He urged Mrs Giles to attend closely upon her mistress, assuring them both that he would find the missing girls and bring them home.
"I am certain we shall find them safe and sound," he said, assuming for her sake a degree of confidence he did not altogether feel.
Catherine, wishing with all her heart that he was right, insisted that they take her manservant, George, with them.
"Let him ride with you. He could help, if help is needed, or bring us back a message, if necessary; please take him with you," she pleaded and they agreed.
It was still light and they set off, hoping to be on the road within the hour.
No sooner had they gone than Catherine went upstairs and, in the privacy of her room, wept. As the tears she had held back flowed, she was riven with illogical but understandable feelings of guilt, because she had not been home. The day that had brought her such promise of happiness had not concluded as auspiciously as it had begun.
"Had I been here, instead of in the rose garden at Rosings, I might have become aware much earlier of the lateness of the hour and I would have caused a search party to be sent out," she cried, yet now she was all too conscious of her own helplessness.
Immensely grateful for the presence of both Mr Adams and Mr Burnett, she knew that with no father or brother to go out in search of her, Lilian's safety depended upon these two men. With what gratitude did she think of Frank Burnett, seeing him offer himself without a moment's hesitation to undertake what she herself was quite powerless to do.
While poor dear John Adams had seemed bereft and despondent, Mr Burnett's determination and sound judgment would no doubt be a source of comfort to him as it had been to her, she mused.
Mrs Giles came upstairs with a tray of food, urging her mistress to partake of some refreshment. It could be a long and anxious night and she would need to be strong. Plagued by recollections of the accident at Maidenhead on the road to Bath, which had taken the life of her youngest sister, Amelia-Jane, Catherine could not easily be persuaded to hope that everything would turn out well. As the hours passed she would wait, longing for some word of them, yet dreading the arrival of a messenger bearing bad news.
***
Meanwhile, Frank Burnett, acting with expedition, making all the arrangements necessary and not losing a moment, had left with Mr Adams for Rosings. Sensitive to the tender feelings of both Catherine and his friend John Adams, he had tried to allay their fears with reassuring words, yet he had his own apprehensions.
They had set out from Rosings, Messrs Adams and Burnett in the carriage, while the manservant George and a stable hand from Rosings rode with them. While it was still light on the open road, he was aware that as they passed through the woods and night fell, it would soon be much darker.
The coachman, a man familiar with the roads they were to travel, had insisted that at least one of the men should carry a pistol in case they encountered any of the villains who were seen from time to time and occasionally apprehended on country roads, especially at night.
Frank Burnett, though he thoroughly disliked carrying arms, had agreed. The safety of the ladies may well depend upon it. The stretch of road from the boundary of Rosings Park to the railway station at Redhill was a good one and not generally known to be frequented by footpads and thieves, but one could never be too careful. On one side of the road lay well-wooded country and on the other open pasture and farmland.
As they travelled, they passed not a single other vehicle going in the opposite direction towards either Rosings or the village of Hunsford, a circumstance that puzzled them greatly. Since it was not a private road, it was generally well used, especially in Summer, when there was a fair amount of traffic in the area. Yet, for the first seven or eight miles, they saw no sign of anyone.
Further on, there were signs that it had rained rather heavily and as it grew darker, visibility was limited. Though Mr Adams and Frank Burnett leaned out and strained their eyes, fixing their gaze upon the road ahead, it was the manservant riding alongside and a little to the fore of the carriage, who first caught sight of debris beside a culvert. Not much further up the road, a wrecked vehicle lay overturned in the ditch.
In the late evening light, it was difficult to make it out, but George recognised it as the vehicle from the village, the one in which Lilian and Sally had set out with Mrs Fitzwilliam that morning.
Calling out to the coachman to pull up, George immediately dismounted and somewhat warily approached the wreckage. No sooner did the carriage come to a standstill, the gentlemen leapt out and joined George, who by now had ascertained there was no one either in the wrecked vehicle, nor did there appear to be anyone lurking with evil intent in the vicinity.
But, there their relief ended. For while there was now no doubt that there had been an accident of some sort—there was no trace of the driver Mr Sparks, nor of his passengers. There were some traces left by the horse.
"It would seem, sir," said George, "that the horse has bolted for some reason—you can tell from the drag marks of the wheels up this way into the ditch."
It was quite clear the animal had pulled away from the road in alarm and probably pitched the vehicle into the ditch as it fled.
John Adams was pale and very agitated.
"My God, Frank, what has happened to Lilian? How on earth shall we find her? Where do we start to look?" he asked in a trembling voice that betrayed both his youth and his deep affection for her.
Frank Burnett was determined not to let him subside into panic. Adopting a tone calculated to bolster his friend's hopes, he replied, "Well, clearly there has been an accident, but equally clearly, it would seem to me that no one has been badly injured or killed, else there would have been a guard placed over this spot, the police or the county authorities would surely have been alerted, and they would have set off for Hunsford, being the nearest town. We have met no one going in the direction of Rosings Park or Hunsford, so I think we can hope that the driver and his passengers are alive, even though they may have suffered some injuries in the accident."
John Adams was not convinced. "We cannot be certain of that!" he cried and Mr Burnett replied, "No indeed, we cannot, but we can hope and when hope is all there is to be had, my friend, we must cling to it, must we not?"
Meanwhile, George and the stable hand had begun to comb the ground around the vehicle and the ditch in which it lay and had found a canvas bag, which George recognised as one Sally had been carrying that morning, and a man's boot, probably the carter's. Further along, they found bits of the harness and reins, which the horse had shed as it bolted.
Finding nothing else and certainly no blood at the scene, they were about to reenter their carriage and proceed to the village up ahead, where they could make enquiries, when two men appeared pushing a farm cart, laden with empty baskets. They were the first people they had seen that night. Seeing the horses and the carriage, one of the men stopped and peered at them. The other appeared to be too drunk to be aware of his surroundings and sat down in the dirt beside the road.
Approaching them, George, pointing to the wrecked vehicle, asked if they had seen anything of the people who had been in the accident. Was there a farmhouse or a cottage nearby, where they may be sheltering? he asked.
The younger, more sober of the two spoke, though not very clearly, and Frank Burnett could not comprehend a word of his rather rough and slurry dialect. He gave thanks that he had heeded Catherine's advice and brought George along. He was from the area and seemed well able to understand the man.
He returned to report that the man had claimed to know nothing of the accident—he had passed that way in the morning on his way to market and was only just returning home. But he had directed them to the house of a farmer, which was situated in the lee of a hill, over to the west. They looked in the direction in which he had pointed and could just make out signs of smoke rising from its chimneys, above the trees that crowned the hill.
"He says the farmer is a Mr Barnaby, sir, whose land
lies to the west of the road, which runs past his estate; if anything had happened here, on his property, he would surely be the one to know."
Greatly relieved to have a clue at last, Mr Burnett and Mr Adams set off with George to walk across the paddock and over the long low hill, to locate the farmhouse and Mr Barnaby, leaving the stable boy with the carriage. They had no certainty of finding anyone, but at least it was a start. They kept a look out for any other pieces of evidence, signs that Lilian and Sally may have come this way, but found none.
The house was still some distance away and it had started to rain again. Neither John Adams nor Frank Burnett had much protection from the weather, apart from their hats and overcoats. Turning up their collars, they hurried on, until they reached a rough gravel and dirt road, which, when followed, led directly to a large country house, before which stood a carriage drawn by two horses.
As they approached, a man came around the back of the house; he was, they assumed, the driver of the same vehicle and seeing them, he called out to ask who they were.
John Adams rushed forward eagerly.
"Pardon me, sir, are you Mr Barnaby?" he asked in a voice so desperate the man hastily took a step back, as if in alarm. Holding up a lantern to get a look at his face, he replied, "No indeed, sir, I am not. Mr Barnaby is my master. But who might you be, sir?"
"My name is Adams. We are come from the Rosings estate and are looking for two young ladies who were travelling in a vehicle that was involved in an accident on the road about a mile from here. Have you seen or heard anything of them? Has there been any news—?"
The man interrupted him, "Well, sir, if that be the case, I think you had best see my master Mr Barnaby right away…"
"Does he know of the accident?" asked Mr Burnett, who had joined them.
"He does, sir, but hadn't you better get yourselves out of this rain first?"
"Oh thank God!" cried John Adams, then turning to Frank Burnett, asked, "Did you hear that, Frank? This man says Mr Barnaby knows about the accident. Are the ladies here then?" he asked, but before the man could answer, a window was thrown open above them and a man's voice called out, in some irritation, "What is going on down there, Thomas? Who is that with you?"
"Mr Barnaby, sir, there's two gentlemen here. They say they are from the Rosings estate, looking for the young ladies who were in the accident, sir," answered Thomas.
"Are they?" said the voice from above, this time a little less annoyed. "Well, they had better come indoors, then," and the window was pulled shut again.
Thomas went to the door and rang the bell and soon they were admitted into a spacious, comfortable parlour, warmed by a large log fire. The servant who had opened the door took their sodden coats and hats and, going into the kitchen, returned directly with clean towels so they could dry their faces and hands. While they were doing so, a maid brought them hot drinks, which were most gratefully accepted. Thomas meanwhile took George around the house to the kitchen, while the two gentlemen waited in the parlour for Mr Barnaby.
Frank Burnett was interested in the house, which had on its walls a variety of exotic souvenirs, but Mr Adams was most impatient, his anxiety for Lilian overwhelming for once his good manners.
"Frank, what do you think? Do you really believe Lilian and Sally are here in this house?"
A voice boomed behind them, "They certainly are and they are upstairs resting after their most dreadful ordeal." Descending the stairs was Mr Barnaby, a pleasant, cheerful-looking man and with him a kindly, middle-aged woman, who was clearly his wife. Both appeared eminently respectable and seemed rather bemused at what had happened that afternoon.
"The young ladies have been very anxious indeed. Miss Harrison was most insistent that we should inform her mother they were safe. I was preparing to send Thomas over to Rosings with a message, when you turned up."
Mr and Mrs Barnaby were keen at first to ascertain who the two men were before they agreed to bring the two young girls down to meet them, a fact that Mr Burnett thought did them great credit.
"After all," he said later, "they had no means of knowing who we were. We may well have been blackguards bent on kidnapping the two young ladies."
Mr Adams protested; he could not comprehend how anyone would think that he would do anything to harm one hair of Miss Lilian's head!
Once Mr Burnett and Mr Adams had introduced themselves and explained how the young ladies came to be in the carriage and Mr Barnaby had then issued dire warnings about the dangers of letting two young women travel along country roads unprotected, Mrs Barnaby went upstairs and brought the girls down to the parlour. It transpired also that Lilian, not wishing to be separated from her, had claimed that Sally was her cousin, a fiction they were now all obliged to maintain.
There was no mistaking their joy when Lilian and John Adams saw one another. It had already been explained to Mr and Mrs Barnaby that the pair were engaged to be married.
"The ladies will both need to keep warm on the journey and I recommend that they should be seen by the physician, who will probably have them tucked up in bed for a few days," warned Mrs Barnaby. "They were both very wet indeed when we found them. And all because Miss Harrison insisted on trying to save the life of the unfortunate carter."
Frank Burnett realised then that they had all been so concerned about Lilian and Sally, they had quite forgotten poor Sparks.
"Where is he? Was he badly hurt?" he asked, only to be told that the man had been thrown so hard when his horse bolted, he had suffered a broken leg as well as concussion. He had been removed to the infirmary in the nearest town.
"Miss Lilian insisted," said Sally, earning herself a black look from her erstwhile "cousin." "She said we could not leave him lying in the road. So we carried him over to the side and put him under some bushes, for shelter from the rain, but he groaned and moaned each time we touched him… it was terrible!" she said, with tears in her eyes.
By this time Lilian, who had been standing beside John Adams, pleaded that she wished to be taken home, and Mr Burnett asked Mr Barnaby if he would be so kind as to have Thomas convey them to the road, where their carriage waited.
Not only were the Barnabys happy to oblige, they supplied the travellers with scarves and rugs aplenty to keep them warm and insisted that they take blankets to wrap the two ladies in, before they sent them on their way, with many good wishes for their swift recovery.
They set off, having thanked Mr and Mrs Barnaby profusely for their great kindness. It had turned out they had once been tenants on the Rosings estate, in the days when Mr Jonathan Bingley had been Lady Catherine de Bourgh's manager. Mr Barnaby was very complimentary indeed about Jonathan Bingley's stewardship of the estate. Following the death of Lady Catherine, Mr Barnaby, who had come into some money, had purchased the farm and land where they now lived.
"When we said we were from Rosings, it was as though we had said the
magic word," Lilian explained. "After that Mr and Mrs Barnaby could not do enough for us."
Lilian would have wished to tell them more, but she was beginning to feel the effects of her ordeal. As they reached the road and transferred to their carriage, they wrapped her up well, but she was too cold and weak to talk. Henceforth, they had to depend for most of their information upon Sally, who being younger and a good deal more resilient than her mistress, was able to tell the tale.
It had been an extraordinary sequence of events.
They had reached Redhill well in time, only to discover on arriving at the station that Mrs Fitzwilliam's train to Derby would not leave until one o'clock, due to a death on the railway line. A man had been killed; no one knew if he had committed suicide or had been accidentally run over by the train, but there had been officials and police everywhere, said Sally, explaining with her eyes wide with horror.
"It was dreadful, the dead man still on the platform, his face covered with a coat. Mrs Fitzwilliam was most upset and Miss Lilian was in tears!" she said, shuddering at the memory.
"The poor creature looked like he were having a fit," said Sally, "frothing at the mouth and tossing his head all restless like."
Mr Sparks had left them with the vehicle and gone to get the horse some medicine and when he returned some half an hour later, he had forcibly administered the concoction, pouring it down the horse's throat. Shortly afterwards, they had then set off for home, around two o'clock.
"We had not gone far when we heard noises; gunshots, like someone shooting rabbits in the woods. We thought it were poachers; it got louder and nearer and the horse took fright and bolted. Try as he might, Mr Sparks could not hold him; he pulled the cart this way and that, then the horse broke loose and fled up the road and into the woods." Sally's vivid and terrifying account conveyed to them how close they had come to disaster.
Recollections of Rosings Page 27