by Ellen Wood
A dozen voices answered. “Madam wasn’t hurt to speak of, only a bit shook: she had told them so herself. She had walked off on Mr. George Ryle’s arm, without waiting for the carriage that Mr. Cris had gone to fetch.”
“I’ll be about that Jim Sanders,” retorted Nora, wrathfully. “How dare he come in with such tales? He said Madam was lying dead in the road.”
She had barely spoken, when the throng standing over the dog-cart was invaded by a new-arrival, one who had been walking in a neighbouring field, and wondered what the collection could mean. The rustics fell back and stared at him: first, because he was a stranger; secondly, because his appearance was somewhat out of the common way; thirdly, because he carried a red umbrella. A tall man with a long white beard, a hat, the like of which had never been seen by country eyes, and a foreign look.
You will at once recognise him for the traveller who had introduced himself at the parsonage as the Reverend Mr. Daw, a friend of its owner. The crowd, having had no such introduction, could only stare, marvelling whether he had dropped from the clouds. He had been out all the afternoon, taking notes of the neighbourhood, and since his conversation with old Canham — which you heard related afterwards to Mr. Chattaway, to that gentleman’s intense dread — he had plunged into the fields on the opposite side of the way. There he had remained, musing and wandering, until aroused by the commotion which he speedily joined.
“What has happened?” he exclaimed. “An accident?”
The assemblage fell back. Rustics are prone to be suspicious of strangers, if their appearance is peculiar, and not one of them found a ready answer. Nora, however, whose tongue had, perhaps, never been at fault in its whole career, stood her ground.
“There’s not much damage done, as far as I can learn,” she said, in her usual free manner. “The dog-cart’s the worst of it. There it lies. It was Cris Chattaway’s own; and I should think it will be a lesson to him not to be so fond of driving strange horses.”
“Is it to the Chattaways the accident has occurred?” asked the stranger.
Nora nodded. She was stooping down to survey more critically the damages done to the dog-cart. “Cris Chattaway was driving his mother out,” she said, rising. “He was trying a strange horse, and this was the result,” touching the wheel with her foot. “Madam was thrown into the ditch here.”
“And hurt?” laconically asked Mr. Daw.
“Only shaken — as they say. But a shaking may be dangerous for one so delicate as Madam Chattaway. A pity but it had been him.”
Nora spoke the last word with emphasis so demonstrative that her hearer raised his eyes in wonderment. “Of whom do you speak?” he said.
“Of Chattaway: Madam’s husband. A shaking might do him good.”
“You don’t like him, apparently,” observed the stranger.
“I don’t know who does,” freely spoke Nora.
“Ah,” said Mr. Daw, quietly. “Then I am not singular. I don’t.”
“Do you know him?” she rejoined.
But to this the stranger gave no reply; he had evidently no intention of giving any; and the silence whetted Nora’s curiosity more than any answer could have done, however obscure or mysterious. Perhaps no living woman within a circuit of five miles possessed curiosity equal to that of Nora Dickson.
“Where have you known Chattaway?” she exclaimed.
“It does not matter,” said the stranger. “He is in the enjoyment of Trevlyn Hold, I hear.”
To say “I hear,” as applied to the subject, imparted the idea that the stranger had only just gained the information. Nora threw her quick black eyes searchingly upon him.
“Have you lived in a wood not to know that James Chattaway was possessor of Trevlyn Hold?” she said, with her characteristic plainness of speech. “He has enjoyed it these twenty years to the exclusion of Rupert Trevlyn.”
“Rupert Trevlyn is its rightful owner,” said the stranger, almost as demonstratively as Nora herself could have spoken.
“Ah,” said Nora, with a sort of indignant groan, “the whole parish knows that. But Chattaway has possession of it, you see.”
“Why doesn’t some one help Rupert Trevlyn to his rights?”
“Who’s to do it?” crossly responded Nora. “Can you?”
“Possibly,” returned the stranger.
Had the gentleman asserted that he might possibly cause the moon to shine by day instead of by night, Nora could not have shown more intense surprise. “Help — him — to — his — rights?” she slowly repeated. “Do you mean to say you could displace Chattaway?”
“Possibly,” was the repeated answer.
“Why — who are you?” uttered the amazed Nora.
A smile flitted for a moment over Mr. Daw’s countenance, the first symptom of a break to its composed sadness. But he gave no reply.
“Do you know Rupert Trevlyn?” she reiterated.
But even to that there was no direct answer. “I came to this place partly to see Rupert Trevlyn,” were the words that issued from his lips. “I knew his father; he was my dear friend.”
“Who can he be?” was the question reiterating itself in Nora’s active brain. “Are you a lawyer?” she asked, the idea suddenly occurring to her: as it had, you may remember, to old Canham.
Mr. Daw coughed. “Lawyers are keen men,” was his answering remark, and Nora could have beaten him for its vagueness. But before she could say more, an interruption occurred.
This conversation had been carried on aloud; neither the stranger nor Nora having deemed it necessary to speak in undertones. The consequence of which was, that those in the midst of whom they stood had listened with open ears, drawing their own deductions — and very remarkable deductions some of them were. The knife-grinder — though a stranger to the local politics, and totally uninterested in them — had listened with the rest. One conclusion he hastily came to, was, that the remarkable-looking gentleman with the white beard was a lawyer; and he pushed himself to the front.
“You be a lawyer, master,” he broke in, with some excitement. “Would you mind telling of me whether they can harm me. If I ain’t at liberty to ply my trade under a roadside hedge but I must be took up and punished for it, why, it’s a fresh wrinkle I’ve got to learn. I’ve done it all my life; others in the same trade does it; can the law touch us?”
Mr. Daw had turned in wonderment. He had heard nothing of the grinding-machine in connection with the accident, and the man’s address was unintelligible. A score of voices hastened to enlighten him, but before it was well done, the eager knife-grinder’s voice rose above the rest.
“Can the laws touch me for it, master?”
“I cannot tell you,” was the answer.
The man’s low brow scowled fitfully: he was somewhat ill-looking to the eye of a physiognomist. “What’ll it cost?” he roughly said, taking from his pocket a bag in which was a handful of copper money mixed with a sprinkling of small silver. “I might know. A lawyer wouldn’t give nothing for nothing, but I’ll pay. If the laws can be down upon me for grinding a knife in the highway open to the world, all I can say is, that the laws is infamous.”
He stood looking at the stranger, with an air of demand, not of supplication — and rather insulting demand, too. Mr. Daw showed no signs of resenting the incipient insolence; on the contrary, his voice took a kind and sympathising tone.
“My good man, you may put up your money. I can give you no information about the law, simply because I am ignorant of its bearing on these cases. In the old days, when I was an inhabitant of England, I have seen many a machine such as yours plying its trade in the public roads, and the law, as I supposed, could not touch them, neither did it attempt to. But that may be altered now: there has been time enough for it; years and years have passed since I last set foot on English soil.”
The razor-grinder thrust his bag into his pocket again, and began to push back to the spot whence he had come. The mob had listened with open ears, but had gained littl
e further information. Whether he was a lawyer or whether he was not; where he had come from, and what his business was amongst them, unless it was the placing of young Rupert Trevlyn in possession of his “rights,” they could not tell.
Nora could not tell — and the fact did not please her. If there was one thing provoked Nora Dickson more than all else, it was to have her curiosity unsatisfied. She felt that she had been thwarted now. Turning away in a temper, speaking not a syllable to the stranger by way of polite adieu, she began to retrace her steps to Trevlyn Farm, holding up the flounces of her black silk gown, that they might not come into contact with the dusty road.
But — somewhat to her surprise — she found the mysterious stranger had also extricated himself from the mob, and was following her. Nora was rather on the high ropes just then, and would not notice him. He, however, accosted her.
“By what I gathered from a word or two you let fall, I should assume that you are a friend of Rupert Trevlyn’s, ma’am?”
“I hope I am,” said Nora, mollified at the prospect of enlightenment. “Few folks about here but are friends to him, unless it’s Chattaway and his lot at the Hold.”
“Then perhaps you will have no objection to inform me — if you can inform me — how it was that Mr. Chattaway came into possession of the Hold, in place of young Rupert Trevlyn. I cannot understand how it could possibly have been. Until I came here to-day, I never supposed but the lad, Rupert, was Squire of Trevlyn Hold.”
“Perhaps you’ll first of all tell me what you want the information for?” returned Nora. “I don’t know who you are, sir, remember.”
“You heard me say I was a friend of his father’s; I should like to be a friend to the boy. It appears to me to be a monstrous injustice that he should not have succeeded to the estate of his ancestors. Has he been legally deprived of it?”
“As legally as a properly-made will could deprive him,” was the reply of Nora. “Legality and justice don’t always go together in our parts: I don’t know what they may do in yours.”
“Joe Trevlyn — my friend — was the direct heir to Trevlyn Hold. Upon his death his son became the heir. Why did he not succeed?”
“There are folks that say he was cheated out of it,” replied Nora, in very significant tones.
“Cheated out of it?”
“It is said the news of Rupert’s birth was never suffered to reach the ears of Squire Trevlyn. That the Squire went to his grave, never knowing he had a grandson in the direct male line — went to it after willing the estate to Chattaway.”
“Kept from it by whom?” eagerly cried Mr. Daw.
“By those who had an interest in keeping it from him — Chattaway and Miss Diana Trevlyn. It is so said, I say: I don’t assert it. There may be danger in speaking too openly to a stranger,” candidly added Nora.
“There is no danger in speaking to me,” he frankly said. “I have told you the truth — that I am a friend of young Rupert Trevlyn’s. Chattaway is not a friend of mine, and I never saw him in my life.”
Nora, won over to forget caution and ill-temper, opened her heart to the stranger. She told him all she knew of the fraud; told him of Rupert’s friendlessness, his undesirable position at the Hold. Nora’s tongue, set going upon any grievance she felt strongly, could not be stopped. They walked on until the fold-yard gate of Trevlyn Farm was reached. There Nora came to a halt. And there she was in the midst of a concluding oration, delivered with forcible eloquence, and there the stranger was listening eagerly, when they were interrupted by George Ryle.
Nora ceased suddenly. The stranger looked round, and seeing a gentleman-like man who evidently belonged in some way to Nora, lifted his hat. George returned it.
“It’s somebody strange to the place,” unceremoniously pronounced Nora, by way of introducing him to George. “He was asking about Rupert Trevlyn.”
CHAPTER XXIII
COMING VERY CLOSE
If they had possessed extraordinarily good eyes, any one of the three, they might have detected a head peering at them over a hedge about two fields off, in the direction of Trevlyn Hold. The head was Mr. Chattaway’s. That gentleman rode home from the lodge, after hearing old Canham’s account of the mysterious visit, in a state not to be described. Encountering Miss Diana, he despatched her with Octave to the lodge to see after his wife; he met George Ryle, and told him his services were no further needed — Madam wanted neither him nor the brandy; he sent his horse to the stable, and went indoors: all in a confused state of agitation, as if he scarcely knew what he was about.
Dinner was ready; the servants were perplexed at no one’s coming in for it, and they asked if the Squire would sit down without Madam. He sit down to dinner — in that awful uncertainty? No; rather would he steal out and poke and pry about until he had learned something.
He left the house and plunged into the fields. He did not go back down the avenue, openly past the lodge into the road: cowards, with their fear upon them, prowl about stealthily — as Chattaway was doing now. Very grievously was the fear upon him.
He walked hither and thither: he stood for some minutes in the field which had once been so fatal to poor Mr. Ryle; his arms were folded, his head was bent, his newly-awakened imagination was in full play. He crept to the outer field, and walked under cover of its hedge until he came opposite all that hubbub and confusion. There he halted, found himself a peep-hole, and took in by degrees all that was to be seen: the razor-grinder and his machine, the dog-cart and its dilapidations, and the mob. Eagerly, anxiously did his restless eyes scan that mob; but he, upon whom they hoped to rest, was not amongst them. For you may be sure Mr. Chattaway was searching after none but the dreaded stranger. Miserly as he was, he would have given a ten-pound note out of his pocket to obtain only a moment’s look at him. He had been telling over all the enemies he had ever made, as far as he could remember them. Was it one of those? — some one who owed him a grudge, and was taking this way of paying it? Or was it a danger coming from a totally unknown quarter? Ten pounds! Chattaway would have given fifty then for a good view of the stranger; and his eyes were unmindful of the unfriendly thorns, in their feverish anxiety to penetrate to the very last of that lazy throng, idling away the summer’s afternoon.
The stranger was certainly not amongst them. Chattaway knew every chattering soul there. Some of his unconscious labourers made a part, and he only wished he dared appear and send them flying. But he did not care to do so. If ever there was a cautious man where he and his interests were concerned, it was Chattaway; and he would not run the risk of meeting this man face to face. No, no; rather let him get a bird’s-eye view of him first, that he might be upon his guard.
The state of the dog-cart did not by any means tend to soothe his feelings; neither did the sight of George Ryle, who passed through the crowd in the direction of his own home. He could see what a pretty penny it would take to repair the one; he knew not how many pounds it might take to set right any mischief being hatched by the other. Mr. Chattaway turned away. He bore along noiselessly by the side of the hedge, and then over a stile into a lower field, and then into another. That brought Trevlyn Farm under his vision, and — and — what did his restless eyes catch sight of?
Leaning on the fold-yard gate, dressed in a style not often seen, stood Nora Dickson; on the other side was George Ryle, and with him one who might be recognised at the first glance — the strange-looking man, with his white hair, his red umbrella, and his queer hat, as described by old Canham. There could be no mistake about it; he it was: and the perspiration poured off the master of Trevlyn Hold in his mortal fear.
What were they hatching, those three? That it looked suspicious must be confessed, to one whose fears were awakened as were Chattaway’s; for their heads were in close contact, and their attention was absorbed. Was he stopping at Trevlyn Farm, this man of treason? Undoubtedly: or why should Nora Dickson be decked out in company attire? Chattaway had always believed George Ryle to be a rogue, but now he knew him
to be one.
It was a pity Chattaway could not be listening as well as peeping. He would only have heard the gentleman explain to George Ryle who he was; his name, his calling, and where he was visiting in Barbrook. So far, Chattaway’s doubts would have been at rest; but he would have heard no worse. George was less impulsive than Nora, and would not be likely to enter on the discussion of the claims of Rupert Trevlyn versus Chattaway, with a new acquaintance.
A very few minutes, and they separated. The conversation had been general since George came up; not a word having been said that could have alarmed intruding ears. Nora hastened indoors; George turned off to his rick-yard; and the stranger stood in the road and gazed leisurely about him, as though considering the points for a sketch. Presently he disappeared from Chattaway’s view.
That gentleman, taking a short time to recover himself, came to the conclusion that he might as well disappear also, in the direction of his home; where no doubt dinner was arrested, and its hungry candidates speculating upon what could have become of the master. It was of no use remaining where he was. He had ascertained one point — the dreaded enemy was an utter stranger to him. More than that he did not see that he could ascertain, in this early stage.
He wiped his damp face and set forth on his walk home, stepping out pretty briskly. It was as inadvisable to make known his fears abroad as to proclaim them at home. Were only an inkling to become known, it seemed to Chattaway that it would be half the business towards wresting Trevlyn Hold from him.
As he walked on, his courage partially came back to him, and the reaction once set in, his hopes went up, until he almost began to despise his recent terror. It was absurd to suppose this stranger could have anything to do with himself and Rupert Trevlyn. He was merely an inquisitive traveller looking about the place for his amusement, and in so doing had picked up bits of gossip, and was seeking further information about them — all to while away an idle hour. What a fool he had been to put himself into a fever for nothing.