by Ellen Wood
“Are you sure it was Ferrar, Maria?”
“Sure!” she returned in surprise. “You don’t think I could mistake him, Master Johnny, do you? He wore that ugly seal-skin winter-cap of his tied over his ears, and his thick grey coat. The coat was buttoned closely round him. I have not seen him wear either since last winter.”
That Ferrar must have gone into hiding somewhere seemed quite evident; and yet there was nothing but the ground to receive him. Maria said she lost sight of him the last time in a moment; both times in fact; and it was absolutely impossible that he could have made off to the triangle or elsewhere, as she must have seen him cross the open land. For that matter I must have seen him also.
On the whole, not two minutes had elapsed since I came up, though it seems to have been longer in telling it: when, before we could look further, voices were heard approaching from the direction of Crabb Cot; and Maria, not caring to be seen, went away quickly. I was still puzzling about Ferrar’s hiding-place, when they reached me — the Squire, Tod, and two or three men. Tod came slowly up, his face dark and grave.
“I say, Johnny, what a shocking thing this is!”
“What is a shocking thing?”
“You have not heard of it? — But I don’t see how you could hear it.”
I had heard nothing. I did not know what there was to hear. Tod told me in a whisper.
“Daniel Ferrar’s dead, lad.”
“What?”
“He has destroyed himself. Not more than half-an-hour ago. Hung himself in the grove.”
I turned sick, taking one thing with another, comparing this recollection with that; which I dare say you will think no one but a muff would do.
Ferrar was indeed dead. He had been hiding all day in the three-cornered grove: perhaps waiting for night to get away — perhaps only waiting for night to go home again. Who can tell? About half-past two, Luke Macintosh, a man who sometimes worked for us, sometimes for old Coney, happening to go through the grove, saw him there, and talked with him. The same man, passing back a little before sunset, found him hanging from a tree, dead. Macintosh ran with the news to Crabb Cot, and they were now flocking to the scene. When facts came to be examined there appeared only too much reason to think that the unfortunate appearance of the galloping policeman had terrified Ferrar into the act; perhaps — we all hoped it! — had scared his senses quite away. Look at it as we would, it was very dreadful.
But what of the appearance Maria Lease saw? At that time, Ferrar had been dead at least half-an-hour. Was it reality or delusion? That is (as the Squire put it), did her eyes see a real, spectral Daniel Ferrar; or were they deceived by some imagination of the brain? Opinions were divided. Nothing can shake her own steadfast belief in its reality; to her it remains an awful certainty, true and sure as heaven.
If I say that I believe in it too, I shall be called a muff and a double muff. But there is no stumbling-block difficult to be got over. Ferrar, when found, was wearing the seal-skin cap tied over the ears and the thick grey coat buttoned up round him, just as Maria Lease had described to me; and he had never worn them since the previous winter, or taken them out of the chest where they were kept. The old woman at his home did not know he had done it then. When told that he died in these things, she protested that they were in the chest, and ran up to look for them. But the things were gone.
XIX.
DAVID GARTH’S NIGHT-WATCH.
It was the following year, and we were again at Crabb Cot. Fever had broken out at Dr. Frost’s, and the school was dismissed. The leaves were falling late that year, for November was nearly half through, and they strewed the ground. But if the leaves were late, the frost was early. The weather had come in curiously cold. Three days before the morning I am about to speak of, the warm weather suddenly changed, and it was now as freezing as January. It is not often that you see ice mingling with the dead leaves of autumn. Both the ice and the leaves have to do with what happened: and I think you often find that if the weather is particularly unseasonable, we get something by which to remember it.
At the corner of a field between our house and North Crabb, stood a small solitary dwelling, called Willow Brook Cottage: but the brook from which it took its name was dry now. The house had a lonely look, and was lonely; and perhaps that kept it empty. It had been unoccupied for more than a year, when the Squire, tired of seeing it so, happened to say in the hearing of James Hill, that new bailiff of ours, that he would let it for an almost nominal rent. Hill caught at the words and said he would be glad to rent it: for some cause or other he did not like the house he was in, and had been wanting to leave it. At least, he said so: but he was of a frightfully stingy turn, and we all thought the low rent tempted him. Hill, this working bailiff, was a steady man, but severe upon every one.
It was during this early frost that he began to move in. One morning after breakfast, I was taking the broad pathway across the fields to North Crabb, which led close by Willow Cottage, and saw Hill wheeling a small truck up with some of his household goods. He was a tall, strong man, and the cold was tolerably sharp, but the load had warmed him.
“Good morning, Master Johnny.”
“Making ready for the flitting, Hill?”
Hill wheeled the truck up to the door, and sat down on one of the handles whilst he wiped his face. It was an honest, though cross face; habitually red. The house had a good large garden at its side, enclosed by wooden palings; with a shed and some pigstys at the back. Trees overshadowed the palings: and the fallen leaves, just now, inside the garden and out were ankle-deep.
“A fine labour I shall have, getting the place in order!” cried Hill, pointing to some broken palings and the overgrown branches. “Don’t think but what the Squire has the best of the bargain, after all!”
“You’d say that, Hill, if he gave you a house rent-free.”
Hill took the key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and we went in. This lower room was boarded; the kitchen was at the back; above were two fair-sized chambers. One of them looked towards Crabb Ravine; the other was only lighted by a skylight in the roof.
“You have had fires here, Hill!”
“I had ’em in every room all day yesterday, sir, and am going to light ’em again now. My wife said it must be done; and she warn’t far wrong; for a damp house plays the mischief with one’s bones. The fools that women be, to be sure! — and my wife’s the worst of ‘em.”
“What has your wife done?”
“She had a bit of a accident yesterday, Master Johnny. A coming out with a few things for this place, she stepped upon some ice, and fell; it gave her ankle a twist, and she had to be helped home. I’m blest if she’s not a-saying now that it’s a bad omen! Because she can’t get about and help shift the things in here, she says we shan’t have nothing but ill-luck in the place.”
I had already heard of the accident. Hill’s wife was a little shrinking woman, mild and gentle, quite superior to him. She was a widow when he married her a short time ago, a Mrs. Garth, with one son, David. Miss Timmens, the schoolmistress at North Crab, was her sister. On the previous morning a letter had come from Worcester, saying their mother, Mrs. Timmens, was taken dangerously ill, and asking them to go over. Miss Timmens went; Hill refused for his wife. How could he get along at moving-time without her, he demanded. She cried and implored, but Hill was hard as flint. So she had to remain at home, and set about her preparations for removal; surly Hill was master and mistress too. In starting with the first lot of movables — a few things carried in her arms — the accident occurred. So that, in the helping to move, she was useless; and the neighbours, ever ready to take part in a matrimonial grievance, said it served Hill right. Any way, it did not improve his temper.
“When do you get in here, Hill?”
“To-morrow, Master Johnny, please the pigs. But for the wife’s awk’ardness we’d ha’ been in to-day. As to any help Davvy could give, it’s worth no more nor a rat’s; he haven’t got much more strength in him nor
one neither. Drat the boy!”
Leaving Hill to his task, I went on; and in passing Mrs. Hill’s dwelling, I thought I’d give a look in to inquire after the ankle. The cottage stood alone, just as this other one did, but was less lonely, for the Crabb houses were round about. Davy’s voice called out, “Come in.”
He was the handiest little fellow possible for any kind of housework — or for sewing, either; but not half strong enough or rough enough for a boy. His soft brown eyes had a shrinking look in them, his face was delicate as a girl’s, and his hair hung in curls. But he was a little bit deformed in the back — some called it only a stoop in the shoulders — and, though fourteen, might have been taken for ten. The boy’s love for his mother was something wonderful. They had lived at Worcester; she had a small income, and he had been well brought up. When she married Hill — all her friends were against it, and it was in fact a frightful mistake — of course they had to come to North Crabb; but Davy was not happy. Always a timid lad, he could not overcome his first fear of Hill. Not that the man was unkind, only rough and resolute.
Davy was washing up the breakfast-things; his mother sat near, sorting the contents of a chest: a neat little woman in a green stuff gown, with the same sweet eyes as David and the same shrinking look in them. She left off when I went in, and said her ankle was no worse.
“It’s a pity it happened just now, Mrs. Hill.”
“I’d have given a great deal for it not to, sir. They call me foolish, I know; always have done; but it just seems to me like an omen. I had a few articles in my arms, the first trifles we’d begun to move, and down I fell on going out at this door. To me it seems nothing but a warning that we ought not to move into Willow Cottage.”
David had halted in his work at the tea-cups, his brown eyes fixed on his mother. That it was not the first time he had listened to the superstition, and that he was every whit as bad as she, might plainly be seen.
“I have never liked the thought of that new place from the first, Master Johnny. It is as if something held me back from it. Hill keeps saying that it’s a convenient dwelling, and dirt-cheap; and so it is; but I don’t like the notion of it. No more does David.”
“Oh, I dare say you will like it when you get in, Mrs. Hill, and David, too.”
“It is to be hoped so, sir.”
The day went on; and its after events I can only speak of from hearsay. Hill moved in a good many of his goods, David carrying some of the lighter things, Luke Macintosh was asked to go and sleep in the house that night as a safeguard against thieves, but he flatly refused, unless some one slept there with him. Hill ridiculed his cowardice; and finally agreed that David should bear him company.
He made the bargain without his wife. She had other views for David. Her intention was to send the lad over to Worcester by the seven-o’clock evening train; not so much because his bed and bedding had been carried off and there was nothing for him to sleep on, as that his dying grandmother had expressed a wish to see him. To hear then that David was not to go, did not please Mrs. Hill.
It was David himself who carried in the news. She had tea waiting on the table when they came in: David first, for his step-father had stopped to speak to some one in the road.
“But, David, dear — you must go to Worcester,” she said, when he told her.
“He will never let me, mother,” was David’s answer. “He says the things might be stolen if nobody takes care of them: and Macintosh is afraid to be there alone.”
She paused and looked at him, a thought striking her. The boy was leaning upon her in his fond manner, his hand in hers.
“Should you be afraid, David?”
“Not — I think — with Luke. We are to be in the same room, mother.”
But Mrs. Hill noticed that his voice was hesitating; his small weak hand trembled in hers. There was not a more morally brave heart than David Garth’s; he had had a religious training; but at being alone in the dark he was a very coward, afraid of ghosts and goblins.
“Hill,” said she to her husband when he stamped in, the lad having gone to wash his hands, “I cannot let David sleep in the other house to-night. He will be too timid.”
“Timid!” repeated Hill, staring at the words. “Why, Luke Macintosh will be with him.”
“David won’t like it. Macintosh is nothing but a coward himself.”
“Don’t thee be a fool, and show it,” returned Hill, roughly. “Thee’ll keep that boy a baby for his life. Davvy would as soon sleep in the house alone, as not, but for the folly put into his head by you. And why not? He’s fourteen.”
Hill — to give him his due — only spoke as he thought. That any one in the world, grown to fourteen and upwards, could be afraid of sleeping in a house alone, was to him literally incomprehensible.
“I said he must go over to Worcester to see mother, James,” she meekly resumed; “you know I did.”
“Well, he can’t go to-night; he shall go in the morning. There! He may stop with her for a week, an’ ye like, for all the good he is to me.”
“Mother’s looking for him to-night, and he ought to go. The dying — —”
“Now just you drop it, for he can’t be spared,” interrupted Hill. “The goods might be stole, with all the loose characters there is about, and that fool of a Macintosh won’t go in of himself. He’s a regular coward! Davvy must keep him company — it’s not so much he does for his keep — and he may start for Worcester by daylight.”
Whenever Hill came down upon her with this resolute decision, it struck her timid forthwith. The allusion to the boy’s keep was an additional thrust, for it was beginning to be rather a sore subject. An uncle at Worcester, who had no family and was well to do, had partly offered to adopt the lad; but it was not yet settled. Davy was a great favourite with all the relatives; Miss Timmens, the schoolmistress, doted on him. Mrs. Hill, not venturing on further remonstrance, made the best of the situation.
“Davy, you are to go to Worcester the first thing in the morning,” she said, when he came back from washing his hands. “So as soon as you’ve been home and had a bit o’ breakfast, you shall run off to the train.”
Tea over, Hill went out on some business, saying he should be in at eight, or thereabouts, to go with Davy to the cottage. As the hour drew near, David, sitting over the fire with his mother in pleasant talk, as they loved to do, asked if he should read before he went: for her habit was to read the Bible to him, or cause him to read to her, the last thing.
“Yes, dear,” she said. “Read the ninety-first Psalm.”
So David read it. Closing the book when it was over, he sat with it on his knee, thoughtfully.
“If we could only see the angels, mother! It is so difficult to remember always that they are close around, taking care of us.”
“So it is, Davy. Most of us forget it.”
“When life’s over it will be so pleasant for them to carry us away to heaven! I wish you and I could go together, mother.”
“We shall each go when God pleases, David.”
“Oh yes, I know that.”
Mrs. Hill, remembering this little bit of conversation, word for word, repeated it afterwards to me and others, with how they had sat, and David’s looks. I say this for fear people might think I had invented it.
Hill came in, and they prepared to go to the other house. David, his arms full — for, of course, with things to be carried, they did not go out empty-handed — came suddenly back from the door in going out, flung his load down, and clasped his mother. She bent to kiss him.
“Good night, my dear one! Don’t you and Luke get chattering all night. Go to sleep betimes.”
He burst into tears, clinging to her with sobs. It was as if his heart were breaking.
“Are you afraid to go?” she whispered.
“I must go,” was his sobbing answer.
“Now then, Davvy!” called back Hill’s rough tones. “What the plague are you lagging for?”
“Say good-bye to me,
mother! Say good-bye!”
“Good-bye, and God bless you, David! Remember the angels are around you!”
“I know; I know!”
Taking up his bundles, he departed, keeping some paces behind Hill all the way; partly to hide his face, down which the tears were raining; partly in his usual awe of that formidable functionary who stood to him as a step-father.
Arrived at the house, Hill was fumbling for the key, when some one came darting out from the shadow of its eaves. It proved to be Luke Macintosh.
“I was a-looking round for you,” said crusty Hill. “I began to think you’d forgot the time o’ meeting.”
“No, I’d not forgot it; but I be come to say that I can’t oblige you by sleeping there,” was Luke’s reply. “The master have ordered me off with the waggon afore dawn, and so — I’m a-going to sleep at home.”
Had I been there, I could have said the master had not ordered Luke off before dawn; but after his breakfast. It was just a ruse of his, to avoid doing what he had never relished, sleeping in the house. Hill suspected as much, and went on at him, mockingly asking if he was afraid of hobgoblins. Luke dodged away in the midst of it, and Hill relieved his anger by a little hot language.
“Come along, Davvy,” said he at last; “we must put these here things inside.”
Unlocking the door, he went in; and, the first thing, fell against something or other in the dark. Hill swore a little at that, and struck a light, the fire having gone out. This lower room was full of articles, thrown down out of hand; the putting things straight had been left to the morrow.