From two to three months passed on. One windy March day, Mrs. Knox sat
alone in the garden-room, worrying over her money matters. The table,
drawn near the fire, was strewed with bills and tradesmen's books; the
sun shone on the closed glass-doors.
Mrs. Knox's affairs had been getting into an extremely hopeless
condition. It seemed, by the accumulation of present debts, that
Arnold's money must have paid for everything. Her own income, which came
in quarterly, appeared to dwindle away, she knew not how or where. A
piteous appeal had gone up a week ago to Arnold, saying she should be in
prison unless he assisted her, for the creditors were threatening to
take steps. Arnold's answer, delivered this morning, was a fifty-pound
note enclosed in a very plain letter. It had inconvenienced him to send
the money, he said, and he begged her fully to understand that it was
the _last_ he should ever send.
So there sat Mrs. Knox before the table in an old dressing-gown, and her
black hair more dishevelled than a mop. The bills, oceans of them, and
the fifty-pound note lay in a heap together. Master Dicky had been
cutting animals out of a picture-book, leaving the scraps on the cloth
and the old carpet. Lotty had distributed there a few sets of dolls'
clothes. Gerty had been tearing up a newspaper for a kite-tail. The
fifty pounds would pay about a third of the debts, and Mrs. Knox was
trying to apportion a sum to each of them accordingly.
It bothered her finely, for she was no accountant. She could manage
to add up without making very many mistakes; but when it came to
subtraction, her brain went into a hopeless maze. Janet might have
done it, but Mrs. Knox was furious with Janet and would not ask her.
Ill-treated, over-worked, Janet had plucked up courage to give notice,
and was looking out for a situation in Lefford. Just now, Janet was in
the kitchen, ironing Dick's frilled collars.
"Take fifty-three from fourteen, and how much _does_ remain?" groaned
Mrs. Knox over the shillings. At that moment there was a sound of
carriage-wheels, and a tremendous ring at the door. Sally darted in.
"Oh, ma'am, it's my Lady Jenkins! I knew her carriage at a distance. It
have got red wheels!"
"Oh, my goodness!" cried Mrs. Knox, starting up. "Don't open the door
yet, Sally: let me get upstairs first. Her ladyship's come to take me a
drive, I suppose. Go and call Miss Carey--or stay, I'll go to her."
Mrs. Knox opened one of the glass-doors, and whisked round to the
kitchen. She bade Janet leave the ironing and go to do her books and
bills: hastily explaining that she wanted to know how far fifty pounds
would go towards paying a fair proportion off each debt. Janet was to
make it all out in figures.
"Be sure and take care of the note--I've left it somewhere," called back
Mrs. Knox as she escaped to the stairs in hurry and confusion; for my
Lady Jenkins's footman was working both bell and knocker alarmingly.
Janet only half comprehended. She went round to the garden-room, shut
the glass-doors, and began upon the bills and books. But first of all,
she looked out for the letters that were lying about, never supposing
that the special charge had reference to anything else: at least, she
said so afterwards: and put them inside Mrs. Knox's desk. From first to
last, then and later, Janet Carey maintained that she did not see any
bank-note.
* * * * *
Mrs. Knox dressed herself with Sally's help, and went out with my Lady
Jenkins--the ex-Mayor of Lefford's wife. The bills and the calculations
made a long job, and Janet's mind was buried in it, when a startling
disturbance suddenly arose in the garden: Dicky had climbed into the
mulberry-tree and fallen out of it. The girls came, dashing open the
glass-doors, saying he was _dead_. Janet ran out, herself nearly
frightened to death.
Very true. If Dicky was not dead, he looked like it. He lay white and
cold under the tree, blood trickling down his face. James galloped off
for Mr. Tamlyn. The two maids and Janet carried Dicky into the kitchen,
and put him on the ironing-board, with his head on an old cushion. That
revived him; and when Mr. Shuttleworth arrived, for Tamlyn was out,
Dicky was demanding bread-and-treacle. Shuttleworth put some diachylon
plaster on his head, ordered him to bed, and told him not to get into
trees again.
Their fears relieved, the maids had time to remember common affairs.
Sally found all the sitting-room fires out, and hastened to light them.
As soon as Janet could leave Dicky, who had persisted in going to bed in
his boots, she went back to the accounts. Mrs. Knox came in before they
were done. She blew up Janet for not being quicker, and when she had
recovered the shock of Dicky's accident, she blew her up for that.
"Where's the note?" she snapped.
"What note, ma'am?" asked Janet.
"The bank-note. The bank-note for fifty pounds that I told you to take
care of."
"I have not seen any bank-note," said Janet.
Well, that began the trouble. The bank-note was searched for, and there
was neither sign nor symptom of it to be found. Mrs. Knox accused Janet
Carey of stealing it, and called in a policeman. Mrs. Knox made her tale
good to the man, representing Janet as a very black girl indeed; but the
man said he could not take her into custody unless Mrs. Knox would
charge her formally with the theft.
And that, Mrs. Knox hesitated to do. She told the policeman she would
take until the morrow to consider of it. The whole of that evening, the
whole of the night, the whole of the next morning till midday, Janet
spent searching the garden-room. At midday the policeman appeared again,
and Janet went into a sort of fit.
When Mr. Shuttleworth was sent for to her, he said it was caused by
fright, and that she had received a shock to the nervous system. For
some days she was delirious, on and off; and when she could escape
Sally's notice, who waited on her, they'd find her down in the
garden-room, searching for the note, just as we afterwards saw her
searching for it in her sleep at Miss Deveen's. It chanced that the two
rooms resembled each other remarkably: in their situation in the houses,
in their shape and size and building arrangements, and in their opening
by glass-doors to the garden. Janet subsided into a sort of wasting
fever; and Mrs. Knox thought it time to send for Miss Cattledon. The
criminal proceedings might wait, she told Janet: like the heartless
woman that she was! Not but that the loss of the money had thrown her
flat on her beam-ends.
Miss Cattledon came. Janet solemnly declared, not only that she had not
the bank-note, but that she had never seen the note: never at all. Mrs.
Knox said no one but Janet could have taken it, and but for her illness,
she would be already in prison. Miss Cattledon told Mrs. Knox she ought
to be ashamed of herself for suspecting Janet Carey, and took Janet off
by train to Miss Deveen's. Janet arrived there in a shivering-fit, fully
persuaded that the Lefford policemen were following her by the orders of
Mrs. Knox.
And for the result of it all we must go on to the next paper.