playing at amateur detectiveship would have ended there, but for
the accident of Lucy's having to come downstairs again for the small
travelling-bag in which she had carried her combs and brushes. She had
put it just inside the little back parlour, where a bed on chairs had
been extemporized for Edwards, their lodgings not being very extensive.
Lucy was picking up the bag in the dark, when some words in the
sitting-room caught her ear; the door between the two rooms being partly
open. Before a minute elapsed she had heard too much. Edwards, in
a loud, gleeful, boasting tone, was telling how he had been acting
the detective, and done the old Squire and his wife out of the other
earring. Lucy, looking in through the opening, saw him holding it up;
she saw the colours of the long pink topaz, and the diamonds flash in
the candle-light.
"I thought I could relieve them of it," he said. "When I read that
advertisement in the paper, it struck me there might be a field open to
do a little stroke of business; and I've done it."
"You are a fool for your pains," growled Captain Bird. "There's sure to
be a row."
"The row won't touch me. I'm off to London to-morrow morning, and the
earring with me. I wonder what the thing will turn us in? Twenty pounds.
There, put it in the box, Bird, and get out the dice."
The dice on a Sunday night!
Lucy felt quite sick as she went back upstairs. What would be the end of
all this? Not of this one transaction in particular, but of all the
other disgraceful transactions with which her husband was connected? It
might come to some public exposure, some criminal trial at the Bar of
Justice; and of that she had a horrible dread ever haunting her like a
nightmare.
She undressed, and went to bed. One hour passed, two hours passed, three
hours passed. Lucy turned and turned on her uneasy pillow, feeling ready
to die. Besides her own anguish arising from _their_ share in it, she
was dwelling on the shameful wrong it did their kind friends at Crabb
Cot.
The fourth hour was passing. Captain Bird had not come up, and Lucy grew
uneasy on that score. Once, when he had taken too much (but as a general
rule the ex-captain's delinquencies did not lie in that direction), he
had set his shirt-sleeve on fire, and burnt his hands badly in putting
it out. Slipping out of bed, Lucy put on her slippers and the large old
shawl, and crept down to see after him.
Opening the sitting-room door very softly, she looked in. The candles
were alight still, but had burnt nearly down to the socket; the dice and
some cards were scattered on the table.
Edwards lay at full length on the old red stuff sofa; Captain Bird had
thrown himself outside the bed in the other room, the door of which was
now wide open, neither of them having undressed. That both were wholly
or partially intoxicated, Lucy felt not a doubt of.
Well, she could only leave them as they were. They would come to no harm
asleep. Neither would the candles: which must soon burn themselves out.
Lucy was about to shut the door again, when her eye fell on the little
pasteboard box that contained the earring.
Without a moment's reflection, acting on the spur of impulse, she softly
stepped to the table, lifted the lid, and took the earring out.
"I will remedy the wrong they have done Mrs. Todhetley," she said to
herself. "They will never suspect me."
Up in her room again, she lighted her candle and looked about for some
place to conceal the earring; and, just as the idea to secure it had
come unbidden to her, so did that of a safe place of concealment. With
feverish hands she undid a bit of the quilting of her petticoat, one
that she had but just made for herself out of an old merino gown,
slipped the earring into the wadding, and sewed it up again. It could
neither be seen nor suspected there; no, nor even felt, let the skirt be
examined as it might. That done, poor Lucy went to bed again and at
length fell asleep.
She was awakened by a commotion. It was broad daylight, and her husband
(not yet as sober as he might be) was shaking her by the arm. Edwards
was standing outside the door, calling out to know whether Mrs. Bird had
"got it."
"What is the matter, George?" she cried, starting up in a fright, and
for the moment completely forgetting where she was, for she had been
aroused from a vivid dream of Timberdale.
"Have you been bringing anything up here from the sitting-room, Lucy?"
asked Captain Bird.
"No, nothing," she replied promptly, and he saw that she spoke with
truth. For Lucy's recollection had not come to her; she remembered
nothing yet about the earring.
"There's something missing," said Captain Bird, speaking thickly.
"It has disappeared mysteriously off the sitting-room table. You are
sure you have not been down and collared it, Lucy?"
The earring and the theft--her own theft--flashed into her memory
together. Oh, if she could only avert suspicion from herself! And she
strove to call up no end of surprise in her voice.
"Why, how could I have been down, George? Did you not see that I was
fast asleep? What have you missed? Some money?"
"Money, no. It was--something of Edwards's. Had it close by him on the
table when he went to sleep, he says--he lay on the sofa last night, and
I had his bed--and this morning it was gone. I thought the house was on
fire by the way he came and shook me."
"I'll look for it when I come down, if you tell me what it is," said
poor Lucy. "How late I have slept! It must have been the cold journey."
"She has not got it," said Captain Bird, retreating to his friend
outside, and closing the door on Lucy. "Knows nothing about it. Was
asleep till I awoke her."
"Search the room, you fool," cried the excited Edwards. "I'd never trust
the word of a woman. No offence to your wife, Bird, but it is _not_ to
be trusted."
"Rubbish!" said Captain Bird.
"Either she or you must have got it. It could not disappear without
hands. The people down below have not been to our rooms, as you must
know."
"She or I--what do you mean by that?" retorted Captain Bird; and a short
sharp quarrel ensued. That the captain had not touched the earring,
Edwards knew full well. It was Edwards who had helped him to reach the
bed the previous night: and since then Bird had been in the deep sleep
of stupor. But Edwards did think the captain's wife had. The result was
that Captain Bird re-entered; and, ordering Lucy to lie still, he made
as exact a search of the room as his semi-sobered faculties allowed.
Lucy watched it from her bed. Amidst the general hunting and
turning-over of drawers and places, she saw him pick up her gown and
petticoats one by one and shake them thoroughly, but he found no signs
of the earring.
From that time to this the affair had remained a mystery. There had been
no one in the house that night, except the proprietor and his wife, two
quiet old people who never concerned themselves with their lodgers. They
protested that the street-door had been fast, and that no midnight
marauder could have broken in and slipped upstairs to steal a pearl
brooch (as Edwards put it) or any other article. So, failing other
sources of suspicion, Edwards continued to suspect Lucy. There were
moments when Bird did also: though he trusted her, in regard to it,
on the whole. At any rate, Lucy was obliged to be most cautious. The
quilted skirt had never been off her since, except at night: through
the warm genial days of spring and the sultry heat of summer she had
worn the clumsy wadded thing constantly: and the earring had never been
disturbed until this afternoon.
"You see how it is, Johnny," she said to me, with one of her long-drawn
sighs.
But at that moment the grocer's young man in the white apron came back
down the walk, swinging his empty basket by the handle; and he took
another good stare at us in passing.
"I mean as to the peril I should be in if you suffer the restoration of
the earring to transpire," she continued in a whisper, when he was at a
safe distance. "Oh, Johnny Ludlow! do you and Mrs. Todhetley take care,
for my poor sake."
"Lucy, you need not doubt either of us," I said earnestly. "We will be,
as you phrased it to-day, true as steel--and as cautious. Are you going
back? Let me walk up to the top with you."
"No, no; we part here. Seeing us together might arouse some suspicion,
and there is no absolute certainty that they may not come out, though I
don't think they will. Edwards is for ever thinking of that earring: he
does not feel safe about it, you perceive. Go you that way: I go this.
Farewell, Johnny Ludlow; farewell."
"Good-night, Lucy. I am off to the circus now."
She went with a brisk step up the walk. I ran out by St. Oswald's, and
so on to the Saracen's Head. The place was crammed. I could not get near
Tod and Harry Parker; but they whistled at me across the sawdust and the
fancy steeds performing on it.
* * * * *
We sat together in Mrs. Todhetley's bedroom at Dyke Manor, the door
bolted against intruders: she, in her astonishment at the tale I told,
hardly daring to touch the earring. It was Saturday morning; we had come
home from Worcester the previous evening; and should now be off to
school in an hour. Tod had gone strolling out with the Squire; which
gave me my opportunity.
"You see, good mother, how it all is, and the risk we run. Do you
know, I had half a mind to keep the earring myself for some months and
say never a word to you; only I was not sure of pitching on a safe
hiding-place. It would be so dreadful a thing for Lucy Bird if it were
to get known."
"Poor Lucy, poor Lucy!" she said, the tears on her light eyelashes. "Oh,
Johnny, if she could only be induced to leave that man!"
"But she can't, you know. Robert Ashton has tried over and over again to
get her back to the Court--and tried in vain. See how it glitters!"
I was holding the earring so that the rays of the sun fell upon it,
flashing and sparkling. It seemed more beautiful than it used to be.
"I am very, very glad to have it back, Johnny; the other was useless
without it. You have not," with a tone of apprehension in her voice,
"told Joseph?"
I shook my head. The truth was, I had never longed to tell anything so
much in my life; for what did I ever conceal from him? It was hard work,
I can assure you. The earring burning a hole in my pocket, and I not
able to show Tod that it was there!
"And now, mother, where will you put it?"
She rose to unlock a drawer, took from it a small blue box in the shape
of a trunk, and unlocked that.
"It is in this that I keep all my little valuables, Johnny. It will be
quite safe here. By-and-by we must invent some mode of 'recovering the
earring,' as poor Lucy said."
Lifting the lid of a little pasteboard box, she showed me the
fellow-earring, lying in a nest of cotton. I took it out.
"Put them both into your ears for a minute, good mother! Do!"
She smiled, hesitated; then took out the plain rings that were in her
ears, and put in those of the beautiful pink topaz and diamonds. Going
to the glass to look at herself, she saw the Squire and Tod advancing in
the distance. It sent us into a panic. Scuffling the earrings out of her
ears, she laid them together on the wool in the cardboard box, put the
lid on, and folded it round with white paper.
"Light one of the candles on my dressing-table, Johnny. We will seal it
up for greater security: there's a bit of red sealing-wax in the tray."
And I did so at her direction: stamping it with the seal that had been
my father's, and which with his watch they had only recently allowed me
to take into wearing.
"There," she said, "should any one by chance see that packet, though it
is not likely, and be curious to know what it contains, I shall say that
I cannot satisfy them, as it concerns Johnny Ludlow."
"Are you upstairs, Johnny? What in the world are you doing there?"
I went leaping down at Tod's call. All was safe now.
That's how the other earring came back. And "Eccles" had to be let off
scot free. But I was glad he had the ducking.
XIV.
ANNE.[2]
[2] This paper, "Anne," ought to have been inserted before some
of the papers which have preceded it, as the events it treats
of took place at an earlier date.
+Part the first.+
"Why, what's the matter with _you_?" cried the Squire.
"Matter enough," responded old Coney, who had come hobbling into our
house, and sat down with a groan. "If you had the gout in your great
toe, Squire, as I have it in mine, you'd soon feel what the matter was."
"You have been grunting over that gout for days past, Coney!"
"So I have. It won't go in and it won't come out; it stops there on
purpose to torment me with perpetual twinges. I have been over to
Timberdale Parsonage this morning, and the walk has pretty nigh done for
me."
The Squire laughed. We often did laugh at Coney's gout: which never
seemed to be very bad, or to get beyond incipient "twinges."
"Better have stayed at home and nursed your gout than have pranced off
to Timberdale."
"But I had to go," said the farmer. "Jacob Lewis sent for me."
Mr. Coney spoke of Parson Lewis, Rector of Timberdale. At this time the
parson was on his last legs, going fast to his rest. His mother and old
Coney's mother had been first cousins, which accounted for the intimacy
between the parsonage and the farm. It was Eastertide, and we were
spending it at Crabb Cot.
"Do you remember Thomas Lewis, the doctor?" asked old Coney.
"Remember him! ay, that I do," was the Squire's answer. "What of him?"
"He has been writing to the parson to take a house for him; he and his
daughter are coming to live in old England again. Poor Lewis can't look
out for one himself, so he has put it upon me. And much I can get about,
with this lame foot!"
"A house at Timberdale?"
"Either in the neighbourhood of Timberdale or Crabb, Dr. Lewis writes:
or he wouldn't mind Islip. I saw his letter. Jacob says there's nothing
vacant at Timberdale at all likely to suit. We have been thinking of
that little place over here, that the people have just gone out of."
"What little place?"
"Maythorn Bank. 'Twould be quite large enough."
"And it's very pretty," added the Squire. "Thomas Lewis coming back!
Wonders will never cease. How he could reconcile himself to staying away
all his life, I can't tell. Johnny lad, he will like to see you. He and
your father were as thick as inkle weavers."
"Ay! Ludlow was a good friend to him while he was doing nothing," nodded
old Coney. "As to his staying away, I expect he could not afford to live
in England. He has had a legacy left him now, he tells the parson. What
are you asking, Johnny?"
"Did I ever know Dr Lewis?"
"Not you, lad. Thomas Lewis went abroad ages before you were born, or
thought of. Five-and-twenty years he must have been away."
"More than that," said the Squire.
This Thomas Lewis was half-brother to the Rector of Timberdale, but was
not related to the Coneys. He served his time, when a boy, to a surgeon
at Worcester. In those days young men were apprenticed to doctors just
as they were to other trades. Young Lewis was steady and clever; but so
weak in health that when he was qualified and ought to have set up on
his own account, he could not. People were wondering what would become
of him, for he had no money, when by one of those good chances that
rarely fail in time of need, he obtained a post as travelling companion
to a nobleman, rich and sickly, who was going to reside in the warmth
of the south of France. They went. It brought up Thomas Lewis's health
well; made quite another man of him; and when, a little later, his
patron died, he found that he had taken care of his future. He had left
the young surgeon a competency of two hundred a-year. Mr. Lewis stayed
on where he was, married a lady who had some small means, took a foreign
medical degree to become Dr. Lewis, and obtained a little practice
amidst the English that went to the place in winter. They had been
obliged to live frugally, though an income of from two to three hundred
a-year goes a great deal farther over the water than it does in England:
and perhaps the lack of means to travel had kept Dr. Lewis from visiting
his native land. Very little had been known of him at home; the letters
interchanged by him and the parson were few and far between. Now, it
appeared, the doctor had again dropped into a legacy of a few hundred
pounds, and was coming back with his daughter--an only child. The wife
was dead.
Maythorn Bank, the pretty little place spoken of by Mr. Coney, was
taken. It belonged to Sir Robert Tenby. A small, red-brick house,
standing in a flower-garden, with a delightful view from its windows
of the charming Worcestershire scenery and the Malvern Hills in the
distance. Excepting old Coney's great rambling farm-homestead close by,
it was the nearest house to our own. But the inside, when it came to be
looked at, was found to be in a state of dilapidation, not at all fit
for a gentleman's habitation. Sir Robert Tenby was applied to, and he
gave directions that it should be put in order.
Before this was completed, the Rector of Timberdale died. He had been
suffering from ailments and sorrow for a long while; and in the sweet
spring season, the season that he had loved above all other seasons,
when the May birds were singing and the May flowers were blooming, he
crossed the river that divides us from the eternal shores.
Mr. Coney had to see to the new house then upon his own responsibility;
and when it was finished and the workmen were gone out of it, he went
over to Worcester, following Dr. Lewis's request, and ordered in a
sufficiency of plain furniture. By the middle of June all was ready, a
maid-servant engaged, and the doctor and his daughter were at liberty to
come when they pleased.
We had just got home for the Midsummer holidays when they arrived.
Old Coney took me to the station to meet them; he said there might be
parcels to carry. Once, a French lady had come on a visit to the farm,
and she brought with her fifteen small hand-packages and a bandbox.
"And these people are French, too, you see, Johnny," reasoned old Coney.
"Lewis can't be called anything better, and the girl was born there.
Can't even speak English, perhaps. I'm sure he has had time to forget
his native tongue."
But they spoke English just as readily and fluently as we did; even the
young lady, Anne, had not the slightest foreign accent. And there were
no small packages; nothing but three huge trunks and a sort of large
reticule, which she carried herself, and would not give up to me. I
liked her looks the moment I saw her. You know I always take likes or
dislikes. A rather tall girl, light and graceful, with a candid face, a
true and sweet voice, and large, soft brown eyes that met mine frankly
and fearlessly.
But the doctor! He was like a shadow. A tall man, with stooping
shoulders, handsome, thin features, hollow cheeks, and scanty hair. But
every look and movement bespoke the gentleman; every tone of his low
voice was full of considerate courtesy.
"What a poor weak fellow!" lamented old Coney aside to me. "It's just
the Thomas Lewis of the years gone by; no health, no stamina. I'm afraid
he has only come home to die."
They liked the house, and liked everything in it; and he thanked old
Coney very earnestly for the trouble he had taken. I never saw a man,
as I learnt later, so considerate for the feelings of others, or so
grateful for any little service rendered to himself.
"It is delightful," said Miss Lewis, smiling at me. "I shall call it
our little château. And those hills in the distance are the beautiful
Malvern Hills that my father has so often told me of!"
"How well you speak English!" I said. "Just as we do."
"Do you suppose I could do otherwise, when my father and my mother were
English? It is in truth my native tongue. I think I know England better
than France. I have always heard so much of it."
"But you speak French as a native?"
"Oh, of course. German also."
"Ah, I see you are an accomplished young lady, Miss Lewis."
"I am just the opposite," she said, with a laugh. "I never learnt
accomplishments. I do not play; I do not sing; I do not draw; I do
not--but yes, I do dance: every one dances in France. Ours was not a
rich home, and my dear mother brought me up to be useful in it. I can
make my own dresses; I can cook you an omelette, or----"
"Anne, this is Mr. Todhetley," interrupted her father.
The Squire had come in through the open glass doors, round which the
jessamine was blooming. When they had talked a bit, he took me up to
Dr. Lewis.
"Has Coney told you who he is? William Ludlow's son. You remember
_him_?"
"Remember William Ludlow! I must forget myself before I could forget
him," was the doctor's answer, as he took both my hands in his and held
me before him to look into my eyes. The tears were rising in his own.
"A pleasant face to look at," he was pleased to say. "But they did not
name him William?"
"No. We call him Johnny."
"One generation passes away and another rises up in its place. How few,
how few of those I knew are now left to welcome me! Even poor Jacob has
not stayed."
Tears seemed to be the fashion just then. I turned away, when released,
and saw them in Miss Lewis's eyes as she stood against the window-sill,
absently playing with the white jessamine.
"When they begin to speak of those who are gone, it always puts me in
mind of mamma," she said in a whisper, as if she would apologize for the
tears. "I can't help it."
"Is it long since you lost her?"
"Nearly two years; and home has not been the same to papa since. I do
my best; but I am not my mother. I think it was that which made papa
resolve to come to England when he found he could afford it. Home is but
triste, you see, when the dearest one it contained has gone out of it."
It struck me that the house could not have had one dearer in it than
Anne. She was years and years older than I, but I began to wish she was
my sister.
And her manners to the servant were so nice--a homely country girl,
named Sally, engaged by Mr. Coney. Miss Lewis told the girl that she
hoped she would be happy in her new place, and that she would help her
when there was much work to do. Altogether Anne Lewis was a perfect
contrast to the fashionable damsels of that day, who could not make
themselves appear too fine.
The next day was Sunday. We had just finished breakfast, and Mrs.
Todhetley was nursing her toothache, when Dr. Lewis came in, looking
more shadowy than ever in his black Sunday clothes, with the deep band
on his hat. They were going to service at Timberdale, and he wanted me
to go with them.
"Of course I have not forgotten the way to Timberdale," said he; "but
there's an odd, shy feeling upon me of not liking to walk about the old
place by myself. Anne is strange to it also. We shall soon get used to
it, I dare say. Will you go, Johnny?"
"Yes, sir."
"Crabb Church is close by, Lewis," remarked the Squire, "and it's a
steaming hot day."
"But I must go to Timberdale this morning. It was poor Jacob's church,
you know for many years. And though he is no longer there, I should like
to see the desk and pulpit which he filled."
"Ay, to be sure," readily acquiesced the Squire. "I'd go with you
myself, Lewis, but for the heat."
Dr. Lewis said he should take the roadway, not the short cut through
Crabb Ravine. It was a good round, and we had to start early. I liked
Anne better than ever: no one could look nicer than she did in her
trim black dress. As we walked along, Dr. Lewis frequently halted to
recognize old scenes, and ask me was it this place, or that.
"That fine place out yonder?" he cried, stopping to point to a large
stone house half-a-mile off the road, partly hidden amidst its beautiful
grounds. "I ought to know whose it is. Let me see!"
"It is Sir Robert Tenby's seat--Bellwood. Your landlord, sir."
"Ay, to be sure--Bellwood. In my time it was Sir George's, though."
"Sir George died five or six years ago."
"Has Sir Robert any family? He must be middle-aged now."
"I think he is forty-five, or so. He is not married."
"Does he chiefly live here?"
"About half his time; the rest he spends at his house in London, He
lives very quietly. We all like Sir Robert."
We sat in the Rector's pew, having it to ourselves. Herbert Tanerton
did the duty, and gave a good sermon. Nobody was yet appointed to the
vacant living, which was in Sir Hubert Tenby's gift. Herbert, meanwhile,
took charge of the parish, and many people thought he would get it--as
he did, later.
The Bellwood pew faced the Rector's, and Sir Robert sat in it alone. A
fine-looking man, with greyish hair, and a homely face that you took to
at once. He seemed to pay the greatest attention to Herbert Tanerton's
sermon; possibly was deliberating whether he was worthy of the living,
or not. In the pew behind him sat Mrs. Macbean, an old lady who had
been housekeeper at Bellwood during two generations; and the Bellwood
servants sat further down.
We were talking to Herbert Tanerton outside the church after service,
when Sir Robert came up and spoke to the parson. He, Herbert, introduced
Dr. Lewis to him as the late Rector's brother. Sir Robert shook hands
with him at once, smiled pleasantly at Anne, and nodded to me as he
continued his way.
"Do you like your house?" asked Herbert.