STRANGE TIDINGS.
When Emmie arose on the following morning, the landscape was covered
with a soft mantle of snow. A few flakes were still falling, ever and
anon, from a sky whence lowering clouds shut out the pale gleam of a
winter daybreak.
Emmie arose with an earnest resolution on her mind--a resolution born of
repentance, and gathering strength from prayer. She would no longer be
the weak, selfish, useless being, whom every shadow could turn from the
path of duty. She would listen for a Father's guiding voice; she would
cling to the helping Hand; she would, through God's promised help,
realize His protecting presence.
"I will beseech the Lord to enable me never, never again to mistrust His
power or His love, or to doubt His promise that all things shall work
together for good to His children," said Emmie to herself, as she
opened her Bible; and in that Bible she read the touching history of
those who once walked unharmed in the burning fiery furnace.
It was thus that the weak soldier of Christ put on armour to resist her
besetting sin. She would, ere the close of that day, sorely need that
armour of proof.
When Emmie had finished her reading, she rose and looked forth from her
casement. She saw an open vehicle approaching along the snow-covered
road towards Myst Court. Three men were seated within it, besides the
driver. It was with no common interest that the maiden watched their
approach.
"Policemen!--London policemen!--and with an inspector!" exclaimed Emmie
in surprise, for she recognized the familiar uniform of the officers of
the law. "What can be bringing them hither? Can Harper's secret have
been discovered?"
Emmie's heart thrilled with mingled fear and hope. Had the officers of
justice received information of some secret plot,--had they come to
search the house,--would light be thrown on its dark recesses? Such was
Emmie's hope, but still linked with a trembling fear. What might not
Harper do, in his desperation, if he were driven to bay? Would he not
conclude that her lips had betrayed his secret, that she had broken her
solemn oath?
Emmie lost sight of the vehicle as it stopped before the large
entrance-door of Myst Court, which was not overlooked by her window. She
heard the policemen's ring at the bell, she heard her father's firm step
as he descended the stairs to meet his early and most unexpected
visitors. Emmie would have followed him at once, but the tresses of her
long hair still floated down over her shoulders. The young lady was not
independent of the help of a maid, and rang her bell for Susan.
Minutes passed, and no Susan appeared. There were sounds of steps and
voices in the house, but not near Emmie's apartment. Her curiosity made
her impatient; she rang again, and more loudly; and as there was still
delay in answering the summons, Emmie resolved to wait no longer, and
herself gathered up and twisted into a knot, as best she might, her
long, luxuriant hair. She had just finished her toilette when Susan
entered at last, looking flushed and excited.
"I beg pardon, miss," said the lady's-maid; "but I could not come
sooner. The police are here, and they have been questioning me and the
other servants."
"Have they come to search the house?" cried Emmie.
"Oh yes; they brought a warrant from London to do that," was Susan's
reply.
Almost breathless with anxiety and hope, Emmie asked if they had
searched the haunted chamber.
"That's the first place they went to," said Susan.
"And was any one there, any one arrested?" cried Emmie, trembling with
eagerness to hear the reply, which might loose the knot of her
perplexity, and free her for ever from haunting terrors.
"No one was found in this house, miss," answered Susan, with a look of
distress. "There were strange presses and instruments found, as I heard,
in the haunted room, such as must have been used in forging those
dreadful bank-notes."
"Forging bank-notes! so that was the crime!" said Emmie under her
breath. "And is any one suspected?" she inquired.
Susan at first looked perplexed, and avoided meeting her lady's
questioning glance. She then answered, "There is a warrant out for the
arrest of Colonel Standish."
"Colonel Standish!" echoed Emmie in surprise.
"The police had been at S----, at the White Hart, before they came
here," said Susan; "but the colonel had gone off, no one knows where. He
had not been seen or heard of since yesterday morning. He owes a large
debt at the hotel, and his stealing off thus, without paying it, makes
every one think him guilty about the forged notes."
"I never believed him to be a real gentleman," observed Emmie. "But,"
she added anxiously, "is he thought to have had no accomplice?" The
maiden, bound by her oath, dared not so much as mention the name of
Harper.
"I think that I hear master calling me," said Susan; and without
answering her lady's question, she hurried from the apartment.
Emmie was standing near the window, and from it she now saw Joe leading
her own pony-chaise from the stables towards the entrance of the house,
and at a quick pace that told of haste. What was the vehicle brought for
at so early an hour? Perhaps--so thought Emmie Trevor--to take one or
more of the policemen back to S----. Yet scarcely so, for their own
conveyance was waiting.
The maiden was not kept long in doubt. It was her own father that she
saw in the chaise, a few seconds afterwards, urging on the pony to a
frantic pace, plunging through the drifted snow as if life or death hung
on its speed! Joe sat behind, while his master drove as Emmie had never
seen her father drive before.
"What can be the matter?" exclaimed Emmie; "papa has forgotten even his
greatcoat, and the weather is so cold, and it looks as if a storm would
come on!" She watched the chaise till it disappeared behind intervening
trees and brushwood.
Susan re-entered the room as her young lady, anxious and wondering,
turned from the casement.
"Do you know where my father is going?" Emmie inquired of her maid.
"Master is going to London, miss," was the answer; "but I doubt whether
the pony can gallop fast enough to take him in time for the train.
Master was in great haste, or he would have come to bid you good-bye."
"What takes him to London?" cried Emmie.
"Oh, this bank-note forgery business," said Susan, the look of
uneasiness passing again over her face. "Master called me to give you a
message, miss. He says that while the police have charge of the house,
he--he does not wish you to speak to them, miss, or question them about
the matter which has brought them here. Master is anxious about you. He
has ordered me to take care that no one should disturb or intrude upon
you, Miss Trevor."
"The police are not likely to disturb the innocent, nor to intrude on
ladies," said Emmie, smiling from the pleasant assurance of safety
conveyed by their presence in the mansion. "If my father does not wish
me to question them or see them, of course his will shall be obeyed. I
must depend on you for my information, or--where is my brother, Master
Bruce?"
"I cannot tell, miss; he is not in the house; he must have gone out,"
replied Susan in a flurried manner. The quiet, respectable, lady's-maid
had never before been examined by a superintendent of police, and her
usual self-possession had forsaken her on that eventful morning.
"Bruce must have heard something of this warrant against Standish,"
thought Emmie; "perhaps he has gone off early to S----, to help in the
search after this daring impostor. I am glad that he felt well enough to
do so; but how he could have received such early information of what has
occurred, I know not."
Emmie now went down-stairs to the breakfast room; there was no
family-prayer in the confusion of that strange day. Susan brought in a
tray with her young lady's breakfast, in the absence of Joe. Emmie was
not disposed to touch it. She lingered near the window, half hoping that
Bruce might appear, or that her father, having missed the early train,
might return to Myst Court. The policemen were very quiet; only the
sound of a heavy tread, now and then, showed that they were in the
house; but Emmie saw nothing of the officers of the law.
There were signs, however, that the unusual occurrences which had taken
place at Myst Court had excited curiosity and interest in the
surrounding neighbourhood. Knots of persons, not only from the hamlet,
but apparently even from the town, came up the carriage-drive, as it
seemed for no purpose but to stare up, open-mouthed, at the house. There
was much shaking of heads and whispering amongst these spectators; but
they had caught sight of the lady looking forth from the window, and
nothing was uttered by them loud enough for its import to be
distinguished by Emmie through the closed window.
Presently the wind rose in wild gusts, whirling the snow into blinding
drifts; dark clouds were sweeping over the sky; all portended a violent
storm; and the assembled crowd hastily retreated from the grounds of
Myst Court, to seek refuge from the fury of the tempest.
"I would give anything to know whether Harper and his wife are under
suspicion!" said Emmie to herself. "Susan is so strangely unwilling to
give full information, she stammers as she answers my questions. I think
that my father must have charged her to say nothing that could possibly
agitate my nerves. He has desired that his weak daughter should be kept
from excitement; and thus I, who have the deepest interest in all that
is happening here, am more ignorant of what is going on than any servant
in the household. I must question Susan again."
Emmie was about to ring the bell for her maid; but before she did so,
there was a quick tap at the door, and, without waiting for the lady's
"Come in," Hannah entered the room. The cook looked more excited than
Susan had done; but while, in the case of the latter, there had been an
appearance of perplexity, if not of pain, with a desire to speak as
little as she could, Hannah's face, on the contrary, showed that she was
not only brimming over with news, but that she had a vulgar pleasure in
being the first to impart it. "Now I shall know all," thought Emmie.
"La, miss!" exclaimed Hannah, "to think of you taking your breakfast so
quietly here, as if nothing had happened, when there be such goings on
in the place!"
"Any one arrested?" asked Emmie eagerly. She dared not mention the names
of Harper or Jessel, lest, by turning suspicion on them, she should
indirectly violate her oath.
"No one took up yet, that I know of, but he in London," said Hannah.
"Didn't master go off like a shot, as soon as he heard the news!"
"What news? who was taken up?" asked Emmie.
"La, miss! you don't mean to say that you've not heard of the scrape of
poor Master Vibert, how he's been catched and put into jail!"
Emmie staggered backwards as though she had been struck. "Put into jail!
my brother! and on what pretext?" she exclaimed, grasping the table for
support.
"I'll tell you all about it--you ought to know, seeing you're his own
sister," said Hannah, enjoying the excitement of the scene, and yet not
without a touch of natural pity, on seeing the anguish which she
inflicted. "Master Vibert went yesterday to London, you know; and when
he got there, he went off straight to a jeweller (Golding, I think, is
the name), and bought from him lots of jewels, diamonds, pearls, and all
kinds of gim-cracks, worth more than a thousand pounds."
"Impossible!" exclaimed Emmie.
"But he did buy the jewels, and paid for them too with a lot of nice,
fresh, clean ten-pound notes," said Hannah. "The shopman didn't suspect
nothing at first, 'cause he knew the young gentleman's face so well, as
he'd often dealt at the shop. But when the head of the firm, as they
call him, came in the afternoon to look after the business (there's
nothing like a master's eye, we know), he said the notes weren't real
and honest bank-notes; and off he went at once to the biggest
police-station in London."
"My brother has been the unconscious tool of a villain!" murmured Emmie,
who felt certain that Vibert's vanity and careless security must have
made him the victim of the impostor who had called himself Colonel
Standish.
"The p'lice and Mr. Golding drove off to Grosvenor Square," continued
Hannah, "for the jeweller knew the address; and a mighty bustle and fuss
was caused by their coming, for there was an afternoon party, and the
gentlefolk were amazed when they found that he who had been the merriest
of them all was to be haled up afore a magistrate, on a charge of
passing forged notes."
"Did not my brother at once clear himself from suspicion?" cried Emmie,
the paleness of whose face was now exchanged for the crimson flush of
indignation and shame.
"Master Vibert said that the notes had been given to him by a Colonel
Standish; and that he had bought the jewels for Colonel Standish; and
that he would have sent them off at once to some address in Liverpool,
only he had waited to have out his dance."
"Then are the jewels safe in the hands of the police?" asked Emmie.
"Ay; I wish that this cheat of a colonel were so too," replied Hannah.
"Hanging is too good for him, say I; for sure and certain it was his
wheedling which made poor Master Vibert do so wicked a thing. Some of
the police were sent off to Liverpool, and some hurried down to S----.
And first they searched the colonel's lodgings, and then they came
ferreting here."
"Did they easily find their way into the bricked-up room?" asked Emmie,
who knew of no way of access into it but by the secret staircase.
"Bless you, miss, what could be easier, when the door was wide open
'twixt that room and Master Bruce's!"
Emmie started, and turned deadly pale.
"You may well start with surprise, miss; all of us were astonished to
find there was any door in that wall. Lizzie declares that even she
never knew that there was one, though she tidies the room every day.
Master Bruce was so sly--he was--hanging the big map over the place!"
"How dare you speak thus of my brother?" cried Emmie.
"It ain't my speaking, but every one's speaking," said Hannah, firing up
at the word of rebuke. "The police say as how young master could not
have slept in the one room for a month, and have been innocent as a babe
of what was going on in the other. Ay, they said that of him, Miss
Trevor, before they'd found a lot of the odd kind of paper of which
bank-notes are made in one of his drawers. I wonder young master did not
throw it all into the fire before he absconded."
Emmie pressed her temples with both her icy cold hands. Her brain was
reeling. Half unconsciously, she echoed the word "Absconded!"
"That's what the p'lice called it; and they're going to take out a
warrant against Master Bruce," said Hannah. "It's plain he went off last
night, for his bed had never been slept in."
This was to Emmie the crowning horror. There had been a door then--an
open door--between her brother's room and that haunted by the presence
of the unscrupulous Harper; and Bruce--the noble, the brave--had
disappeared during the night!
"Leave me, leave me!" cried Emmie wildly; and, alarmed at the lady's
ghastly looks, the bearer of evil tidings at once obeyed her command.
Hannah had said more than enough, and now retreated in alarm, lest the
effect of her words should have been to turn her young mistress's
brain.