Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “What, is the dog off?” exclaimed old Jones.

  “Yes, he is,” said Tod. “And if those poachers have stolen him, I’ll try and get them hanged.”

  Leaving us to our commotion, Katrine Barbary passed on to the nursery with Lena, where the lessons were taken. This straying away of Don made one of the small calamities of the day. Giles, put to the torture of confession, admitted that he remembered unchaining Don the past night as usual, but could not remember whether or not he locked the gate. Of course the probability was that he left it wide open, Mack having found it so in the morning. So that Mr. Don, finding himself at liberty, might have gone out promenading as early in the night as he pleased. Giles was ready to hang himself with vexation. The dog was a valuable animal; a prize for any tramp or poacher, for he could be sold at a high price.

  We turned out on our different quests; old Jones after the poachers, I and Tod after Don: and the morning wore on.

  Katrine went home at midday. This news of the night encounter between the keepers and the poachers had thrown her into a state of anxious pain — though of course the reader fully understands that I am, so far, writing of what I knew nothing about until later. That her father and Edgar Reste had been the poachers of the past night she could not doubt, and a dread of the discovery which might ensue lay upon her with a sick fear. The Standishes might have been included in the party; more than likely they were; Ben Gibbon also. Mr. Jim Standish had contrived to let Katrine believe that they were all birds of a feather, tarred with the same brush. But how could Edgar Reste have allowed himself to be drawn into it even for one night? She could not understand that.

  Entering Caramel Cottage by its side gate, Katrine found Joan seated in the kitchen, slicing kidney beans for dinner. Her father was in his favourite den, the gun-room, Mr. Reste was out. When she left in the morning, neither of them had quitted his respective chamber, an entirely unusual thing.

  “How late you are with those beans, Joan!” listlessly observed Katrine.

  “The master sent me to the Silver Bear for a bottle of the best brandy, and it hindered me,” explained Joan. “They were having a fine noise together when I got back,” she added, dropping her voice.

  “Who were?” quickly cried Katrine.

  “The master and Mr. Reste. Talking sharply at one another, they were, like two savages. I could hear ’em through my deafness. Ben Gibbon was here when I went out, but he’d gone when I came in with the brandy.”

  What with one thing and another, Katrine felt more uncomfortable than an oyster out of its shell. Mr. Reste came in at dinner-time, and she saw nothing amiss then, except that he and her father were both unusually silent.

  Afterwards they went out together, and Katrine hoped that the unpleasantness between them was at an end.

  She was standing at the front gate late in the afternoon, looking up and down the solitary road, which was no better than a wide field path, when Tod and I shot out of the dark grove by Caramel’s Farm, and made up to her.

  “You look hot and tired,” she said to us.

  “So would you, Miss Barbary, if you had been scouring the fields in search of Don, as we have,” answered Tod, who was in a desperate mood.

  At that moment Mr. Barbary came swinging round the corner of the short lane that led to the high-road, his guest following him. They nodded to us and went in at the gate.

  “You do not happen to have seen anything of our Newfoundland dog to-day, I suppose, Mr. Barbary?” questioned Tod.

  “No, I have not,” he answered. “My daughter mentioned to me that he had strayed away.”

  “Strayed away or been stolen,” corrected Tod. “The dog was a favourite, and it has put my father out more than you’d believe. He thinks the Standishes may have got him: especially if it is they who were out in the night.”

  “Shouldn’t wonder but they have,” said Mr. Barbary.

  Standing by in silence, I had been wondering what had come to Mr. Reste. He leaned against the porch, listening to this, arms folded, brow lowering, face dark, not a bit like his own pleasant self.

  “I am about the neighbourhood a good deal; I’ll not fail to keep a look-out,” said Mr. Barbary, as we were turning away. “He was a fine dog, and might prove a temptation to the Standishes; but I should be inclined to think it more likely that he has strayed to a distance than that they have captured him. They might find a difficulty in concealing a large, powerful dog such as he is.”

  “Not they; they are deep enough for any wicked action,” concluded Tod, as we went onwards.

  It was tea-time then at Caramel Cottage, and they sat down to take it. Mr. Barbary was sociable and talked of this and that; Edgar Reste spoke hardly a word; Katrine busied herself with the teapot and cups. At dusk Ben Gibbon came in, and Katrine was sent to bear Joan company in the kitchen. Brandy and whisky were put upon the table, Joan being called to bring in hot and cold water. They sat drinking, as Katrine supposed, and talking together in covert tones for two hours, when Gibbon left; upon which Katrine was graciously told by her father she might return to the parlour. Her head ached badly, she felt ill at ease, and when supper was over went up to bed. But she could not get to sleep.

  About eleven o’clock, as she judged it to be, loud and angry sounds arose. Her father and Mr. Reste had renewed their dispute — whatever its cause might be. By-and-by, when it was at its height, she heard Mr. Reste dash out at the back door; she heard her father dash after him. In the yard there seemed to be a scuffle, more hot words, and then a sudden silence. Katrine rose and stole to the window to look.

  She could not see either of them. But a noise in the kitchen beneath, as if the fire-irons were thrown down, seemed to say they had come back indoors. Another minute and her father came out with a lighted lantern in his hand; she wondered why, as it was moonlight. He crossed the yard and went into the back kitchen, or brewhouse, as it was more often called, and Katrine, hoping the quarrel was over, got into bed again. Presently the back door was shut with a bang that shook the room, and footsteps were heard ascending the stairs, and afterwards all was quiet until morning.

  As on the past morning, so it was on this. When Katrine got downstairs she found that neither her father nor Mr. Reste was up. She breakfasted alone, and set off for the Manor afterwards.

  But, as it chanced, she was to have partial holiday that day. Lena complained of a sore throat; she was subject to sore throats; so Miss Barbary was released when the lesson was half over, and returned home.

  Going to her room to take her bonnet off, she found Joan busy there. From the window she saw her father at work at the far end of the garden. This was Thursday, the day of the projected walk to Church Leet, and very lovely weather. But Mr. Reste had not said anything about it since the Tuesday afternoon.

  “Is Mr. Reste gone out, Joan?”

  “Mr. Reste is gone, Miss Katrine.”

  “Gone where?” asked she.

  “Gone away; gone back to London,” said Joan. Upon which Katrine, staring at the old woman, inquired what she meant.

  It appeared that Mr. Barbary had left his chamber close upon Katrine’s departure, and sat down to breakfast. When he had finished he called Joan to take the things away. She inquired whether they had not better be left for Mr. Reste. He answered that Mr. Reste was gone. “What, gone away back to London?” Joan cried, in surprise; and her master said, “Yes.” “You might just have knocked me down with a feather, Miss Katrine, I was that took to,” added Joan now, in relating this. “Never to say good-bye to me, nor anything!”

  Katrine, thinking there was somebody else he had not said good-bye to, could hardly speak from amazement. “When did he go, Joan? Since breakfast? Or was he gone when I went out?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” pondered Joan; “it seems all a moither in my head; as if I couldn’t put this and that together. I never saw nor heard anything of him at all this morning, and I find his bed has not been slept in, which looks as if he went last night. It’s odd, too
, that he didn’t say he was going, and it’s odd he should start off to London at midnight. Your papa is in one of his short tempers, Miss Katrine, and I’ve not dared to ask him about it.”

  Katrine, as she listened, felt perfectly bewildered. Why had he taken his departure in this strange manner? What for? What had caused him to do it? Joan had told all she knew, and it was of no use questioning her further.

  Mr. Reste’s chamber door stood open; Katrine halted at it and looked in. Why! he seemed to have taken nothing with him! His coats were hanging up; trifles belonging to him lay about on chairs; on the side shelf stood his little portable desk — and she had heard him say that he never travelled without that desk, it went with him wherever he went. Opening a drawer or two, she saw his linen, his neckties, his handkerchiefs. What was the meaning of it all? Could he have been recalled to London in some desperate hurry? But no letter or summons of any kind had come to Caramel Cottage, so far as she knew, except the letter from Captain Amphlett on Tuesday morning, and that one had not recalled him.

  “There be two pairs of his boots in the kitchen,” said Joan. “He has took none with him but them he’s got on.”

  “I must ask papa about it,” cried the puzzled Katrine.

  Mr. Barbary was at the bottom of the garden working away at the celery bed in his shirt sleeves; his coat lay across the cucumber-frame.

  “What brings you home now?” he cried out, looking up as Katrine drew near.

  “The little girl is not well. Papa,” she added, her voice taking a timid, shrinking tone, she hardly knew why, “Joan says Mr. Reste is gone.”

  “Well?”

  “But why has he left so suddenly, without saying anything about it?”

  “He could do so if he pleased. He was at liberty to go or stay.”

  Katrine could not dispute that. She hardly liked to say more, her father’s answers were so curt and cross.

  “He must have gone unexpectedly, papa.”

  “Unexpectedly! Not at all. He has been talking of going all the week.”

  Katrine paused. “Is he coming back, papa?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “But he has not taken any of his things.”

  “I am going to pack his things and send them after him.”

  “But —— when did he go, papa?”

  Mr. Barbary, who had kept on working, drew himself bolt upright. Letting his hands rest on the handle of his spade, he looked sternly into Katrine’s face.

  “He went last night.”

  “He —— he never told me he was going. He never said anything about it.”

  “And why should he tell you?” demanded Mr. Barbary. “It was enough that he told me. He thought he had been quite long enough away from his work, and that it was high time to go back to it. I thought the same. That’s all, Katrine; you need not inquire further. And now you can go indoors.”

  She walked slowly up the narrow path, conscious that some mystery must lie behind this. Joan was standing in the yard, outside the back-kitchen door, trying to pull it open.

  “This here back’us door’s locked!” exclaimed Joan, in her country vernacular. “I want the spare jack out; t’other’s given way at last.”

  “It can’t be locked,” dissented Katrine. “It never is.”

  “Well, I’ve never known the door locked afore; but ’tis now, Miss Katrine. I noticed it was shut to all day yesterday, but I didn’t try it.”

  “It is only stuck,” said Katrine, laying hold of the high old-fashioned bow handle which served to lift the latch inside; and she shook it well.

  “What’s that? What are you about?” called out Mr. Barbary, dashing up the path like a flash of lightning. “Let the door alone.”

  “Joan says it is locked, papa,” said Katrine, frightened by his manner.

  “And what if it is? I have locked up some — some wine there that came in. How dare you meddle with the places I choose to keep closed?”

  “It’s the other jack I want out, sir,” said Joan, hearing imperfectly.

  “You can’t have the other jack.”

  “But, master, the old jack’s broke clean in two, and it’s time to put the lamb down.”

  “Cut it into chops,” he cried, waving them both off, and standing, himself, before the door, as if to guard it, with a white, imperious, passionate face.

  Single-minded old Joan went indoors, marvelling a little — such a bit of a trouble for him to have opened the back’us door and given her out the jack! Katrine followed, marvelling very much. She did not believe in the wine: felt sure no wine had come in; they never had any; what was it that was locked up there? All in a moment a thought flashed over her that it might be game: poached game: pheasants and partridges and hares. But, upon that thought came another: why should the spoil have been brought in on Tuesday night when it had never (as she believed) been brought before? Just a little came in for their own use, nothing more.

  II

  That day, Thursday, we had news of Don. And we had it in this way. Tobias Jellico — who had a small draper’s shop at Evesham, and went about the country with a pack, out of which he seduced unwary ladies to buy finery, more particularly some of our ladies living in Piefinch Cut — was at Church Dykely to-day on one of his periodical visitations. We did not like the man or his trade; but that’s neither here nor there. Hearing that the Squire’s dog was lost, he at once said he had seen Dick Standish that morning in Bengeworth (a portion of Evesham) with a large Newfoundland dog. White-and-brown, he called it; which was a mistake, for Don was white and black; but Jellico might not know colours. It was Mr. Duffham who brought us this news in the afternoon: he had been sent for to Lena, whose throat was getting worse. Duffham heard it from Perkins the butcher, to whom Jellico told it.

  I don’t know which item pleased the Squire most: that Don was found, or that the guilt of Tuesday night was traced home to the Standishes; for the three brothers had in general a certain gentleman’s own luck, and were rarely caught.

  “Don went out roaming, through that villain Giles unloosing him and leaving the yard gate open,” decided the Squire, in his excitement. “The dog must have sprung upon them; he has a mortal enmity to tramps and poachers, you know, Duffham; and the Standishes captured him. I’ll send a message to the police at Evesham at once, to look after Mr. Dick, and go over myself in the morning.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad the dog’s found,” said Duffham. “But what an idiot Dick Standish must be to allow himself to be seen with the dog in the public streets.”

  “Johnny,” said the Squire, turning to me as he was leaving the room to send a man galloping on horseback to the Evesham police, “you run over to Caramel Cottage. Make my compliments to young Reste; say that I am going to drive to Evesham to-morrow morning, and shall be happy to take him if he likes to accompany me. I offered to drive him over some day before he left, but this bother has caused me to delay it. Shall start at nine o’clock, tell him.”

  About the time the Squire was charging me with this message, Katrine Barbary was sitting in the homely garden at Caramel Cottage, amidst the fruit trees, the vegetables, and the late flowers. The October sunlight fell on her pretty face, that somehow put you in mind of a peach with its softest bloom upon it.

  Katrine was striving to see daylight out of a mass of perplexity, of which I then knew nothing, and she could not discern a single ray. Why should that fine young barrister, Edgar Reste, staying with them so peacefully for several weeks past, and fully intending to stay this week out — why should he have run away by night, leaving behind him an atmosphere of mystery? This question would never leave Katrine’s mind by night or by day.

  Sitting there in the afternoon sun, she was running over mentally, for the tenth time or so, the details of the affair. One or two of them might have looked somewhat shady to a suspicious observer; to Katrine they presented only a web of perplexity. She felt sure that when she went to bed on the Wednesday night he had no thought of leaving; and yet it s
eemed that he did leave. When Joan rose in the early morning, he had disappeared — vanished, as may be said. The puzzle that Katrine could not solve was this: why had he gone away in haste so great that he could not take his clothes with him? and why had he gone at all in an unexpected, stealthy way, saying nothing to anybody?

  “It looks just as though he had run away to escape some imminent danger, with not a minute to spare,” mused Katrine.

  At this moment Katrine met with an interruption to her thoughts in the shape of me. Catching a glimpse of her print frock through the hedge, I went straight in at the little side gate, without troubling the front door.

  “Sit down, Johnny,” she said, holding out her hand, and making room for me on the bench. And as I took the seat, I said what I had come for — to deliver the Squire’s message to Mr. Reste.

  “Mr. Reste has left us,” said Katrine. “He went away last night.”

  “Went away last night!” I exclaimed, the news surprising me uncommonly. “What took him off so suddenly?”

  Open-natured as the day, Katrine told me the particulars (which proved that she had no dark fears about it as yet), of course saying nothing about the poaching. And she did mention the quarrel.

  “It is so strange that he should leave all his things behind him — don’t you see that, Johnny?” she said. “Even that little desk, full of private papers, is left, and he never travels without it; his boots are left.”

  “He must have had some news to call him away. A letter perhaps.”

  “The only letter he has had lately came on Tuesday morning,” returned Katrine. “It had a good deal of money in it in bank-notes; sixty pounds; but it did not call him away. Nothing called him away, that I can discover. You can’t think how it is worrying me; it seems just a mystery.”

  “Look here, Katrine,” I said, after mentally twisting the matter this way and that, “I’ve known the most unaccountable problems turn out to be the simplest on explanation. When you hear from him, as you most likely will in a day or two, I dare say he will tell you he was called away unexpectedly, and had to go at once. Does not Mr. Barbary know why he went?”