by Ellen Wood
“That young man must have a rare time of it between the two,” whispered Tod to me. “As good as the ass between the bundles of hay.”
At dusk began the fun of the harvest-home. Mrs. Cramp’s labourers and their wives sat in the large kitchen at an abundant board. Hot beef, mutton and hams crowded it, with vegetables; and of fruit pies and tarts there was a goodly show. Some of us helped to wait on them, and that was the best fun of all.
They had all taken as much as they could possibly eat, and were in the full flow of cider and beer and delight; a young man in a clean white smock-frock was sheepishly indulging the table with a song: “Young Roger of the Valley,” and I was laughing till I had to hold my sides; when Mrs. Cramp touched me on the back. She sat with the Miss Dennets in the little parlour off the kitchen, in full view of the company. I sat on the door-sill between them.
“Johnny,” she whispered, “I don’t see Juliet and Cherry Dawson. Have they been in at all?”
I did not remember to have seen them; or Fred Scott either.
“Just go out and look for the two girls, will you, Johnny. It’s too late for them to be out, though it is a warm night. Tell them I say they are to come in at once,” said Mrs. Cramp.
Not half a stone’s throw from the house I found them — quarrelling. Their noisy voices guided me. A brilliant moon lighted up the scene. The young ladies were taunting one another; Juliet in frantic passion; Cherry in sarcastic mockery. Fred Scott, after trying in vain to throw oil upon the troubled waters, had given it up as hopeless, and stood leaning against a tree in silent patience.
“It’s quite true,” Cherry was saying tauntingly when I got up. “We are engaged. We shall be married shortly. Come!”
“You are not,” raved Juliet, her voice trembling with the intense rage she was in. “He was engaged to me before you came here; he is engaged to me still.”
Cherry laughed out in mockery. “Dear me! old maids do deceive themselves so!”
Very hard, that, and Juliet winced. She was five or six years older than the fairy. How Fred relished the bringing home to him of his sins, I leave you to judge.
“I say, can’t you have done with this, you silly girls?” he cried out meekly.
“In a short time you’ll have our wedding-cards,” went on Cherry. “It’s all arranged. He’s only waiting for me to decide whether it shall take place here or at Gretna Green.”
Juliet dashed round to face Fred Scott. “If this be true; if you do behave in this false way to me, I’ll not survive it,” she said, hardly able to bring the words out in her storm of passion. “Do you hear me? I’ll not live to see it, I say; and my ghost shall haunt her for her whole life after.”
“Come now, easy, Juliet,” pleaded Fred uncomfortably. “It’s all nonsense, you know.”
“I think it is; I think she is saying this to aggravate me,” assented Juliet, subsiding to a sort of calmness. “If not, take you warning, Cherry Dawson, for I’ll keep my word. My apparition shall haunt you for ever and ever.”
“It had better begin to-night, then, for you’ll soon find out that it’s as true as gospel,” retorted Cherry.
Managing at last to get in a word, I delivered Mrs. Cramp’s message: they were to come in instantly. Fred obeyed it with immense relief and ran in before me. The two girls would follow, I concluded, when their jarring had spent itself. The last glimpse I had of them, they were stretching out their faces at each other like a couple of storks. Juliet’s straw hat had fallen from her head and was hanging by its strings round her neck.
“Oh, they’re coming,” spoke up Fred, in answer to Mrs. Cramp. “It’s very nice out there; the moon’s bright as day.”
And presently I heard the laugh of Cherry Dawson amidst us. Her golden hair, her scarlet cheeks and her blue eyes were all sparkling together.
III
It was the next morning. We were at breakfast, answering Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley’s questions about the harvest home, when old Thomas came in, all sad and scared, to tell some news. Juliet Chandler was dead: she had destroyed herself.
Of course the Squire at once attacked Thomas for saying it. But a sick feeling of conviction arose within me that it was true. One of the servants, out of doors on an errand, had heard it from a man in the road. The Squire sat rubbing his face, which had turned hot.
Leaving the breakfast table, I started for Mrs. Cramp’s. Miss Susan Dennet was standing at her gate, her white handkerchief thrown over her head, her pale face limp with fright.
“Johnny,” she called to me, “have you heard? Do you think it can be true?”
“Well, I hope not, Miss Susan. I am now going there to see. What I’m thinking of is this — if it is not true, how can such a report have arisen?”
Tod caught me up, and we found the farm in distress and commotion. It was all true; and poor Mrs. Cramp was almost dumb with dismay. These were the particulars: The previous evening, Juliet did not appear at the late supper, laid in the dining-room for the guests; at least, no one remembered to have seen her. Later, when the guests had left, and Mrs. Cramp was in the kitchen busy with her maids, Cherry Dawson looked in, bed-candle in hand, to say good-night. “I suppose Juliet is going up with you,” remarked Mrs. Cramp. “Oh, Juliet went up ages ago,” said Cherry, in answer.
The night passed quietly. Early in the morning one of the farm men went to the eel-pond to put in a net, and saw some clothes lying on the brink. Rushing indoors, he brought out Sally. She knew the things at once. There lay the white dress and the pink ribbons which Juliet had worn the night before; the straw hat, and a small fleecy handkerchief which she had tied round her neck at sundown. Pinned to the sash and the dress was a piece of paper on which was written in ink, in a large hand — Juliet’s hand:
“I said I would do it; and I will haunt her for evermore.”
Of course she had taken these things off and left them on the bank, with the memorandum pinned to them, to make known that she had flung herself into the pond.
“I can scarcely believe it; it seems so incredible,” sighed poor Mrs. Cramp, to the Squire, who had come bustling in. “Juliet, as I should have thought, was one of the very last girls to do such a thing.”
The next to appear upon the scene, puffing and panting with agitation, was Fred Scott. He asked which of the two girls it was, having heard only a garbled account; and now learned that it was Juliet. As to Cherry Dawson, she was shut up in her bedroom in shrieking hysterics. Men were preparing to drag the pond in search of —— well, what was lying there.
The pond was at the end of the garden, near the fence that divided it from the three-acre field. Nothing had been disturbed. The white frock and pink ribbons were lying with the paper pinned to them; the hat was close by. A yard off was the white woollen handkerchief; and near it I saw the faded bunch of mignonette which Juliet had worn in her waistband. It looked as if she had flung the things off in desperation.
Standing later in the large parlour, listening to comments and opinions, one question troubled me — Ought I to tell what I knew of the quarrel? It might look like treachery towards Scott and the girl upstairs; but, should that poor dead Juliet ——
The doubt was suddenly solved for me.
“What I want to get at is this,” urged the Squire: “did anything happen to drive her to this? One doesn’t throw oneself into an eel-pond for nothing in one’s sober senses.”
“Miss Juliet and Miss Dawson had a quarrel out o’ doors last night,” struck in Joan, for the two servants were assisting at the conference. “Sally heard ‘em.”
“What’s that?” cried Mrs. Cramp. “Speak up.”
“Well, it’s true, ma’am,” said Sally, coming forward. “I went out to shake a tray-cloth, and heard voices at a distance, all in a rage like; so I just stepped on a bit to see what it meant. The two young lasses was snarling at one another like anything. Miss Juliet was — —”
“What were they quarrelling about?” interrupted the Squire.
“Well, sir, it seemed to be about Mr. Scott — which of ’em had him for a sweetheart, and which of ’em hadn’t. Mr. Johnny Ludlow ran up as I came in: perhaps he heard more than I did.”
After that, there was nothing for it but to let the past scene come out; and Mrs. Cramp had the pleasure of being enlightened as to the rivalry which had been going on under her roof and the ill-feeling which had arisen out of it. Fred Scott, to do him justice, spoke up like a man, not denying the flirtation he had carried on, first with Juliet, next with Cherry, but he declared most positively that it had never been serious on any side.
The Squire wheeled round. “Just say what you mean by that, Mr. Frederick. What do you call serious?”
“I never said a word to either of them which could suggest serious intentions, sir. I never hinted at such a thing as getting married.”
“Now look here, young man,” cried Mrs. Cramp, taking her handkerchief from her troubled face, “what right had you to do that? By what right did you play upon those young girls with your silly speeches and your flirting ways, if you meant nothing? — nothing to either of them?”
“I am sorry for it now, ma’am,” said Scott, eating humble pie; “I wouldn’t have done it for the world had I foreseen this. It was just a bit of flirting and nothing else. And neither of them ever thought it was anything else; they knew better; only they became snappish with one another.”
“Did not think you meant marrying?” cried the Squire sarcastically, fixing Scott with his spectacles.
“Just so, sir. Why, how could I mean it?” went on Scott in his simple way. “I’ve no money, while my mother lives, to set up a wife or a house; she wouldn’t let me. I joked and laughed with the two girls, and they joked and laughed back again. I don’t care what they may have said between themselves — they knew there was nothing in it.”
Scott was right, so far. All the world, including the Chandlers and poor Juliet, knew that Scott was no more likely to marry than the man in the moon.
“And you could stand by quietly last night when they were having, it seems, this bitter quarrel, and not stop it?” exclaimed Mrs. Cramp.
“They would not listen to me,” returned Scott. “I went between them; spoke to one, spoke to the other; told them what they were quarrelling about was utter nonsense — and the more I said, the more they wrangled. Johnny Ludlow saw how it was; he came up at the end of it.”
Cherry Dawson was sent for downstairs, and came in between Sally and Joan, limp and tearful and shaking with fright. Mrs. Cramp questioned her.
“It was all done in fun,” she said with a sob. “Juliet and I teased one another. It was as much her fault as mine. Fred Scott needn’t talk. I’m sure I don’t want him. I’ve somebody waiting for me at Edgbaston, if I choose. Scott may go to York!”
“Suppose you mind your manners, young woman: you’ve done enough mischief in my house without forgetting them,” reproved Mrs. Cramp. “I want to know when you last saw Juliet.”
“We came in together after the quarrel. She ran up to her room; I joined the rest of you. As she did not come down to supper, I thought she had gone to bed. O-o-o-o-o!” shivered Cherry; “and she says she’ll haunt me! I shall never dare to be alone in the dark again.”
Mr. Fred Scott took his departure, glad no doubt to do so, carrying with him a hint from Mrs. Cramp that for the present his visits must cease, unless he should be required to give evidence at the inquest. As he went out, Mr. Paul and Tom Chandler came in together. Tom, strong in plain common-sense, could not at all understand it.
“Passion must have overbalanced her reason and driven her mad,” he said aside to me. “The taunts of that Dawson girl did it, I reckon.”
“Blighted love,” said I.
“Moonshine,” answered Tom Chandler. “Juliet, poor girl, had gone in for too many flirtations to care much for Scott. As to that golden-haired one, her life is passed in nothing else: getting out of one love affair into another, month in, month out. Her brother Tim once told her so in my presence. No, Johnny, it is a terrible calamity, but I shall never understand how she came to do it as long as I live.”
I was not sure that I should. Juliet was very practical: not one of your moaning, sighing, die-away sort of girls who lose their brains for love, like crazy Jane. It was a dreadful thing, whatever might have been the cause, and we were all sorry for Mrs. Cramp. Nothing had stirred us like this since the death of Oliver Preen.
Georgiana Chandler came flying over from Birmingham in a state of excitement. Cherry Dawson had gone then, or Georgie might have shaken her to pieces. When put up, Georgie had a temper of her own. Cherry had disappeared into the wilds of Devonshire, where her home was, and where she most devoutly hoped Juliet’s ghost would not find its way.
“It is an awful thing to have taken place in your house, Aunt Mary Ann. And why unhappy, ill-fated Juliet should have — but I can’t talk of it,” broke off Georgie.
“I know that I am ashamed of its having happened here, Georgiana,” assented Mrs. Cramp. “I am not alluding to the sad termination, but to that parcel of nonsense, the sweethearting.”
“Clementina is more heartless than an owl over it,” continued Georgie, making her remarks. “She says it serves Juliet right for her flirting folly, and she hopes Cherry will be haunted till her yellow curls turn grey.”
The more they dragged, the less chance there seemed of finding Juliet. Nothing came up but eels. It was known that the eel-pond had a hole or two in it which no drags could penetrate. Gloom settled down upon us all. Mrs. Cramp’s healthy cheeks lost some of their redness. One day, calling at Crabb Cot, she privately told us that the trouble would lie upon her for ever. The best word Tod gave to it was — that he would go a day’s march with peas in his shoes to see a certain lady hanging by her golden hair on a sour apple tree.
It was a bleak October evening. Jane Preen, in her old shawl and garden hat, was hurrying to Dame Sym’s on an errand for her mother. The cold wind sighed and moaned in the trees, clouds flitted across the face of the crescent moon. It scarcely lighted up the little old church beyond the Triangle, and the graves in the churchyard beneath, Oliver’s amidst them. Jane shivered, and ran into Mrs. Sym’s.
Carrying back her parcel, she turned in at the garden gate and stood leaning over it for a few moments. Tears were coursing down her cheeks. Life for a long time had seemed very hard to Jane; no hope anywhere.
The sound of quick footsteps broke upon her ear, and a gentleman came into view. She rather wondered who it was; whether anyone was coming to call on her father.
“Jane! Jane!”
With a faint cry, she fell into the arms opened to receive her — those of Valentine Chandler. He went away, a ne’er-do-well, three years ago, shattered in health, shaken in spirit; he had returned a healthy, hearty man, all his parts about him.
Yes, Valentine had turned over a new leaf from the moment he touched the Canadian shores. He had put his shoulder to the wheel in earnest, had persevered and prospered. And now he had a profitable farm of his own, and a pretty house upon it, all in readiness for Jane.
“We have heard from time to time that you were doing well,” she said, with a sob of joy. “Oh, Valentine, how good it is! To have done it all yourself!”
“Not altogether myself, Jane,” he answered. “I did my best, and God sent His blessing upon it.”
Jane no longer felt the night cold, the wind bleak, or remembered that her mother was waiting for the parcel. They paced the old wilderness of a garden, arm locked within arm. There was something in the windy night to put them in mind of that other night: the night of their parting, when Valentine had sung his song of farewell, and bade her remember him though rolling ocean placed its bounds between them. They had been faithful to one another.
Seated on the bench, under the walnut tree, the very spot on which poor Oliver had sat after that rush home from his fatal visit to Mr. Paul’s office at Islip, Jane ventured to say a word about Juliet, and, to her surprise, found
that Valentine knew nothing.
“I have not heard any news yet, Jane,” he said. “I came straight to you from the station. Presently I shall go back to astonish Aunt Mary Ann. Why? What about Juliet?”
Jane enlightened him by degrees, giving him one particular after another. Valentine listening in silence to the end.
“I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t believe it!” exclaimed Jane.
“Not a syllable of it.”
“But what do you mean? What don’t you believe?”
“That Juliet threw herself into the pond. My dear, she is not the kind of girl to do it; she’d no more do such a thing than I should.”
“Oh, Val! It is true the drags brought up nothing but eels; but — —”
“Of course they didn’t. There’s nothing but eels there to bring up.”
“Then where can Juliet be? — what is the mystery?” dissented Jane. “What became of her?”
“That I don’t know. Rely upon it, Janey, she is not there. She’d never jump into that cold pond. How long ago is this?”
“Nearly a month. Three weeks last Thursday.”
“Ah,” said Valentine. “Well, I’ll see if I can get to the bottom of it.”
Showing himself indoors to Mr. and Mrs. Preen for a few minutes, Valentine then made his way to Mrs. Cramp’s, where he would stay. He knew his mother was away, and her house shut up. Mrs. Cramp, recovering from her surprise, told him he was welcome as the sun in harvest. She had been more grieved when Valentine went wrong than the world suspected.