by Ellen Wood
There was a crowd at the top of Salt Lane, and I had to wait before I could get across. In the wake of a carriage-and-four that was turning out of it came Captain Bird, not a feather of his plumage ruffled, not a speck (except dust) on his superfine coat, not a wristband soiled. He had not been ducked, if his friend had.
“How d’ye do, Master Ludlow?” said he, with a grandly patronizing air, and a flourish of his cane, as if it were a condescension to notice me. And I answered him civilly; though he must have been aware I knew what a scamp he was.
“I wish he’d steal away to America some moonlight night,” ran my thoughts, “and leave poor Lucy in peace.”
The Squire’s carriage dashed up to the hotel as I reached it, Tod sitting behind with Giles. I asked which of the two horses had won. Swallower: won by half-a-neck. The Squire was in a glow of satisfaction, boasting of the well-contested race.
And now, to make things intelligible, I must refer again for a minute or two to that past paper. It may be remembered that when “Detective Eccles” called on us that Sunday afternoon, asking to look at the fellow-earring to the one lost, Mrs. Todhetley had gone in to the Coneys’, and the Squire sent me for her. When I arrived there, Lucy Bird was in the drawing-room alone, the mater being upstairs with Mrs. Coney. Poor Lucy told me she had been spending a day or two at Timberdale Court (her happy childhood’s home), and had come over to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Coney, who were always kind to her, she added with a sigh; but she was going back to Worcester by the next train. I told her what I had come for — of the detective’s visit and his request to see the other earring. Mrs. Todhetley felt nervous at meeting a real live detective, and asked me no end of questions as to what this particular one was like. I said he was no tiger to be afraid of, and described him as well as I could: a tall, slender, gentlemanly man, well-dressed; gold studs, a ring on his finger, a blue necktie, and a black moustache. Lucy (I had noticed at the time) seemed struck with the description; but she made no remark. Before we turned in at our gate we saw her leave the Coneys’ house, and come stepping through the snow on her way to the station. Since then, until now, we had not seen anything of Lucy Bird.
The stars flickered through the trees in Sansome Walk as I turned into it. A fine trouble I had had to come! Some entertainment was in full swing that evening at the Saracen’s Head — a sort of circus, combined with rope-dancing. Worcester would be filled with shows during the race-week (I don’t mean those on Pitchcroft), and we went to as many as we could get money for. We had made the bargain with Harry Parker on the course to go to this one, and during the crowded dinner Tod asked the Squire’s leave. He gave it with the usual injunctions to take care of ourselves, and on condition that we left our watches at home. So, there I was in a fix; neither daring to say at the dinner-table that I could not go, nor daring to say what prevented it, for Lucy had bound me to secrecy.
“What time is this thing going to be over to-night, Joe?” had questioned the Squire, who was drinking port wine with some more old gentlemen at one end of the table, as we rose to depart.
“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Tod. “About ten o’clock, I dare say.”
“Well, mind you come straight home, you two. I won’t have you getting into mischief. Do you hear, Johnny?”
“What mischief do you suppose, sir, we are likely to get into?” fired Tod.
“I don’t know,” answered the Squire. “When I was a young lad — younger than you — staying here for the races with my father — but we stayed at the Hop-pole, next door, which was the first inn then — I remember we were so wicked one night as to go about ringing and knocking at all the doors — —”
“You and your father, sir?” asked Tod, innocently.
“My father! no!” roared the Squire. “What do you mean, Joe? How dare you! My father go about the town knocking at doors and ringing at bells! How dare you suggest such an idea! We left my father, sir, at the hotel with his friends at their wine, as you are leaving me with my friends here now. It was I and half-a-dozen other young rascals who did it — more shame for us. I can’t be sure how many bell-wires we broke. The world has grown wiser since then, though I don’t think it’s better; and — and mind you walk quietly home. Don’t get into a fight, or quarrel, or anything of that kind. The streets are sure to be full of rough people and pickpockets.”
Harry Parker was waiting for us in the hotel gateway. He said he feared we should be late, and thought we must have been eating dinner for a week by the time we took over it.
“I’m not coming with you, Tod,” I said; “I’ll join you presently.”
Tod turned round and faced me. “What on earth’s that for, Johnny?”
“Oh, nothing. I’ll come soon. You two go on.”
“Suppose you don’t get a place!” cried Parker to me.
“Oh, I shall get one fast enough: it won’t be so crowded as all that.”
“Now, look here, lad,” said Tod, with his face of resolution; “you are up to some dodge. What is it?”
“My head aches badly,” I said — and that was true. “I can’t go into that hot place until I have had a spell of fresh air. But I shall be sure to join you later, if I can.”
My headaches were always allowed. I had them rather often. Not the splitting, roaring pain that Tod would get in his head on rare occasions, once a twelvemonth, or so, when anything greatly worried him; but bad enough in all conscience. He said no more; and set off with Harry Parker up the street towards the Saracen’s Head.
The stars were flickering through the trees in Sansome Walk, looking as bright as though it were a frosty night in winter. It was cool and pleasant: the great heat of the day — which must have given me my headache — had passed. Mrs. Bird was already at the spot. She drew me underneath the trees on the side, looking up the walk as though she feared she had been followed. A burst of distant music crashed out and was borne towards us on the air: the circus band, at the Saracen’s Head. Lucy still glanced back the way she had come.
“Are you afraid of anything, Lucy?”
“There is no danger, I believe,” she answered; “but I cannot help being timid: for, if what I am doing were discovered, I — I — I don’t know what they would do to me.”
“You did not come this afternoon.”
“No. I was very sorry, but I could not,” she said, as we paced slowly about, side by side. “I had my shawl and bonnet on, when Edwards came in — a friend of my husband’s, who is staying with him. He had somehow got into the Severn, and looked quite an object, his hair and clothes dripping wet, and his forehead bruised.”
“Why, Lucy, he was ducked!” I cried excitedly. “I saw it all. That is, I saw the row; and I saw him when he made his escape across Pitchcroft. He had on a smart green cut-away coat, and top-boots.”
“Yes, yes,” she said; “I was sure it was something of that kind. When my husband came home later they were talking together in an undertone, Edwards cursing some betting-man, and Captain Bird telling Edwards that it was his own fault for not being more cautious. However, I could not come out, Johnny, though I knew you were waiting for me. Edwards asked, as impertinently as he dared, where I was off to. To buy some tea, I answered, but that it did not matter particularly, as I had enough for the evening. They think I have come out to buy it now.”
“Do you mean to say, Lucy, that Captain Bird denies you free liberty? — watches you as a cat does a mouse?”
“No, no; you must not take up wrong notions of my husband, Johnny Ludlow. Bad though the estimation in which he is held by most people is, he has never been really unkind to me. Trouble, frightful trouble he does bring upon me, for I am his wife and have to share it, but personally unkind to me he has never yet been.”
“Well, I should think it unkind in your place, if I could not go out when I pleased, without being questioned. What do they suspect you would be after?”
“It is not Captain Bird; it is Edwards. As to what he suspects, I am sure he does not know himself;
but he seems to be generally suspicious of every one, and he sees I do not like him. I suppose he lives in general fear of being denounced to the police, for he is always doing what he calls ‘shady’ things; but he must know that he is safe with us. I heard him say to my husband the day before we left London, ‘Why do you take your wife down?’ Perhaps he thinks my brothers might be coming to call on me, and of course he does not want attention drawn to the place he may chance to be located in, whether here or elsewhere.”
“What is his name, Lucy?”
“His name? Edwards.”
“It’s not Eccles, is it?”
She glanced quickly round as we walked, searching my face in the dusk.
“Why do you ask that?”
“Because, when I first saw him to-day on the racecourse with Captain Bird, he put me in mind of the fine gentleman who came to us that Sunday at Crabb Cot, calling himself Detective Eccles, and carried off Mrs. Todhetley’s other earring.”
Mrs. Bird looked straight before her, making no answer.
“You must remember that afternoon, Lucy. When I ran over to old Coney’s for Mrs. Todhetley, you were there, you know; and I told you all about the earrings and the detective officer, then making his dinner of cold beef at our house while he waited for the mother to come home and produce the earring. Don’t you remember? You were just going back to Worcester.”
Still she said not a word.
“Lucy, I think it is the same man. Although his black moustache is gone, I feel sure it is he. The face and the tall slender figure are just like his.”
“How singular!” she exclaimed, in a low tone to herself. “How strangely things come about!”
“But is it Eccles?”
“Johnny Ludlow,” she said, catching my arm, and speaking in an excited, breathless whisper, “if you were to bring harm on me — that is, on him or on my husband through me, I should pray to die.”
“But you need not be afraid. Goodness me, Lucy! don’t you know that I wouldn’t bring harm on any one in the world, least of all on you? Why, you said to me this morning that I was true as steel.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, bursting into tears. “We have always been good friends, have we not. Johnny, since you, a little mite of a child in a tunic and turned-down frill, came to see me one day at school, a nearly grown-up young lady, and wanted to leave me your bright sixpence to buy gingerbread? Oh, Johnny, if all people were only as loyal and true-hearted as you are!”
“Then, Lucy, why need you doubt me?”
“Do you not see the shadows of those leaves playing on the ground cast by the light of that gas-lamp?” she asked. “Just as many shadows, dark as those, lie in the path of my life. They have taught me to fear an enemy where I ought to look for a friend; they have taught me that life is so full of unexpected windings and turnings, that we know not one minute what new fear the next may bring forth.”
“Well, Lucy, you need not fear me. I have promised you to say nothing of having met you here; and I will say nothing, or of what you tell me.”
“Promise it me again, Johnny. Faithfully.”
Just a shade of vexation crossed me that she should think it needful to reiterate this; but I would not let my face or voice betray it.
“I promise it again, Lucy. Faithfully and truly.”
“Ever since last winter I have wanted to hold communication with one of you at your home, and to restore something that had been lost. But it had to be done very, very cautiously, without bringing trouble on me or on any one connected with me. Many a solitary hour, sitting by myself in our poor lodgings in London, have I deliberated whether I might venture to restore this, and how it was to be done: many a sleepless night have I passed, dwelling on it. Sometimes I thought I would send it anonymously by the post, but it might have been stolen by the way; sometimes it would occur to me to make a parcel of it and despatch it in that way. I never did either. I waited until some chance should bring me again near Mrs. Todhetley. But to-day I saw that it would be better to trust you. She is true also, and kind; but she might not be able to keep the secret from the Squire, and he — he would be sure to betray it, though perhaps not intentionally, to all Timberdale, and there’s no knowing what mischief might come of it.”
Light flashed upon me as she spoke. As surely as though it were already before me in black and white, I knew what she was about to disclose.
“Lucy, it is the lost earring! The man staying with you is Eccles.”
“Hush!” she whispered in extreme terror, for a footstep suddenly sounded close to us. Lucy glided behind the tree we were passing, which in a degree served to hide her. How timid she was! — what induced it?
The intruder was a shop-boy with an apron on, carrying a basket of grocery parcels to one of the few houses higher up. He turned his head and gave us a good stare, probably taking us for a pair of lovers enjoying a stolen ramble by starlight. Setting up a shrill whistle, he passed on.
“I don’t know what has come to me lately; my heart seems to beat at nothing,” said poor Mrs. Bird, coming from behind the tree with her hand to her side. “And it was doubly foolish of me to go there; better that I had kept quietly walking on with you, Johnny.”
“What is it that you are afraid of, Lucy?”
“Only of their seeing me; seeing me with you. Were they to do so, and it were to come out that the earring had been returned, they would know I had done it. They suspected me at the time — at least, Edwards did. For it is the earring I am about to restore to you, Johnny.”
She put a little soft white paper packet in my hand, that felt as if it had wool inside it. I hardly knew whether I was awake or asleep. The beautiful earring that we had given up for good, come back again! And the sound of the drums and trumpets burst once more upon our ears.
“You will give it to Mrs. Todhetley when you go home, Johnny. And I must leave it to your discretion to tell her what you think proper of whence you obtained it. Somewhat of course you must tell her, but how much or how little I leave with you. Only take care you bring no harm upon me.”
“I am sure, Lucy, that Mrs. Todhetley may be trusted.”
“Very well. Both of you must be secret as the grave. It is for my sake, tell her, that I implore it. Perhaps she will keep the earring by her for a few months, saying nothing, so that this visit of ours into Worcestershire may be quite a thing of the past, and no suspicion, in consequence of it, as connected with the earring, may arise in my husband’s mind. After that, when months have elapsed, she must contrive to let it appear that the earring is then, in some plausible way or other, returned to her.”
“Rely upon it, we will take care. It will be managed very easily. But how did you get the earring, Lucy?”
“It has been in my possession ever since the night of the day you lost it; that Sunday afternoon, you know. I have carried it about with me everywhere.”
“Do you mean carried it upon you?”
“Yes; upon me.”
“I wonder you never lost it — a little thing like this!” I said, touching the soft packet that lay in my jacket pocket.
“I could not lose it,” she whispered. “It was sewn into my clothes.”
“But, Lucy, how did you manage to get it?”
She gave me the explanation in a few low, rapid words, glancing about her as she did it. Perhaps I had better repeat it in my own way; and to do that we must go back to the Sunday afternoon. At least, that will render it more intelligible and ship-shape. But I did not learn one-half of the details then; no, nor for a long time afterwards. And so, we go back again in imagination to the time of that January day, when we were honoured by the visit of “Detective Eccles,” and the snow was lying on the ground, and Farmer Coney’s fires were blazing hospitably.
Lucy Bird quitted the warm fires and her kind friends, the Coneys, and followed us out — me and Mrs. Todhetley — she saw us turn in at our own gate, and then she picked her way through the snow to the station at South Crabb. It was a long walk for h
er in that inclement weather; but she had been away from home (if the poor lodgings they then occupied in Worcester could be called home) two days, and was anxious to get back again. During her brief absences from it, she was always haunted by the fear of some ill falling on that precious husband of hers, Captain Bird; but he was nothing but an ex-captain, as you know. All the way to the station she was thinking about the earrings, and of my description of Detective Eccles. The description was exactly that of her husband’s friend, Edwards, both as to person and dress; not that she supposed it could be he. When she left Worcester nearly two days before, Edwards had just arrived. She knew him to be an educated man, of superior manners, and full of anecdote, when he chose, about college life. Like her husband, he had, by recklessness and ill-conduct, sunk lower and lower in the world, until he had to depend on “luck” or “chance” for a living.
Barely had Lucy reached the station, walking slowly, when the train shot in. She took her seat; and, after a short halt the train moved on again. At that moment there strode into the station that self-same man, Edwards, who began shouting furiously for the train to stop, putting up his hands, running and gesticulating. The train declined to stop; trains generally do decline to stop for late passengers, however frantically adjured; and Edwards was left behind. His appearance astonished Lucy considerably. Had he, in truth, been passing himself off as a detective officer to Squire Todhetley? If so, with what motive? Lucy could not see any motive, and still thought it could not be; that Edwards must be over here on some business of his own. The matter passed from her mind as she drew near Worcester, and reached their lodgings, which were down Lowesmoor way.
Experience had taught Lucy not to ask questions. She was either not answered at all, or the answer would be sure to give her trouble. Captain Bird had grown tolerably careless as to whether his hazardous doings reached, or did not reach, the ears of his wife, but he did not willingly tell her of them. She said not a word of having seen Edwards, or of what she had heard about the loss of Mrs. Todhetley’s earring, or of the detective’s visit to Crabb Cot. Lucy’s whole life was one of dread and fear, and she never knew whether any remark of hers might not bear upon some dangerous subject. But while getting the tea, she did just inquire after Edwards.