by Ellen Wood
The mater was in Mrs. Coney’s bedroom with old Coney and Cole the doctor, who was paying his daily visit. One might have thought they were settling all the cases of rheumatism in the parish by the time they took over it. While I waited, I told Mrs. Bird about the earring and the present visit of Detective Eccles. Mrs. Todhetley came down in the midst of it; and lifted her hands at the prospect of facing a detective.
“Dear me! Is he anything dreadful to look at, Johnny? Very rough? Has he any handcuffs?”
It made me laugh. “He is a regular good-looking fellow — quite a gentleman. Tall and slender, and well-dressed: gold studs and a blue necktie. He has a ring on his finger and wears a black moustache.”
Mrs. Bird suddenly lifted her head, and stared at me: perhaps the description surprised her. The mater seemed inclined to question my words; but she said nothing, and came away after bidding good-bye to Lucy.
“Keep up your heart, my dear,” she whispered. “Things may grow brighter for you some time.”
When I got back, Mr. Eccles had nearly finished the sirloin, some cheese, and a large tankard of ale. The Squire sat by, hospitably pressing him to take more, whenever his knife and fork gave signs of flagging. Tod stood looking on, his back against the mantelpiece. Mrs. Todhetley soon appeared with a little cardboard box, where the solitary earring was lying on a bed of wool.
Rising from the table, the detective carried the box to the window, and stood there examining the earring; first in the box, then out of it. He turned it about in his hand, and looked at it on all sides; it took him a good three minutes.
“Madam,” said he, breaking the silence, “will you entrust this earring to us for a day or two? It will be under Sergeant Cripp’s charge, and perfectly safe.”
“Of course, of course,” interposed the Squire, before any one could speak. “You are welcome to take it.”
“You see, it is possible — indeed, most probable — that only one of us may be able to obtain sight of the other earring. Should it be Cripp, my having seen this one will be nearly useless to him. It is essential that he should see it also: and it will not do to waste time.”
“Pray take charge of it, sir,” said Mrs. Todhetley, mentally recalling what I had said of his errand to her and Lucy Bird. “I know it will be safe in your hands and Sergeant Cripp’s. I am only too glad that there is a probability of the other one being found.”
“And look here,” added the Squire to Eccles, while the latter carefully wrapped the box in paper, and put it into his inner breast-pocket, “don’t you and Cripp let that confounded gipsy escape. Have her up and punish her.”
“Trust us for that,” was the detective’s answer, given with an emphatic nod. “She is already as good as taken, and her confederate also. There’s not a doubt — I avow it to you — that the other earring is yours. We only wait to verify it.”
And, with that, he buttoned his coat, and bowed himself out, the Squire himself attending him to the door.
“He is as much like a detective as I’m like a Dutchman,” commented Tod. “At least, according to what have been all my previous notions of one. Live and learn.”
“He seems quite a polished man, has quite the manners of society,” added the mater. “I do hope he will get back my poor earring.”
“Mother, is Lucy Bird in more trouble than usual?” I asked.
“She is no doubt in deep distress of some kind, Johnny. But she is never out of it. I wish Robert Ashton could induce her to leave that most worthless husband of hers!”
The Squire, after watching off the visitor, came in, rubbing his hands and looking as delighted as old Punch. He assumed that the earring was as good as restored, and was immensely taken with Mr. Eccles.
“A most intelligent, superior man,” cried he. “I suppose he is what is called a gentleman-detective: he told me he had been to college. I’m sure it seems quite a condescension in him to work with Cripp and the rest.”
And the whole of tea-time and all the way to church, the praises were being rung of Mr. Eccles. I’m not sure but that he was more to us that night than the sermon.
“I confess I feel mortified about that woman, though,” confessed Mrs. Todhetley. “You heard him say that she was as good as taken: they must have traced the earring to her. I did think she was one to be trusted. How one may be deceived in people!”
“I’d have trusted her with a twenty-pound note, mother.”
“Hark at Johnny!” cried Tod. “This will be a lesson for you, lad.”
Monday morning. The Squire and Tod had gone over to South Crabb. Mrs. Todhetley sat at the window, adding up some bills, her nose red with the cold: and I was boxing Hugh’s ears, for he was in one of his frightfully troublesome moods, when Molly came stealing in at the door, as covertly as if she had been committing murder.
“Ma’am! ma’am! — there’s that tramp in the yard!”
“What?” cried the mater, turning round.
“I vow it’s her; I know the old red shawl again,” pursued Molly, with as much importance as though she had caught half the thieves in Christendom. “She turned into the yard as bold as brass; so I just slipped the bolt o’ the door against her, and come away. You’ll have her took up on the instant, ma’am, won’t you?”
“But if she has come back, I don’t think she can be guilty,” cried Mrs. Todhetley, after a bewildered pause. “We had better see what she wants. What do you say, Johnny?”
“Why, of course we had. I’ll go to her, as Molly’s afraid.”
Rushing out of hearing of Molly’s vindictive answer, I went round through the snow to the yard, and found the woman meekly tapping at the kitchen-door — the old red shawl, and the black bonnet, and the white muslin cap border, all the same as before. Before I got quite up, the kitchen-door was cautiously drawn open, and Mrs. Todhetley looked out. The poor old woman dropped a curtsy and held out half-a-crown on the palm of her withered hand.
“I’ve made bold to call at the door to leave it, lady. And I can never thank you enough, ma’am,” she added, the tears rising to her eyes; “my tongue would fail if I tried it. ’Tis not many as would have trusted a stranger; and, that, a poor body like me. I got over to Worcester quick and comfortable, ma’am, thanks to you, and found my daughter better nor I had hoped for.”
The same feeling of reliance, of trust, arose within me as I saw her face and heard her voice and words. If this woman was what they had been fancying her, I’d never eat tarts again.
“Come in,” said Mrs. Todhetley; and Molly, looking daggers as she heard it, approached her mistress with a whisper.
“Don’t, ma’am. It’s all a laid-out plan. She has heard that she’s suspected, and brings back the half-crown, thinking to put us off the scent.”
“Step this way,” went on Mrs. Todhetley, giving no heed to Molly, except by a nod — and she took the woman into the little store-room where she kept her jam-pots and things, and bade her go to the fire.
“What did you tell me your name was,” she asked, “when you were here on Friday?”
“Nutt’n, ma’am.”
“Nutten,” repeated the mater, glancing at me. “But I sent over to Islip, and no one there knew anything about you — they denied that any one of your name lived there.”
“Why, how could they do that?” returned the woman, with every appearance of surprise. “They must have mistook somehow. I live in the little cottage, ma’am, by the dung-heap. I’ve lived there for five-and-twenty year, and brought up my children there, and never had parish pay.”
“And gone always by the name of Nutten?”
“Not never by no other, ma’am. Why should I?”
Was she to be believed? There was the half-crown in Mrs. Todhetley’s hand, and there was the honest wrinkled old face looking up at us openly. But, on the other side, there was the assertion of the Islip people; and there was the earring.
“What was the matter with your daughter, and in what part of Worcester does she live?” queried th
e mater.
“She’s second servant to a family in Melcheapen Street, ma’am, minds the children and does the beds, and answers the door, and that. When I got there — and sick enough my heart felt all the way, thinking what the matter could be — I found that she had fell from the parlour window that she’d got outside to clean, and broke her arm and scarred her face, and frighted and shook herself finely. But thankful enough I was that ’twas no worse. Her father, ma’am, died of an accident, and I can never abear to hear tell of one.”
“I — I lost an earring out of my ear that afternoon,” said Mrs. Todhetley, plunging into the matter, but not without hesitation. “I think I must have lost it just about the time I was talking to you. Did you pick it up?”
“No, ma’am, I didn’t. I should have gave it to you if I had.”
“You did not carry it off with you, I suppose!” interrupted wrathful Molly; who had come in to get some eggs, under pretence that the batter-pudding was waiting for them.
And whether it was Molly’s sharp and significant tone, or our silence and looks, I don’t know; but the woman saw it all then, and what she was suspected of.
“Oh, ma’am, were you thinking that ill of me?” — and the hands shook as they were raised, and the white border seemed to lift itself from the horror-stricken face. “Did you think I could do so ill a turn, and after all the kindness showed me? The good Lord above knows I’m not a thief. Dear heart! I never set eyes, lady, on the thing you’ve lost.”
“No, I am sure you didn’t,” I cried; “I said so all along. It might have dropped anywhere in the road.”
“I never see it, nor touched it, sir,” she reiterated, the tears raining down her cheeks. “Oh, ma’am, do believe me!”
Molly tossed her head as she went out with the eggs in her apron; but I would sooner have believed myself guilty than that poor woman. Mrs. Todhetley thought with me. She offered her some warm ale and a crust; but the old woman shook her head in refusal, and went off in a fit of crying.
“She knows no more of the earring than I know of it, mother.”
“I feel sure she does not, Johnny.”
“That Molly’s getting unbearable. I wonder you don’t send her away.”
“She has her good points, dear,” sighed Mrs. Todhetley. “Only think of her cooking! and of what a thrifty, careful manager she is!”
The Squire and Tod got home for lunch. Nothing could come up to their ridicule when they heard what had occurred, saying that the mother and I were two muffs, fit to go about the world in a caravan as specimens of credulity. Like Molly, they thought we ought to have secured the woman.
“But you see she was honest in the matter of the half-crown,” debated Mrs. Todhetley, in her mild way. “She brought that back. It does not stand to reason that she would have dared to come within miles of the place, if she had taken the earring.”
“Why, it’s just the thing she would do,” retorted the Squire, pacing about in a commotion. “Once she had got rid of the earring, she’d show up here to throw suspicion off herself. And she couldn’t come without returning the half-crown: it must have gone nicely against the grain to return that.”
And Mrs. Todhetley, the most easily swayed spirit in the world, began to veer round again like a weathercock, and fear we had been foolish.
“You should see her jagged-out old red shawl,” cried Molly, triumphantly. “All the red a’most washed out of it, and the edges in tatters. I know a tramp when I sees one: and the worst of all tramps is them that do the tricks with clean hands and snow-white cap-borders.”
The theme lasted us all the afternoon. I held my tongue, for it was of no use contending against the stream. It was getting dusk when Cole called in, on his way from the Coneys. The Squire laid the grievance before him, demanding whether he had ever heard of two people so simple as I and the mother.
“What did she say her name was?” asked Cole. “Nutten? — of Islip? Are you sure she did not say Norton?”
“She said Nutt’n. We interpreted it into Nutten.”
“Yes, Johnny, that’s how she would say it. I’ll lay a guinea it’s old Granny Norton.”
“Granny Norton!” echoed the Squire. “She is respectable.”
“Respectable, honest, upright as the day,” replied Cole. “I have a great respect for old Mrs. Norton. She’s very poor now; but she was not always so.”
“She told us this morning that she lived in the cottage by the dung-heap,” I put in.
“Exactly: she does so. And a nice dung-heap it is; the disgrace of Islip,” added Cole.
“And you mean to say, Cole, that you know this woman — that she’s not a tramp, but Mrs. Norton?” spoke the pater.
“I know Mrs. Norton of Islip,” he answered. “I saw her pass my window this morning: she seemed to be coming from the railway-station. It was no tramp, Squire.”
“How was she dressed?” asked Mrs. Todhetley.
“Dressed? Well, her shawl was red, and her bonnet black. I’ve never seen her dressed otherwise, when abroad, these ten years past.”
“And — has she a daughter in service at Worcester?”
“Yes, I think so. Yes, I am sure so. It’s Susan. Oh, it is the same person: you need not doubt it.”
“Then what the deuce did Luke Macintosh mean by bringing word back from Islip that she was not known there?” fiercely demanded the Squire, turning to me.
“But Luke said he asked for her by the name of Nutt — Mrs. Nutt. I questioned him about it this afternoon, sir, and he said he understood Nutt to have been the name we gave him.”
This was very unsatisfactory as far as the earring went. (And we ascertained later that poor Mrs. Norton was Mrs. Norton, and had been suspected wrongly.) For, failing the tramp view of the case, who could have sold the earring to the professional gentleman in Worcester?
“Cripp knows what he is about; never fear,” observed the Squire. “Now that he has the case well in hand, he is sure to pull it successfully through.”
“Yes, you may trust Cripp,” said the doctor. “And I hope, Mrs. Todhetley, you will soon be gladdened by the sight of your earring again.” And Cole went out, telling us we were going to have a thaw. Which we could have told him, for it had already set in, and the snow was melting rapidly.
“To think that I should have done so stupid a thing. But I have been so flustered this morning by that parson and his nonsense that I hardly know what I’m about.”
The speaker was Miss Timmens. She had come up in a passion, after twelve o’clock school. Not with us, or with her errand — which was to bring one of the new shirts to show, made after Tod’s fancy — but with the young parson. Upon arriving and unfolding the said shirt, Miss Timmens found that she had brought the wrong shirt — one of those previously finished. The thaw had gone on so briskly in the night that this morning the roads were all mud and slop, and Miss Timmens had walked up in her pattens.
“He is enough to make a saint swear, with his absurdities and his rubbish,” went on Miss Timmens, turning from the table where lay the unfolded shirt, and speaking of the new parson; between whom and herself hot war waged. “You’d never believe, ma’am, what he did this morning” — facing Mrs. Todhetley. “I had got the spelling-class up, and the rest of the girls were at their slates and copies, and that, when in he walked amidst the roomful. ‘Miss Timmens,’ says he to me, in the hearing of them all, ‘I think these children should learn a little music. And perhaps a little drawing might not come amiss to those who have talent for it.’ ‘Oh yes, of course,’ says I, hardly able to keep my temper, ‘and a little dancing as well, and let ’em go out on the green daily and step their figures to a fife and tambourine!’ ‘There’s nothing like education,’ he goes on, staring hard at me, as if he hardly knew whether to take my words for jest or earnest; ‘and it is well to unite, as far as we can, the ornamental with the useful, it makes life pleasanter. It is quite right to teach girls to hem dusters and darn stockings, but I think some fancy-work sh
ould be added to it: embroidery and the like.’ ‘Oh, you great baby!’ I thought to myself, and did but just stop my tongue from saying it. ‘Will embroidery and music and drawing help these girls to scour floors, and cook dinners, and wash petticoats?’ I asked him. ‘If I had a set of young ladies here, it would be right for them to learn accomplishments; but these girls are to be servants. And all I can say, sir, is, that if ever those new-fangled notions are introduced, you’ll have to find another mistress, for I’ll not stop to help in it. It would just lead many a girl to her ruin, sir; that’s what it would do, whoever lives to see it.’ Well, he went away with that, ma’am, but he had put my temper up — talking such dangerous nonsense before the girls, their ears all agape to listen! — and when twelve o’clock struck, I was not half through the spelling-class! Altogether, it’s no wonder I brought away the wrong shirt.”
Miss Timmens, her errand a failure, began folding up the shirt in a bustle, her thin face quite fiery with anger. Mrs. Todhetley shook her head; she did not approve of nonsensical notions for these poor peasant girls any more than did the rest of us.
“I’ll bring up the right shirt this evening when school’s over; and if it suits we’ll get on with the rest,” concluded Miss Timmens, making her exit with the parcel.
“What the world will come to later, Mr. Johnny, if these wild ideas get much ground, puzzles me to think of,” resumed Miss Timmens, as I went with her, talking, along the garden-path. “We shall have no servants, sir; none. It does not stand to reason that a girl will work for her bread at menial offices when she has had fine notions instilled into her. Grammar, and geography, and history, and botany, and music, and singing, and fancy-work! — what good will they be of to her in making beds and cleaning saucepans? The upshot will be that they won’t make beds and they won’t clean saucepans; they’ll be above it. The Lord protect ‘em! — for I don’t see what else will; or what will become of them. Or of the world, either, when it can get no servants. My goodness, Master Johnny! what’s that? Surely it’s the lost earring?”