“Johnny Ludlow! Master Johnny! Don’t go. We have found the string under the unused holly. Why!—what’s that?”
No chance of concealment for Jessy now. Susan Page made for the buttress, and saw the white face in the moonlight.
“It’s Jessy,” I whispered.
With a shriek that might have scared away all the ghosts in the churchyard, Susan Page called for Abigail. They heard it through the window, and came rushing out, thinking Susan must have fallen at least into the clutches of a winter wolf. Miss Susan’s voice trembled as she spoke in a whisper.
“Here’s Jessy—come back at last!”
Unbelieving Abigail Page went down on her knees in the snow to trace the features, and convince herself. Yes, it was Jessy. She had fainted now, and lay motionless. Leek came up then, and stood staring.
Where had she come from?—how had she got there? It was just as though she had dropped from the skies with the snow. And what was to be done with her?
“She must—come home,” said Abigail.
But she spoke hesitatingly, as though some impediment might lie in the way: and she looked round in a dreamy manner on the open country, all so white and dreary in the moonlight.
“Yes, there’s no other place—of course it must be the farm,” she added. “Perhaps you can bring her between you. But I’ll go on and speak to my father first.”
It was easy for one to carry her, she was so thin and light. John Drench lifted her and they all went off: leaving me and Leek to finish up in the church, and put out the candles.
William Page was sitting in his favourite place, the wide chimney-corner of the kitchen, quietly smoking his pipe, when his daughter broke in upon him with the strange news. Just in the same way that, a year before, she had broken in upon him with that other news—that a gentleman had arrived, uninvited, on a visit to the farm. This news was more startling than that.
“Are they bringing her home?—how long will they be?” cried the old man with feverish eagerness, as he let fall his long churchwarden pipe, and broke it. “Abigail, will they be long?”
“Father, I want to say something: I came on to say it,” returned Miss Page, and she was trembling too. “I don’t like her face: it is wan, and thin, and full of suffering: but there’s a look in it that—that seems to tell of shame.”
“To tell of what?” he asked, not catching the word.
“May Heaven forgive me if I misjudge her! The fear crossed me, as I saw her lying there, that her life may not have been innocent since she left us: why else should she come back in this most strange way? Must we take her in all the same, father?”
“Take her in!” he repeated in amazement. “Yes. What are you thinking of, child, to ask it?”
“It’s the home of myself and Susan, father: it has been always an honest one in the sight of the neighbours. Maybe, they’ll be hard upon us for receiving her into it.”
He stared as one who does not understand, and then made a movement with his hands, as if warding off her words and the neighbours’ hardness together.
“Let her come, Abigail! Let her come, poor stray lamb. Christ wouldn’t turn away a little one that had strayed from the fold: should her own father do it?”
And when they brought her in, and put her in an easy-chair by the sitting-room fire, stirring it into a blaze, and gave her hot tea and brandy in it, William Page sat down by her side, and shed fast tears over her, as he fondly stroked her hand.
Gay and green looked the church on Christmas morning, the sun shining in upon us as brightly as it shone a year before. The news of Jessy Page’s return and the curious manner of it, had spread; causing the congregation to turn their eyes instinctively on the Pages’ pew. Perhaps not one but recalled the last Christmas—and the gallant stranger who had sat in it, and found the places in the Prayer-book for Jessy. Only Mr. Page was there to-day. He came slowly in with his thick stick—for he walked badly since his illness, and dragged one leg behind the other. Before the thanksgiving prayer the parson opened a paper and read out a notice. Such things were uncommon in our church, and it caused a stir.
“William Page desires to return thanks to Almighty God for a great mercy vouchsafed to him.”
We walked to the Copse Farm with him after service. Considering that he had been returning thanks, he seemed dreadfully subdued. He didn’t know how it was yet; where she had been, or why she had come home in the manner she did, he told the Squire; but, anyway, she had come. Come to die, it might be; but come home, and that was enough.
Mrs. Todhetley went upstairs to see her. They had given her the best bed, the one they had given to Marcus Allen. She lay in it like a lily. It was what Mrs. Todhetley said when she came down: “like a lily, so white and delicate.” There was no talking. Jessy for the most part kept her eyes shut and her face turned away. Miss Page whispered that they had not questioned her yet; she seemed too weak to bear it. “But what do you think?” asked Mrs. Todhetley in return. “I am afraid to think,” was all the answer. In coming away, Mrs. Todhetley stooped over the bed to kiss her.
“Oh don’t, don’t!” said Jessy faintly: “you might not if you knew all. I am not worth it.”
“Perhaps I should kiss you all the more, my poor child,” answered Mrs. Todhetley. And she came downstairs with red eyes.
But Miss Susan Page was burning with impatience to know the ins and outs of the strange affair. Naturally so. It had brought more scandal and gossip on the Copse Farm than even the running away of the year before. That was bad enough: this was worse. Altogether Jessy was the home’s heartsore. Mr. Page spoke of her as a lamb, a wanderer returned to the fold, and Susan heard it with compressed lips: in her private opinion, she had more justly been called an ungrateful girl.
“Now, then, Jessy; you must let us know a little about yourself,” began Susan on this same afternoon when she was with her alone, and Jessy lay apparently stronger, refreshed with the dinner and the long rest. Abigail had gone to church with Mr. Page. Susan could not remember that any of them had gone to church before on Christmas-Day after the morning service: but there was no festive gathering to keep them at home to-day. Unconsciously, perhaps, Susan resented the fact. Even John Drench was dining at his father’s. “Where have you been all this while in London?”
Jessy suddenly lifted her arm to shade her eyes; and remained silent.
“It is in London, I conclude, that you have been? Come: answer me.”
“Yes,” said Jessy faintly.
“And where have you been? In what part of it?—who with?”
“Don’t ask me,” was the low reply, given with a suppressed sob.
“Not ask you! But we must ask you. And you must answer. Where have you been, and what have you been doing?”
“I—can’t tell,” sobbed Jessy. “The story is too long.”
“Story too long!” echoed Susan quickly, “you might say in half-a-dozen words—and leave explanations until to-morrow. Did you find a place in town?”
“Yes, I found a place.”
“A lady’s-maid’s place?—as you said.”
Jessy turned her face to the wall, and never spoke.
“Now, this won’t do,” cried Miss Susan, not choosing to be thwarted: and no doubt Jessy, hearing the determined tone, felt something like a reed in her hands. “Just you tell me a little.”
“I am very ill, Susan; I can’t talk much,” was the pleading excuse. “If you’d only let me be quiet.”
“It will no more hurt you to say in a few words where you have been than to make excuses,” persisted Miss Susan, giving a flick to the skirt of her new puce silk gown. “Your conduct altogether has been most extraordinary, quite baffling to us at home, and I must hear some explanation of it.”
“The place I went to was too hard for me,” said Jessy after a pause, speaking out of the pillow.
“Too hard!”
“Yes; too hard. My heart was breaking with its hardness, and I couldn’t stop in it. Oh, be merciful to me, Susan! don’t ask any more.”
Susan Page thought that when mysterious answers like these were creeping out, there was all the greater need that she should ask for more.
“Who found you the place at first, Jessy?”
Not a word. Susan asked again.
“I—got it through an advertisement,” said Jessy at length.
Advertisements in those days, down in our rural district, were looked upon as wonderful things, and Miss Susan opened her eyes in surprise. A faint idea was upon her that Jessy could not be telling the truth.
“In that letter that you wrote to us; the only one you did write; you asserted that you liked the place.”
“Yes. That was at first. But afterwards—oh, afterwards it got cruelly hard.”
“Why did you not change it for another?”
Jessy made no answer. Susan heard the sobs in her throat.
“Now, Jessy, don’t be silly. I ask why you did not get another place, if you were unable to stay in that one?”
“I couldn’t have got another, Susan. I would never have got another.”
“Why not?” persisted Susan.
“I—I—don’t you see how weak I am?” she asked with some energy, lifting her face for a moment to Susan.
And its wan pain, its depth of anguish, disarmed Susan. Jessy looked like a once fair blossom on which a blight had passed.
“Well, Jessy, we will leave these matters until later. But there’s one thing you must answer. What induced you to take this disreputable mode of coming back?”
A dead silence.
“Could you not have written to say you were coming, as any sensible girl would, that you might have been properly met and received? Instead of appearing like a vagabond, to be picked up by anybody.”
“I never meant to come home—to the house.”
“But why?” asked Susan.
“Oh, because—because of my ingratitude in running away—and never writing—and—and all that.”
“That is, you were ashamed to come and face us.”
“Yes, I was ashamed,” said Jessy, shivering.
“And no wonder. Why did you go?”
Jessy gave a despairing sigh. Leaving that question in abeyance, Susan returned to the former one.
“If you did not mean to come home, what brought you down here at all?”
“It didn’t matter where I went. And my heart was yearning for a look at the old place—and so I came.”
“And if we had not found you under the church wall—and we never should but for Johnny Ludlow’s running out to get some string—where should you have gone, pray?”
“Crawled under some haystack, and let the cold and hunger kill me.”
“Don’t be a simpleton,” reproved Susan.
“I wish it had been so,” returned Jessy. “I’d rather be dying there in quiet. Oh, Susan, I am ill; I am indeed! Let me be at peace!”
The appeal shut up Susan Page. She did not want to be too hard upon her.
Mr. Duffham came in after church. Abigail had told him that she did not like Jessy’s looks; nor yet her cough. He went up alone, and was at the bedside before Jessy was aware. She put up her hand to hide her face, but not in time: Duffham had seen it. Doctors don’t get shocks in a general way: they are too familiar with appearances that frighten other people: but he started a little. If ever he saw coming death in a face, he thought he saw it in that of Jessy Page.
He drew away the shading hand, and looked at her. Duffham was pompous on the whole and thought a good deal of his gold-headed cane, but he was a tender man with the sad and sick. After that, he sat down and began asking her a few things—where she had been, and what she had done. Not out of curiosity, or quite with the same motive that Miss Susan had just asked; but because he wished to find out whether her illness was more on the body or the mind. She would not answer. Only cried softly.
“My dear,” said Duffham, “I must have you tell me a little of the past. Don’t be afraid: it shall go no further. If you only knew the strange confidences that are sometimes placed in me, Jessy, you would not hesitate.”
No, she would not speak of her own accord, so he began to pump her. Doing it very kindly and soothingly: had Jessy spent her year in London robbing all the banks, one might have thought she could only have yielded to his wish to come to the bottom of it. Duffham listened to her answers, and sat with a puzzled face. She told him what she had told Susan: that her post of lady’s-maid had been too hard for her and worn her to what she was; that she had shrunk from returning home on account of her ingratitude, and should not have returned ever of her own will. But she had yearned for a sight of the old place, and so came down by rail, and walked over after dark. In passing the church she saw it lighted up; and lingered, peeping in. She never meant to be seen; she should have gone away somewhere before morning. Nothing more.
Nothing more! Duffham sat listening to her. He pushed back the pretty golden hair (no more blue ribbons in it now), lost in thought.
“Nothing more, Jessy? There must have been something more, I think, to have brought you into this state. What was it?”
“No,” she faintly said: “only the hard work I had to do; and the thought of how I left my home; and—and my unhappiness. I was unhappy always, nearly from my first entering. The work was hard.”
“What was the work?”
“It was——”
A long pause. Mr. Duffham, always looking at her, waited.
“It was sewing; dress-making. And—there was sitting up at nights.”
“Who was the lady you served? What was her name?”
“I can’t tell it,” answered Jessy, her cheeks flushing to a wild hectic.
The surgeon suddenly turned the left hand towards him, and looked at the forefinger. It was smooth as ivory.
“Not much sign of sewing there, Jessy.”
She drew it under the clothes. “It is some little time since I did any; I was too ill,” she answered. “Mr. Duffham, I have told you all there is to tell. The place was too hard for me, and it made me ill.”
It was all she told. Duffham wondered whether it was, in substance, all she had to tell. He went down and entered the parlour with a grave face: Mr. Page, his daughters, and John Drench were there. The doctor said Jessy must have perfect rest, tranquillity, and the best of nourishment; and he would send some medicine. Abigail put a shawl over her head, and walked with him across the garden.
“You will tell me what your opinion is, Mr. Duffham.”
“Ay. It is no good one, Miss Abigail.”
“Is she very ill?”
“Very. I do not think she will materially rally. Her chest and lungs are both weak.”
“Her mother’s were before her. As I told you, Jessy looks to me just as my mother used to look in her last illness.”
Mr. Duffham went through the gate without saying more. The snow was sparkling like diamonds in the moonlight.
“I think I gather what you mean,” resumed Abigail. “That she is, in point of fact, dying.”
“That’s it. As I truly believe.”
They looked at each other in the clear light air. “But not—surely, Mr. Duffham, not immediately?”
“Not immediately. It may be weeks off yet. Mind—I don’t assert that she is absolutely past hope; I only think it. It is possible that she may rally, and recover.”
“It might not be the happier for her,” said Abigail, under her breath. “She is in a curiously miserable state of mind—as you no doubt saw. Mr. Duffham, did she tell you anything?”
“She says she took a place as lady’s-maid; that the work proved too hard for her; and that, with the remorse for her ingratitude towards her home, made her ill.”
“She said the same to Susan this afternoon. Well, we must wait for more. Good-night, Mr. Duffham: I am sure you will do all you can.”
Of course Duffham meant to do all he could; and from that time he began to attend her regularly.
Jessy Page’s coming home, with, as Miss Susan had put it, the vagabond manner of it, was a nine days’ wonder. The neighbours went making calls at the Copse Farm, to talk about it and to see her. In the latter hope they failed. Jessy showed a great fear of seeing any one of them; would put her head under the bed-clothes and lie there shaking till the house was clear; and Duffham said she was not to be crossed.
Her sisters got to know no more of the past. Not a syllable. They questioned and cross-questioned her; but she only stuck to her text. It was the work that had been too much for her; the people she served were cruelly hard.
“I really think it must be so; that she has nothing else to tell,” remarked Abigail to Susan one morning, as they sat alone at breakfast, “But she must have been a downright simpleton to stay.”
“I can’t make her out,” returned Susan, hard of belief. “Why should she not say where it was, and who the people are? Here comes the letter-man.”
The letter-man—as he was called—was bringing a letter for Miss Page. Letters at the Copse Farm were rare, and she opened it with curiosity. It proved to be from Mrs. Allen of Aberystwith; and out of it dropped two cards, tied together with silver cord.
Mrs. Allen wrote to say that her distant relative, Marcus, was married. He had been married on Christmas-Eve to a Miss Mary Goldbeater, a great heiress, and they had sent her cards. Thinking the Miss Pages might like to see the cards (as they knew something of him) she had forwarded them.
Abigail took the cards up. “Mr. Marcus Allen. Mrs. Marcus Allen.” And on hers was the address: “Gipsy Villas, Montgomery Road, Brompton.” “I think he might have been polite enough to send us cards also,” observed Abigail.
Susan put the cards on the waiter when she went upstairs with her sister’s tea. Jessy, looking rather more feverish than usual in a morning, turned the cards about in her slender hands.
“I have heard of her, this Mary Goldbeater,” said Jessy, biting her parched lips. “They say she’s pretty, and—and very rich.”
“Where did you hear of her?” asked Susan.
“Oh, in—let me think. In the work-room.”
“Now what do you mean by that?” cried Miss Susan. “A work-room implies a dressmaker’s establishment, and you tell us you were a lady’s-maid.”
Jessy seemed unable to answer.
“I don’t believe you were at either the one place or the other. You are deceiving us, Jessy.”
“No,” gasped Jessy.
“Did you ever see Mr. Marcus Allen when you were in town?”
“Mr. Marcus Allen?” repeated Jessy after a pause, just as if she were unable to recall who Mr. Marcus Allen was.
“The Mr. Marcus Allen you knew at Aberystwith; he who came here afterwards,” went on Susan impatiently. “Are you losing your memory, Jessy?”
“No, I never saw the Marcus Allen I knew here—and there,” was Jessy’s answer, her face white and still as death.
“Why!—Did you know any other Marcus Allen, then?” questioned Susan, in surprise. For the words had seemed to imply it.
“No,” replied Jessy. “No.”
“She seems queerer than usual—I hope her mind’s not going,” thought Susan. “Did you ever go to see Madame Caron, Jessy, while you were in London?”
“Never. Why should I? I didn’t know Madame Caron.”
“When Marcus Allen wrote to excuse himself from visiting us in the summer, he said he would be sure to come later,” resumed Susan. “I wonder if he will keep his promise.”
“No—never,” answered Jessy.
“How do you know?”
“Oh—I don’t think it. He wouldn’t care to come. Especially now he’s married.”
“And you never saw him in town, Jessy? Never even met him by chance?”
“I’ve told you—No. Do you suppose I should be likely to call upon Marcus Allen? As to meeting him by chance, it is not often I went out, I can tell you.”
“Well, sit up and take your breakfast,” concluded Susan.
A thought had crossed Susan Page’s mind—whether this marriage of Marcus Allen’s on Christmas-Eve could have had anything to do with Jessy’s return and her miserable unhappiness. It was only a thought; and she drove it away again. As Abigail said, she had been inclined throughout to judge hardly of Jessy.
The winter snow lay on the ground still, when it became a question not of how many weeks Jessy would live, but of days. And then she confessed to a secret that pretty nearly changed the sober Miss Pages’ hair from black to grey. Jessy had turned Roman Catholic.
It came out through her persistent refusal to see the parson, Mr. Holland, a little man with shaky legs. He’d go trotting up to the Copse Farm once or twice a-week; all in vain. Miss Abigail would console him with a good hot jorum of sweet elder wine, and then he’d trot back again. One day Jessy, brought to bay, confessed that she was a Roman Catholic.
There was grand commotion. John Drench went about, his hands lifted in the frosty air; Abigail and Susan Page sat in the bedroom with (metaphorically speaking) ashes on their heads.
People have their prejudices. It was not so much that these ladies wished to cast reflection on good Catholics born and bred, as that Jessy should have abandoned her own religion, just as though it had been an insufficient faith. It was the slight on it that they could not bear.
“Miserable girl!” exclaimed Miss Susan, looking upon Jessy as a turncoat, and therefore next door to lost. And Jessy told, through her sobs, how it had come to pass.
Wandering about one evening in London when she was very unhappy, she entered a Catholic place of worship styled an “Oratory.”—The Miss Pages caught up the word as “oratorio,” and never called it anything else.—There a priest got into conversation with Jessy. He had a pleasant, kindly manner that won upon her and drew from her the fact that she was unhappy. Become a Catholic, he said to her; it would bring her back to happiness: and he asked her to go and see him again. She went again; again and again. And so, going and listening to him, she at length did turn, and was received by him into his church.
“Are you the happier for it?” sharply asked Miss Abigail.
“No,” answered Jessy with distressed eyes. “Only—only——”
“Only what, pray?”
“Well, they can absolve me from all sin.”
“Oh, you poor foolish misguided child!” cried Abigail in anguish; “you must take your sins to the Saviour: He can absolve you, and He alone. Do you want any third person to stand between you and Him?”
Jessy gave a sobbing sigh. “It’s best as it is, Abigail. Anyway, it is too late now.”
“Stop a bit,” cried sharp Miss Susan. “I should like to have one thing answered, Jessy. You have told us how hard you were kept to work: if that was so, pray how did you find leisure to be dancing abroad to Oratorios? Come?”
Jessy could not, or would not, answer.
“Can you explain that!” said Miss Susan, some sarcasm in her tone.
“I went out sometimes in an evening,” faltered Jessy. And more than that could not be drawn from her.
They did not tell Mr. Page: it would have distressed him too much. In a day or two Jessy asked to see a priest. Miss Abigail flatly refused, on account of the scandal. As if their minister was not good enough!
One afternoon I was standing by Jessy’s bed—for Miss Abigail had let me go up to see her. Mrs. Todhetley, that first day, had said she looked like a lily: she was more like one now. A faded lily that has had all its beauty washed out of it.
“Good-bye, Johnny Ludlow,” she said, opening her eyes, and putting out her feeble hand. “I shall not see you again.”
“I hope you will, Jessy. I’ll come over to-morrow.”
“Never again in this world.” And I had to lean over to catch the words, and my eyes were full.
“In the next world there’ll be no parting, Jessy. We shall see each other there.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You will be there, Johnny; I can’t tell whether I shall be. I turned Roman Catholic, you see; and Abigail won’t let a priest come. And so—I don’t know how it will be.”
The words struck upon me. The Miss Pages had kept the secret too closely for news of it to have come abroad. It seemed worse to me to hear it than to her to say it. But she had grown too weak to feel things strongly.
“Good-bye, Johnny.”
“Good-bye, Jessy dear,” I whispered. “Don’t fear: God will be sure to take you to heaven if you ask Him.”
Miss Abigail got it out of me—what she had said about the priest. In fact, I told. She was very cross.
“There; let it drop, Johnny Ludlow. John Drench is gone off in the gig to Coughton to bring one. All I hope and trust is, that they’ll not be back until the shades of night have fallen upon the earth! I shouldn’t like a priest to be seen coming into this door. Such a reproach on good Mr. Holland! I’m sure I trust it will never get about!”
We all have our prejudices, I repeat. And not a soul amongst us for miles round had found it necessary to change religions since the Reformation.
Evening was well on when John Drench brought him in. A mild-faced man, wearing a skull-cap under his broad-brimmed hat. He saw Jessy alone. Miss Page would not have made a third at the interview though they had bribed her to it—and of course they wouldn’t have had her. It was quite late when he came down. Miss Page stopped him as he was going out, after declining refreshment.
“I presume, sir, she has told you all about this past year—that has been so mysterious to us?”
“Yes; I think all,” replied the priest.
“Will you tell me the particulars?”
“I cannot do that,” he said. “They have been given to me under the seal of confession.”
“Only to me and to her sister Susan,” pleaded Abigail. “We will not even disclose it to our father. Sir, it would be a true kindness to us, and it can do her no harm. You do not know what our past doubts and distress have been.”
But the priest shook his head. He was very sorry to refuse, he said, but the tenets of his Church forbade his speaking. And Miss Page thought he was sorry, for he had a benevolent face.
“Best let the past lie,” he gently added. “Suffice it to know that she is happy now, poor child, and will die in peace.”
They buried her in the churchyard beside her mother. When the secret got about, some said it was not right—that she ought to have been taken elsewhere, to a graveyard devoted to the other faith. Which would just have put the finishing stroke on old Page—broken all that was left of his heart to break. The Squire said he didn’t suppose it mattered in the sight of God: or would make much difference at the Last Day.
And that ended the life of Jessy Page: and, in one sense, its episode of mystery. Nothing more was ever heard or known of where she had been or what she had done. Years have gone by since then; and William Page is lying beside her. Miss Page and Charley live on at the Copse Farm; Susan became Mrs. John Drench ages ago. Her husband, a man of substance now, was driving her into Alcester last Tuesday (market-day) in his four-wheeled chaise, two buxom daughters in the back seat. I nodded to them from Mr. Brandon’s window.
The mystery of Jessy Page (as we grew to call it) remained a mystery. It remains one to this day. What the secret was—if there was a secret—why she went in the way she did, and came back in what looked like shame and fear and trembling, a dying girl—has not been solved. It never will be in this world. Some old women put it all down to her having changed her religion and been afraid to tell: while Miss Abigail and Miss Susan have never got rid of a vague doubt, touching Marcus Allen. But it may be only their fancy; they admit that, and say to one another when talking of it privately, that it is not right to judge a man without cause. He keeps a carriage-and-pair now; and gives dinners, and has handsome daughters growing up; and is altogether quite up to the present style of expensive life in London.
And I never go into church on a Christmas morning—whether it may be decorated in our simple country fashion, or in accordance with your new “artistic” achievements—but I think of Jessy Page. Of her sweet face, her simplicity, and her want of guile: and of the poor wreck that came back, broken-hearted, to die.
CRABB RAVINE.
I.
“Yes! Halloa! What is it?”
To be wakened up short by a knocking, or some other noise, in the night, is enough to make you start up in bed, and stare round in confusion. The room was dark, barring the light that always glimmers in at the window on a summer’s night, and I listened and waited for more. Nothing came: it was all as silent as the grave.
We were staying at Crabb Cot. I had gone to bed at half-past nine, dead tired after a day’s fishing. The Squire and Tod were away: Mrs. Todhetley went over to the Coneys’ after tea, and did not seem in a hurry to come back. They fried one of the fish I had caught for my supper; and after that, there being no one to speak to, I went to bed.
It was a knocking that had wakened me out of my sleep: I was sure of that. And it sounded exactly as though it were at the window—which was very improbable. Calling out again to know who was there, and what was wanted—though not very loudly, for the children slept within earshot—and getting no answer, I lay down again, and was all but asleep when the noise came a second time.
It was at the dining-room window, right underneath mine. There could be no mistake about it. The ceilings of the old-fashioned house were low; the windows were very near each other, and mine was down at the top. I thought it time to jump out of bed, and take a look out.
Well, I was surprised! Instead of its being the middle of the night, it must be quite early still; for the lamp was yet alight in the dining-room. It was a cosy kind of room, with a bow window jutting on to the garden, of which the middle compartment opened to the ground, as French windows do. My window was a bow also, and close above the other. Throwing it up, I looked out.
There was not a soul to be seen. Yet the knocking could not have been from within, for the inside shutters were closed: they did not reach to the top panes, and the lamplight shone through them on the mulberry tree. As I leaned out, wondering, the crazy old clock at North Crabb Church began to tell the hour. I counted the strokes, one by one—ten of them. Only ten o’clock! And I thought I had been asleep half the night.
All in a moment I caught sight of some one moving slowly away. He was keeping in the shade; close to the shrubs that encircled the lawn, as if not caring to be seen. A short, thin man, in dark clothes and round black felt hat. Who he was, and what he wanted, was more than I could imagine. It could not be a robber. Robbers don’t come knocking at houses before people have gone to bed.
The small side-gate opened, and Mrs. Todhetley came in. Old Coney’s farm was only a stone’s-throw off, and she had run home alone. We people in the country think nothing of being abroad alone at night. The man emerged from the shade, and placed himself right in her path, on the gravel walk. They stood there together. I could see him better now: there was no moon, but the night was light; and it flashed into my mind that he was the same man I had seen Mrs. Todhetley with in the morning, as I went across the fields, with my rod and line. She was at the stile, about to descend into the Ravine, when he came up from it, and accosted her. He was a stranger; wearing a seedy, shabby black coat; and I had wondered what he wanted. They were still talking together when I got out of sight, for I turned to look.
Not long did they stand now. The gentleman went away; she came hastening on with her head down, a soft wool kerchief thrown over her cap. In all North Crabb, no one was so fearful of catching face-ache as Mrs. Todhetley.
“Who was it?” I called out, when she was under the window: which seemed to startle her considerably, for she gave a spring back, right on to the grass.
“Johnny! how you frightened me! What are you looking out at?”
“At that fellow who has just taken himself off. Who is he?”
“I do believe you have on nothing but your nightshirt! You’ll be sure to take cold. Shut the window down, and get into bed.”
Four times over, in all, had I to ask about the man before I got an answer. Now it was the nightshirt, now catching cold, now the open window and the damp air. She always wanted to be as tender with us as though we were chickens.
“The man that met me in the path?” she got to, at length. “He made some excuse for being here: was not sure whose house it was, I think he said: had turned in by mistake to the wrong one.”
“That’s all very fine; but, not being sure, he ought to mind his manners. He came rapping at the dining-room window like anything, and it woke me up. Had you been at home, sitting there, good mother, you might have been startled out of your seven senses.”
“So I should, Johnny. The Coneys would not let me come away: they had friends with them. Good-night, dear. Shut down that window.”
She went on to the side-door. I put down the window, opened it at the top, and let the white curtain drop before it. It was an hour or two before I got to sleep again, and I had the man and the knocking in my thoughts all the time.
“Don’t say anything about it in the house, Johnny,” Mrs. Todhetley said to me, in the morning. “It might alarm the children.” So I promised her I would not.
Tod came home at mid-day, not the Squire: and the first thing I did was to tell him. I wouldn’t have broken faith with the mother for the world; not even for Tod; but it never entered my mind that she wished me to keep it a close secret, excepting from those, servants or others, who might be likely to repeat it before Hugh and Lena. I cautioned Tod.
“Confound his impudence!” cried Tod. “Could he not be satisfied with disturbing the house at the door at night, but he must make for the window? I wish I had been at home.”
Crabb Ravine lay to the side of our house, beyond the wide field. It was a regular wilderness. The sharp descent began in that three-cornered grove, of which you’ve heard before, for it was where Daniel Ferrar hanged himself; and the wild, deep, mossy dell, about as wide as an ordinary road, went running along below, soft, green and damp. Towering banks, sloping backwards, rose on either side; a mass of verdure in summer; of briars, brown and tangled, in winter. Dwarf shrubs, tall trees, blackberry and nut bushes, sweet-briar and broom clustered there in wild profusion. Primroses and violets peeped up when spring came in; blue bells and cowslips, dog-roses, woodbine, and other sweet flowers, came later. Few people would descend except by the stile opposite our house and the proper zigzag path leading down the side bank, for a fall might have broken limbs, besides bringing one’s clothes to grief. No houses stood near it, except ours and old Coney’s; and the field bordering it just here on this side belonged to Squire Todhetley. If you went down the zigzag path, turned to the right, walked along the Ravine some way, and then up another zigzag on the opposite side, you soon came to Timberdale, a small place in itself, but our nearest post-town. The high-road to Timberdale, winding past our house from South Crabb, was twice the distance, so that people might sometimes be seen in the Ravine by day; but no one cared to go near it in the evening, as it had the reputation of being haunted. A mysterious light might sometimes be observed there at night, dodging about the banks, where it would be rather difficult for ordinary human beings to walk: some said it was a will-o’-the-wisp, and some said a ghost. It was difficult to get even a farm-servant to go the near way to Timberdale after dark.
One morning, when I was running through the Ravine with Tod in search of Tom Coney, we came slap against a man, who seemed to be sneaking there, for he turned short off, into the underwood, to hide himself. I knew him by his hat.
“Tod, that’s the man,” I whispered.
“What man, Johnny?”
“The one who came knocking at the window three nights ago.”
“Oh!” said Tod, carelessly. “He looks like a fellow who comes out with begging petitions.”
It might have been an hour after that. We had come up from the Ravine, on our side of it, not having seen or spoken to a soul, except Luke Mackintosh. Tod told me to stay and waylay Coney if he made his appearance, whilst he went again to the farm in search of him. Accordingly, I was sitting on the fence (put there to hinder the cattle and sheep from getting over the brink of the Ravine), throwing stones and whistling, when I saw Mrs. Todhetley cross the stile to go down the zigzag. She did not see me: the fence could hardly be gained for trees, and I was hidden.
Just because I had nothing to do, I watched her as she went; tall, thin, and light in figure, she could spin along nearly as quick as we. The zigzag path went in and out, sloping along the bank until it brought itself to the dell at a spot a good bit beyond me as I looked down, finishing there with a high, rough step. Mrs. Todhetley took it with a spring.
What next! In one moment the man with the black coat and hat had appeared from somewhere, and placed himself in front of her parasol. Before I could quit the place, and leap down after her, a conviction came over me that the meeting was not accidental: and I rubbed my eyes in wonder, and thought I must be dreaming.
The summer air was clear as crystal; not a bee’s hum just then disturbed its stillness. Detached words ascended from where they stood; and now and again a whole sentence. She kept looking each way as if afraid to be seen; and so did he, for that matter. The colloquy seemed to be about money. I caught the word two or three times; and Mrs. Todhetley said it was “impossible.” “I must, and I will have it,” came up distinctly from him in answer.
“What’s that, Johnny?”
The interruption came from Tod. All my attention absorbed in them, he stood at my elbow before I knew he was near. When I would have answered, he suddenly put his hand upon my mouth for silence. His face had a proud anger on it as he looked down.
Mrs. Todhetley seemed to be using entreaty to the man, for she clasped her hands in a piteous manner, and then turned to ascend the zigzag. He followed her, talking very fast. As to me, I was in a regular sea of marvel, understanding nothing. Our heads were hardly to be distinguished from the bushes, even if she had looked up.
“No,” she said, turning round upon him; and they were near us then, half way up the path, so that every word was audible. “You must not venture to come to the house, or near the house. I would not have Mr. Todhetley know of this for the world: for your sake as well as for his.”
“Todhetley’s not at home,” was the man’s answer: and Tod gave a growl as he heard it.
“If he is not, his son is,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “It would be all the same; or worse.”
“His son’s here,” roared out passionate Tod. “What the deuce is the meaning of this, sir?”
The man shot down the path like an arrow. Mrs. Todhetley—who had been walking on, seeming not to have caught the words, or to know whose the voice was, or where it came from—gazed round in all directions, her countenance curiously helpless. She ran up the rest of the zigzag, and went swiftly home across the field. Tod disentangled himself from the brambles, and drew a long breath.
“I think it’s time we went now, Johnny.” It was not often he spoke in that tone. He had always been at war tacitly with Mrs. Todhetley, and was not likely to favour her now. Generous though he was by nature, there could be no denying that he took up awful prejudices.
“It is something about money, Tod.”
“I don’t care what it is about—the fellow has no business to be prowling here, on my father’s grounds; and he shan’t be, without my knowing what it’s for. I’ll watch madam’s movements.”
“What do you think it can mean?”
“Mean! Why, that the individual is some poor relation of hers, come to drain as much of my father’s money out of her as he can. She is the one to blame. I wonder how she dare encourage him!”
“Perhaps she can’t help herself.”
“Not help herself? Don’t show yourself a fool, Johnny. An honest-minded, straightforward woman would appeal to my father in any annoyance of this sort, or to me, in his absence, and say ‘Here’s So-and-so come down upon us, asking for help, can we give it him?’—and there’s no doubt the Squire would give it him; he’s soft enough for anything.”
It was of no use contending. I did not see it quite in that light, but Tod liked his own opinion. He threw up his head with a haughty jerk.
“You have tried to defend Mrs. Todhetley before, in trifling matters, Johnny; don’t attempt it now. Would any good woman, say any lady, if you will, subject herself to this kind of thing?—hold private meetings with a man—allow him to come tapping at her sitting-room window at night? No; not though he were her own brother.”
“Tod, it may be her brother. She would never do anything wrong willingly.”
“Shut up, Johnny. She never had a brother.”
Of course I shut up forthwith, and went across the field by Tod’s side in silence, his strides wide and indignant, his head up in the air. Mrs. Todhetley was hearing Lena read when we got in, and looked as if she had never been out that morning.
Some days went on. The man remained near, for he was seen occasionally, and the servants began to talk. One remarked upon him, wondering who he was; another remarked upon him, speculating on what he did there. In a quiet country place, a dodging stranger excites curiosity, and this one dodged about as much as ever the ghostly light did. If you caught sight of him in the three-cornered plantation, he vanished forthwith to appear next in the Ravine; if he stood peering out from the trees on the bank, and found himself observed, the next minute he’d be crouching amongst the broom on the other side.
This came to be observed, and was thought strange, naturally; Hannah, who was often out with Hugh and Lena, often saw him, and talked to the other servants. One evening, when we were finishing dinner, the glass doors of the bow-window being open, Hannah came back with the children. They ran across the grass-plat after the fawn—one we had, just then—and Hannah sat down in the porch of the side-door to wait. Old Thomas had just drawn the slips from the table, and went through the passage to the side-door to shake them.
“I say,” cried Hannah’s voice, “I saw that man again.”
“Where?” asked Thomas, between his shakes of the linen.
“In the old place—the Ravine. He was sitting on the stile at the top of the zigzag, as cool as might be.”
“Did you speak to him? I should, if I came across the man; and ask what his business might be in these parts.”
“I didn’t speak to him,” returned Hannah. “I’d rather not. There’s no knowing the answer one might get, Thomas, or what he’s looking after. He spoke to the children.”
“What did he say to them?”
“Asked if they’d go away with him to some beautiful coral islands over the sea, and catch pretty birds, and parrots, and monkeys. He called them by their names, too—‘Hugh’ and ‘Lena.’ I should like to know how he got hold of them.”
“I can’t help thinking that he belongs to them engineering folk who come spying for no good on people’s land: the Squire won’t like it if they cut a railroad through here,” said Thomas; and the supposition did not appear to please Hannah.
“Why you must be as silly as a turkey, old Thomas! Engineers have no need to hide themselves as if they were afraid of being took up for murder. He has about as much the cut of an engineer as you have, and no more: they don’t go about looking like Methodist parsons run to seed. My opinion is that he’s something of that sort.”
“A Methodist parson!”
“No; not anything half so respectable. If I spoke out my thoughts, though, I dare say you’d laugh at me.”
“Not I,” said Thomas. “Make haste. I forgot to put the claret jug on the table.”
“Then I’ve got it in my head that he is one of them seducing Mormons. They appear in neighbourhoods without the smallest warning, lie partly concealed by day, and go abroad at night, persuading all the likely women and girls to join their sect. My sister told me about it in a letter she wrote me only three days ago. There has been a Mormon down there; he called himself a saint, she says; and when he went finally away he took fifteen young women with him. Fifteen, Thomas! and after only three weeks’ persuasion! It’s as true as that you’ve got that damask cloth in your hand.”
Nothing further was heard for a minute. Then Thomas spoke. “Has the man here been seen talking with young women?”
“Who is to know? They take care not to be seen; that’s their craft. And so you see, Thomas, I’d rather steer clear of the man, and not give him the opportunity of trying his arts on me. I can tell him it’s not Hannah Baber that would be cajoled off to a barbarous desert by a man who had fifteen other wives beside! Lord help the women for geese! Miss Lena” (raising her voice), “don’t you tear about after the fawn like that; you’ll put yourself into a pretty heat.”
“I’d look him up when I came home, if I were the Squire,” said Thomas, who evidently took it all gravely in. “We don’t want a Mormon on the place.”
“If he were not a Mormon, which I’m pretty sure he is, I should say he was a kidnapper of children,” went on Hannah. “After we had got past him over so far, he managed to ’tice Hugh back to the stile, gave him a sugar-stick, and said he’d take him away if he’d go. It struck me he’d like to kidnap him.”
Tod, sitting at the foot of the table in the Squire’s place, had listened to all this deliberately. Mrs. Todhetley, opposite to him, her back to the light, had tried, in a feeble manner, once or twice, to drown the sounds by saying something. But when urgently wanting to speak, we often can’t do so; and her efforts died away helplessly. She looked miserably uncomfortable, and seemed conscious of Tod’s feeling in the matter; and when Hannah wound up with the bold assertion touching the kidnapping of Hugh, she gave a start of alarm, which left her face white.
“Who is this man that shows himself in the neighbourhood?” asked Tod, putting the question to her in a slow, marked manner, his dark eyes, stern then, fixed on hers.
“Johnny, those cherries don’t look ripe. Try the summer apples.”
It was of no use at any time trying to put aside Tod. Before I had answered her that the cherries were ripe enough for me, Tod began at her again.
“Can you tell me who he is?”
“Dear me, no,” she faintly said. “I can’t tell you anything about it.”
“Nor what he wants?”
“No. Won’t you take some wine, Joseph?”
“I shall make it my business to inquire, then,” said Tod, disregarding the wine and everything else. “The first time I come across the man, unless he gives me a perfectly satisfactory answer as to what he may be doing here on our land, I’ll horse-whip him.”
Mrs. Todhetley put the trembling fingers of her left hand into the finger-glass, and dried them. I don’t believe she knew what she was about more than a baby.
“The man is nothing to you, Joseph. Why should you interfere with him?”
“I shall interfere because my father is not here to do it,” he answered, in his least compromising of tones. “An ill-looking stranger has no right to be prowling mysteriously amongst us at all. But when it comes to knocking at windows at night, to waylaying—people—in solitary places, and to exciting comments from the servants, it is time some one interfered to know the reason of it.”
I am sure he had been going to say you; but with all his prejudice he never was insolent to Mrs. Todhetley, when face to face; and he substituted “people.” Her pale blue eyes had the saddest light in them you can well conceive, and yet she tried to look as though the matter did not concern her. Old Thomas came in with the folded damask slips, little thinking he and Hannah had been overheard, put them in the drawer, and set things straight on the sideboard.
“What time tea, ma’am?” he asked.
“Any time,” answered Mrs. Todhetley. “I am going over to Mr. Coney’s, but not to stay. Or perhaps you’ll go for me presently, Johnny, and ask whether Mrs. Coney has come home,” she added, as Thomas left the room.
I said I’d go. And it struck me that she must want Mrs. Coney very particularly, for this would make the fifth time I had gone on the same errand within a week. On the morning following that rapping at the window, Mrs. Coney had news that Mrs. West, her married daughter, was ill, and she started at once by the rail to Worcester to visit her.
“I think I’ll go and look for the fellow now,” exclaimed Tod, rising from his seat and making for the window. But Mrs. Todhetley rose too, as one in mortal fright, and put herself in his way.
“Joseph,” she said, “I have no authority over you; you know that I have never attempted to exercise any since I came home to your father’s house; but I must ask you to respect my wishes now.”
“What wishes?”
“That you will refrain from seeking this stranger: that you will not speak to or accost him in any way, should you and he by chance meet. I have good reasons for asking it.” Tod stood stock-still, neither saying Yes nor No; only biting his lips in the anger he strove to keep down.
“Oh, very well,” said he, going back to his seat. “Of course, as you put it in this light, I have no alternative. A night’s delay cannot make much difference, and my father will be home to-morrow to act for himself.”
“You must not mention it to your father, Joseph. You must keep it from him.”
“I shall tell him as soon as he comes home.”
“Tell him what? What is it that you suspect? What would you tell him?”
Tod hesitated. He had spoken in random heat; and found, on consideration, he was without a case. He could not complain to his father of her: in spite of his hasty temper, he was honourable as the day. Her apparent intimacy with the man would also tie his tongue as to him, whomsoever he might be.
“You must be quite aware that it is not a pleasant thing, or a proper thing, to have this mysterious individual encouraged here,” he said, looking at her.
“And you think I encourage him, Joseph?”
“Well, it seems that you—that you must know who he is. I saw you talking with him one day in the Ravine,” continued Tod, disdaining not to be perfectly open, now it had come to an explanation. “Johnny was with me. If he is a relative of yours, why, of course——”
“He is no relative of mine, Joseph.” And Tod opened his eyes wide to hear the denial. It was the view he had taken all along.
“Then why do you suffer him to annoy you?—and I am sure he does do it. Let me deal with him. I’ll soon ascertain what his business may be.”
“But that is just what you must not do,” she said, seeming to speak out the truth in very helplessness, like a frightened child. “You must leave him in my hands, Joseph: I shall be able, I dare say, to—to—get rid of him shortly.”
“You know what he wants?”
“Yes, I am afraid I do. It is quite my affair; and you must take no more notice of it: above all, you must not say anything to your father.”
How much Tod was condemning her in his heart perhaps he would not have cared to tell; but he could but be generous, even to his step-mother.
“I suppose I must understand that you are in some sort of trouble?”
“Indeed I am.”
“If it is anything in which I can help you, you have only to ask me to do it,” he said. But his manner was lofty as he spoke, his voice had a hard ring in it.
“Thank you very much, Joseph,” was the meek, grateful answer. “If you will only take no further notice, and say nothing to your father when he comes home, it will be helping me sufficiently.”
Tod strolled out; just as angry as he could be; and I ran over to the farm. Jane Coney had received a letter from her mother by the afternoon post, saying she might not be home for some days to come.
“Tell Mrs. Todhetley that I am sorry to have to send her bad news over and over again,” said Jane Coney, who was sitting in the best kitchen, with her muslin sleeves turned up, and a big apron on, stripping fruit for jam. The Coneys had brought up their girls sensibly, not to be ashamed to make themselves thoroughly useful, in spite of their education, and the fair fortune they would have. Mary was married; Jane engaged to be. I sat on the table by her, eating away at the fruit.
“What is it Mrs. Todhetley wants with my mother, Johnny?”
“As if I knew!”
“I think it must be something urgent. When she came in, that morning, only five minutes after mamma had driven off, she was so terribly disappointed, saying she would give a great deal to have spoken to her first. My sister is not quite so well again; that’s why mamma is staying longer.”
“I’ll tell her, Jane.”
“By the way, Johnny, what’s this they are saying—about some strange man being seen here? A special constable, peeping after bad characters?”
“A special constable?”
Jane Coney laughed. “Or a police-officer in disguise. It is what one of our maids told me.”
“Oh,” I answered, carelessly, for somehow I did not like the words; “you must mean a man that is looking at the land; an engineer.”
“Is that all?” cried Jane Coney. “How foolish people are!”
It was a sort of untruth, no doubt; but I should have told a worse in the necessity. I did not like the aspect of things; and they puzzled my brain unpleasantly all the way home.
Mrs. Todhetley was at work by the window when I got there. Tod had not made his re-appearance; Hugh and Lena were in bed. She dropped her work when I gave the message.
“Not for some days to come yet! Oh, Johnny!”
“But what do you want with her?”
“Well, I do want her. I want a friend just now, Johnny, that’s the truth; and I think Mrs. Coney would be one.”
“Joe asked if he could help you; and you said ‘No.’ Can I?”
“Johnny, if you could, there’s no one in the world I’d rather ask. But you cannot.”
“Why?”
“Because”—she smiled for a moment—“you are not old enough. If you were—of age, say—why then I would.”
I had hold of the window-frame, looking at her, and an idea struck me. “Do you mean that I should be able then to command money?”
“Yes, that’s it, Johnny.”
“But, perhaps—if I were to write to Mr. Brandon——”
“Hush!” she exclaimed in a sort of fright. “You must not talk of this, Johnny; you don’t know the sad mischief you might do. Oh, if I can only keep it from you all! Here comes Joseph,” she added in a whisper; and gathering up her work, went out of the room.
“Did I not make a sign to you to come after me?” began Tod, in one of his tempers.
“But I had to go over to the Coneys’. I’ve only just got back again.”
He looked into the room and saw that it was empty. “Where’s madam gone? To the Ravine after her friend?”
“She was here sewing not a minute ago.”
“Johnny, she told a lie. Did you notice the sound of her voice when she said the fellow was no relative of hers?”
“Not particularly.”
“I did, then. At the moment the denial took me by surprise; but I remembered the tone later. It had an untrue ring in it. Madam told a lie, Johnny, as sure as that we are here. I’d lay my life he is a relative of hers, or a connection in some way. I don’t think now it is money he wants; if it were only that, she’d get it, and send him packing. It’s worse than that: disgrace, perhaps.”
“What sort of disgrace can it be?”
“I don’t know. But if something of the sort is not looming, never trust me again. And here am I, with my hands tied, forbidden to unravel it. Johnny, I feel just like a wild beast barred up in a cage.”
Had he been a real wild beast he could not have given the window-frame a much worse shake, as he passed through in his anger to the bench under the mulberry-tree.
When you have to look far back to things, recollection sometimes gets puzzled as to the order in which they happened. How it came about I am by no means clear, but an uncomfortable feeling grew up in my mind about Hugh. About both the children, in fact, but Hugh more than Lena. Mrs. Todhetley seemed to dread Hugh’s being abroad—and I’m sure I was not mistaken in thinking it. I heard her order Hannah to keep the children within view of the house, and not to allow Hugh to stray away from her. Had it been winter weather I suppose she’d have kept them indoors altogether; there could be no plea for it under the blue sky and the hot summer sun.
The Squire came home; he had been staying some time with friends in Gloucestershire; but Mrs. Coney did not come—although Mrs. Todhetley kept sending me for news. Twice I saw her talking to the strange man; who I believed made his abode in the Ravine. Tod watched, as he had threatened to do; and would often appear with in-drawn lips. There was active warfare between him and his step-mother: at least if you can say that when both kept silence. As to the Squire, he observed nothing, and knew nothing: and no one enlightened him. It seems a long time, I dare say, when reading of this, as if it had extended over a month of Sundays; but I don’t think it lasted much more than a fortnight in all.
One evening, quite late, when the sun was setting, and the Squire was smoking his pipe on the lawn, talking to me and Tod, Lena and her mother came in at the gate. In spite of the red rays lighting up Mrs. Todhetley’s face, it struck me that I had never seen it look more careworn. Lena put her arms on Tod’s knee, and began telling about a fright she had had: of a big toad that leaped out of the grass, and made her scream and cry. She cried “because nobody was with her.”
“Where was mamma?” asked Tod; but I am sure he spoke without any ulterior thought.
“Mamma had gone to the zigzag stile to talk to the man. She told me to wait for her.”
“What man?” cried the Squire.
“Why, the man,” said Lena logically. “He asks Hugh to go with him over the sea to see the birds and the red coral.”
If any one face ever turned whiter than another, Mrs. Todhetley’s did then. Tod looked at her, sternly, ungenerously; and her eyes fell. She laid hold of Lena’s hand, saying it was bed-time.
“What man is the child talking about?” the Squire asked her.
“She talks about so many people,” rather faintly answered Mrs. Todhetley. “Come, Lena dear; Hannah’s waiting for you. Say good-night.”
The Squire, quite unsuspicious, thought no more. He got up and walked over to the beds to look at the flowers, holding his long churchwarden pipe in his mouth. Tod put his back against the tree.
“It is getting complicated, Johnny.”
“What is?”
“What is! Why, madam’s drama. She is afraid of that hinted scheme of her friend’s—the carrying-off Master Hugh beyond the seas.”
He spoke in satire. “Do you think so?” I returned.
“Upon my honour I do. She must be an idiot! I should like to give her a good fright.”
“Tod, I think she is frightened enough without our giving her one.”
“I think she is. She must have caught up the idea from overhearing Hannah’s gossip with old Thomas. This afternoon Hugh was running through the little gate with me; madam came flying over the lawn and begged me not let him out of my hand, or else to leave him indoors. But for being my father’s wife, I should have asked her if her common-sense had gone wool-gathering.”
“I suppose it has, Tod. Fancy a kidnapper in these days! The curious thing is, that she should fear anything of the sort.”
“If she really does fear it. I tell you, Johnny, the performance is growing complicated; somewhat puzzling. But I’ll see it played out if I live.”
The week went on to Friday. But the afternoon was over, and evening set in, before the shock fell upon us: Hugh was missing.
The Squire had been out in the gig, taking me; and it seems they had supposed at home that Hugh was with us. The particulars of Hugh’s disappearance, and what had happened in the day, I will relate further on.
The Squire thought nothing: he said Hugh must have got into Coney’s house or some other neighbour’s house: and sat down to dinner, wondering why so much to-do was made. Mrs. Todhetley looked scared to death; and Tod tore about as if he were wild. The servants were sent here, the outdoor men there: it was like a second edition of that day in Warwickshire when we lost Lena: like it, only worse, more commotion. Hannah boldly said to her mistress that the strange man must have carried off the boy.
Hour after hour the search continued. With no result. Night came on, with a bright moon to light it up. But it did not light up Hugh.
Mrs. Todhetley, a dark shawl over her head, and I dare say a darker fear upon her heart, went out for the second or third time towards the Ravine. I ran after her. We had nearly reached the stile at the zigzag, when Tod came bounding over it.
“Has not the time for shielding this man gone by, think you?” he asked, placing himself in Mrs. Todhetley’s path, and speaking as coolly as he was able for the agitation that shook him. And why Tod, with his known carelessness, should be so moved, I could not fathom.
“Joseph, I do not suppose or think the man knows anything of Hugh; I have my reasons for it,” she answered, bearing on for the stile, and leaning over it to look down into the dark Ravine.
“Will you give me permission to inquire that of himself?”
“You will not find the man. He is gone.”
“Leave the finding him to me,” persisted Tod. “Will you withdraw the embargo you laid upon me?”
“No, no,” she whispered, “I cannot do it.”
The trees had an uncommonly damp feel in the night-air, and the place altogether looked as weird as could be. I was away then in the underwood; she looked down always into the Ravine and called Hugh’s name aloud. Nothing but an echo answered.