dinner."
"And it will soon be half-an-hour after it," returned old Coney. "If he
does not make haste, we shall sit down without him."
The clock on the mantelpiece went ticking on, and struck half-past six.
Dinner. The Squire led off the van with Mrs. Coney. Tod laid hold of
Jane.
"I'll take Robert's place whilst I can, Jenny."
The oak-room was a surprise. It looked beautiful. The dark walls were
quite covered with holly and ivy, mixed with the blossoms of laurustinus
and some bright flowers. Old Thomas (borrowed from us) and the maids
stood by the sideboard, which glittered with silver. The Coneys had
their stores as well as other people, and did things well when they
did them at all. On the table was a large codfish, garnished with
horse-radish and lemon. Our names were before our places, and we took
them without bustle, Robert Ashton's, next to Jane, being left vacant.
"For what----"
A faint shriek interrupted the Reverend Mr. Ashton, and the grace was
interrupted. Lifting his head towards the quarter whence the shriek
came, he saw his sister-in-law with a scared face.
"We are thirteen!" exclaimed Mrs. James Ashton. "I beg your pardon,
Charles--I beg everybody's pardon; but indeed we must not sit down
thirteen to dinner on New Year's Day. I would not for any money."
"What nonsense, my dear!" cried her husband, rather crossly. "Robert
will be here directly."
It was of no use. The ladies took her part, saying they ought not to sit
down. And there we all stood, uncertain what to do, the dinner hovering
in mid-air like Mahomet's coffin, and not to be eaten.
"There are two days in the year when it is not well to sit down
thirteen: New Year's Day and Christmas Day," said Mrs. Todhetley, and
the rest held with her.
"Are we all to go back to the drawing-room, and leave our dinner?"
demanded old Coney, in wrath. "Where the plague _is_ Robert? Look here:
those that won't sit down thirteen can go, and those that don't mind it
can stop."
"Hear, hear!" cried the Squire.
But Jane Coney went gliding to her mother's side. "I will wait for
Robert in the drawing-room, mamma, and you can sit down twelve. Yes,
please; it is best so. Indeed I could not eat anything if I stayed."
"Shall we send you some dinner in, child?" asked Mr. Coney.
"No, thank you, papa. I should like best to take it with Robert when he
comes."
"All right," said old Coney. "Johnny, you go over to that side, to make
the table even. We'll have the grace now, parson."
And the parson said it.
It was a dinner that pleased the Squire's heart. He had a mortal
objection to what he called kickshaws, meaning the superfluous dishes
you find at a modern entertainment. The Coneys never had kickshaws, only
a plain, substantial dinner, the best of its kind.
"Coney, I never taste such oyster-sauce as yours, go where I will,"
cried the Squire. "It can't be matched."
Old Coney winked, as much as to say he knew it. "The missis gives an eye
to that, you see, Squire," he answered, in a side whisper. "She had been
in the kitchen till you came."
The Squire took another ladleful. He went once or twice to every dish,
and drank champagne with all of us. But still Robert Ashton did not
come.
I slipped round to Mrs. Coney when the plum-pudding appeared, whispering
that I would take a slice to Jane.
"So you shall, Johnny," she said, giving me some on a plate, and putting
a mince-pie beside it. "She will have no luck unless she eats a little
of both pudding and pie on the first day of the year."
Jane sat in a low elbow-chair before the fire, her head leaning on her
hand, her hair a little tumbled. It was very pretty hair, dark chestnut,
and her eyes were hazel. Robert Ashton was fair-haired and blue-eyed;
Saxon all over, and very good-looking.
"I have brought you some pudding, Jane."
"Oh, Johnny! why did you leave the table? I can't eat it."
"But Mrs. Coney says you are to; and some mince-pie also, or you'll have
no luck."
As if in obedience she ate a little of the pudding, cut a quarter of the
mince-pie with her fork, and ate that.
"There, Johnny, that's quite enough for 'luck.' Go back now to your
dinner; I dare say you've not had any pudding yourself."
"I'll stay with you, and finish this: as it is going begging."
She neither said yes nor no. She was looking frightfully uneasy.
"Are you vexed that Robert Ashton's not here, Jane?"
"I am not vexed, because I know he would have been here if he could. I
think something has happened to him."
I stared at her. "What! because he is a little late in coming? Why,
Jane, you must be nervous."
She kept looking into the fire, her eyes fixed. I sat on a stool on the
other side of the hearth; the empty pudding-plate standing on the rug
between us, where I had put it.
"Robert was _sure_ to come for this dinner, Johnny, all being well, and
to be in time."
"Tell me what you fear, Jane--and why?"
"I think I will tell you," she said, after a pause. "I should like to
tell some one. I wish I had told Robert when he called this morning; but
I was afraid he would laugh at me. You will laugh too."
And Jane Coney told it. In a low, dread voice, her eyes staring into the
fire as before, just as though they could see through the blaze into the
future.
Early that morning she had had a dream; a disagreeable, ugly dream about
Robert Ashton. She thought he was in some frightful peril, that she
cried to him to avoid it, or it would stop their marriage. He seemed not
to take the least notice of her, but to go right on to it, and in the
alarm this brought her, she awoke. I listened in silence, saying nothing
to the end; no, nor then.
"The dream was so intensely _real_, Johnny. It seemed to be to-day; this
very day then dawning; and we both of us knew that it was; the one
before our marriage. I woke up in a fever; and but that it was night and
not day, should have had difficulty in persuading myself at first that
we were not really enacting the scene--it was, as I say, so vividly
real. And Robert went out to the peril, never heeding me."
"What was the peril?"
"That's what I can't tell. A consciousness lay upon me that it was
something very bad and frightful; but of its nature I saw nothing. I
did not go to sleep again: it must have been about six o'clock, but
the mornings are very dark, you know. I got up soon: what with this
dinner-party and other things, there has been a great deal to do to-day,
and I soon forgot my dream. Robert called after breakfast, and the sight
of him put me in mind of it. I felt a great inclination to tell him to
take especial care of himself; but he would only have laughed at me. He
drove away direct to the Timberdale Station, to take the train for
Worcester."
She did not say, though, what he had gone for to Worcester. To get the
ring and licence.
"I have not felt the smallest fear of the dream all along, Johnny, since
I awoke. Excepting for the few minutes Robert was here, I don't remember
even to have thought of it. But when his brothers and Mr. West came in
without him to-night, it flashed into my mind like a dart. I felt sure
then that something had happened. I dare say we shall never be married
now."
"Jane!"
"Well, Johnny Ludlow, I think it."
To me it seemed to be growing serious. There might be nothing at all in
what she had said; most people would have said there was nothing; but,
sitting there in the quiet room listening to her earnest voice, seeing
her anxious face, a feeling came over me that there _was_. What had
become of Robert Ashton? Where could he be?
"I wish you would give me that shawl of mamma's," she said, pointing to
one on a chair. "I feel cold."
She was shivering when I put it over her pretty white shoulders and
arms. And yet the fire was roaring to the very top of the grate.
"Alone here, while you were at dinner, I went over all sorts of
probabilities," she resumed, drawing the shawl round her as if she were
out in the snow. "Of course there are five hundred things that might
happen to him, but I can only think of one."
"Well?" for she had stopped. She seemed to be speaking very unwillingly.
"If he walked he would be almost sure to take the near way, across the
Ravine."
Was she ever coming to the point? I said nothing. It was better to let
her go on in her own way.
"I dare say you will say the idea is far-fetched, Johnny. What I think
is, that he may have fallen down the Ravine, in coming here."
Well, I did think it far-fetched. I'd as soon have expected her to say
fallen down the chimney.
"Those zigzag paths are not very safe in good weather, especially the
one on the Timberdale side," she went on. "With the snow on them,
perhaps ice, they are positively dangerous. One false step at the
top--and the fall might kill him."
Put in this way, it seemed feasible enough. But yet--somehow I did not
take to it.
"Robert Ashton is strong and agile, Jane. He has come down the zigzag
hundreds of times."
"I seem to see him lying there, at the bottom of the Ravine," she said,
staring as before into the fire. "I--wish--some of you would go and look
for him."
"Perhaps we had better. I'll make one. Who's this?"
It was Tom Coney. His mother had sent him to see after me. I thought I'd
tell him--keeping counsel about the dream--that Robert Ashton might have
come to grief in the Ravine.
"What kind of grief?" asked Tom.
"Turned a summersault down the zigzag, and be lying with a leg broken."
Tom's laugh displayed his small white teeth: the notion amused him
excessively. "What else would you like to suppose, Johnny?"
"At any rate, Jane thinks so."
She turned round then, the tears in her eyes, and went up to Tom in an
outburst of grief. It took him aback.
"Tom! Tom! if no one goes to see after him, I think I must go myself. I
cannot bear the suspense much longer!"
"Why, Jenny girl, what has taken you?"
_That_ had taken her. The fear that Robert Ashton might be lying
disabled, or dead, in the Ravine. Tom Coney called Tod quietly out of
the dining-room, and we started. Putting on our dark great-coats in
silence, we went out at the back-door, which was nearest the Ravine.
Jane came with us to the gate. I never saw eyes so eager as hers were,
as she gazed across the snow in the moonlight.
"Look here," said Tom, "we had better turn our trousers up."
The expedition was not pleasant, I can assure you, especially the going
down the zigzag. Jane was right about its being slippery: we had to hold
on by the trees and bushes, and tread cautiously. When pretty near the
bottom, Tod made a false step, and shot down into the snow.
"Murder!" he roared out.
"Any bones broken?" asked Tom Coney, who could hardly speak for
laughing. Tod growled, and shied a handful of snow at him.
But the slip brought home to us the probability of the fear about Robert
Ashton. To slip from where Tod did was fun; to slip from the top of the
opposite zigzag, quite another thing. The snow here at the bottom was up
to our calves, and our black evening trousers got rolled up higher. The
moonlight lay cold and white on the Ravine: the clustering trees, thick
in summer, were leafless now. Had any fellow been gazing down from the
top, we must have looked, to him, like three black-coated undertakers,
gliding along to a funeral.
"I'll tell you what," cried Tod: "if Ashton did lose his footing, he
wouldn't come to such mortal grief. The depth of snow would save him."
"I don't believe he did fall," said Tom Coney, stoutly. "Bob Ashton's as
sure-footed as a hare. But for Jane's being so miserable, I'd have said,
flatly, I wouldn't come out on any such wild-goose errand."
On we went, wading through the snow. Some of us looked round for the
ghost's light, and did not see it. But rumour said that it never came on
a bright moonlit night. Here we were at last!--at the foot of the other
zigzag. But Robert Ashton wasn't here. And, the best proof that he had
_not_ fallen, was the unbroken surface of the snow. Not so much as a
rabbit had scudded across to disturb it.
"I knew it," said Tom Coney. "He has not come to grief at all. It
stands to reason that a fellow must have heaps to do the day before his
wedding, if it's only in burning his old letters from other sweethearts.
Bob had a heap of them, no doubt; and couldn't get away in time for
dinner."
"We had better go on to the Court, and see," I said.
"Oh, that be hanged!" cried the other two in a breath.
"Well, I shall. It's not much farther. You can go back, or not, as you
like."
_This_ zigzag, though steeper than the one on our side, was not so
slippery. Perhaps the sun had shone on it in the day and melted the
snow. I went up it nearly as easily as in good weather. Tod and Coney,
thinking better of the turning back, came after me.
We should have been at Timberdale Court in five minutes, taking the
short-cut over hedges and ditches, but for an adventure by the way,
which I have not just here space to tell about. It had nothing to do
with Robert Ashton. Getting to the Court, we hammered at it till the
door was opened. The servant started back in surprise.
"Goodness me!" said she, "I thought it was master."
"Where is the master?" asked Tom.
"Not come home, sir. He has not been in since he left this morning."
It was all out. Instead of pitchpolling into Crabb Ravine and breaking
his limbs, Bob Ashton had not got back from Worcester. It was very
strange, though, what could be keeping him, and the Court was nearly in
a commotion over it.
When we got back to the Farm, they were laying the table for the
wedding-breakfast. Plenty of kickshaws now, and some lovely flowers. The
ladies, helping, had their gowns turned up. This helping had not been in
the evening's programme; but things seemed to have been turned upside
down, and they were glad to seize upon it. Jane and her sister, Mrs.
West, sat alone by the drawing-room fire, never saying a word to one
another.
"Johnny, I don't half like this," whispered Mrs. Todhetley to me.
"Like what, good mother?"
"This absence of Robert Ashton."
I don't know that I liked it either.
* * * * *
Morning came. In an uncertainty such as this, people go to each other's
houses indiscriminately. The first train came in from Worcester before
it was well light; but it did not bring Robert Ashton. As to the snow on
the ground, it was pretty well beaten now.
"He wouldn't travel by that slow parliamentary thing: he'll come by the
express to South Crabb Junction," said Tom Coney, thinking he would
cheer away the general disappointment. Jane we had not seen.
The express would be at the Junction between nine and ten. A whole lot
of us went down there. It was not farther off than Timberdale Station,
but the opposite way. I don't think one of us was more eager than
another, unless it was the Squire. The thing was getting serious, he
told us; and he went puffing about like a man looking for his head.
To witness the way he seized upon the doors when the express steamed in,
and put his old red nose inside all the carriages, looking for Robert
Ashton, was a rare sight. The guard laid hold of his arm, saying he'd
come to damage. But Robert Ashton was not in the train.
"He may come yet," said old Coney, looking fit to cry. "There'll be a
train in again at Timberdale. Or, he may drive over."
But every one felt that he would _not_ come. Something told us so. It
was only making believe to one another, saying he would.
"I shall go to Worcester by the next down train," said the Squire to old
Coney.
"The next does not stop here."
"They'd better stop it for me," said the Squire, defiantly. "You can't
come, Coney. You must remain to give Jane away."
"But if there's no bridegroom to give her to?" debated old Coney.
"There may be. You must remain on the strength of it."
The down train came up, and obeyed the signal to stop made by the
station-master. The Squire, Tod, and Tom Coney got in, and it steamed on
again.
"Now mind, I shall conduct this search," the Squire said to the others
with a frown. "You young fellows don't know your right hand from your
left in a business of this sort. We must go about it systematically, and
find out the different places that Robert Ashton went to yesterday, and
the people he saw." Tod and Tom Coney told us this later.
When they arrived at Worcester, the first man they saw at Shrubb Hill
Station was Harry Coles, who had been seeing somebody off by the
train, which was rather curious; for his brother, Fred Coles, was
Robert Ashton's great chum, and was to be groom's-man at the wedding.
Harry Coles said his brother had met Ashton by appointment the
previous day, and went with him to the Registrar's office for the
marriage licence--which was supplied to them by Mr. Clifton himself.
After that, they went to the jeweller's, and chose the wedding-ring.
"Well, what after that?" cried the impatient Squire.
Harry Coles did not know what. His brother had come back to their office
early in the afternoon--about one o'clock--saying Ashton was going, or
had gone, home.
"Can't you tell which he said--going, or gone?" demanded the Squire,
getting red.
"No, I can't," said Harry Coles. "I was busy with some estimates, and
did not pay particular attention to him."
"Then you ought to have paid it, sir," retorted the Squire. "Your
brother?--where is he?"
"Gone over to Timberdale ages ago. He started the first thing this
morning, Squire; a big coat thrown over his wedding toggery."
The Squire growled, as a relief to his feelings, not knowing what in the
world to do. He suddenly said he'd go to the Registrar's office, and
started for Edgar Street.
Mr. Clifton was not there, but a clerk was. Yes, Mr. Ashton of
Timberdale had been there the previous day, he said, in answer to the
Squire, and had got his licence. The governor (meaning Mr. Clifton, who
knew the Ashtons and the Coneys well) had joked a bit with young Ashton,
when he gave it. As to telling where Ashton of Timberdale and Mr. Coles
had gone to afterwards, the clerk did not know at all.
So there was nothing to be gathered at the Registrar's office, and the
Squire turned his steps up the town again, Tod and Coney following him
like two tame lambs; for he wouldn't let them make a suggestion or put
in a word edgeways. He was on his way to the jeweller's now: but as he
had omitted to ask Harry Coles which of the jewellers' shops the ring
was bought at, he took them all in succession, and hit upon the right
one after some difficulty.
He learnt nothing there, either. Mr. Ashton of Timberdale had bought the
ring and keeper, and paid for them, the master said. Of course every one
knew the young lady was Miss Jane Coney: he had brought one of her rings
as a guide for size: a chased gold ring, with small garnet stones in it.
"I am not asking for rings and stones," interrupted the Squire,
wrathfully. "I want to know if Mr. Ashton said where he was going to
afterwards?"
"He said never a word about it," returned the master. "When they went
out of here--young Fred Coles was with him--they took the way towards
the Hop Market."
The Squire went to the Crown next--the inn used by the Ashtons of
Timberdale. Robert Ashton had called in the previous day, about one
o'clock, the waiter said, taking a little bread-and-cheese, observing
that he had no time for anything else, and a glass of table-beer. Mr.
Coles had come down Broad Street with him, as far as the inn door, when
they shook hands and parted; Mr. Coles going back again. The waiter
thought Mr. Ashton was not in the house above five minutes at the most.
"And don't you know where he went to next?" urged the Squire.
"No," the waiter replied. The impression on his mind was, that Mr.
Ashton's business in Worcester was over, and that he was returning home
again.
The Squire moved slowly up Broad Street, more gloomy than an owl, his
hands in his pockets, his nose blue. He boasted of his systematic
abilities, as applied to seekings and searchings, but he knew no more
what to be at next than the man in the moon. Turning up the Cross, he
came to an anchor outside the linen-draper's shop; propping his back
against the window, as if the hanging silks had offended him. There he
stood staring up at St. Nicholas's clock opposite.
"Tom," said he, virtually giving in, "I think we had better talk to the
police. Here's one coming along now."
When the policeman was abreast, the Squire took his hands from his
pockets, and pinned the man by his button-hole.
"Mr. Ashton of Timberdale?--oh, he has got into trouble, sir," was the
man's ready answer. "He is before the magistrates now, on a charge
of----"
The railway omnibus, coming along at the moment, partially drowned the
word.
"Charge of _what_?" roared the Squire.
The policeman repeated it. The omnibus was making a frightful rattle,
and the Squire only just caught it now. With a great cry he dashed over
to the fly-stand, got into one, and ordered it to gallop away with him.
Tom Coney and Tod barely escaped having to hang on behind.
"Drive like mad!" stamped the Squire.
"Yes, sir," said the man, obeying. "Where to?"
"Go on, will you, sir! To the deuce."
"To the police-court," corrected Tom Coney.
Arrived there, the Squire left them to pay the fare, and fought his
way inside. The first thing his spectacles caught sight of distinctly
was the fair Saxon face and fine form of Robert Ashton, standing, a
prisoner, in the criminal dock.
* * * * *
At the Farm, things were in a state more easily imagined than described.
The carriages came bowling up, bringing the guests. The four bridesmaids
wore pale-blue silk, trimmed with white fur. Jane was dressed. In
passing her door, I saw her. They had sent me up to fetch something from
Tom's room.
"Is it not a mockery, Johnny?" she said, letting me enter. And her poor
pale face looked more fit for a burying than a wedding, and her eyes had
dark circles round them.
"If you mean your dress, Jane, I never saw anything less like a mockery,
or more like a princess's in a fairy tale."
It was of rich white silk; a delicate wreath of myrtle and
orange-blossoms on her chestnut hair. The veil lay upon the bed.
"You know what I mean, Johnny. There will be no wedding at North Crabb
Church to-day--and nothing can have been more foolish than to prepare me
for it. Oh, Johnny! if I could only go to sleep till ten years hence,
and never wake up between!"
Before the gate waited the carriages, their postillions in scarlet
jackets; the company, in their fine plumage, jostled each other in the
nooks and corners of the house; the maids, wearing a bright uniform
of purple gowns and white muslin aprons, ran about wildly. Every two
minutes, old Coney went up to a staircase window that faced Timberdale,
looking out to see whether Robert Ashton was coming--like Sister Anne,
in "Bluebeard."
Twelve o'clock! It was like a knell booming out; and the carriages went
away with the company. A fine ending to a wedding!
I was standing at the back-door, disconsolate as the moaning wind, when
the Timberdale Station fly came rattling along. A gentleman put his head
out of it, to tell the driver to stop. He got down, and came limping
up to me. It was Mr. West's partner, old Lawyer Cockermuth, who had
declined an invitation to the wedding, because of gout.
"Look here," said he, catching me by the shoulder, "I want to say
half-a-dozen words to Mr. Coney. Can you manage to bring him out to me,
or smuggle me into any little place where we can be alone? I suppose the
house is chock-full of wedding-people."
"You have brought bad news of Robert Ashton!" I said, in sudden
conviction. "What is it?"
"Well, so I _have_," he answered confidentially. "It will soon be known
to every one, but I should like to break it to Coney first. I've come
over to do it. Robert Ashton is in custody for murder!"
I felt my face turn as pale as a girl's. "For _murder_?"
Old Cockermuth's face grew long as he nodded. "He is in custody for
nothing less than the murder of his brother-in-law, Bird. Yesterday----"
A smothered cry behind us, and I turned sharply. There stood Jane. She
had seen Cockermuth's arrival, and came down, knowing he must have
brought bad news. The white robe and wreath were gone, and she wore an
everyday dress of violet merino.
"Now, my dear! my dear, be calm!" cried the old lawyer, in a fright.
"For goodness' sake shut us in somewhere, Johnny Ludlow! We shall have
the whole pack out upon us."
Some of the pack did come, before he could be shut up. And there we
were--hearing that Robert Ashton had been taken up for murder.