a token of her good-will. But the quantity of stuff bought proved not
to be sufficient: Miss Deveen had doubted the point when it was cut off,
and told Matilda to go herself and get two yards more. This it was, this
simple incident, that led to the meeting with Owen. And I was present at
it.
The money-order office of the district was situated amidst this colony
of shops. In going down there one afternoon to cash an order, I overtook
Matilda. She was on her way to buy the additional yards of stuff.
"I suppose I am going right, sir?" she said to me. "I don't know much
about this neighbourhood."
"Not know much about it! What, after having lived in it more than a
year!"
"I have hardly ever gone out; except to church on a Sunday," she
answered. "And what few articles I've wanted in the dress line, I have
mostly bought at the little draper's shop round the corner."
Hardly had the words left her lips, when we came face to face with
Thomas Owen. Matilda gave a sort of smothered cry, and stood still,
gazing at him. What they said to one another in that first moment, I did
not hear. Matilda had a frightened look, and was whiter than death.
Presently we were all walking together towards Thomas Owen's, he having
invited Matilda to go and see his home.
But there was another encounter first. Standing at the grocer's door
was pretty Fanny Valentine. She and Matilda recognized each other, and
clasped hands. It appeared to me that Matilda did it with reluctance,
as though it gave her no pleasure to meet her relatives. She must have
known how near they lived to Miss Deveen's, and yet she had never sought
them out. Perhaps the very fact of not wishing to see them had kept her
from the spot.
They all sat down in the parlour behind the shop--a neat room. Mrs. Owen
was out; her son produced some wine. I stood up by the bookcase, telling
them I must be off the next minute to the post-office. But the minutes
passed, and I stayed on.
How he led up to it, I hardly know; but, before I was prepared for
anything of the kind, Thomas Owen had plunged wholesale into the subject
of Jane Cross, recounting the history of that night, in all its minute
details, to Fanny Valentine. Matilda, sitting back on the far side of
the room in an armchair, looked terror-stricken: her face seemed to be
turning into stone.
"Why do you begin about that, Thomas Owen?" she demanded, when words at
length came to her. "It can have nothing to do with Fanny."
"I have been wishing to tell it her for some little time, and this seems
to be a fitting opportunity," he answered, coolly resolute. "You, being
better acquainted with the matter than I, can correct me if I make any
blunders. I don't care to keep secrets from Fanny: she is going to be my
wife."
Matilda's hands lifted themselves with a convulsive movement and fell
again. Her eyes flashed fire.
"_Your wife?_"
"If you have no objection," he replied. "My dear old mother goes into
Wales next month, and Fanny comes here in her place."
With a cry, faint and mournful as that of a wounded dove, Matilda put
her hands before her face and leaned back in her chair. If she had in
truth loved Thomas Owen, if she loved him still, the announcement must
have caused her cruel pain.
He resumed his narrative; assuming as facts what he had in his own mind
conceived to have been the case, and by implication, but not directly,
charging Matilda with the crime. It had a dreadful effect upon her; her
agitation increased with every word. Suddenly she rose up in the chair,
her arms lifted, her face distorted. One of those fits of passion had
come on.
We had a dreadful scene. Owen was powerful, I of not much good, but we
could not hold her. Fanny ran sobbing into her own door and sent in two
of the shopmen.
It was the climax in Matilda Valentine's life. One that perhaps might
have been always looked for. From that hour she was an insane woman,
her ravings interspersed with lucid intervals. During one of these, she
disclosed the truth.
She had loved Thomas Owen with a passionate love. Mistaking the gossip
and the nonsense that the young man was fond of chattering to her and
Jane Cross, she believed her love was returned. On the day preceding the
tragedy, when talking with him after morning service, she had taxed him
with paying more attention to Jane Cross than to herself. Not a bit
of it, he had lightly answered; he would take her for a walk by the
seashore that evening if she liked to go. But, whether he had meant it,
or not, he never came, though Matilda dressed herself in readiness. On
the contrary, he went to church, met Jane there, and walked the best
part of the way home with her. Matilda jealously resented this; her mind
was in a chaos; she began to suspect that it was Jane Cross he liked,
not herself. She said a word or two upon the subject to Jane Cross the
next day, Monday; but Jane made sport of it--laughed it off. So the
time went on to evening, when they were upstairs together, Jane sewing,
Matilda writing. Suddenly Jane Cross said that Thomas Owen was coming
along, and Matilda ran to the window. They spoke to him as he passed,
and he said he would look in as he returned from Munpler. After
Matilda's letter to her brother was finished, she began a note to Thomas
Owen, intending to reproach him with not keeping his promise to her
and for joining Jane Cross instead. It was the first time she had ever
attempted to write to him; and she stuck her work-box with the lid open
behind the sheet of paper that Jane Cross might not see what she was
doing. When it grew dusk, Jane Cross remarked that it was blind man's
holiday and she would go on down and lay the supper. In crossing the
room, work-basket in hand, she passed behind Matilda, glanced at her
letter, and saw the first words of it, "Dearest Thomas Owen." In sport,
she snatched it up, read the rest where her own name was mentioned, and
laughingly began, probably out of pure fun, to teaze Matilda. "Thomas
Owen your sweetheart!" she cried, running out on to the landing. "Why,
he is mine. He cares more for my little finger than for----" Poor girl!
She never finished her sentence. Matilda, fallen into one of those
desperate fits of passion, had caught her up and was clutching her like
a tiger-cat, tearing her hair, tearing pieces out of her gown. The
scuffle was brief: almost in an instant Jane Cross was falling headlong
down the well of the staircase, pushed over the very low balustrades by
Matilda, who threw the work-basket after her.
The catastrophe sobered her passion. For a while she lay on the landing
in a sort of faint, all strength and power taken out of her as usual by
the frenzy. Then she went down to look after Jane Cross.
Jane was dead. Matilda, not unacquainted with the aspect of death, saw
that at once, and her senses pretty nearly deserted her again with
remorse and horror. She had never thought or wished to kill Jane Cross,
hardly to harm her, she liked her too well: but in those moments of
frenzy she had not the slightest control over her actions. Her first act
was to run and lock the side door in the garden wall, lest anyone should
come in. How she lived through the next half-hour, she never knew. Her
superstitious fear of seeing the dead Edmund Peahern in the house was
strong--and now there was another! But, with all her anguish and her
fear, the instinct of self-preservation was making itself heard. What
must she do? How could she throw the suspicion off herself? She could
not run out of the house and say, "Jane Cross has fallen accidentally
over the stairs; come and look to her"--for no one would have believed
it to be an accident. And there were the pieces, too, she had clutched
out of the gown! Whilst thus deliberating the gate-bell rang, putting
her into a state of the most intense terror. It rang again. Trembling,
panting, Matilda stood cowering in the kitchen, but it did not ring a
third time. This was, of course, Thomas Owen.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Something she _must_ do, and her
brain hastily concocted the plan she should adopt. Putting the cloth and
the bread and cheese on the table, she took the jug and went out at the
front door to fetch the usual pint of ale. A moment or two she stood
at the front door, peering up and down the road to make sure that no
one was passing. Then she slipped out, locking the door softly; and,
carrying the key concealed in the hollow of her hand, she threw it
amidst the shrubs at No 1. _Now_ she could not get into the house
herself; she would not have entered it alone for the world: people must
break it open. All along the way to the post-office, to which she really
did go, and then to the Swan, she was mentally rehearsing her tale. And
it succeeded in deceiving us all, as the reader knows. With regard to
the visit of her brother on the Wednesday, she had told Thomas Owen the
strict truth; though, when he first alluded to it in the churchyard, her
feelings were wrought up to such a pitch that she could only cry out
and escape. But how poor Matilda contrived to live on and carry out her
invented story, how she bore the inward distress and repentance that
lay upon her, we shall never know. A distress, remorse, repentance that
never quitted her, night or day; and which no doubt contributed to
gradually unhinge her mind, and throw it finally off its balance.
Such was the true history of the affair at No. 7, which had been so
great a mystery to Saltwater. The truth was never made public, save to
the very few who were specially interested in it. Matilda Valentine is
in an asylum, and likely to remain there for life; whilst Thomas Owen
and his wife flourish in sunshine, happy as a summer day is long.
CARAMEL COTTAGE
I.--EDGAR RESTE
I
It was early in August, and we were at Dyke Manor, for the Squire had
let us go home from school for the Worcester races. We had joined him
at Worcester the previous day, Tuesday, driving home with him in the
evening. To-morrow, Thursday, he would drive us over to the course
again; to-day, Wednesday, the horses would have rest; and on Friday we
must return to school.
Breakfast was over, the Squire gone out, and the few minutes'
Bible-reading to us--which Mrs. Todhetley never forgot, though Tod did
not always stay in for it, but he did this morning--came to an end.
Hannah appeared at the door as she closed the Book.
"Miss Barbary's come, ma'am," she said.
"Run, my dear," cried Mrs. Todhetley to Lena.
"I don't want to," said Lena, running to the open window instead, and
nearly pitching head-foremost through it: upon which Hannah captured
her and carried her off.
"Who on earth is Miss Barbary?" questioned Tod. "Any relation to the man
at Caramel Cottage?"
"His daughter," said Mrs. Todhetley. "She comes to teach Lena French."
"Hope she's less of a shady character than her father!" was Tod's free
comment.
A year or two before this, a stranger had made his appearance at Church
Dykely, and put up at the Silver Bear. He was a gentlemanly-looking man
of perhaps forty years, tall, slender, agile, with thin, distinguished
features, an olive skin, black hair, and eyes of a peculiar shade of
deep steel-blue. People went into raptures over his face, and called it
beautiful. And so it was; but to my thinking it had a look in it that
was the opposite of beautiful; any way, the opposite of good. They said
it was my fancy at home: but Duffham owned to the same fancy. His name,
as he wrote it down one day at the Silver Bear, was Pointz Barbary.
After a week's stay at the inn, he, finding, I suppose, that the
neighbourhood suited him, looked out for a little place to settle down
upon, and met with it in Caramel Cottage, a small dwelling near to us,
on the property called Caramel's Farm. The cottage was then to be let,
and Mr. Barbary went into it.
Some items of his past history came out by degrees; it is hard to say
how, for he told none himself. Now and then some former friend or other
came to pay him a short visit; and it may be that these strangers talked
about him.
Pointz Barbary, a gentleman by descent, and once of fairly good
substance, had been a great traveller, had roved pretty nearly all over
the world. The very few relatives he possessed lived in Canada--people
of condition, it was said--and his own property (what was left of it)
was also there. He had been married twice. First to a young lady in
France; her friends (English) having settled there for economy's sake.
She died at the end of the year, leaving him a little girl, that the
mother's people at once took to. Next he married a Miss Reste, daughter
of Colonel Reste, in her Majesty's service. A few years later she also
died--died of consumption--leaving him a widower and childless. It's
true he had his first wife's daughter, but she lived in France with her
mother's sister, so he did not get much benefit from her.
Mr. Barbary was poor. No mistake about that. The interest of his first
wife's money brought him in fifty-two pounds yearly, and this he would
enjoy till his death, when it went to his daughter. Miss Reste had
brought him several thousand pounds; but he and she had lived away, and
not a stiver remained of it. His own means had also been spent lavishly;
and, so far as was known, he had but the two and fifty pounds a year to
live upon at Caramel Cottage, with a chance remittance from Canada now
and again.
He made no acquaintance at Church Dykely, and none was made with him.
Civilly courteous in a rather grand and haughty way when he met people,
so far as a few remarks went, touching the weather or the crops, and
similar safe topics, he yet kept the world at a distance. As the time
went on it was thought there might be a reason for this. Whispers
began to circulate that Mr. Barbary's doings were not orthodox. He was
suspected of poaching, both in game and fish, and a strong feeling of
shyness grew up against him.
Some few months prior to the present time--August--his daughter came
to Caramel Cottage. Her aunt in France was dead, and she had no home
henceforth but her father's. That I and Tod had not seen or heard of
her until now, was owing to the midsummer holidays having been spent at
Crabb Cot. The vacation over, and Mrs. Todhetley back at Dyke Manor, she
found herself called upon by Miss Barbary. Hearing that Mrs. Todhetley
wished her little girl to begin French, she had come to offer herself as
teacher. The upshot was that she was engaged, and came for a couple of
hours every morning to drill French into Lena.
"What's she like?" asked Tod of the mother, upon her explaining this.
"Long and thin and dark, like Barbary, and disagreeable with a
self-contained reticence?"
"She is not the least like him in any way," was Mrs. Todhetley's
answer. "She is charmingly simple--good, I am sure, and one of the most
open-natured girls I ever met. 'I wish to do it for the sake of earning
a little money,' she said to me, when asking to come. 'My dear father
is not rich, and if I can help him in ever so small a way I shall be
thankful.' The tears almost came into her eyes as she spoke," added Mrs.
Todhetley; "she quite won my heart."
"She seems to think great things of that respectable parent of hers!"
commented Tod.
"Oh, yes. Whatever may be the truth as to his failings, _she_ sees none
in him. And, my dears, better that it should be so. She earns a little
money of me, apart from teaching Lena," added Mrs. Todhetley.
"What at?" asked Tod. "Teaching _you_?"
The mother shook her head with a smile. "I found out, Joseph, that she
is particularly skilful at mending old lace. I have some that needs
repairing. She takes it home and does it at her leisure--and you cannot
imagine how grateful she is."
"How old is she?"
"Nineteen--close upon twenty, I think she said," replied the mother.
And there the conversation ended, for Mrs. Todhetley had to go to the
kitchen to give the daily orders.
The morning wore on. We went to Church Dykely and were back again
by twelve o'clock. Tod had got Don on the lawn, making him jump for
biscuit, when the dog rushed off, barking, and we heard a scream. A
young lady in a straw hat and a half-mourning cotton dress was running
away from him, she and Lena having come out of the house together.
"Come here, Don," said Tod in his voice of authority, which the good
Newfoundland dog never disobeyed. "How dare you, sir? Johnny, lad, I
suppose that's Miss Barbary."
I had forgotten all about her. A charming girl, as the mother had said,
slight and graceful, with a face like a peach blossom, dimpled cheeks,
soft light-brown hair and dark-blue eyes. Not the hard, steel-blue eyes
that her father had: sweet eyes, these, with a gentle, loving look in
them.
"You need not be afraid of the dog," cried Tod, advancing to where she
stood, behind the mulberry tree. "Miss Barbary, I believe?"--lifting his
cap.
"Yes," she said in a frank tone, turning her frank face to him; "I am
Katrine Barbary. It is a very large dog--and he barks at me."
Large he was, bigger than many a small donkey. A brave, faithful,
good-tempered dog, he, and very handsome, his curly white coat marked
out with black. Gentle to friends and respectable strangers, Don was at
mortal enmity with tramps and beggars: we could not cure him of this, so
he was chained up by day. At night he was unchained to roam the yard at
will, but the gate was kept locked. Had he got out, he might have pinned
the coat of any loose man he met, but I don't believe he would have
bitten him. A good fright Don would give, but not mortal injury. At
least, we had never yet known him to do that.
Lena ran up in her short pink frock, her light curls flying. "Miss
Barbary is always afraid when she hears Don bark," she said to us. "She
will not go near the yard; she thinks he'll bite her."
"I will teach you how to make friends with him," said Tod: "though he
would never hurt you, Miss Barbary. Come here and pat his head whilst
I hold him; call him by his name gently. Once he knows you, he would
protect you from harm with his life."
She complied with ready obedience, though the roses left her cheeks.
"There," said Tod, loosing the dog, and letting her pat him at leisure,
"see how gentle he is; how affectionately he looks up at you!"
"Please not to think me very silly!" she pleaded earnestly, as though
beseeching pardon for a sin. "I have never been used to dogs. We do not
keep dogs in France. At least very few people do. Oh dear!"
Something that she carried in her left hand wrapped in paper had dropped
on to the lawn. Don pounced upon it. "Oh, please take it from him!
please, please!" she cried in terror. Tod laughed, and extricated the
little parcel.
"It has some valuable old lace in it of Mrs. Todhetley's," she explained
as she thanked him. "I am taking it home to mend."
"You mend old lace famously, I hear," said Tod, as we walked with her to
the entrance gate.
"Yes, I think I do it nearly as well as the nuns who taught me."
"Have you been in a convent?"
"Only for my education. I was an externe--a daily pupil. My aunt lived
next door to it. I went every morning at eight o'clock and returned home
at six in the evening to supper."
"Did you get no dinner?" asked Tod.
She took the question literally. "I had dinner and collation at school;
breakfast and supper at home. That was the way in our town with the
externes at the convent. We were Protestants, you see, so my aunt liked
me to be at home on Sundays. Thank you for teaching Don to know me: and
now I will say good morning to you."
I was holding the gate open for her to pass out, when Ben Gibbon went
by, a gun carelessly held over his shoulder. He touched his hat to us,
and we gave him a slight nod in reply. Miss Barbary said "Good day, Mr.
Gibbon."
Tod drew down his displeased lips. He had already taken a liking to
the girl--so had I, for that matter--she was a true lady, and Mr. Ben
Gibbon, a brother to the gamekeeper at Chavasse Grange, could not boast
of a particularly shining character.
"Do you know _him_, Miss Barbary?" asked Tod. "Be quiet, Don!" he cried
to the dog, which had begun to growl when he saw Gibbon.
"He comes to our house sometimes to see papa. Please pardon me for
keeping you waiting," she added to me, as I still held back the gate.
"That gun is pointed this way and it may go off."
Tod was amused. "You seem to dread guns as much as you dread dogs, Miss
Barbary. I will walk home with you," he said, as she at last came
through, the gun having got to a safe distance.
"Oh, but----" she was beginning, and then stopped in confusion, blushing
hotly, and looking at both of us. "I should like it; but----would it be
proper?"
"Proper!" echoed Tod, staring, and then bursting into a fit of laughter
long and loud. "Oh dear! why, Miss Barbary, you must be French all over!
Johnny, you can come, too. Lena, run back again; you have not any hat
on."
Crossing the road to take the near field way, we went along the path
that led beside the hedge, and soon came in view of Caramel Cottage;
it was only a stone's throw, so to say, from our house. An uncommonly
lonely look it had, buried there amidst many trees, with the denser
trees of the Grove close beyond it. We asked her whether she did not
find it dull here.
"At first I did, very; I do still a little: it is so different from the
lively town I have lived in, where we knew all the people, and they knew
us. But we shall soon be more lively," she resumed, after a pause. "A
cousin is coming to stay with us."
"Indeed," said Tod. "Is it a lady or a gentleman?"
"Oh, it is a gentleman--Edgar Reste. He is not my cousin by kin; not
really related to me; but papa says he will be as my cousin, as my
brother even, and that he is very nice. Papa's last wife was Miss Reste,
and he is her nephew. He is a barrister in London, and he has been much
overworked, and he is coming here to-morrow for rest and country air."
Within the low green gate of the little front garden of Caramel Cottage
stood Mr. Barbary, in his brown velveteen shooting coat and breeches of
the same, that became him and his straight lithe limbs so well. Every
time I saw him the beauty of his face struck me afresh; but so did the
shifty expression of his eyes.
"There's papa!" exclaimed the girl, her dimples lighting up. "And--why,
there's a gentleman with him--a stranger! I wonder who it is?"
I saw him as he came from the porch down the narrow garden-path. A
slight, slender young man of middle height and distinguished air, with a
pale, worn, nice-looking face, and laughing, luminous dark brown eyes.
Yes, I saw Edgar Reste for the first time at this his entrance at
Caramel Cottage, and it was a thing to be thankful for that I could not
then foresee the nameless horror his departure from it (I may as well
say his disappearance) was to shadow forth.
"How do you do?" said Mr. Barbary to us, courteously civil. "Katrine,
here's a surprise for you: your cousin is come. Edgar, this is my little
girl.--Mr. Reste," he added, by way of introduction generally.
Mr. Reste lifted his hat, bowed slightly, and then turned to Katrine
with outstretched hand. She met it with a hot blush, as if strange young
men did not shake hands with her every day.
"We did not expect you quite so soon," she gently said, to atone for her
first surprise.
"True," he answered. "But I felt unusually out of sorts yesterday, and
thought it would make no difference to Mr. Barbary whether I came to-day
or to-morrow."
His voice had a musical ring; his manner was open and honest. He might
be Pointz Barbary's nephew by marriage, but I am sure he was not by
nature.
"They'll fall in love with one another, those two; you'll see," said
Tod to me as we went home. "Did you mark his pleased face when he spoke
to her, Johnny--and how she blushed?"
"Oh, come, Tod! they tell me I am fanciful. What are you?"
"Not fanciful with your fancies, lad. As to you, Mr. Don"--turning to
the dog, which had done nothing but growl while we stood before
Barbary's gate, "unless you mend your manners, you shall not come out
again. What ails you, sir, to-day?"
II
If love springs out of companionship, why then, little wonder that it
found its way into Caramel Cottage. They were with each other pretty
nearly all day and every day, that young man and that young woman; and
so--what else was to be expected?
"We must try and get you strong again," said Mr. Barbary to his guest,
who at first, amidst other adverse symptoms, could eat nothing. No
matter what dainty little dish old Joan prepared, Mr. Reste turned from
it.
Mr. Barbary had taken to old Joan with the house. A little, dark, active
woman, she, with bright eyes and a mob-cap of muslin. She was sixty
years old; quick, capable, simple and kindly. We don't get many such
servants now-a-days. One defect Joan had--deafness. When a voice was
close to her, it was all right; at a distance she could not hear it at
all.
"How long is it that you have been ailing, Cousin Edgar?" asked Miss
Barbary, one day when they were sitting together.
"Oh, some few weeks, Cousin Katrine," he answered in a tone to imitate
hers--and then laughed. "Look here, child, don't call me 'Cousin Edgar!'
For pity's sake, don't!"
"I know you are not my true cousin," she said, blushing furiously.
"It's not that. If we were the nearest cousins that can be, it would
still be silly." Objectionable, was the word he had all but used. "It is
bad taste; has not a nice sound to cultivated ears--as I take it. I am
Edgar, if you please; and you are Katrine."
"In France we say 'mon cousin,' or 'ma cousine,' when speaking to one,"
returned Katrine.
"But we are not French; we are English."
"Well," she resumed, as her face cooled down--"why did you not take rest
before? and what is it that has made you ill?"
He shook his head thoughtfully. The parlour window, looking to the
front, was thrown up before them. A light breeze tempered the summer
heat, wafting in sweetness from the homely flowers and scented shrubs.
The little garden was crowded with them, as all homely gardens were
then. Roses, lilies, columbines, stocks, gillyflowers, sweet peas, sweet
Williams, pinks white and red, tulips, pansies (or as they were then
generally called, garden-gates), mignonette, bachelor's buttons, and
lots of others, sweet or not sweet, that I can't stay to recall: and
clusters of marjoram and lavender and "old-man" and sweet-briar, and
jessamines white and yellow, and woodbine, and sweet syringa; and
the tall hollyhock, and ever true but gaudy sunflower--each and all
flourished there in their respective seasons. Amidst the grand
"horticulture," as it is phrased, of these modern days, it is a pleasure
to lose one's self in the memories of these dear old simple gardens.
Sometimes I get wondering if we shall ever meet them again--say in
Heaven.
They sat there at the open window enjoying the fragrance. Katrine had
made a paper fan, and was gently fluttering it to and fro before her
flushed young face.
"I have burnt the candle at both ends," continued Mr. Reste. "That is
what's the matter with me."
"Y--es," hesitated she, not quite understanding.
"At law business all day, and at literary work the best part of the
night, year in and year out--it has told upon me, Katrine."
"But why should you do both?" asked Katrine.
"Why? Oh, because--because my pocket is a shallow pocket, and has,
moreover, a hole in it."
She laughed.
"Not getting briefs showered in upon me as one might hope my merits
deserve--I know not any young barrister who does--I had to supplement my
earnings in that line by something else, and I took to writing. _That_
is up-hill work, too; but it brings in a few shillings now and again.
One must pay one's way, you know, Katrine, if possible; and with some of
us it is apt to be a rather extravagant way."
"Is it with you?" she asked, earnestly.
"It _was_. I squandered money too freely at first. My old uncle gave me
a fair sum to set up with when my dinners were eaten and I was called;
and I suppose I thought the sum would never come to an end. Ah! we buy
our experience dearly."
"Will not the old uncle give you more?"
"Not a stiver--this long while past. He lives in India, and writing to
ask him does no good. And he is the only relative left to me in the
world."
"Except papa."
Edgar Reste lifted his eyebrows. "Your father is not my relative, young
lady. His late wife was my aunt; my father's sister."
"Did your father leave you no money, when he died?"
"Not any. He was a clergyman with a good benefice, but he lived up to
his income and did not save anything. No, I have only myself to lean on.
Don't know whether it will turn out to be a broken reed."
"If I could only help you!" breathed Katrine.
"You are helping me more than I can say," he answered, impulsively.
"When with you I have a feeling of rest--of peace. And that's what I
want."
Which avowal brought a hot blush again to Miss Katrine's cheek and a
curious thrill somewhere round about her heart.
* * * * *
Time went on. Before much of it had elapsed, they were in love with one
another for ever and for ever, with that first love that comes but once
in a lifetime. That is, in secret; it was not betrayed or spoken of by
either of them, or intended to be. Mr. Reste, Barrister-at-law (and
briefless), could as soon have entertained thoughts of setting up a
coach-and-four, as of setting up a wife. He had not a ghost of the means
necessary at present, he saw not the smallest chance yet of attaining
them. Years and years and years might go by before that desirable
pinnacle in the social race was reached; and it might never be reached
at all. It would be the height of dishonour, as he considered, to
persuade Katrine Barbary into an engagement, which might never be
fulfilled. How could he condemn her to wear out her heart and her life
and her days in loneliness, sighing for him, never seeing him--he at
one end of the world, she at the other? for that's how, lover-like, he
estimated the distance between this and the metropolis. So he never let
a word of his love escape him, and he guarded his looks, and treated
Katrine as his little cousin.
And she? Be you sure, she was as reticent as he. An inexperienced young
maiden, scrupulously and modestly brought up, she kept her secret
zealously. It is true she could not help her blushes, or the tell-tale
thrilling of her soft voice; but Edgar Reste was not obliged to read
them correctly.
Likely enough he could penetrate, as the weeks wore on, some of the ins
and outs in the private worth of Mr. Barbary. In fact, he _did_ do so.
He found that gentleman rather addicted to going abroad at night when
reasonable people were in bed and asleep. Mr. Barbary gave him his views
upon the subject. Poaching, he maintained, was a perfectly legitimate
and laudable occupation. "It's one to be proud of, instead of the
contrary," he asserted, one September day, when they were in the
gun-room together. "_Proud of_, Edgar."
"For a gentleman?" laughed Mr. Reste, who invariably made light of the
subject. And he glanced at his host curiously from between his long dark
eyelashes and straight, fine eyebrows; at the dark, passive, handsome
face, at the long slender fingers, busy over the lock of his favourite
gun.
"For a gentleman certainly. Why should common men usurp all its benefit?
The game laws are obnoxious laws, and it behoves us to set them at
naught."
Another amused laugh from Mr. Reste.
"Who hesitates to do a bit of smuggling?" argued the speaker. "Answer
me that, Reste. Nobody. Nobody, from a prince to a peasant, from poor
Jack Tar to his superfine commander, but deems it meritorious to cheat
the Customs. When a man lands here or yonder with a few contraband
things about him, and gets them through safely, do his friends and
acquaintances turn the cold shoulder upon him? Not a bit of it; they
regard it as a fine feather in his cap."
"Oh, no doubt."
"Poaching is the same thing. It is also an amusement. Oh, it is grand
fun, Edgar Reste, to be out on a fine night and dodge the keepers!"
continued Mr. Barbary, with enthusiasm. "The spice of daring in it, of
danger, if you choose to put it that way, stimulates the nerves like
wine."
"Not quite orthodox, though, mon ami."
"Orthodox be hanged. Stolen pleasures are sweetest, as we all know. You
shall go out with me some night, Edgar, and judge for yourself."
"Don't say but I will--just to look on--if you'll ensure my getting back
in safety," said the barrister, in a tone that might be taken for jest
or earnest, assent or refusal.
"Back in safety!" came the mocking echo, as if to get back in safety
from midnight poaching were a thing as sure as the sun. "We'll let a
week or two go on; when shooting first comes in the keepers are safe
to be on the alert; and then I'll choose a night for you."
"All right. I suppose Katrine knows nothing of this?"
Mr. Barbary lodged his gun in the corner against the wainscot, and
turned to look at the barrister. "Katrine!" he repeated, in surprised
reproach. "Why, _no_. And take care that you don't tell her."
Mr. Reste nodded.
"She is the most unsuspicious, innocent child in regard to the ways of
the naughty world that I've ever met with," resumed Barbary. "I don't
think she as much as knows what poaching means."
"I wonder you should have her here," remarked the younger man,
reflectively.
"How can I help it? There's nowhere else for her to be. She is too
old to be put to school; and if she were not, I have not the means to
pay for her. It does not signify; she will never suspect anything,"
concluded Mr. Barbary.
Please do not think Caramel Cottage grand enough to possess a regular
"gun-room." Mr. Barbary called it so, because he kept his two guns in
it, also his fishing-tackle and things of that sort. Entering at the
outer porch and over the level door-sill, to the narrow house-passage,
the parlour lay on the left, and was of pretty good size. The gun-room
lay on the right; a little square room with bare boards, unfurnished
save for a deal table, a chair or two, and a strong cupboard let into
the wall, which the master of the house kept locked. Behind this room
was the kitchen, which opened into the back yard. This yard, on the
kitchen side, was bounded by dwarf wooden palings, having a low gate in
their midst. Standing at the gate and looking sideways, you could see
the chimneys of Dyke Manor. On the opposite side, the yard was enclosed
by various small outbuildings and adjuncts belonging to a cottage
homestead. A rain-water barrel stood in the corner by the house; an
open shed next, in which knives were cleaned and garden tools kept;
then came the pump; and lastly, a little room called the brewhouse, used
for washing and brewing, and for cooking also during the worst heat of
summer. A furnace was built beside the grate, and its floor was paved
with square red bricks. Beyond this yard, quite open to it, lay a long
garden, well filled with vegetables and fruit trees, and enclosed by a
high hedge. Upstairs were three bed chambers. Mr. Barbary occupied the
largest and best, which was over the parlour; the smaller one over the
gun-room had been assigned to Edgar Reste, both of them looking front;
whilst Katrine's room was above the kitchen, looking to the yard and the
garden. Old Joan slept in a lean-to loft in the roof. There is a reason
for explaining all this.
III
He had looked like a ghost when we went to school after the races; he
looked like a hale, hearty man when we got home from the holidays at
Michaelmas and to eat the goose. Of course he had had pretty near eight
weeks' spell of idleness and country air at Caramel Cottage. To say the
truth, we felt surprised at his being there still.
"Well, it _is_ longer than I meant to stay," Mr. Reste admitted, when
Tod said something of this, "The air has done wonders for me."
"Why longer? The law courts do not open yet."
"I had thoughts of going abroad. However, that can stay over for next
year."
"Have you had any shooting?"
"No. I don't possess a licence."
It was on the tip of Tod's tongue, as I could well see, to ask why he
did not take out a licence, but he checked it. This little colloquy was
held at the Manor gate on Saturday, the day after our return. Miss
Barbary was leaving Lena at the usual time, and he had come strolling
across the field to meet her. They went away together.
"What did I tell you, Johnny?" said Tod, turning to me, as soon as they
were out of hearing. "It is a regular case of over-head-and-ears: cut
and dried and pickled."
"I don't see what you judge by, Tod."
"_Don't you!_ You'll be a muff to the end, lad. Fancy a fine young
fellow like Reste, a man of the world, staying on at that pokey little
place of Barbary's unless he had some strong motive to keep him there!
I dare say he pays Barbary well for the accommodation."
"I dare say Barbary could not afford to entertain him unless he did."
"He stops there to make love to her. It must be a poor look-out, though,
for Katrine, pretty little dimpled girl! As much chance of a wedding,
I should say, as of a blue moon."
"Why not?"
"Why not! Want of funds. I'd start for London, if I were you, Johnny,
and set the Thames on fire. A man must be uncommonly hard up when he
lets all the birds go beside him for want of taking out a licence."
They were walking onwards slowly, Mr. Reste bending to talk to her.
And of course it will be understood that a good deal of that which I
have said, and am about to say, is only related from what came to my
knowledge later on.
"Is it true that you had meant to go abroad this year?" Katrine was
asking him.
"Yes, I once thought of it," he answered. "I have friends living at
Dieppe, and they wanted me to go to them. But I have stayed on here
instead. Another week of it, ten days perhaps, and then I must leave
Worcestershire and you, Katrine."
"But why?"
"Why, to work, my dear little girl. That is getting in arrears
shamefully. We are told that all work and no play makes Jack a dull
boy; but all play and no work would have worse results for Jack than
dullness. Ah, Katrine, what a world this might be if we could only do
as we like in it!"
"When shall you come again?"
"Perhaps never," he answered, incautiously.
"Never!" she repeated, her face turning white before she could hide it
from him. It was a great shock.
"Katrine, my dear," he said with some emotion, his tones low and
earnest, "I could stay at Caramel Cottage for my whole life and never
wish to quit it, unless I carried somebody else away from it with me.
But there are things which a poor man, a man without money in the
present or prospect of it in the future, may not as much as glance at:
he must put the temptation from him and hold it at arm's length. I
had a dream the other night," he added, after a pause: "I thought I
was a Q.C. and stood in my silk, haranguing a full bench of judges at
Westminster--who listened to me with attentive suavity. When I awoke I
burst out laughing."
"At the contrast it presented to reality?" she breathed.
"Just at that. If I were only making enough to set up a snug little nest
of a home, though ever so small, it would be--something: but I am not.
And so, Katrine, you see that many things I would do I cannot do; cannot
even think of. And there it lies, and there it ends."
"Yes, I see, Edgar," she answered, softly sighing.
"Shall you miss me when I am gone?"
Some queer feeling took her throat; she could not speak. Mr. Reste
stopped to pick a little pale blue-bell that grew under the hedge.
"I do not know how I shall bear with the loneliness then," she said in
answer, seemingly more to herself than to him, or to the blue sky right
before her, on which her eyes were fixed. "And I shall be more afraid
when you are no longer in the house."
"Afraid!" he exclaimed, turning to her in blank surprise. "What are you
afraid of, Katrine?"
"It--it is all so solitary for me.... Old Joan is too deaf to be talked
to much; and papa is either at work in the garden or shut up in the
gun-room, busy with his things. Please don't laugh at my childishness!"
She had paused, just to get over her embarrassment, the avowal having
slipped from her unwittingly. The fact was, poor Katrine Barbary had
been rudely awakened from her state of innocent security. Some days
back, when in the cottage hut of Mary Standish, for Katrine liked to go
about and make friends with the people, that ill-doing husband of
Mary's, Jim, chanced to be at home. Jim had just been had up before the
magistrates at Alcester on some suspicion connected with snares and
gins, but there was no certain proof forthcoming, and he had to be
discharged. Katrine remarked that if she were Jim she should leave
off poaching, which must be a very dreadful thing, and frightfully
hazardous. Mr. Jim replied that it was not a dreadful thing, nor
hazardous either, for them that knew what they were about, and he
referred her to her father for confirmation of this assertion. One word
led to another. Jim Standish, his ideas loose and lawless, never thought
to hurt the young lady by what he disclosed, for he was kind enough when
he had no motive to be the contrary, but when Katrine left the hut, she
carried with her the terrible knowledge that her father was as fond of
poaching as the worst of them. Since then she had lived in a state of
chronic terror.
"Yes, it must be very solitary for you," assented Mr. Reste in a grave
tone, and he had no idea that her answer was an evasive one, or its
lightness put on; "but I cannot help you, Katrine. Should you ever need
counsel, or--or protection in any way, apply for it to your friends at
Dyke Manor. They seem kind, good people, and would be strong to aid."
Turning in at the little side gate as he spoke, they saw Mr. Barbary at
work in the garden. He was digging up a plot of ground some seven or
eight feet square under the branches of the summer-apple tree, which
grew at this upper end of the garden, nearly close to the yard.
"What is he going to plant there, I wonder?" listlessly spoke Mr. Reste,
glancing at the freshness of the turned-up mould.
"Winter cabbages, perhaps; but I am sure I don't know," returned
Katrine. "I do not understand the seasons for planting vegetables as
papa does."
This, as I have just said, was on Saturday. We saw Mr. Reste and Katrine
at church the next day: a place Barbary did not often trouble with
his presence; and walked with them, on coming out, as far as the two
ways lay. Our people liked the look of Edgar Reste, but had not put
themselves forward to make much acquaintance with him, on account of
Barbary. One Tuesday, when the Squire was driving to Alcester, he had
overtaken Mr. Reste walking thither to have a look at the market, and
he invited him to a seat in the carriage. They drove in and drove back
together, and had between the times a snack of bread and cheese at the
Angel. The Squire took quite a fancy to the young barrister, and openly
said to him he wished he was staying anywhere but at Caramel Cottage.
"You are thinking of leaving soon, I hear," said the Squire, as we
halted in a group when parting, on this same walk from church.
"In about a week," replied Mr. Reste. "I may go on Saturday next;
certainly not later than the following Monday."
"Shall you like a drive to Evesham between this and then?" went on the
Squire. "I am going over there one of these days."
"I shall like it very much indeed."
"Then I will let you know which day I go. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," answered Mr. Reste, lifting his hat in salute to us all, as
he walked on with Katrine.
Am I lingering over these various trifling details? I suppose it will
seem so. But the truth is, a dreadful part of the story is coming on (as
poor Katrine said of the poaching) and my pen holds back from it.
* * * * *
A day or two had gone on. It was Tuesday morning, warm and bright with
sunshine. Katrine sat in the parlour at Caramel Cottage, pouring out the
coffee at the breakfast-table.
"Will you take some ham, Katrine?"
"No, thank you, papa; I have no appetite."
"No appetite! nonsense!" and Mr. Barbary put a slice of ham on her
plate. "Do you feel inclined for a walk as far as Church Leet this
morning, Edgar?"
"I don't mind," said Mr. Reste. "About three miles, is it not?"
"Three miles across the fields as straight as the crow flies. I want to
see a man who lives there. He--why, that's Pettipher coming here!--the
postman," broke off Mr. Barbary. Letters were not written every day
then, and very few found their way to Caramel Cottage.
Old Joan went to the door, and then came in. She was like a picture. A
dark-blue linsey gown down to her ancles, neat black stockings and low,
tied shoes, a check apron, and a bow of black ribbon perched in front
behind the flapping border of her white muslin mob-cap.
"Pettipher says 'tis for the gentleman," said Joan, putting the letter,
a thick one, on the table by Mr. Reste.
"Why, it is from Amphlett!" he exclaimed, as he took it up, looking at
the great sprawling writing. "What on earth has he got to say?"
Opening the letter, a roll of bank-notes fell out. Mr. Reste stared at
them with intense curiosity.
"Is it your ship come in?" asked Katrine gaily: for he was wont to say
he would do this or that when "his ship came home."
"No, Katrine; not much chance of that. Let me see what he says."
"'Dear Reste,--I enclose you my debt at last. The other side have come
to their senses, and given in, and paid over to me instalment the first.
Thank you, old friend; you are a good fellow never to have bothered me.
Let me know your movements when you write back; I ask it particularly.
Ever yours, W. A.'
"Well, I never expected that," cried Mr. Reste, as he read the words
aloud.
"Money lent by you, Edgar?" asked Mr. Barbary.
"Yes; three or four years ago. I had given it up as a bad job. Never
thought he would gain his cause."
"What cause? Who is he?"
"Captain Amphlett, of the Artillery, and an old friend of mine. As to
the cause, it was some injustice that his avaricious relatives involved
him in, and he had no resource but to bring an action. I am glad he has
gained it; he is an honest fellow, no match for them in cunning."
Mr. Reste was counting the notes while he spoke; six of them for ten
pounds each. Katrine happened to look at her father, and was startled
at the expression of his face--at the grasping, covetous, _evil_ regard
he had fixed upon the notes. She felt frightened, half sick, with some
vague apprehension. Mr. Reste smoothed the notes out one by one, and
laid them open on the breakfast cloth in a little stack. While doing
this, he caught Mr. Barbary's covetous look.
"You'd like such a windfall yourself," he said laughingly to his host.
"I should. For _that_ a man might be tempted to smother his
grandmother."
Katrine instinctively shuddered, though the avowal was given in a half
jesting tone. A prevision of evil seized her.
CARAMEL COTTAGE
II.--DISAPPEARANCE
I
October was setting in beautifully. Some people say it is the most
lovely month in the year when the skies are blue and genial.
Seated at the breakfast-table at Caramel Cottage that Tuesday morning,
with the window thrown open to the warm, pleasant air, the small party
of three might have enjoyed that air, but for being preoccupied with
their own reflections. Edgar Reste was thinking of the bank-notes which
the postman had just brought him in Captain Amphlett's letter; Katrine
Barbary sat shrinking from the vague fear imparted to her by the curious
avowal her father had made in language not too choice, as his covetous
eyes rested on the money: "For that, a man might be tempted to smother
his grandmother." While Mr. Barbary had started instantly up and flung
the window higher, as if in the silence that followed the words, they
had struck back upon himself unpleasantly, and he sought to divert
attention from them.
"A grand day for the outlying crops," he remarked, his lithe, slender
form, his pale, perfect features showing out well in the light of the
brilliant morning. "But most of the grain is in, I think. We shall have
a charming walk to Church Leet, Edgar."
"Yes," assented Mr. Reste, as he folded the notes together and placed
them in his pocket-book. There were six of them for £10 each.
Breakfast over, Katrine set off for Dyke Manor that morning as usual, to
talk to Lena in French, and teach her to read it. She stayed luncheon
with us. Chancing to say that her father and his guest were gone to
Church Leet, Mrs. Todhetley kept her.
At four o'clock, when Katrine went home, she found they had returned,
and were then shut up in the gun-room. Katrine could hear the hum of
their voices, with now and again a burst of merry laughter from Edgar
Reste.
"Have they had dinner?" she enquired of Joan.
"Ay, sure they have, Miss Katrine. They got back at two o'clock, and I
prepared the dinner at once."
I had lent Katrine that afternoon the "Vicar of Wakefield,"--which she
said she had never read; one could hardly believe such a thing of an
English girl, but I suppose it was through her having lived over in
France. Taking it into the back garden, she sat down on a rustic bench,
one or two of which stood about. By-and-by Edgar Reste came out and sat
down beside her.
"Had you a nice walk to-day?" she asked.
"Very," he answered. "What a quaint little village Church Leet is!
Hardly to be called a village, though. Leet Hall is a fine old place."
"Yes, I have heard so. I have not seen it."
"Not seen it! Do you mean to say, Katrine, that you have never been to
Church Leet?"
"Not yet. Nobody has ever invited me to go, and I cannot walk all that
way by myself, you know."
He was sitting sideways, his left arm leaning on the elbow of the bench,
his kindly, luminous brown eyes fixed on her fair pretty face, all
blushes and dimples. Ah, if fortune had but smiled upon him!--if he
might but have whispered to this young girl, who had become so dear to
him, of the love that filled his whole heart!
"Suppose you walk over with me one of these fine days before I leave?"
he continued. "It won't be too far for you, will it?"
"Oh no. I should like to go."
"There is the prettiest churchyard you ever saw, to rest in. And such
a quaint little church, covered with ivy. The Rectory, standing by, is
quite a grand mansion in comparison with the church."
"And the church has a history, I believe."
"Ay, as connected with the people of the Hall and the Rectory; and with
its own chimes, that never played, I hear, but disaster followed. We
will go then, Katrine, some afternoon between now and Saturday."
Her face fell; she turned it from him. "_Must_ you leave on Saturday,
Edgar?"
"My dear little cousin, yes. Cousins in name, you know we are, though
not in reality."
"You did say you might stay until Monday."
"Ay, my will would be good to stay till Monday, and many a Monday after
it: but you see, Katrine, I have neglected my work too long, and I
cannot break into another week. So you must please make the most of me
until Saturday," he added playfully, "when I shall take the evening
train."
"You English do not care to travel on a Sunday, I notice."
"We English! Allow me to remind Mademoiselle that she is just as much
English as are the rest of us."
Katrine smiled.
"My good mother instilled all kinds of old-world notions into me,
Katrine. Amongst them was that of never doing week-day work on a Sunday
unless compelled by necessity."
"Do you never work on a Sunday--at your reviews and writings, and all
that?"
"Never. I am sure it would not bring me luck if I did. Suppose we fix
Thursday for walking to Church Leet?"
"That will do nicely. Unless--Squire Todhetley invited you to go with
him to Evesham one day, you know," broke off Katrine. "He may just fix
upon Thursday."
"In that case we will take our walk on Friday."
A silence ensued. Their hearts were very full, and that makes speech
reticent. Katrine glanced now and again at the pages of the "Vicar of
Wakefield," which lay in her lap, but she did not read it. As to the
barrister, he was looking at her; at the face that had become so dear to
him. They might never meet again, nothing on earth might come of the
present intimacy and the sweet burning longings, but he knew that he
should remember her to the end of time. A verse of one of Moore's
melodies passed through his mind: unconsciously he began to hum it:
"O, that hallowed form is ne'er forgot
Which first love traced;
Still it, lingering, haunts the greenest spot
On memory's waste."
"Here comes Joan to say tea is ready," interrupted Katrine.
They strolled indoors slowly, side by side. The tea-tray waited in the
parlour. Mr. Barbary came in from the gun-room, and they all sat down to
the table.
After tea he went back to the gun-room, Mr. Reste with him, leaving
Katrine alone. She had the candles lighted and began to mend a piece of
Mrs. Todhetley's valuable old lace. Presently Joan came in to ask a
question.
"Miss Katrine, is it the brace of partridges or the pheasants that are
to be cooked for supper? Do you know?"
"No, that I don't," said Katrine. "But I can ask."
Putting down her work, she went to the gun-room and gently opened the
door. Upon which, she heard these remarkable words from Mr. Reste:
"I wouldn't hesitate at all if it were not for the moon."
"The moon makes it all the safer," contended Mr. Barbary. "Foes can't
rush upon one unawares when the moon's shining. I tell you this will be
one of the best possible nights for you."
"Papa, papa," hurriedly broke in Katrine, speaking through the dusk of
twilight, "is Joan to cook the pheasants or the partridges?"
"The pheasants," he answered sharply. "Shut the door."
So the pheasants were dressed for supper, and very nice they proved with
their bread-sauce and rich gravy. Mr. Barbary especially seemed to enjoy
them; his daughter did not.
Poor Katrine's senses were painfully alert that night, as she lay
listening after getting to bed. The words she had overheard in the
gun-room seemed to her to bear but one meaning--that not only was her
father going abroad into the wilds of danger, but Edgar Reste also. They
had gone to their respective rooms early, soon after she went to hers;
but that might be meant as a blind and told nothing.
By-and-by, she caught a sound as of the stairs creaking. Mr. Reste and
her father were both creeping down them. Katrine flew to her window and
peeped behind the blind.
They went out together by the back door. The bright moonbeams lay full
upon the yard. Mr. Reste seemed to be attired like her father, in high
leggings and a large old shooting-coat, no doubt borrowed plumes. Each
of them carried a gun, and they stole cautiously out at the little side
gate.
"Oh," moaned the unhappy Katrine, "if papa would but take better care
of himself! If he would but leave off doing this most dreadful and
dangerous thing!"
Whether Katrine fell asleep after that, or not, she could never decide:
it appeared as though but a short time had elapsed, when she was
startled by a sharp sound outside, close to the house. It might have
been the report of a gun, but she was not sure. This was followed by
some stir in the yard and covert talking.
"They are bringing in the game they have shot," thought Katrine, "but
oh, I am thankful they have got back safely!" And she put the pillow
over her head and ears, and lay shivering.
* * * * *
Squire Todhetley was as good and lenient a man at heart as could be
found in our two counties, Warwickshire and Worcestershire; fonder of
forgiving sins and sinners than of bringing them to book, and you have
not read of him all these years without learning it. But there was one
offence that stirred his anger up to bubbling point, especially when
committed against himself. And that was poaching.
So that, when we got downstairs to breakfast at Dyke Manor on the
following morning, Wednesday, and were greeted with the news that some
poachers had been out on our land in the night, and had shot at the
keepers, it was no wonder the Squire went into a state of commotion,
and that the rest of us partook of it.
"Johnny, tell Mack to fetch Jones; to bring him here instantly," fumed
he. "Those Standishes have been in this work!"
I went to carry the orders to Mack in the yard. In passing back, after
giving them, I saw that the dog-kennel was empty and the chain lying
loose.
"Where's Don?" I asked. "Who has taken him out?"
"Guess he have strayed out of hisself, Master Johnny," was Mack's
answer. "He was gone when I come on this morning, sir, and the gate
were standing wide open."
"Gone then?--and the gate open? Where's Giles?"
But, even as I put the question, I caught sight of Giles at the stable
pump, plunging his head and face into a pail of water. So I knew what
had been the matter with _him_. Giles was a first-rate groom and a good
servant, and it was very seldom indeed that he took more than was good
for him, but it did happen at intervals.
Old Jones arrived in obedience to the summons, and stood on his fat
gouty legs in the hall while the Squire talked to him. The faith he put
in that old constable was surprising, whose skill and discernment were
about suited to the year One.
His tale of the night's doings, as confirmed by other tales, was not
very clear. At least, much satisfaction could not be got out of it. Some
poachers congregated on a plot of land called Dyke's Neck--why it should
have been so named nobody understood--were surprised by the keepers
early in the night. A few stray shots were interchanged, no damage
being done on either side, and the poachers made off, escaping not only
scot-free but unrecognised. This last fact bore the keenest sting of
all, and the Squire paced the hall in a fury.
"You must unearth them," he said to Jones: "don't tell me. They can't
have buried themselves, the villains!"
"No need to look far for 'em, Squire," protested Jones. "It's them
jail-birds, the three Standishes. If it's not, I'll eat my head."
"Then why have you not taken up the three Standishes?" retorted the
Squire. "Of course it is the Standishes."
"Well, your honour, because I can't get at 'em," said Jones helplessly.
"Jim, he is off somewhere; and Dick, he swears through thick and thin
that he was never out of his bed last night; and t'other, Tom, ain't
apperiently at home at all just now. I looked in at their kitchen on my
way here, and that was all I could get out of Mary."
It was at this juncture that Katrine arrived, preparatory to her
morning's work with Lena. Old Jones and the Squire, still in the hall,
were chanting a duet upon the poachers' iniquity, and she halted by me
to listen. I was sitting on the elbow of the carved-oak settle. Katrine
looked pale as a sheet.
Girls, thought I, do not like to hear of these things. For I knew
nothing then of her fears that the offenders had been her father and Mr.
Reste.
"If the poachers had been taken, sir--what then?" she said tremblingly
to the Squire, in a temporary lull of the voices.
"What then, Miss Barbary? Why then they would have been lodged in gaol,
and the neighbourhood well rid of them," was the impulsive answer.
"Snug and safe, miss," put in old Jones, shuffling on his gouty legs in
his thick white stockings, "a-waiting to stand their trial next spring
assizes at Worcester. Which it would be transportation for 'em, I
hope--a using o' their guns indeed!"
"Were they known at all?" gasped Katrine. "And might not the gamekeepers
have shot _them_? Perhaps have killed them?"
"Killed 'em or wounded 'em, like enough," assented Jones, "and it would
be a good riddance of such varmint, as his worship says, miss. And a
misfortin it is that they be _not_ known. Which is an odd thing to my
mind, sir, considering the lightness o' the night: and I'd like to find
out whether them there keepers did their duty, or didn't do it."
"I can't see the dog anywhere, father," interrupted Tod, dashing in at
this moment in a white heat, for he had been racing about in search of
Don.
"What, is the dog off?" exclaimed old Jones.
"Yes, he is," said Tod. "And if those poachers have stolen him, I'll try
and get them hanged."
Leaving us to our commotion, Katrine Barbary passed on to the nursery
with Lena, where the lessons were taken. This straying away of Don made
one of the small calamities of the day. Giles, put to the torture of
confession, admitted that he remembered unchaining Don the past night
as usual, but could not remember whether or not he locked the gate. Of
course the probability was that he left it wide open, Mack having found
it so in the morning. So that Mr. Don, finding himself at liberty, might
have gone out promenading as early in the night as he pleased. Giles was
ready to hang himself with vexation. The dog was a valuable animal; a
prize for any tramp or poacher, for he could be sold at a high price.
We turned out on our different quests; old Jones after the poachers, I
and Tod after Don: and the morning wore on.
Katrine went home at midday. This news of the night encounter between
the keepers and the poachers had thrown her into a state of anxious
pain--though of course the reader fully understands that I am, so far,
writing of what I knew nothing about until later. That her father and
Edgar Reste had been the poachers of the past night she could not doubt,
and a dread of the discovery which might ensue lay upon her with a sick
fear. The Standishes might have been included in the party; more than
likely they were; Ben Gibbon also. Mr. Jim Standish had contrived to let
Katrine believe that they were all birds of a feather, tarred with the
same brush. But how could Edgar Reste have allowed himself to be drawn
into it even for one night? She could not understand that.
Entering Caramel Cottage by its side gate, Katrine found Joan seated
in the kitchen, slicing kidney beans for dinner. Her father was in his
favourite den, the gun-room, Mr. Reste was out. When she left in the
morning, neither of them had quitted his respective chamber, an entirely
unusual thing.
"How late you are with those beans, Joan!" listlessly observed Katrine.
"The master sent me to the Silver Bear for a bottle of the best brandy,
and it hindered me," explained Joan. "They were having a fine noise
together when I got back," she added, dropping her voice.
"Who were?" quickly cried Katrine.
"The master and Mr. Reste. Talking sharply at one another, they were,
like two savages. I could hear 'em through my deafness. Ben Gibbon was
here when I went out, but he'd gone when I came in with the brandy."
What with one thing and another, Katrine felt more uncomfortable than an
oyster out of its shell. Mr. Reste came in at dinner-time, and she saw
nothing amiss then, except that he and her father were both unusually
silent.
Afterwards they went out together, and Katrine hoped that the
unpleasantness between them was at an end.
She was standing at the front gate late in the afternoon, looking up and
down the solitary road, which was no better than a wide field path, when
Tod and I shot out of the dark grove by Caramel's Farm, and made up to
her.
"You look hot and tired," she said to us.
"So would you, Miss Barbary, if you had been scouring the fields in
search of Don, as we have," answered Tod, who was in a desperate mood.
At that moment Mr. Barbary came swinging round the corner of the short
lane that led to the high-road, his guest following him. They nodded to
us and went in at the gate.
"You do not happen to have seen anything of our Newfoundland dog to-day,
I suppose, Mr. Barbary?" questioned Tod.
"No, I have not," he answered. "My daughter mentioned to me that he had
strayed away."
"Strayed away or been stolen," corrected Tod. "The dog was a favourite,
and it has put my father out more than you'd believe. He thinks the
Standishes may have got him: especially if it is they who were out in
the night."
"Shouldn't wonder but they have," said Mr. Barbary.
Standing by in silence, I had been wondering what had come to Mr. Reste.
He leaned against the porch, listening to this, arms folded, brow
lowering, face dark, not a bit like his own pleasant self.
"I am about the neighbourhood a good deal; I'll not fail to keep a
look-out," said Mr. Barbary, as we were turning away. "He was a fine
dog, and might prove a temptation to the Standishes; but I should be
inclined to think it more likely that he has strayed to a distance than
that they have captured him. They might find a difficulty in concealing
a large, powerful dog such as he is."
"Not they; they are deep enough for any wicked action," concluded Tod,
as we went onwards.
It was tea-time then at Caramel Cottage, and they sat down to take it.
Mr. Barbary was sociable and talked of this and that; Edgar Reste spoke
hardly a word; Katrine busied herself with the teapot and cups. At dusk
Ben Gibbon came in, and Katrine was sent to bear Joan company in the
kitchen. Brandy and whisky were put upon the table, Joan being called to
bring in hot and cold water. They sat drinking, as Katrine supposed, and
talking together in covert tones for two hours, when Gibbon left; upon
which Katrine was graciously told by her father she might return to the
parlour. Her head ached badly, she felt ill at ease, and when supper was
over went up to bed. But she could not get to sleep.
About eleven o'clock, as she judged it to be, loud and angry sounds
arose. Her father and Mr. Reste had renewed their dispute--whatever its
cause might be. By-and-by, when it was at its height, she heard Mr.
Reste dash out at the back door; she heard her father dash after him. In
the yard there seemed to be a scuffle, more hot words, and then a sudden
silence. Katrine rose and stole to the window to look.
She could not see either of them. But a noise in the kitchen beneath,
as if the fire-irons were thrown down, seemed to say they had come back
indoors. Another minute and her father came out with a lighted lantern
in his hand; she wondered why, as it was moonlight. He crossed the yard
and went into the back kitchen, or brewhouse, as it was more often
called, and Katrine, hoping the quarrel was over, got into bed again.
Presently the back door was shut with a bang that shook the room, and
footsteps were heard ascending the stairs, and afterwards all was quiet
until morning.
As on the past morning, so it was on this. When Katrine got downstairs
she found that neither her father nor Mr. Reste was up. She breakfasted
alone, and set off for the Manor afterwards.
But, as it chanced, she was to have partial holiday that day. Lena
complained of a sore throat; she was subject to sore throats; so Miss
Barbary was released when the lesson was half over, and returned home.
Going to her room to take her bonnet off, she found Joan busy there.
From the window she saw her father at work at the far end of the garden.
This was Thursday, the day of the projected walk to Church Leet, and
very lovely weather. But Mr. Reste had not said anything about it since
the Tuesday afternoon.
"Is Mr. Reste gone out, Joan?"
"Mr. Reste is gone, Miss Katrine."
"Gone where?" asked she.
"Gone away; gone back to London," said Joan. Upon which Katrine, staring
at the old woman, inquired what she meant.
It appeared that Mr. Barbary had left his chamber close upon Katrine's
departure, and sat down to breakfast. When he had finished he called
Joan to take the things away. She inquired whether they had not better
be left for Mr. Reste. He answered that Mr. Reste was gone. "What, gone
away back to London?" Joan cried, in surprise; and her master said,
"Yes." "You might just have knocked me down with a feather, Miss
Katrine, I was that took to," added Joan now, in relating this. "Never
to say good-bye to me, nor anything!"
Katrine, thinking there was somebody else he had not said good-bye to,
could hardly speak from amazement. "When did he go, Joan? Since
breakfast? Or was he gone when I went out?"
"Well, I don't know," pondered Joan; "it seems all a moither in my head;
as if I couldn't put this and that together. I never saw nor heard
anything of him at all this morning, and I find his bed has not been
slept in, which looks as if he went last night. It's odd, too, that he
didn't say he was going, and it's odd he should start off to London at
midnight. Your papa is in one of his short tempers, Miss Katrine, and
I've not dared to ask him about it."
Katrine, as she listened, felt perfectly bewildered. Why had he taken
his departure in this strange manner? What for? What had caused him to
do it? Joan had told all she knew, and it was of no use questioning her
further.
Mr. Reste's chamber door stood open; Katrine halted at it and looked in.
Why! he seemed to have taken nothing with him! His coats were hanging
up; trifles belonging to him lay about on chairs; on the side shelf
stood his little portable desk--and she had heard him say that he never
travelled without that desk, it went with him wherever he went. Opening
a drawer or two, she saw his linen, his neckties, his handkerchiefs.
What was the meaning of it all? Could he have been recalled to London in
some desperate hurry? But no letter or summons of any kind had come to
Caramel Cottage, so far as she knew, except the letter from Captain
Amphlett on Tuesday morning, and that one had not recalled him.
"There be two pairs of his boots in the kitchen," said Joan. "He has
took none with him but them he's got on."
"I _must_ ask papa about it," cried the puzzled Katrine.
Mr. Barbary was at the bottom of the garden working away at the celery
bed in his shirt sleeves; his coat lay across the cucumber-frame.
"What brings you home now?" he cried out, looking up as Katrine drew
near.
"The little girl is not well. Papa," she added, her voice taking a
timid, shrinking tone, she hardly knew why, "Joan says Mr. Reste is
gone."
"Well?"
"But why has he left so suddenly, without saying anything about it?"
"He could do so if he pleased. He was at liberty to go or stay."
Katrine could not dispute that. She hardly liked to say more, her
father's answers were so curt and cross.
"He must have gone unexpectedly, papa."
"Unexpectedly! Not at all. He has been talking of going all the week."
Katrine paused. "Is he coming back, papa?"
"Not that I know of."
"But he has not taken any of his things."
"I am going to pack his things and send them after him."
"But----_when_ did he go, papa?"
Mr. Barbary, who had kept on working, drew himself bolt upright. Letting
his hands rest on the handle of his spade, he looked sternly into
Katrine's face.
"He went last night."
"He----he never told me he was going. He never said anything about it."
"And why should he tell you?" demanded Mr. Barbary. "It was enough that
he told me. He thought he had been quite long enough away from his work,
and that it was high time to go back to it. I thought the same. That's
all, Katrine; you need not inquire further. And now you can go indoors."
She walked slowly up the narrow path, conscious that some mystery must
lie behind this. Joan was standing in the yard, outside the back-kitchen
door, trying to pull it open.
"This here back'us door's locked!" exclaimed Joan, in her country
vernacular. "I want the spare jack out; t'other's given way at last."
"It can't be locked," dissented Katrine. "It never is."
"Well, I've never known the door locked afore; but 'tis now, Miss
Katrine. I noticed it was shut to all day yesterday, but I didn't try
it."
"It is only stuck," said Katrine, laying hold of the high old-fashioned
bow handle which served to lift the latch inside; and she shook it well.
"What's that? What are you about?" called out Mr. Barbary, dashing up
the path like a flash of lightning. "Let the door alone."
"Joan says it is locked, papa," said Katrine, frightened by his manner.
"And what if it is? I have locked up some--some wine there that came in.
How dare you meddle with the places I choose to keep closed?"
"It's the other jack I want out, sir," said Joan, hearing imperfectly.
"You can't have the other jack."
"But, master, the old jack's broke clean in two, and it's time to put
the lamb down."
"Cut it into chops," he cried, waving them both off, and standing,
himself, before the door, as if to guard it, with a white, imperious,
passionate face.
Single-minded old Joan went indoors, marvelling a little--such a bit of
a trouble for him to have opened the back'us door and given her out the
jack! Katrine followed, marvelling very much. She did not believe in the
wine: felt sure no wine had come in; they never had any; what was it
that was locked up there? All in a moment a thought flashed over her
that it might be game: poached game: pheasants and partridges and hares.
But, upon that thought came another: why should the spoil have been
brought in on Tuesday night when it had never (as she believed) been
brought before? Just a little came in for their own use, nothing more.
II
That day, Thursday, we had news of Don. And we had it in this way.
Tobias Jellico--who had a small draper's shop at Evesham, and went about
the country with a pack, out of which he seduced unwary ladies to buy
finery, more particularly some of our ladies living in Piefinch Cut--was
at Church Dykely to-day on one of his periodical visitations. We did not
like the man or his trade; but that's neither here nor there. Hearing
that the Squire's dog was lost, he at once said he had seen Dick
Standish that morning in Bengeworth (a portion of Evesham) with a large
Newfoundland dog. White-and-brown, he called it; which was a mistake,
for Don was white and black; but Jellico might not know colours. It was
Mr. Duffham who brought us this news in the afternoon: he had been sent
for to Lena, whose throat was getting worse. Duffham heard it from
Perkins the butcher, to whom Jellico told it.
I don't know which item pleased the Squire most: that Don was found, or
that the guilt of Tuesday night was traced home to the Standishes; for
the three brothers had in general a certain gentleman's own luck, and
were rarely caught.
"Don went out roaming, through that villain Giles unloosing him and
leaving the yard gate open," decided the Squire, in his excitement. "The
dog must have sprung upon them; he has a mortal enmity to tramps and
poachers, you know, Duffham; and the Standishes captured him. I'll send
a message to the police at Evesham at once, to look after Mr. Dick, and
go over myself in the morning."
"Anyway, I'm glad the dog's found," said Duffham. "But what an idiot
Dick Standish must be to allow himself to be seen with the dog in the
public streets."
"Johnny," said the Squire, turning to me as he was leaving the room to
send a man galloping on horseback to the Evesham police, "you run over
to Caramel Cottage. Make my compliments to young Reste; say that I am
going to drive to Evesham to-morrow morning, and shall be happy to take
him if he likes to accompany me. I offered to drive him over some day
before he left, but this bother has caused me to delay it. Shall start
at nine o'clock, tell him."
About the time the Squire was charging me with this message, Katrine
Barbary was sitting in the homely garden at Caramel Cottage, amidst the
fruit trees, the vegetables, and the late flowers. The October sunlight
fell on her pretty face, that somehow put you in mind of a peach with
its softest bloom upon it.
Katrine was striving to see daylight out of a mass of perplexity, of
which I then knew nothing, and she could not discern a single ray. Why
should that fine young barrister, Edgar Reste, staying with them so
peacefully for several weeks past, and fully intending to stay this
week out--why should he have run away by night, leaving behind him an
atmosphere of mystery? This question would never leave Katrine's mind by
night or by day.
Sitting there in the afternoon sun, she was running over mentally, for
the tenth time or so, the details of the affair. One or two of them
might have looked somewhat shady to a suspicious observer; to Katrine
they presented only a web of perplexity. She felt sure that when she
went to bed on the Wednesday night he had no thought of leaving; and yet
it seemed that he did leave. When Joan rose in the early morning, he had
disappeared--vanished, as may be said. The puzzle that Katrine could not
solve was this: why had he gone away in haste so great that he could not
take his clothes with him? and why had he gone at all in an unexpected,
stealthy way, saying nothing to anybody?
"It looks just as though he had run away to escape some imminent danger,
with not a minute to spare," mused Katrine.
At this moment Katrine met with an interruption to her thoughts in the
shape of me. Catching a glimpse of her print frock through the hedge, I
went straight in at the little side gate, without troubling the front
door.
"Sit down, Johnny," she said, holding out her hand, and making room for
me on the bench. And as I took the seat, I said what I had come for--to
deliver the Squire's message to Mr. Reste.
"Mr. Reste has left us," said Katrine. "He went away last night."
"Went away last night!" I exclaimed, the news surprising me uncommonly.
"What took him off so suddenly?"
Open-natured as the day, Katrine told me the particulars (which proved
that she had no dark fears about it as yet), of course saying nothing
about the poaching. And she did mention the quarrel.
"It is so strange that he should leave all his things behind him--don't
you see that, Johnny?" she said. "Even that little desk, full of private
papers, is left, and he never travels without it; his boots are left."
"He must have had some news to call him away. A letter perhaps."
"The only letter he has had lately came on Tuesday morning," returned
Katrine. "It had a good deal of money in it in bank-notes; sixty pounds;
but it did not call him away. _Nothing_ called him away, that I can
discover. You can't think how it is worrying me; it seems just a
mystery."
"Look here, Katrine," I said, after mentally twisting the matter this
way and that, "I've known the most unaccountable problems turn out to be
the simplest on explanation. When you hear from him, as you most likely
will in a day or two, I dare say he will tell you he was called away
unexpectedly, and had to go at once. Does not Mr. Barbary know why he
went?"
"Well, yes; I fancy he does: he is indoors now, packing Mr. Reste's
things: but he does not tell me."
After talking a little longer, we strolled up the path together, and had
reached the yard when Mr. Barbary suddenly opened the kitchen door to
shake the dust from a coat that seemed covered with it. His handsome
face took a haughty expression, and his slender, shapely form was drawn
up in pride as he looked sternly at me, as much as to say, "What do you
want here?"
I turned, on my way to the side gate, to explain: that Don had been seen
at Evesham in the company of Dick Standish, that the Squire would be
driving thither on the morrow, and had thought Mr. Reste might like to
go with him.
"Very kind of Mr. Todhetley," drawled Barbary in his stand-off manner.
"Tell him, with my compliments and thanks for his courtesy, that my
nephew has left for London."
"Left for good, I suppose?" I said.
"For the present, at any rate. A pressing matter of business recalled
him, and he had to attend to it without delay."
I glanced at Katrine: there was the explanation.
"So the dog is at Evesham!" remarked Mr. Barbary. "The Standishes are
great rogues, all three of them, and Dick's the worst. But--I think--had
you gone after him to-day, instead of delaying it until to-morrow, there
might have been more certainty of finding him. Mr. Dick may give you
leg-bail in the night."
"The police will see he does not do that; the Squire has sent a
messenger to warn them," I replied. "I suppose you have not heard any
more rumours about the poaching on Tuesday night, Mr. Barbary?"
"I've heard no more than was said at first--that the keepers reported
some poachers were out, and they nearly came to an encounter with the
rascals. Wish they had--and that I had seen the fun. Reste and I had
walked to Church Leet and back that day; we were both tired and went
upstairs betimes."
To hear him coolly assert this, to see his good-looking face raised
unblushingly to the sun as he said it, must have been as a bitter farce
to Katrine, who had believed him, until a few days back, to be next door
to a saint for truth and goodness. _I_ put faith in it, not being then
behind the scenes.
Mr. Barbary did his packing leisurely. Tea was over, and dusk set in
before the portmanteau was shut up and its direction fastened to it.
Katrine read the card. "Edgar Reste, Esq., Euston Square Station,
London. _To be left till called for._"
Very lonely felt Katrine, sitting by herself that evening, working a
strip of muslin for a frill. _He_ was not there to talk to her in his
voice of music--for that's what she had grown to think it, like other
girls in love. She wondered whether they should ever meet again--ever,
ever? She wondered how long it would be before a letter came from him,
and whether he would write to _her_.
Mr. Barbary appeared at supper-time, ate some cold lamb in silence,
seeming to be buried in thought, and went back to the gun-room when he
had finished. Katrine got to her work again, did a little, then put it
away for the night, and turned to the book-shelf to get a book.
Standing to make a choice of one, Katrine was seized with consternation.
On the lower shelf, staring her right in the face, was Mr. Reste's
Bible. It had been given him by his dead father, and he set store by it.
He must have left it downstairs the previous Sunday, and Joan had put it
away on the shelves amongst the other books.
"I wonder if papa would mind opening the portmanteau again?" thought
Katrine, as she hastened to the gun-room, and entered.
"Papa! papa! here's Mr. Reste's Bible left out," she cried, impulsively.
"Can you put it into the portmanteau?"
Mr. Barbary stood by the small safe in the wall, the door of which was
open. In his hand lay some bank-notes; he was holding them towards the
candle on the deal table, and seemed to be counting them. Katrine,
thinking of the Bible and of nothing else, went close to him, and her
eye fell on the notes. He flung them into the cupboard in a covert
manner, gave the door a slam, turned an angry face on Katrine, and a
sharp tongue.
"Why do you come bursting in upon me in this boisterous fashion? I won't
have it. What? Will I undo the portmanteau to put in a Bible? No, I
won't. Keep it till he chooses to come for it."
She shrank away frightened, softly closing the door behind her. Those
bank-notes belonged to Mr. Reste: they were the same she had seen him
put into his pocket-book two days ago. Why had he not taken them with
him?--what brought them in her father's possession? The advance shadow
of the dark trouble, soon to come, crept into Katrine Barbary's heart.
In no mood for reading now, she went to bed, and lay trying to think it
out. What did it all mean? Had her father conjured the pocket-book by
sleight-of-hand out of Mr. Reste's keeping and _stolen_ the notes? She
strove to put the disgraceful thought away from her, and could not. The
distress brought to her by the poaching seemed as nothing to this, bad
though that was.--And would he venture abroad to-night again?
Joan's light foot-fall passed her door, going up to her bed in the roof.
Once there, nothing ever disturbed the old servant or her deafness until
getting-up time in the morning. Katrine lay on, no sleep in her eyes;
half the night it would have seemed, but that she had learned how slowly
time passes with the restless. Still, it was a good while past twelve,
she thought, when curious sounds, as of _digging_, seemed to arise from
the garden. Sounds too faint perhaps to have been heard in the day-time,
but which penetrated to her ear unless she was mistaken, in the deep,
uncanny, undisturbed silence of the night. She sat up in bed to listen.
There, it came again! What could it be? People did not dig up gardens at
midnight. Slipping out of bed, she drew the blind aside and peeped out.
The night was light as day, with a bright, clear, beautiful moon: the
hunters' moon. Underneath the summer-apple tree, close at this end of
the garden, bent Mr. Barbary, digging away with all his might, his large
iron spade turning up the earth swiftly and silently. Katrine's eyes
grew wide with amazement. He had dug up that same plot of ground only a
few days ago, in readiness to plant winter greens: she and Edgar Reste
had stood looking on for a time, talking with him as to the sort of
greens he meant to put in. Why was he digging up the same ground
again?--and why was he doing it at this unearthly hour?
It appeared to be a hole that was being dug now, for he threw the
spadefuls of mould up on each side pretty far. The ground seemed quite
soft and pliant; owing perhaps to its having been so recently turned.
As the hole grew larger; wider and longer and deeper; an idea flashed
over Katrine that it looked just as though it were meant for a grave.
Not that she thought it.
Putting a warm shawl on her shoulders and slippers on her feet, she
sat down before the window, drew the blind up an inch or two, and kept
looking out, her curiosity greatly excited. The moon shone steadily, the
time passed, and the hole grew yet larger. Suddenly Mr. Barbary paused
in his work, and held up his head as if to listen. Did he fear, or
fancy, a noise in the field pathway outside, or in the dark grove to the
right near Caramel's Farm? Apparently so: and that he must not be seen
at his work. For he got out of the hole, left the spade in it, came with
noiseless, swift, stealthy movement up the yard, and concealed himself
in the dark tool-shed. Presently, he stole across to the little gate,
looked well about him to the right and left, and then resumed his
digging.
Quite six feet long it soon looked to Katrine, and three or more feet
wide, and how deep she knew not. _Was it for a grave?_ The apprehension
really stole across her, and with a sick faintness. If so, if so--? A
welcome ray of possibility dawned then. Had her father (warned by this
stir that was going on, the search for poachers and their spoil) a lot
of contraband game in his possession that must be hidden away out of
sight? Perhaps so.
It seemed to be finished now. The moon had sailed ever so far across the
sky by this time, but was still shining full upon it. Mr. Barbary crept
again to the gate and stood listening and looking up and down in the
silence of the night. Then he crossed to the brewhouse, took the key
from his pocket, unlocked it, and went inside. Katrine could see the
flash of the match as he struck a light.
When he emerged from the brewhouse he was dragging a weight along
the ground with two strong cords. A huge, unshapely, heavy substance
enveloped in what looked like matting or sacking. Dragging it straight
over the yard to the grave, Mr. Barbary let it fall carefully in, cords
and all, and began to shovel in the mould upon it with desperate haste.
Terror seized on Katrine. What was in that matting? All in an instant,
a little corner of the veil--that had obscured from her understanding
so much which had seemed mysterious and unfathomable--lifted itself,
bringing to her an awful conviction. Was it Edgar Reste that was being
put out of the way; buried for ever from the sight of man? Her father
must have killed him; must have done it in a passion! Katrine Barbary
cried out with a loud and bitter cry.
Fascinated by the sight of terror, she was unable to draw her eyes away.
But the next moment they had caught sight of another object, bringing
equal terror, though of a different nature: some one, who had apparently
crept in at the gate unheard, was standing at the corner of the garden
hedge, looking on. Was it an officer of the law, come to spy upon her
father and denounce his crime? But, even as she gazed, the figure drew
back to make its exit by the gate again, and to Katrine it seemed to
take my form.
"It is Johnny Ludlow!" she gasped. "Oh, I pray that it may be! I think
_he_ would not betray him."
Katrine watched on. She saw the grave filled in; she saw her father
stamp it down; she saw him carry the superfluous mould to a place under
the wall, near the manure bed, and she saw him stamp that down, and then
cover it loosely with some of the manure, so that it might look like a
part of the heap. Then he seemed to be coming in, and Katrine thought it
must be nearing the dawn.
Creeping into bed, she hid her face, that never again ought to show
itself amidst honest men, under the clothes. Some covert stir yet seemed
to be going on in the yard, as of pumping and scrubbing. Turning from
hot to cold, from cold to hot, Katrine was seized with a shivering fit.
"And who really was it watching?" she moaned. "It looked like Johnny,
yet I can't be sure; he stood in the shade."
But it was _me_, as the schoolboys say. And the reason of my being
there at the small, unearthly hours of the morning, together with the
conclusion of this appalling story, will be found in the next chapter.
CARAMEL COTTAGE
III.--DON THE SECOND
I
We have a saying in England, "It never rains but it pours," as applied,
not to the rain, but to the occurrences of daily life. Dyke Manor was
generally quiet enough, but on Thursday evening--the Thursday already
told of--we were destined to have visitors. First of all, arrived Mr.
Jacobson, our neighbour at Elm Farm, with his nephew, young Harry Dene;
he had his gig put up, meaning to make an evening of it. It turned out
to be a night, or nearly so, as you will soon find. Close upon that,
Charles Stirling of the Court (my place) came in; and Mrs. Todhetley
went to the kitchen to say that we should require supper. The stirring
events of the week had brought them over--namely, the encounter on
our land between the poachers and the keepers, and the flight of the
valuable yard dog, Don, a Newfoundland.
That afternoon, Thursday, we had heard, as may be remembered, that Don
was at Evesham, under the keeping of Mr. Dick Standish; and I had been
told by Katrine Barbary that Mr. Reste had suddenly and unexpectedly
disappeared from Caramel Cottage. Old Jacobson predicted that Dick
Standish would come to be hanged; Charles Stirling said he ought to be
transported.
"Of course you will prosecute him, Squire?" said Charles Stirling.
"Of course I shall," replied the Squire, warmly. "The police have him
already safe enough if they've done their duty, and I shall be over at
Evesham in the morning."
After a jolly supper they got to their pipes, and the time went by on
wings. At least, that's what the master of Elm Farm said when the clocks
struck eleven, and he asked leave to order his gig.
It was brought round by Giles, the groom; and we were all assembled in
the hall to speed the departure, when old Jones, the constable, burst in
upon us at the full speed of his gouty legs, his face in a white heat.
Private information had reached Jones half an hour ago that the poachers
intended to be out again that night, but he could not learn in which
direction.
Then commotion arose. The Squire and his friend Jacobson were like two
demented wild Indians, uncertain what was best to be done to entrap the
villains. The gig was ordered away again.
Some time passed in discussion. In these moments of excitement one
cannot always bring one's keenest wits to the fore. Charles Stirling
offered to go out and reconnoitre; we, you may be quite sure, were eager
to second him. I went with Charles Stirling one way; Tod and Harry Dene
went another--leaving the Squire and Mr. Jacobson at the gate, listening
for shots, and conferring in whispers with old Jones.
How long we marched about under the bright moonlight, keeping under the
shade of the trees and hedges, I cannot tell you; but when we all four
met at Dyke Neck, which lay between the Manor and the Court, we had seen
nothing. Mr. Stirling went straight home then, but we continued our
ramblings. A schoolboy's ardour is not quickly damped.
Beating about fresh ground together for a little while, we then
separated. I went across towards the village: the other two elsewhere.
It was one of the loveliest of nights, the full moon bright as day, the
air warm and soft. But I neither saw nor heard signs of any poachers,
and I began to suspect that somebody had played a trick on the old
constable.
I turned short back at the thought, and made, as the Americans say,
tracks for home. My nearest way was through the dense grove of trees at
the back of Caramel Farm, and I took it, though it was not the liveliest
way by any means.
But no sooner was I beyond the grove than sounds struck on my ear in
the stillness of the night. They seemed to come from the direction of
Caramel Cottage. Darting under the side hedge, and then across the side
lane, and so under the hedge again that bound the cottage, I stole on
the grass as softly as a mouse. Poachers could not be at work there;
but an idea flashed across me that somebody had got into Mr. Barbary's
well-stocked garden, and was robbing it.
Peering through the hedge, I saw Barbary himself. He was coming out of
the brewhouse, dragging behind him, with two cords, a huge sack of some
kind, well-filled and heavy. Opposite the open door, on the furnace,
shone a lighted horn lantern. Mr. Barbary pushed-to the door behind him,
thereby shutting out the light, dragged his burden over the yard to the
garden, and let it fall into what looked like--a freshly dug grave.
Astonishment kept me intensely still. What did it all mean? Hardly
daring to breathe, I stole in at the gate and under the shade of the
hedge. Whatever it might contain, that sacking lay perfectly quiet, and
Mr. Barbary began to shovel in the spadefuls of earth upon it, as one
does upon a coffin.
This was nothing for me to interfere with, and I went away silently.
It looked like a mystery, and a dark one; any way it was being done in
secret in the witching hours of the night. What the time might be I knew
not, the Squire having ordered our watches taken off before starting:
perhaps one, or two, or three o'clock.
Tod and Harry Dene reached the gate of Dyke Manor just as I did; and we
were greeted, all three, with a storm of reproaches by the Squire and
Mr. Jacobson. What did we mean by it?--scampering off like that for
hours?--for _hours_!--Three times had the gig been brought out and put
up again! Harry was bundled headforemost into the gig, and Mr. Jacobson
drove off.
And it turned out that my suspicion touching old Jones was right. Some
young men had played the trick upon him. I need not have mentioned it at
all, but for seeing what I did see in Barbary's garden.
How Katrine Barbary passed that night you have seen: for, like many
another story-teller, I have had to carry you back a few hours.
Shivering and shaking, now hot, now cold, she lay, striving to reason
with herself that _it could not be_; that so dreadful a thing was not
possible; that she was the most wicked girl on earth for imagining it:
and she strove in vain. All the events of the past day or two kept
crowding into her mind one upon another in flaring colours, like the
figures in some hideous phantasmagoria. The unexpected arrival of the
bank-notes for Mr. Reste; her father's covetous look at them and his
dreadful joke; their going out together that night poaching; their
quarrelling together the next morning; their worse quarrelling at night,
and their dashing out to the yard (as if in passion) one after the
other. And, so far as Katrine could trace it, that was the very last
seen or heard of Edgar Reste. The next morning he was gone; gone in a
mysterious manner, leaving all his possessions behind him. Her father
was reticent over it; would not explain. Then came the little episode of
the locked-up brewhouse, which had never been locked before in Joan's
memory. Mr. Barbary refused to unlock it, said he had put some wine
there; told Joan she must do without the jack. What had really been
hidden in that brewhouse? Katrine felt faint at the thought. _Not wine._
And the terrible farce of packing Mr. Reste's effects and addressing
them to Euston Square Station, London! Would they lie there for
ever--unclaimed? Alas, alas! The proofs were only too palpable. Edgar
Reste had been put out of the world for ever. She had been the shivering
witness to his secret burial.
* * * * *
"What's the matter, Katrine? Are you ill?"
The inquiry was made by Mr. Barbary next day at breakfast. Sick unto
death she looked. The very bright night had given place to a showery
morning, and the rain pattered against the window-panes.
"I have a headache," answered Katrine, faintly.
"Better send Joan to the Manor to say you cannot attend to-day."
"Oh, I would rather go; I must go," she said hastily. For this good girl
had been schooling herself as well as she knew how; making up her mind
to persevere in fulfilling the daily duties of her life in the best way
she should be able; lest, if she fell short abruptly, suspicion might
turn towards her father. She had wildly prayed Heaven to grant her
strength and help to bear up on her course. Not from her must come the
pointing finger of discovery. It is true that he--Edgar--was her first
and dearest love; she should never love another as she had loved him;
but she was her father's child, and held him sacred.
"Why must you go?" demanded Mr. Barbary, as, having finished a plate of
broiled mushrooms, he began upon a couple of eggs with an appetite that
the night's work did not seem to have spoiled.
"The air--the walk--may do me good."
"Well, you know best, child. I suppose Todhetley be off to Evesham
after that dog of theirs," Mr. Barbary went on to remark. "Master Dick
Standish must be a bold sinner to steal the dog one day and parade the
open streets with it the next! If---- What is it now, Joan?"
For old Joan had come in with a face of surprise. "Sir," she cried, "has
Tom Noah been at work here this morning?"
"Not that I know of," replied Mr. Barbary. Tom Noah, an industrious
young fellow, son to Noah, the gardener, was occasionally employed by
Mr. Barbary to clean up the yard and clear the garden of its superfluous
rubbish.
"Our back'us has been scrubbed out this morning, sir," went on Joan,
still in astonishment. "And it didn't want it. Who in the world can have
come in and gone and done it?"
"Nonsense," said Mr. Barbary.
"But it has, master; scrubbed clean; the flags are all wet still. And
the rain-water barrel's a'most empty, nearly every drop of water drawn
out of it! I'd not say but the yard has had a bit of a scrubbing, too,
near the garden, as well as the back'us."
"Nonsense!" repeated Mr. Barbary, his light tone becoming irritable.
"You see it has been raining! the rain has drifted into the brewhouse,
that's all; I left the door open last night. There! go back to your
work."
Joan was a simple-natured woman, but she was neither silly nor blind,
and she knew that what she said was true. Rapidly turning the matter
over in her mind, she came to the conclusion that Tom Noah had been in
"unbeknown to the master," and so left the subject.
"I suppose I may take out the spare jack now, sir?" she waited to say.
"Take out anything you like," replied Mr. Barbary.
Afraid of her tell-tale face, Katrine had moved to the window,
apparently to look at the weather. Too well she knew who had scrubbed
out the place, and why.
The rain had ceased when she set off on her short walk--for it was not
much more than a stone's throw to the Manor; the sun was struggling from
behind the clouds, blue sky could be seen. Alone with herself and the
open country, Katrine gave vent to her pent-up spirit, which she had
not dared to do indoors; sighs of anguish and of pain escaped her; she
wondered whether it would be wrong if she prayed to die. But some one
was advancing to meet her, and she composed her countenance.
It was Ben Gibbon. For the past week or so, since Katrine had been
enlightened as to her father's poaching propensities, she had somehow
feared this man. He was son to the late James Gibbon, the former
gamekeeper at Chavasse Grange, and brother to the present keeper,
Richard. Of course one might expect that Mr. Benjamin would protect game
and gamekeepers; instead of which, he was known to do a little safe
poaching on his own account, and to be an idle fellow altogether.
Katrine did not like his intimacy with her father, and she could not
forget that he had passed part of that fatal evening with him and Edgar
Reste.
"Showery weather to-day, miss," was Ben Gibbon's salutation.
"Yes, it is," answered Katrine, with intense civility--for how could she
tell what the man might know?
"I suppose I shall find Mr. Barbary at home?"
"Oh, yes," faintly spoke she, and passed on her way.
II
We started for Evesham under a sharp shower, the Squire driving Bob and
Blister in the large phaeton. Tod sat with him, I and the groom behind.
Not a shadow of doubt lay on any one of us that we should bring back
Don in triumph--leaving Dick Standish to be dealt with according to his
merits. But, as the Squire remarked later, we were not a match for Dick
in cunning.
"Keep your eyes open, lads," the Squire said to us as we approached the
town. "And if you see Dick Standish, with or without the dog, jump out
and pounce upon him. You hear, Giles?"
"No need to tell me to do it, sir," answered Giles humbly, clenching his
fists; he had been eating humble pie ever since Tuesday night. "I am
ready."
But Dick Standish was not seen. Leaving the carriage and Giles at the
inn, we made our way to the police station. An officer named Brett
attended to us. It was curious enough, but the first person we saw
inside the station was Tobias Jellico, who had called in on some matter
of business that concerned his shop.
"We had your message yesterday, sir," said Brett to the Squire, "and we
lost no time in seeing after Standish. But it is not your dog that he
has with him."
"Not my dog!" repeated the Squire, up in arms at once. "Don't tell me
that, Brett. Whose dog should it be but mine? Come!"
"Well, sir, I never saw your dog; but Tomkins, one of our men, who has
often been on duty at Church Dykely, knows it well," rejoined Brett. "We
had Standish and the dog up here, and Tomkins at once said it was not
your dog at all, so we let the man go. Mr. Jellico also says it is not
yours; I was talking to him about it now."
"What I said was this," put in Jellico, stepping forward, and speaking
with meek deprecation. "If Squire Todhetley's dog has been described to
me correctly, the dog I saw with Standish yesterday can't be the same.
It is a great big ugly dog, with tan marks about his white coat----"
"Ugly!" retorted the Squire, resenting the aspersion, for he fully
believed it to be Don.
"It is not at all an ugly dog, it's a handsome dog," spoke up Brett.
"Perhaps Mr. Jellico does not like dogs."
"Not much," confessed Jellico.
"How came you to say yesterday at Church Dykely that it was the same
dog?" Tod asked the man.
"If you please, sir, I didn't exactly say it was; I said I made no doubt
of it," returned Jellico, mild as new milk. "It was in this way: Perkins
the butcher was standing at his shop door as I passed down the street.
We began talking, and he told me about the poachers having been out
on the Tuesday night, and that Squire Todhetley had lost his fine
Newfoundland dog; he said it was thought the Standishes were in both
games. So then I said I had met Dick Standish with just such a dog that
morning as I was a-coming out of Evesham. I had never seen the Squire's
dog, you perceive, gentlemen; but neither Mr. Perkins nor me had any
doubt it was his."
"And it must be mine," returned the Squire, hotly. "Send for the dog,
Brett; I will see it. Send for Standish also."
"I'll send, sir," replied Brett, rather dubiously, "and get the man here
if he is to be had. The chances are that with all this bother Standish
has left the town and taken the dog with him."
Brett was a talkative man, with a mottled face and sandy hair. He
despatched a messenger to see after Standish. Jellico went out at the
same time, telling Brett that his business could wait till another day.
"I know it is my dog," affirmed the Squire to Brett while he waited.
Nothing on earth, except actual sight, would have convinced him that it
was not his. "Those loose men play all sorts of cunning tricks. Dick
Standish is full of them. I shouldn't wonder but he has _painted_ the
dog; done his black marks over with brown paint--or _green_."
"We've a dyer in this town, Squire," related Brett; "he owns a little
white curly dog, and he dyes him as an advertisement for his colours,
and lets him run about on the pavement before the shop door. To-day the
dog will be a delicate sky-blue, to-morrow a flaming scarlet; the next
day he'll be a beautiful orange, with a green tail. The neighbours'
dogs collect round and stand looking at him from a respectful distance,
uncertain, I suppose, whether he is of the dog species, or not."
I laughed.
"Passing the shop the other day, I saw the dog sitting on the
door-step," ran on Brett. "He was bright purple that time. An old lady,
driving by in her chariot, caught sight of the dog and called to the
coachman to pull up. There she sat, that old lady, entranced with
amazement, staring through her eye-glass at what she took to be a
phenomenon in nature. Five minutes, full, she stared, and couldn't tear
herself away. It is true, gentlemen, I assure you."
Mr. Dick Standish was found, and brought before us. He looked rather
more disreputable than usual, his old fustian coat out at elbows,
a spotted red handkerchief twisted loosely round his neck. The dog
was with him, _and it was not ours_. A large, fine dog, as already
described, though much less handsome than Don, and out of condition, his
curly coat a yellowish white, the marks on it of real tan colour, not
painted.
Dick's account, after vehemently protesting he had nothing to do with
the poaching affair on Tuesday night, was never for a minute out of his
bed--was this: The dog belonged to one of the stable-helpers at Leet
Hall; but the man had determined to have the dog shot, not being
satisfied with him of late, for the animal had turned odd and uncertain
in his behaviour. Dick Standish heard of this. Understanding dogs
thoroughly, and believing that this dog only wanted a certain course of
treatment to put him right, Standish walked to Church Leet on Wednesday
morning last from Church Dykely, and asked the man, Brazer, to give him
the dog--he would take him and run all risks. Brazer refused at first;
but, after a bit, agreed to let Standish keep the dog for a time. If he
cured the dog, Brazer was to have him back again, paying Standish for
his keep and care; but if not satisfied with the dog, Standish might
keep him for good. Standish brought the dog away, and took him straight
to Evesham, walking the whole way and getting there about nine o'clock
in the evening. He was doctoring the dog well, and hoped to cure him.
Whether this tale was true or whether it wasn't, none of us could
contradict it. But there was an appearance of fear, of shuffling in the
man's manner, which seemed to indicate that something lay behind.
"It's every word gospel, ain't it, Rove, and no lie nowhere," cried
Standish, bending to pat the dog, while the corner of his eye was turned
to regard the aspect of the company. "You've blown me up for many things
before now, Squire Todhetley, but there's no call, sir, to accuse me
this time."
"When did you hear about this dog of Brazer's, and who told you of it?"
inquired Tod, in his haughty way.
"'Twas Bill Rimmer, sir; he telled me on Tuesday night," replied Dick.
"And I said to him what a shame it was to talk of destroying that there
fine dog, and that Brazer was a soft for thinking on't. And I said,
young Mr. Todhetley, that I'd be over at Church Leet first thing the
next morning, to see if he'd give the dog to me."
"It is not my dog, I see that," spoke the Squire, breaking the silence
that followed Dick's speech; "and it may be the stableman's at Leet
Hall; that's a thing readily ascertained. Do you know where my dog is,
Dick Standish?"
"No, I don't know, sir," replied the man in a very eager tone; "and I
never knowed at all, till fetched to this police station yesterday, that
your dog was a-missing. I'll swear I didn't."
There was nothing more to be done, but to accept the failure, and leave
the station, after privately charging the police to keep an eye on
clever Mr. Dick Standish, his haunts, and his movements.
In the afternoon we drove back home, not best pleased with the day's
work. A sense of having been _done_, in some way or other not at present
explicable, lay on most of us.
It appeared that the groom shared this feeling strongly. In passing
through the yard, I came upon him in his shirt sleeves, seated outside
the stable door on an inverted bucket. His elbows on his knees and his
face in his hands, he looked the image of despair. The picture arrested
me. Mack was rubbing down the horses; a duty Giles rarely entrusted to
anybody. He was fond of Don, and had been ready to hang himself ever
since Tuesday night.
"Why, Giles! what's the matter?"
"Matter enough, Master Johnny, when a false villyan like that Dick
Standish can take the master, and the police their-selves, and everybody
else, in!" was his answer. "I felt as cock-sure, sir, that we should
bring home Don as I am that the sky above us is shining out blue after
the last shower."
"But it was not Don, you see, Giles."
"_He_ wasn't; the dog Standish had to show," returned Giles, with a
peculiar emphasis. "Dick had got up his tale all smooth and sleek, sir."
"How do you know he had?"
"Because he told it me over again--the one he said he had been telling
at the police station, Master Johnny. I was standing outside the inn
yard while you were all in at lunch, and Standish came by as bold as
brass, Brazer's dog, Rover, leashed to his hand."
"I suppose it is Brazer's dog?"
"Oh, it's Brazer's dog, that'un be," said Giles, with a deep amount of
scorn; "I know _him_ well enough."
"Then how can it be Don? And we could not bring home another man's dog."
Giles paused. His eyes had a far-off look in them, as if seeking for
something they could not find.
"Master Johnny," he said, "I can't rightly grasp things. All the way
home I've been trying to put two and two together, I am trying at it
still, and I can't do it anyhow. Don't it seem odd to you, sir, that
Standish should have got Brazer's dog, Rover, into his hands just at
the very time we are suspecting he has got Don into 'em?"
I did not know. I had not thought about it.
"He has that dog of Brazer's as a blind. A blind, and nothing else,
sir. He has captured our dog, safe and sure, and is keeping him hid up
somewhere till the first storm of the search is over, when he'll be able
to dispose of him safely."
I could not see Giles's drift, or how the one dog could help to conceal
the possession of the other.
"Well, sir, I can't explain it better," he answered; "I can't fit
the pieces of the puzzle into one another in my mind _yet_. But I am
positive it is so. Dick Standish has made up the farce about Brazer's
dog and got him into his hands to throw dust in our eyes and keep us off
the scent of Don."
I began to see the groom might be right; and that the Standishes, sly
and crafty, were keeping Don in hiding.
Mrs. Todhetley had met us with a face of concern. Lena's throat was
becoming very bad indeed, and Mr. Duffham did not like the look of it at
all. He had already come twice that day.
"I think, Johnny," said the mother to me, "that we had better stop Miss
Barbary's coming to-morrow; Mr. Duffham does not know but the malady may
be getting infectious. Suppose you go now to the cottage and tell her."
So I went off to do so, and found her ill. On this same Friday
afternoon, having occasion to ask some question of her father, who was
in the garden, she found him planting greens on the plot of ground--the
_grave_--under the summer-apple tree. Before she could speak, a shudder
of terror seized her; she trembled from head to foot, turned back to the
kitchen, and sat down on the nearest chair.
Old Joan pronounced it to be an attack of ague; Miss Katrine, she said,
must have taken a chill. Perhaps she had. It was just then that I
arrived and found her shivering in the kitchen. Joan ran up to her room
in the garret to bring down some powder she kept there, said to be a
grand remedy for ague.
It was getting dusk then; the sun had set. To me, Katrine seemed to
be shaking with terror, not illness. Mr. Barbary, in full view of the
window, was planting the winter greens under the summer-apple tree.
"What is it that you are frightened at?" I said, propping my back
against the kitchen mantelpiece.
"I _must_ ask you a question, Johnny Ludlow," she whispered, panting and
shivering. "Was it you who came and stood inside the gate there in the
middle of last night?"
"Yes it was. And I saw what Mr. Barbary was doing--_there_. I could not
make it out."
Katrine left her chair and placed herself before me. Clasping her
piteous hands, she besought me to be silent; to keep the secret for pity
sake--to be _true_. All kinds of odd ideas stole across me. I would not
listen to them; only promised her that I would tell nothing, would be
true for ever and a day.
"It must have been an accident, you know," she pleaded; "it must have
been an accident."
Joan came back, and I took my departure. What on earth could Katrine
have meant? All kinds of fancies were troubling my brain, fit only for
what in these later days are called the penny dreadfuls, and I did my
best to drive them out of it.
The next morning Katrine was really ill. Her throat was parched, her
body ached with fever. As to Lena, she was worse; and we, who ought to
have gone back to school that day, were kept at home lest we should
carry with us any infection.
"All right," said Tod. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody go
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