Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Mrs. Chattaway, timid Mrs. Chattaway, trembling almost as much as Bridget, but who had compassion for every one in distress, came to the rescue. “Don’t, Diana,” she said. “I am sure Bridget is too honest a girl to have taken part in anything so dreadful as this. The rick may have got heated and taken fire spontaneously.”

  “No, Madam, I’d die before I’d do such a thing,” sobbed Bridget, responding to the kindness. “If I was in the rick-yard, I wasn’t doing no harm — and I’m sure I’d rather have went a hundred miles the other way if I’d thought what was going to happen. I turned sick with fright when I saw the flame burst out.”

  “Was it you who screamed?” inquired Miss Diana.

  “I did scream, ma’am. I couldn’t help it.”

  “Diana,” whispered Mrs. Chattaway, “you may see she’s innocent.”

  “Yes, most likely; but there’s something behind for all that,” replied Miss Diana, decisively. “Bridget, I mean to come to the bottom of this business, and the sooner you explain it, the less trouble you’ll get into. I ask what took you to the rick-yard?”

  “It wasn’t no harm, ma’am, as Madam says,” sobbed Bridget, evidently very unwilling to enter on the explanation. “I never did no harm in going there, nor thought none.”

  “Then it is the more easily told,” responded Miss Diana. “Do you hear me? What business took you to the rick-yard, and who were you talking to?”

  There appeared to be no help for it; Bridget had felt this from the first; she should have to confess to her rustic admirer’s stolen visit. And Bridget, whilst liking him in her heart, was intensely ashamed of him, from his being so much younger than herself.

  “Ma’am, I only came into it for a minute to speak to a young boy; my cousin, Jim Sanders. Hatch came into the kitchen and said Jim wanted to see me, and I came out. That’s all — if it was the last word I had to speak,” she added, with a burst of grief.

  “And what did Jim Sanders want with you?” pursued Miss Diana, sternly.

  “It was to show me this puppy,” returned Bridget, not choosing to confess that the small animal was brought as a present. “Jim seemed proud of it, ma’am, and brought it up for me to see.”

  A very innocent confession; plausible also; and Miss Diana saw no reason for disbelieving it. But she was one who liked to be on the sure side, and when corroborative testimony was to be had, did not allow it to escape her. “One of you find Hatch,” she said, addressing the maids.

  Hatch was found with the men-servants and labourers, who were tumbling over each other in their endeavours to carry water to the rick under the frantic directions of their master. He came up to Miss Diana.

  “Did you go into the kitchen, and tell Bridget Jim Sanders wanted her in the rick-yard?” she questioned.

  I think it has been mentioned once before that this man, Hatch, was too simple to answer anything but the straightforward truth. He replied that he did so; had been called to by Jim Sanders as he was passing along the rick-yard near the stables, who asked him to go to the house and send out Bridget.

  “Did he say what he wanted with her?” continued Miss Diana.

  “Not to me,” replied Hatch. “It ain’t nothing new for that there boy to come up and ask for Bridget, ma’am. He’s always coming up for her, Jim is. They be cousins.”

  A well-meant speech, no doubt, on Hatch’s part; but Bridget would have liked to box his ears for it there and then. Miss Diana, sufficiently large-hearted, saw no reason to object to Mr. Jim’s visits, provided they were paid at proper times and seasons, when the girl was not at her work. “Was any one with Jim Sanders?” she asked.

  “Not as I saw, ma’am. As I was coming back after telling Bridget, I see Jim a-waiting there, alone. He — —”

  “How could you see him? Was it not too dark?” interrupted Miss Diana.

  “Not then. Bridget kep’ him waiting ever so long afore she came out. Jim must a’ been a good half-hour altogether in the yard; ’twas that, I know, from the time he called me till the blaze burst out. But Jim might have went away afore that,” added Hatch, reflectively.

  “That’s all, Hatch; make haste back again,” said Miss Diana. “Now, Bridget, was Jim Sanders in the yard when the flames broke out, or was he not?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he was there.”

  “Then if any suspicious characters got into the rick-yard, he would no doubt have seen them,” thought Miss Diana, to herself. “Do you know who did set it on fire?” she impatiently asked.

  Bridget’s face, which had regained some of its colour, grew white again. Should she dare to tell what she had heard about Rupert? “I did not see it done,” she gasped.

  “Come, Bridget, this will not do,” cried Miss Diana, noting the signs. “There’s more behind, I see. Where’s Jim Sanders?”

  She looked around as she spoke but Jim was certainly not in sight. “Do you know where he is?” she sharply resumed.

  Instead of answering, Bridget was taken with a fresh fit of shivering. It amazed Miss Diana considerably.

  “Did Jim do it?” she sharply asked.

  “No, no,” answered Bridget. “When I got to Jim he had somehow lost the puppy” — glancing down at her apron— “and we had to look about for it. It was just in the minute he found it that the flames broke forth. Jim was showing of it to me, ma’am, and started like anything when I shrieked out.”

  “And what has become of Jim?”

  “I don’t know,” sobbed Bridget. “Jim seemed like one dazed when he turned and saw the blaze. He stood a minute looking at it, and I could see his face turn all of a fright; and then he flung the puppy into my arms and scrambled off over the palings, never speaking a word.”

  Miss Diana paused. There was something suspicious in Jim’s making off in the manner described; it struck her so at once. On the other hand she had known Jim from his infancy — known him to be harmless and inoffensive.

  “An honest lad would have remained to see what assistance he could render towards putting it out, not have run off in that cowardly way,” spoke Miss Diana. “I don’t like the look of this.”

  Bridget made no reply. She was beginning to wish the ground would open and swallow her up for a convenient half-hour; wished Jim Sanders had been buried also before he had brought this trouble upon her. Miss Diana, Madam, and the young ladies were surrounding her; the maid-servants began to edge away suspiciously; even Edith had dismissed her hysterics to stare at Bridget.

  Cris Chattaway came leaping past them. Cris, who had been leisurely making his way to the Hold when the flames broke out, had just come up, and after a short conference with his father, was now running to the stables. “You are a fleet horseman, Cris,” Mr. Chattaway had said to him: “get the engines here from Barmester.” And Cris was hastening to mount a horse, and ride away on the errand.

  Mrs. Chattaway caught his arm as he passed. “Oh, Cris, this is dreadful! What can have caused it?”

  “What?” returned Cris, in savage tones — not, however, meant for his mother, but induced by the subject. “Don’t you know what has caused it? He ought to swing for it, the felon!”

  Mrs. Chattaway in her surprise connected his words with what she had just been listening to. “Cris! — do you mean —— It never could have been Jim Sanders!”

  “Jim Sanders!” slightingly spoke Cris. “What should have put Jim Sanders into your head, mother? No; it was your favoured nephew, Rupert Trevlyn!”

  Mrs. Chattaway broke into a cry as the words came from his lips. Maude started a step forward, her face full of indignant protestation; and Miss Diana imperiously demanded what he meant.

  “Don’t stop me,” said Cris. “Rupert Trevlyn was in the yard with a torch just before it broke out, and he must have set it on fire.”

  “It can’t be, Cris!” exclaimed Mrs. Chattaway, in accents of intense pain, arresting her son as he was speeding away. “Who says this?”

  Cris twisted himself from her. “I can’t stop, mother, I say. I am go
ing for the engines. You had better ask my father; it was he told me. It’s true enough. Who would do it, except Rupert?”

  The shaft lanced at Rupert struck to the heart of Mrs. Chattaway; unpleasantly on the ear of Miss Diana Trevlyn: was anything but agreeable to the women-servants. Rupert was liked in the household, Cris hated. One of the latter spoke up in her zeal.

  “It’s well to try to throw it off the shoulders of Jim Sanders on to Mr. Rupert! Jim Sanders — —”

  “And what have you to say agin’ Jim Sanders?” interrupted Bridget, fearing, it may be, that the crime should be fastened on him. “Perhaps if I had spoken my mind, I could have told it was Mr. Rupert as well as others could; perhaps Jim Sanders could have told it, too. At any rate, it wasn’t — —”

  “What is that, Bridget?”

  The quiet but imperative interruption came from Miss Diana. Excitement was overpowering Bridget. “It was Mr. Rupert, ma’am; Jim saw him fire it.”

  “Diana! Diana! I feel ill,” gasped Mrs. Chattaway, in faint tones. “Let me go to him; I cannot breathe under this suspense.”

  She meant her husband. Pressing across the crowded rick-yard — for people, aroused by the sight of the flames, were coming up now in numbers — she succeeded in reaching Mr. Chattaway. Maude, scared to death, followed her closely. She caught him just as he had taken a bucket of water to hand on to some one standing next him in the line, causing him to spill it. Mr. Chattaway turned with a passionate word.

  “What do you want here?” he roughly asked, although he saw it was his wife.

  “James, tell me,” she whispered. “I felt sick with suspense, and could not wait. What did Cris mean by saying it was Rupert?”

  “There’s not a shadow of doubt that it was Rupert,” answered Mr. Chattaway. “He has done it out of revenge.”

  “Revenge for what?”

  “For the horsewhipping I gave him. When I joined you upstairs just now, I came straight from it. I horsewhipped him on this very spot,” continued Mr. Chattaway, as if it afforded him satisfaction to repeat the avowal. “He had a torch with him, and I — like a fool — left it with him, never thinking of consequences, or that he might use it in the service of felony. He must have fired the rick in revenge.”

  Mrs. Chattaway had been gradually drawing away from the heat of the blaze; from the line formed to pass buckets for water on to the flames, which crackled and roared on high; from the crowd and confusion prevailing around the spot. Mr. Chattaway had drawn with her, leaving his place in the line to be filled by another. She fell against a distant rick, sick unto death.

  “Oh, James! Why did you horsewhip him? What had he done?”

  “I horsewhipped him for insolence; for bearding me to my face. I bade him tell me who let him in last night when he returned home, and he set me at defiance by refusing to tell. One of my servants must be a traitor, and Rupert is screening him.”

  A great cry escaped her. “Oh, what have you done? It was I who let him in.”

  “You!” foamed Mr. Chattaway. “It is not true,” he added, the next moment. “You are striving also to deceive me — to defend him.”

  “It is true,” she answered. “I saw him come to the house from my dressing-room window, and I went down the back-stairs and opened the door for him. If he refused to betray me, it was done in good feeling, out of love for me, lest you should reproach me. And you have horsewhipped him for it! — you have goaded him on to this crime! Oh, Rupert! my darling Rupert!”

  Mr. Chattaway turned impatiently away; he had no time to waste on sentiment when his ricks were burning. His wife detained him.

  “It has been a wretched mistake altogether, James,” she whispered. “Say you will forgive him — forgive him for my sake!”

  “Forgive him!” repeated Mr. Chattaway, his voice assuming quite a hissing angry sound. “Forgive this? Never. I’ll prosecute him to the extremity of the law; I’ll try hard to get him condemned to penal servitude. Forgive this! You are out of your mind, Madam Chattaway.”

  Her breath was coming shortly, her voice rose amidst sobs, and she entwined her arms about him caressingly, imploringly, in her agony of distress and terror.

  “For my sake, my husband! It would kill me to see it brought home to him. He must have been overcome by a fit of the Trevlyn temper. Oh, James! forgive him for my sake.”

  “I never will,” deliberately replied Mr. Chattaway. “I tell you that I will prosecute him to the utmost limit of the law; I swear it. In an hour’s time from this he shall be in custody.”

  He broke from her; she staggered against the rick, and but for Maude might have fallen. Poor Maude, who had stood and listened, her face turning to stone, her heart to despair.

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  A NIGHT SCENE

  Alas for the Trevlyn temper! How many times has the regret to be repeated! Were the world filled with lamentations for the unhappy state of mind to which some of its mortals give way, they could not atone for the ill inflicted. It is not a pleasant topic to enlarge upon, and I have lingered in my dislike to approach it.

  When Rupert leaped the palings and flew away over the field, he was totally incapable of self-government for the time being. I do not say this in extenuation. I say that such a state of things is lamentable, and ought not to be. I only state that it was so. The most passionate temper ever born with man may be kept under, where the right means are used — prayer, ever-watchful self-control, stern determination; but how few there are who find the means! Rupert Trevlyn did not. He had no clear perception of what he had done; he probably knew he had thrust the blazing torch into the rick; but he gave no thought whatever to consequences, whether the hay was undamaged or whether it burst forth into a flame.

  He flew over the field as one possessed; he flew over a succession of fields; the high-road intervened, and he was passing over it in his reckless career, when he was met by Farmer Apperley. Not, for a moment, did the farmer recognise Rupert.

  “Hey, lad! What in the name of fortune has taken you?” cried he, laying his hand upon him.

  His face distorted with passion, his eyes starting with fury, Rupert tore on. He shook the farmer’s hand off him, and pressed on, leaping the low dwarf hedge opposite, and never speaking.

  Mr. Apperley began to doubt whether he had not been deceived by some strange apparition — such, for instance, as the Flying Dutchman. He ran to a stile, and stood there gazing after the mad figure, which seemed to be rustling about without purpose; now in one part of the field, now in another: and Mr. Apperley rubbed his eyes and tried to penetrate more clearly the obscurity of the night.

  “It was Rupert Trevlyn — if I ever saw him,” decided he, at length. “What can have put him into this state? Perhaps he’s gone mad!”

  The farmer, in his consternation, stood he knew not how long: ten minutes possibly. It was not a busy night with him, and he would as soon linger as go on at once to Bluck the farrier — whither he was bound. Any time would do for his orders to Bluck.

  “I can’t make it out a bit,” soliloquised he, when at length he turned away. “I’m sure it was Rupert; but what could have put him into that state? Halloa! what’s that?”

  A bright light in the direction of Trevlyn Hold had caught his eye. He stood and gazed at it in a second state of consternation equal to that in which he had just gazed after Rupert Trevlyn. “If I don’t believe it’s a fire!” ejaculated he.

  Was every one running about madly? The words were escaping Mr. Apperley’s lips when a second figure, white, breathless as the other, came flying over the road in the selfsame track. This one wore a smock-frock, and the farmer recognised Jim Sanders.

  “Why, Jim, is it you? What’s up?”

  “Don’t stop me, sir,” panted Jim. “Don’t you see the blaze? It’s Chattaway’s rick-yard.”

  “Mercy on me! Chattaway’s rick-yard! What has done it? Have we got the incendiaries in the county again?”

  “It was Mr. Rupert,” answered Jim, dropping his voi
ce to a whisper. “I see him fire it. Let me go on, please, sir.”

  In very astonishment, Mr. Apperley loosed his hold of the boy, who went speeding off in the direction of Barbrook. The farmer propped his back against the stile, that he might gather his scared senses together.

  Rupert Trevlyn had set fire to the rick-yard! Had he really gone mad? — or was Jim Sanders mad when he said it? The farmer, slow to arrive at conclusions, was sorely puzzled. “The one looked as mad as the other, for what I saw,” deliberated he. “Any way, there’s the fire, and I’d better make my way to it: they’ll want hands if they are to put that out. Thank God, it’s a calm night!”

  He took the nearest way to the Hold; another helper amidst the many now crowding the busy scene. What a babel it was! — what a scene for a painting! — what a life’s remembrance! The excited workers as they passed the buckets; the deep interjections of Mr. Chattaway; the faces of the lookers-on turned up to the lurid flames. Farmer Apperley, a man more given to deeds than words, rendered what help he could, speaking to none.

  He had been at work some time, when a shout broke simultaneously from the spectators. The next rick had caught fire. Mr. Chattaway uttered a despairing word, and the workers ceased their efforts for a few moments — as if paralysed with the new evil.

  “If the fire-engines would only come!” impatiently exclaimed Mr. Chattaway.

  Even as he spoke a faint rumbling was heard in the distance. It came nearer and nearer; its reckless pace proclaiming it a fire-engine. And Mr. Chattaway, in spite of his remark, gazed at its approach with astonishment; for he knew there had not been time for the Barmester engines to arrive.

  It proved to be the little engine from Barbrook, one kept in the village. A very despised engine indeed; from its small size, one rarely called for; and which Mr. Chattaway had not so much as thought of, when sending to Barmester. On it came, bravely, as if it meant to do good service, and the crowd in the rick-yard welcomed it with a shout, and parted to make way for it.

  Churlish as was Mr. Chattaway’s general manner, he could not avoid showing pleasure at its arrival. “I am glad you have come!” he exclaimed. “It never occurred to me to send for you. I suppose you saw the flames, and came of your own accord?”