by Ellen Wood
“His inside’s like a barrel — always waiting to be filled,” remarked Nora. “He’d drink the sea dry, if it ran beer. What with his drinking, and her untidiness, small wonder the children are in rags. I am surprised the master keeps him on!”
“He only drinks by fits and starts, Nora. His health will not let him do more.”
“No, it won’t,” acquiesced Nora. “And I fear this bout may be the ending of him. That hole was not dug for nothing.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Ryle. “How can you be so foolishly superstitious, Nora? Find Treve, will you, and get him ready.”
“Treve,” a young gentleman given to having his own way, and to be kept very much from school on account of “delicate health,” a malady less real than imaginary, was found somewhere about the farm, and put into visiting condition. He and his mother were invited to take tea at Barbrook. In point of fact, the invitation had been for Mrs. Ryle only; but she could not bear to stir anywhere without her darling boy Trevlyn.
They had barely departed when George entered. Nora had then laid the tea-table, and was standing cutting bread-and-butter.
“Where are they all?” asked George, depositing his books upon a sideboard.
“Your mother and Treve are off to tea at Mrs. Apperley’s,” replied Nora. “And the master rode over to Barmester this afternoon, and is not back yet. Sit down, George. Would you like some pumpkin pie?”
“Try me,” responded George. “Is there any?”
“I saved it from dinner,” — bringing forth a plate from a closet. “It is not much. Treve’s stomach craves for pies as much as Jim Sanders’s for beer; and Mrs. Ryle would give him all he wanted, if it cleared the larder —— Is some one calling?” she broke off, going to the window. “George, it’s Mr. Chattaway! See what he wants.”
A gentleman on horseback had reined in close to the gate: a spare man, rather above the middle height, with a pale, leaden sort of complexion, small, cold light eyes and mean-looking features. George ran down the path.
“Is your father at home?”
“No. He is gone to Barmester.”
A scowl passed over Mr. Chattaway’s brow. “That’s the third time I have been here this week, and cannot get to see him. Tell your father that I have had another letter from Butt, and will trouble him to attend to it. And further tell your father I will not be pestered with this business any longer. If he does not pay the money right off, I’ll make him pay it.”
Something not unlike an ice-bolt shot through George Ryle’s heart. He knew there was trouble between his house and Mr. Chattaway; that his father was, in pecuniary matters, at Mr. Chattaway’s mercy. Was this message the result of his recent encounter with Cris Chattaway? A hot flush dyed his face, and he wished — for his father’s sake — that he had let Mr. Cris alone. For his father’s sake he was now ready to eat humble-pie, though there never lived a boy less inclined to humble-pie in a general way than George Ryle. He went close up to the horse and raised his honest eyes fearlessly.
“Has Christopher been complaining to you, Mr. Chattaway?”
“No. What has he to complain of?”
“Not much,” answered George, his fears subsiding. “Only I know he does carry tales.”
“Were there no tales to carry he could not carry them,” coldly remarked Mr. Chattaway. “I have not seen Christopher since dinner-time. It seems to me that you are always suspecting him of something. Take care you deliver my message correctly, sir.”
Mr. Chattaway rode away, and George returned to his pumpkin pie. He had scarcely finished it — with remarkable relish, for the cold dinner he took with him to school daily was little more than a luncheon — when Mr. Ryle entered by the back-door, having been round to the stables with his horse. He was a tall, fine man, with light curling hair, mild blue eyes, and a fair countenance pleasant to look at in its honest simplicity. George delivered the message left by Mr. Chattaway.
“He left me that message, did he?” cried Mr. Ryle, who, if he could be angered by anything, it was on this very subject of Chattaway’s claims against him. “He might have kept it until he saw me himself.”
“He bade me tell you, papa.”
“Yes; it is no matter to Chattaway how he browbeats me and exposes my affairs. He has been at it for years. Has he gone home?”
“I think so,” replied George. “He rode that way.”
“I’ll stand it no longer, and I’ll tell him so to his face,” continued Mr. Ryle. “Let him do his best and his worst.”
Taking up his hat, Mr. Ryle strode out of the house, disdaining Nora’s invitation to tea, and leaving on the table a scarf of soft scarlet merino, which he had worn into Barmester. Recently suffering from sore throat, Mrs. Ryle had induced him to put it on when he rode out that afternoon.
“Look there!” cried Nora. “He has left his cravat on the table.”
Snatching it up, she ran after Mr. Ryle, catching him half-way down the path. He took the scarf from her with a hasty movement, and went along swinging it in his hand. But he did not attempt to put it on.
“It is just like the master,” grumbled Nora to George. “He has worn that warm woollen thing for hours, and now goes off without it! His throat will be bad again.”
“I am afraid papa’s gone to have it out with Mr. Chattaway,” said George.
“And serve Chattaway right if he has,” returned Nora. “It is what the master has threatened this many a day.”
CHAPTER II
SUPERSTITION
Later, when George was working diligently at his lessons, and Nora was sewing — both by the help of the same candle: for an array of candles was not more indulged in than other luxuries in Mr. Ryle’s house — footsteps were heard approaching the porch, and a modest knock came to the door.
“Come in,” called out Nora.
A very thin woman, in a washed-out cotton gown, with a thin face and inflamed eyes, came in, curtseying. It was an honest face, a meek face; although it looked as if its owner had a meal about once a week.
“Evening, Miss Dickson; evening, Master George. I have stepped round to ask the missis whether I shall be wanted on Tuesday.”
“The missis is out,” said Nora. “She has been talking of putting off the wash till the week after, but I don’t know that she will do so. If you sit down a bit, Ann Canham, she’ll come in, perhaps.”
Ann Canham seated herself respectfully on the edge of a remote chair. And Nora, who liked gossiping above every earthly thing, began to talk of Jim Sanders’s illness.
“He has dreadful bouts, poor fellow!” observed Ann Canham.
“But six times out of seven he brings them on through his own fault,” tartly returned Nora. “Many and many a time I have told him he’d do for himself, and now I think he has done it. This bout, it strikes me, is his last.”
“Is he so ill as that?” exclaimed Ann Canham. And George looked up from his exercise-book in surprise.
“I don’t know that he is,” said Nora; “but — —”
Nora broke suddenly off, dropped her work, and bent her head towards Ann Canham.
“We have had a strange thing happen here,” she continued, her voice falling to a whisper; “and if it’s not a warning of death, never believe me again. This morning —— George, did you hear the dog in the night?”
“No,” answered George.
“Boys sleep soundly,” she remarked to Ann Canham. “You might drive a coach-and-six through their room, and not wake them. His room’s at the back, too. Last night the dog got round to the front of the house, and there he was, all night long, sighing and moaning like a human creature. You couldn’t call it a howl; there was too much pain in it. He was at it all night long; I couldn’t sleep for it. The missis says she couldn’t sleep for it. Well, this morning I was up first, the master next, Molly next; but the master went out by the back-way and saw nothing. By-and-by I spied something out of this window on the garden path, as if some one had been digging there; so out I went. It
was for all the world like a grave! — a great hole, with the earth thrown up on either side of it. That dog had done it in the night!”
Ann Canham, possibly feeling uncomfortably aloof from the company when graves became the topic, drew her chair nearer the table. George sat, his pen arrested; his large wide-open eyes turned on Nora — not with fear, but merriment.
“A great hole, twice the length of our rolling-pin, and wide in proportion, all hollowed and scratched out,” went on Nora. “I called the cow-boy, and asked him what it looked like. ‘A grave,’ said he, without a moment’s hesitation. Molly came out, and they two filled it in again, and trod the path down. The marks have been plain enough all day. The master has been talking a long while of having that path gravelled, but it has not been done.”
“And the hole was scratched by the dog?” proceeded Ann Canham, unable to get over the wonder.
“It was scratched by the dog,” answered Nora. “And every one knows it’s a sign that death’s coming to the house, or to some one belonging to the house. Whether it’s your own dog scratches it, or somebody else’s dog, no matter; it’s a sure sign that a real grave is about to be dug. It may not happen once in fifty years — no, not in a hundred; but when it does come, it’s a warning not to be neglected.”
“It’s odd how the dogs can know!” remarked Ann Canham, meekly.
“Those dumb animals possess an instinct we can’t understand,” said Nora. “We have had that dog ever so many years, and he never did such a thing before. Rely upon it, it’s Jim Sanders’s warning. How you stare, George!”
“I may well stare, to hear you,” was George’s answer. “How can you put faith in such rubbish, Nora?”
“Just hark at him!” exclaimed Nora. “Boys are half heathens. I wouldn’t laugh in that irreverent way, if I were you, George, because Jim Sanders’s time has come.”
“I am not laughing at that,” said George; “I am laughing at you. Nora, your argument won’t hold water. If the dog had meant to give notice that he was digging a hole for Jim Sanders, he would have dug it before his own door, not before ours.”
“Go on!” cried Nora, sarcastically. “There’s no profit arguing with unbelieving boys. They’d stand it to your face the sun never shone.”
Ann Canham rose, and put her chair back in its place with much humility. Indeed, humility was her chief characteristic. “I’ll come round in the morning, and know about the wash, if you please, ma’am,” she said to Nora. “Father will be wanting his supper, and will wonder where I’m staying.”
She departed. Nora gave George a lecture upon unbelief and irreverence in general, but George was too busy with his books to take much notice of it.
The evening went on. Mrs. Ryle and Trevlyn returned, the latter a diminutive boy, with dark curls and a handsome face.
“Jim Sanders is much better,” remarked Mrs. Ryle. “He is all right again now, and will be at work in a day or two. It must have been a sort of fainting-fit he had this afternoon, and his wife got frightened. I told him to rest to-morrow, and come up the next day if he felt strong enough.”
George turned to Nora, his eyes dancing. “What of the hole now?” he asked.
“Wait and see,” snapped Nora. “And if you are impertinent, I’ll never save you pie or pudding again.”
Mrs. Ryle went into the sitting-room, but came back speedily when she found it dark and untenanted. “Where’s the master?” she exclaimed. “Surely he has returned from Barmester!”
“Papa came home ages ago,” said George. “He has gone up to the Hold.”
“The Hold?” repeated Mrs. Ryle in surprise, for there was something like deadly feud between Trevlyn Hold and Trevlyn Farm.
George explained; telling of Mr. Chattaway’s message, and the subsequent proceedings. Nora added that “as sure as fate, he was having it out with Chattaway.” Nothing else would keep him at Trevlyn Hold.
But Mrs. Ryle knew that her easy-natured husband was not one to “have it out” with any one, even his enemy Chattaway. He might say a few words, but it was all he would say, and the interview would end almost as soon as begun. She took off her things, and Molly carried the supper-tray into the parlour.
But still there was no Mr. Ryle. Ten o’clock struck, and Mrs. Ryle grew, not exactly uneasy, but curious as to what could have become of him. What could be detaining him at the Hold?
“It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that he has been taken too bad to come back,” said Nora. “He unwound his scarlet cravat from his throat, and went away swinging it in his hand. John Pinder’s waiting all this time in the kitchen.”
“Have you finished your lessons, George?” asked Mrs. Ryle, perceiving that he was putting his books away.
“Every one,” answered George.
“Then you shall go up to the Hold, and walk home with your father. I cannot think what is delaying his return.”
“Perhaps he has gone somewhere else,” said George.
“He would neither go anywhere else nor remain at Chattaway’s,” said Mrs. Ryle. “This is Tuesday evening.”
A conclusive argument. Tuesday evening was invariably devoted by Mr. Ryle to his farm accounts, and he never suffered anything to interfere with that evening’s work. George put on his cap and started on his errand.
It was a starlight night, cold and clear, and George went along whistling. A quarter of an hour’s walk up the turnpike road brought him to Trevlyn Hold. The road rose gently the whole way, for the land was higher at Trevlyn Hold than at Trevlyn Farm. A white gate, by the side of a lodge, opened to the shrubbery or avenue — a dark walk wide enough for two carriages to pass, with the elm trees nearly meeting overhead. The shrubbery wound up to a lawn stretched before the windows of the house: a large, old-fashioned stone-built house, with gabled roofs, and a flight of steps leading to the entrance-hall. George ascended the steps and rang the bell.
“Is my father ready to come home?” he asked, not very ceremoniously, of the servant who answered it.
The man paused, as though he scarcely understood. “Mr. Ryle is not here, sir,” was the answer.
“How long has he been gone?”
“He has not been here at all, sir, that I know of. I don’t think he has.”
“Just ask, will you?” said George. “He came here to see Mr. Chattaway. It was about five o’clock.”
The man went away and returned. “Mr. Ryle has not been here at all, sir. I thought he had not.”
George wondered. Could he be out somewhere with Chattaway? “Is Mr. Chattaway at home?” he inquired.
“Master is in bed,” said the servant. “He came home to-day about five, or thereabouts, not feeling well, and he went to bed as soon as tea was over.”
George turned away. Where could his father have gone to? Where to look for him? As he passed the lodge, Ann Canham was locking the gate, of which she and her father were the keepers. It was a whim of Mr. Chattaway’s that the larger gate should be locked at night; but not until after ten. Foot-passengers could enter by the side-gate.
“Have you seen my father anywhere, since you left our house this evening?” he asked.
“No, I have not, Master George.”
“I can’t imagine where he can be. I thought he was at Chattaway’s, but they say he has not been there.”
“At Chattaway’s! He wouldn’t go there, would he, Master George?”
“He started to do so this afternoon. It’s very odd! Good night, Ann.”
“Master George,” she interrupted, “do you happen to have heard how it’s going with Jim Sanders?”
“He is much better,” said George.
“Better!” slowly repeated Ann Canham. “Well, I hope he is,” she added, in doubting tones. “But, Master George, I didn’t like what Nora told us. I can’t bear tokens from dumb animals, and I never knew them fail.”
“Jim Sanders is all right, I tell you,” said heathen George. “Mamma has been there, and he is coming to his work the day after to-morrow. Good nig
ht.”
“Good night, sir,” answered Ann Canham, as she retreated within the lodge. And George went through the gate, and stood in hesitation, looking up and down the road. But it was apparently of no use to search elsewhere in the uncertainty; and he turned towards home, wondering much.
What had become of Mr. Ryle?
CHAPTER III
IN THE UPPER MEADOW
The stars shone bright and clear as George Ryle walked down the slight descent of the turnpike-road, wondering what had become of his father. Any other night but this, he might not have wondered about it; but George could not remember the time when Tuesday evening had been devoted to anything but the farm accounts. John Pinder, who acted as a sort of bailiff, had been in the kitchen some hours with his weekly memoranda, to go through them as usual with his master; and George knew his father would not willingly keep the man waiting.
George went along whistling a tune; he was given to whistling. About half-way between Trevlyn Hold and his own house, the sound of another whistle struck upon his ear. A turn in the road brought a lad into view, wearing a smock-frock. It was the waggoner’s boy at Trevlyn Hold. He ceased when he came up to George, and touched his hat in rustic fashion.
“Have you seen anything of my father, Bill?”
“Not since this afternoon, Master George,” was the answer. “I see him, then, turning into that field of ours, next to where the bull be. Going up to the Hold, mayhap; else what should he do there?”
“What time was that?” asked George.
The boy considered a moment. “’Twas afore the sun set,” he said at length, “I am sure o’ that. He had some’at red in his hand, and the sun shone on it fit to dazzle one’s eyes.”
The boy went his way; George stood and thought. If his father had turned into the field indicated, there could be no doubt that he was hastening to Chattaway’s. Crossing this field and the one next to it, both large, would bring one close to Trevlyn Hold, cutting off, perhaps, two minutes of the high-road, which wound round the fields. But the fields were scarcely ever favoured, on account of the bull. This bull had been a subject of much contention in the neighbourhood, and was popularly called “Chattaway’s bull.” It was a savage animal, and had once got out of the field and frightened several people almost to death. The neighbours said Mr. Chattaway ought to keep it under lock and key. Mr. Chattaway said he should keep it where he pleased: and he generally pleased to keep it in the field. This barred it to pedestrians; and Mr. Ryle must undoubtedly have been in hot haste to reach Trevlyn Hold to choose the route.