by Ellen Wood
“Have you found Kettie?” was his next question.
“It is the first time a search of mine ever failed,” she replied, beginning to pace the little room in agitation, just as a tiger paces its confined cage. “I have given myself neither rest nor peace since I set out upon it; but it has not brought me tidings of my child.”
“It must have been a weary task for you, Ketira. I wish you would break bread with me.”
“I was helped.”
“Helped!” repeated Abel. “Helped by what?”
“I know not yet, whether angel or devil. It has been one or the other: — according as he has, or has not, played me false.”
“As who has played you false?”
“Of whom do you suppose I speak but him?” she retorted, standing to confront Abel with her deep eyes. “Hyde Stockhausen has in some subtle manner evaded me: but I shall find him yet.”
“Hyde Stockhausen is back here,” quietly observed Abel.
“Back here! Then it is no false instinct that has led me here,” she added in a low tone, apparently communing with herself. “Is Ketira with him?”
“No, no,” said Abel, vexed at the question. “Kettie has never come back to the place since she left it.”
“When did he come?”
“It must be about two months ago.”
“He is in the same dwelling-house as before! For what is he making it so grand?”
“It is said to be against his marriage.”
“His marriage with Ketira?”
“With a Miss Peyton; some young lady he has met. Why do you bring up Ketira’s name in conjunction with this matter — or with him?”
She turned to the open casement, and stood there, as if to inhale the sweet scent of Abel’s flowers, and listen to the hum of his bees. Her face was working, her strange eyes were gleaming, her hands were clasped to pain.
“I know what I know, Abel Carew. Let him look to it if he brings home any other wife than my Ketira.”
“Nay,” remonstrated peaceful old Abel. “Because a young man has whispered pretty words in a maiden’s ear, and given her, it may be, a moonlight kiss, that does not bind him to marry her.”
“And would I have wished to bind him had it ended there?” flashed the gipsy. “No; I should have been thankful that it had so ended. I hated him from the first.”
“You have no proof that it did not so end, Ketira.”
“No proof; none,” she assented. “No tangible proof that I could give to you, her father’s brother, or to others. But the proof lies in the fatal signs that show themselves to me continually, and in the unerring instinct of my own heart. If the man puts another into the place that ought to be hers, let him look to it.”
“You may be mistaken, Ketira. I know not what the signs you speak of can be: they may show themselves to you but to mislead; and nothing is more deceptive than the fancies of one’s imagination. Be it as it may, vengeance does not belong to us. Do not you put yourself forward to work young Stockhausen ill.”
“I work him ill!” retorted the gipsy. “You are mistaking me altogether. It is not I who shall work it. I only see it — and foretell it.”
“Nay, why speak so strangely, Ketira? It cannot be that you — —”
“Abel Carew, talk not to me of matters that you do not understand,” she interrupted. “I know what I know. Things that I am able to see are hidden from you.”
He shook his head. “It is wrong to speak so of Hyde Stockhausen — or of any one. He may be as innocent in the matter as you or I.”
“But I tell you that he is not. And the conviction of it lies here” — striking herself fiercely on the breast.
Abel sighed, and began to put his dinner-plates together. He could not make any impression upon her, or on the notion she had taken up.
“Do you know what it is to have a breaking heart, Abel Carew?” she asked, her voice taking a softer tone that seemed to change it into a piteous wailing. “A broken heart one can bear; for all struggle is over, and one has but to put one’s head down on the green earth and die. But a breaking heart means continuous suffering; a perpetual torture that slowly saps away the life; a never-ending ache of soul and of spirit, than which nothing in this world can be so hard to battle with. And for twelve months now this anguish has been mine!”
Poor Ketira! Mistaken or not mistaken, there could be no question that her trouble was grievous to bear; the suspense, in which her days were passed, well-nigh unendurable.
This, that I have told, occurred on Thursday morning. Ketira quitted Abel Carew only to bend her steps back towards Virginia Cottage, and stayed hovering around the house that day and the next. One or another, passing, saw her watching it perpetually, herself partly hidden. Now peeping out from the little coppice; now tramping quickly past the gate, as though she were starting off on a three-mile walk; now stealing to the back of the house, to gaze at the windows. There she might be seen, in one place or another, like a haunting red dragon: her object, as was supposed, being to get speech of Hyde Stockhausen. She did not succeed. Twice she went boldly to the door, knocked, and asked for him. Deborah Preen slammed it in her face. It was thought that Hyde, who then knew of her return and that the report of her death was false, must be on the watch also, to avoid her. If he wanted to go abroad and she was posted at the back, he slipped out in front: when he wished to get in again and caught sight of her red cloak illumining the coppice, he made a dash in at the back-gate, and was lost amid the kidney beans.
By this time the state of affairs was known to Church Dykely: a rare dish of nuts for the quiet place to crack. Those of us who possessed liberty made pleas for passing by Virginia Cottage to see the fun. Not that there was much to see, except a glimpse of the red cloak in this odd spot or in that.
“Stockhausen must be silly!” cried the Squire. “Why does he not openly see the poor woman and inquire what it is she wants with him? The idea of his shunning her in this absurd way! What does he mean by it, I wonder?”
Now, before telling more, I wish to halt and say a word. That much ridicule will be cast on this story by the intelligent reader, is as sure as that apples grow in summer. Nevertheless, I am but relating what took place. Certain things in it were curiously strange; not at all explainable hitherto: possibly never to be explained. I chanced to be personally mixed up with it, so to say, in a degree; from its beginning, when Ketira and her daughter first appeared at Abel Carew’s, to its ending, which has yet to be told. For that much I can vouch — I mean what I was present at. But you need not accord belief to the whole, unless you like.
Chance, and nothing else, caused me to be sent over this same evening to Mr. Duffham’s. It was Friday, you understand; and the eve of the day Hyde Stockhausen would depart preparatory to his marriage. One of our maids had been ailing for some days with what was thought to be a bad cold: as she did not get better, but grew more feverish, Mrs. Todhetley decided to send for the doctor, if only as a measure of precaution.
“You can go over to Mr. Duffham’s for me, Johnny,” she said, as we got up from tea — which meal was generally taken at the manor close upon dinner, somewhat after the fashion that the French take their tasse de café. “Ask him if he will be so kind as to call in to see Ann when he is out to-morrow morning.”
Nothing loth was I. The evening was glorious, tempting the world out-of-doors, calm and beautiful, but very hot yet. The direct way to Duffham’s from our house was not by Virginia Cottage: but, as a matter of course, I took it. Going along at tip-top speed until I came within sight of it, I then slackened to a snail’s pace, the better to take observations.
There’s an old saying, that virtue is its own reward. If any virtue existed in my choosing this circuitous and agreeable route, I can only say that for once the promise was at fault, for I was not rewarded. Were Hyde Stockhausen’s house a prison, it could not have been much more closely shut up. The windows were closed on that lovely midsummer night; the doors looked tight as wax. Not a glimp
se could I catch of as much as the bow of Deborah Preen’s mob-cap atop of the short bedroom blinds; and Hyde might have been over in Africa for all that could be seen of him.
Neither (for a wonder) was there any trace of Ketira the gipsy. Her red cloak was nowhere. Had she obtained speech of Hyde, and so terminated her watch, or had she given it up in despair? Any way, there was nothing to reward me for having come that much out of my road, and I went on, whistling dolorously.
But, hardly had I got past the premises and was well on the field-path beyond, when I met Duffham. Giving him the message from home, which he said he would attend to, I enlarged on the disappointment just experienced in seeing nothing of anybody.
“Shut up like a jail, is it?” quoth Duffham. “I have just had a note from Stockhausen, asking me to call there. His throat’s troubling him again, he says: wants me to give him something that will cure him by to-morrow.”
I had turned with the doctor, and went walking with him up the garden, listening to what he said. But I meant to leave him when we reached the door. He began trying it. It was fastened inside.
“I dare say you can come in and see Hyde, Johnny. What do you want with him?”
“Not much; only to wish him good luck.”
“Is your master afraid of thieves that he bolts his doors?” cried Duffham to old Preen when she let us in.
“’Twas me fastened it, sir; not master,” was her reply. “That gipsy wretch have been about yesterday and to-day, wanting to get in. I’ve got my silver about, and don’t want it stolen. Mr. Hyde’s mother and Massock have been here to dinner; they’ve not long gone.”
Decanters and fruit stood on the table before Hyde. He started up to shake hands, appearing very much elated. Duffham, more experienced than I, saw that he had been taking quite enough wine.
“So you have had your stepfather here!” was one of the doctor’s first remarks. “Been making up the quarrel, I suppose.”
“He came of his own accord; I didn’t invite him,” said Hyde, laughing. “My mother wrote me word that they were coming — to give me their good wishes for the future.”
“Just what Johnny Ludlow here says he wants to give,” said Duffham: though I didn’t see that he need have brought my words up, and made a fellow feel shy.
“Then, by Jove, you shall drink them in champagne!” exclaimed Hyde. He caught up a bottle of champagne that stood under the sideboard, from which the wire had been removed, and would have cut the string but for the restraining hand of Duffham.
“No, Hyde; you have had rather too much as it is.”
“I swear to you that I have not had a spoonful. It has not been opened, you see. My mother refused it, and Massock does not care for champagne: he likes something heavier.”
“If you have not taken champagne, you have taken other wine.”
“Sherry at dinner, and port since,” laughed Hyde.
“And more of it than is good for you.”
“When Massock sits down to port wine he drinks like a fish,” returned Hyde, still laughing. “Of course I had to make a show of drinking with him. I wished the port at Hanover.”
By a dexterous movement, he caught up a knife and cut the string. Out shot the cork with a bang, and he filled three of the tumblers that stood on the sideboard with wine and froth — one for each of us. “Your health, doctor,” nodded he, and tossed off his own.
“It will not do your throat good,” said Duffham, angrily. “Let me look at the throat.”
“Not until you and Johnny have wished me luck.”
We did it, and drank the wine. Duffham examined the throat; and told Hyde, for his consolation, that it was not in a state to be trifled with.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Hyde carelessly. “But I don’t want it to be bad to-morrow when I travel, and I thought perhaps you might be able to give me something or other to set it to rights to-night. I start at ten to-morrow morning.”
“Sore throats are not cured so easily,” retorted Duffham. “You must have taken cold.”
Telling him he would send in a gargle and a cooling draught, and that he was to go to bed soon, Duffham rose to leave. Hyde opened the glass-doors of the room that we might pass out that way, and stepped over the threshold with us. Talking with Duffham, he strolled onwards towards the gate.
“About three weeks, I suppose,” he said, in answer to the query of how long he meant to be away. “If Mabel — —”
Gliding out of the bushy laurels on one side the path, and planting herself right in front of us, came Ketira the gipsy. Her face looked yellower than ever in the twilight of the summer’s evening; her piercing black eyes fiercer. Hyde was taken aback by the unexpected encounter. He started a step back.
“Where’s my daughter, Hyde Stockhausen?”
“Go away,” he said, in the contemptuous tone one might use to a dog. “I don’t know anything of your daughter.”
“Only tell me where she is, that I may find her. I ask no more.”
“I tell you that I do not know anything of her. You must be mad to think it. Get along with you!”
“Hyde Stockhausen, you lie. You do know where she is; you know that it is with you she has been. Heaven hears me say it: deny it if you dare.”
His face looked whiter than death. Just for an instant he seemed unable to speak. Ketira changed her tone to one of plaintive wailing.
“She was my one little ewe lamb. What had she or I done to you that you should come as a spoiler to the fold? I prayed you not. Make her your wife, and I will yet bless you. It is not too late. Do not break her heart and mine.”
Hyde had had time to rally his courage. A man full of wine can generally call some up, even in the most embarrassing of situations. He scornfully asked the gipsy whether she had come out of Bedlam. Ketira saw how hard he was — that there was no hope.
“It is said that you depart to-morrow to bring home a bride, Hyde Stockhausen. I counsel you not to do it. For your own sake, and for the young woman’s sake, I bid you beware. The marriage will not bring good to you or to her.”
That put Hyde in a towering passion. His words came out with a splutter as he spurned her from him.
“Cease your folly, you senseless old beldame! Do you dare to threaten me? Take yourself out of my sight instantly, before I fetch my horsewhip. And, if ever you attempt to molest me again, I will have you sent to the treadmill.”
Ketira stood looking at him while he spoke, never moving an inch. As his voice died away she lifted her forefinger in warning. And anything more impressive than her voice, than her whole manner — anything more startlingly defiant than her countenance, I never wish to see.
“It is well; I go. But listen to me, Hyde Stockhausen; mark what I say. Only three times shall you see me again in life. But each one of those times you shall have cause to remember; and after the last of them you will not need to see me more.”
It was a strange threat. That she made it, Duffham could, to this day, corroborate. Pulling her red cloak about her shoulders, she went swiftly through the gate, and disappeared within the opposite coppice.
Hyde smiled; his good humour was returning to him. One can be brave enough when an enemy turns tail.
“Idiotic old Egyptian!” he exclaimed lightly. “What on earth ever made her take the fancy into her head, that I knew what became of Kettie, I can’t imagine. I wonder, Duffham, some of you people in authority here don’t get her confined as a lunatic!”
“We must first of all find that she is a lunatic,” was Duffham’s dry rejoinder.
“Why, what else is she?”
“Not that.”
“She is; and a dangerous one,” retorted Hyde.
“Nonsense, man! Gipsies have queer ways and notions; and — and — are not to be judged altogether as other people,” added the doctor, finishing off (as it struck me) with different words from those he had been about to say. “Good-night; and don’t take any more of that champagne.”
Hyde returned indoors, and w
e walked away, not seeing a sign of the red cloak anywhere.
“I must say I should not like to be attacked in this manner, were I Hyde,” I remarked to Duffham. “How obstinate the old gipsy is!”
“Ah,” replied Duffham. “I’d sooner believe her than him.”
The words surprised me, and I turned to him quickly. “Why do you say that, sir?”
“Because I do say it, Johnny,” was the unsatisfactory answer. “And now good-evening to you, lad, for I must send the physic in.”
“Just a word, please, Mr. Duffham. Do you know where that poor Kettie is? — and did you know that Hyde Stockhausen stole her?”
“No, to both your questions, Johnny Ludlow.”
Everybody liked Hyde’s wife. A fragile girl with a weak voice, who looked as if a strong wind would blow her away. Duffham feared she was not strong enough to make old days.
Virginia Cottage flourished. Parson Hyde had died and left all his fortune to Hyde: who had now nothing to do but take care of his wife and his money, and enjoy life. Before the next summer came round, Hyde had a son and heir. A fine little shaver, with blue eyes like Hyde’s, and good lungs. His mother was a long while getting about again: and then she looked like a shadow, and had a short, hacking kind of cough. Hyde wore a grave face at times, and would say he wished Mabel could get strong.
But Hyde was regarded with less favour than formerly. People did not scruple to call him “villain.” And one Sunday, when Mr. Holland told us in his sermon that man’s heart was deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, the congregation wondered whether he meant it especially for Stockhausen. For the truth had come out.
When Hyde departed to keep his marriage engagement, Ketira the gipsy had again disappeared from Church Dykely. In less than a month afterwards, Abel Carew received a letter from her. She had found Kettie: and she had found that her own instincts against Hyde Stockhausen were not mistaken ones. For all his seeming fair face and his indignant denials, it was he who had been the thief.