“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.”