IN WHICH BEN KNUTTON GROWS CONFIDENTIAL
REILLY returned shortly afterwards with a budget of information. When we
had traversed the little wood and were out on the highway he told us
certain facts that were interesting.
The village was called Bringhurst, distant a mile and a quarter from
Caldecott. The place where we had emerged was called the Glebe Farm, and
was occupied by an old man called Page, who had as lodgers a gentleman
named Purvis and his niece. They often had visitors, two gentlemen who
came over from Kettering, and from their description one was Bennett.
Purvis had lived there on and off for three weeks, but the young lady
had only recently come.
Reilly had learned all this at the little beerhouse at Bringhurst. And
he had learned something more, namely, that there was some village
gossip regarding the young lady.
“Gossip!” I demanded. “What is it?”
“Well,” answered Reilly, “the old innkeeper says that she’s been seen
out walking late at night with that drunken scamp who sold Purvis the
parchment.”
“What!” I cried. “With old Ben Knutton, of Rockingham?”
“That’s so.”
“Then he knows her,” I exclaimed, quickly. “He’ll be able to tell me
something. I must see him to-day. A pot or two of beer will make him
talk.”
According to Reilly the villagers of Bringhurst had no suspicion of the
reason Purvis lived at the Glebe Farm, nor were they aware of the
existence of the secret communication between the two villages. It was
certain, however, that Purvis and Bennett knew of it, and for that
reason the former had taken up his quarters there. The man Page was
probably unaware of the tunnel, for it led from beneath his barn with
the entry well concealed. One fact, however, I had not overlooked. At
the bottom of the steps which led up to the surface a wall had been
recently broken down, showing that the tunnel had been closed up for
years and had only recently been opened.
The men who had worked so assiduously during the night were probably
within the farmhouse. At any rate, on our walk back to Caldecott along
the white highway through the village of Great Easton we saw nothing of
them.
When we returned to the Manor a ridiculous position presented itself. We
were locked out! All windows and doors we had barred on the inside;
therefore Reilly, an adept at scaling walls, clambered up a rain-spout
and effected an entrance by one of the upper windows.
We took counsel together and arrived at two conclusions, namely, that
our rivals had by some means obtained possession of the secret of the
underground passage, and, secondly, that they, like ourselves, were
convinced that the treasure lay hidden upon the premises we occupied.
This caused our excitement to increase rather than diminish; but after
lunch at the Plough I strolled down to Rockingham, while my companions
returned to resume their investigations.
I found that Ben Knutton was at work. He was cleaning out a ditch on the
edge of Thoroughsale Wood, and I was directed to the spot, about a mile
away. I discovered the old fellow without much difficulty, and my
appearance there was something of a surprise to him.
At my request he put down his spade and came to the stile whereon I
seated myself.
“Well, Knutton,” I said, “I’ve come to have another little chat with
you—a confidential chat, you understand. Now look here, before we begin
I’ve one thing to say, and that is if you answer all my questions
truthfully there’s half a sovereign for you.”
“Thankee, sir,” responded the bibulous old rascal, touching his hat.
“What did you want to know, sir?”
“Listen,” I said. “There’s a young lady staying over at Mr. Page’s at
Bringhurst. You know her?”
“Yes, sir, I knows ’er. I’ve knowed ’er since she were a little girl.”
“Then tell me all about her,” I said.
“Well, there ain’t very much to tell,” responded the old man. “I don’t
know who was ’er father. She came to my sister-in-law as a nurse-child
from London when she was about two years old. They say ’er father and
mother were rich people. But Fanny Stanion, my sister-in-law, who lived
over at Deenethorpe, brought her up, and got paid for it by a lawyer in
Oundle. You don’t know Deenethorpe. It’s about five miles from here.”
“Near Deene?” I suggested, for I had been photographing in Lady
Cardigan’s beautiful park.
“Yes, close by,” was the labourer’s reply. “Fanny had ’er with ’er nigh
on twelve years and was like a mother to ’er, and often brought ’er over
to Rockingham to see us. Then, when Fanny died, she was sent back to
London, an’ some lady, I believe, took charge of ’er and sent her to
boardin’ school somewhere in Devonshire. I ain’t seen little Dolly these
seven years till the other day when she came to my cottage. My! Ain’t
she grown to be a fine young ’ooman? I didn’t know ’er ag’in,” and the
old man leaned upon the rail and laughed. Men who work in the fields at
all hours and in hot and cold weather age very early; the furrows grow
deep on their faces and the skin is crossed and recrossed with
multitudinous lines like a spider’s web, the spine gets bent from the
long hours of stooping over the earth, and the heat and the damp and the
frost all turn by turn enter into the bones, and stiffen and cramp them
before old age is due.
“Is nothing known regarding her parentage?” I asked. “Have you never
heard any story about her?”
“No, nothing. The lawyer in Oundle who used to pay Fanny monthly
probably knew all about it, but he’s dead now. Fanny had the child
brought to her through answerin’ an advertisement in the _Stamford
Mercury_. My poor wife used to be particular fond o’ little Dolly.”
“And why did she call to see you? Had she an object in doing so?”
“I suppose she wanted to visit the cottage ag’in,” was the old man’s
answer. “But she’s growed such a fine London lady that I was quite taken
aback when she told me she was Dolly Drummond.”
“Drummond! Why, that’s not her name,” I cried. “I mean Miss Bristowe.”
“You said the young lady who lives at Mr. Page’s, eh?”
“Certainly. A tall, dark young lady.”
“That’s Dolly Drummond. There’s only one lady livin’ there. She’s with
her uncle, Mr. Purvis.”
“Do you know anything about him?”
“Only that he’s ’er uncle—’er guardian, too, I fancy. She didn’t tell
me much about him, and I haven’t seen him myself.”
“Well,” I said; “you may be surprised to know that he’s the man to whom
you sold that piece of parchment.”
“What!” cried the old man, glaring at me. “Is he ’er uncle? Why, then,
that accounts for the questions she put to me.”
“What about?”
“About the old secret way from the Glebe Farm into the Manor House at
Caldecott. My father knew about it, and told me of it, but nobody’s been
able to find it yet.”
“And the young lady came to you for information?”
“She’s heard me mention it when she were a girl, so I suppose her
curiosity was aroused and that was why she came to me for information.”
“More likely that the man Purvis sent her. Perhaps they’ve discovered
what was written on that parchment, and are now making use of it. But I
hear you’ve met her at night.”
“Who told you so?” he asked, starting at my words.
“It is common gossip in Bringhurst.”
The old fellow laughed heartily, and in his broad dialect said:—
“They’ll be saying next that I’m the young lady’s father, and that I
want it kept secret.”
“Why did you meet her at such late hours?”
“Because she wanted to talk to me about her youth. She seems very
anxious to find out who were her parents, and for that reason I believe
she’s down here.”
“Isn’t it rather remarkable that Purvis should be with her?”
“It is. I don’t like that man. I’m very sorry I didn’t show you the
parchment afore I sold it to him, sir.”
With that latter sentiment I heartily coincided. Had I not been
forestalled, the treasure would have undoubtedly been ours long ago.
“But tell me more about Miss Drummond,” I urged.
“What is there to tell? When she was old enough Fanny sent ’er to the
national school at Deenethorpe. But she wasn’t at all like the village
children. She was always the lady, even when quite young.”
“Your sister-in-law was well paid, I suppose?”
“Yes. She was a widow, and only had the money from the lawyer to live
upon. Her husband was a wood-cutter, and was killed by a tree falling on
him over in Carlton Purlieus. One time Fanny fell ill, and we had little
Dolly with us at Rockingham for nigh on a year.”
Little wonder was it that she should have sought out the
good-for-nothing old labourer who had in his younger and more sober days
been as guardian to her.
“But I can’t understand why she should wish to meet you late at night,”
I remarked.
“She didn’t wish her uncle to know of our meetin’, she said. Besides,
she had a lot to ask me about her earlier days, and a lot to tell me of
how she had fared since she had left these parts.”
“Did she make any mention of that story about the fortune of the
Knuttons?”
“Well, sir, she did,” responded the old fellow, rather puzzled at what I
had divined. “She told me how she remembered me telling her all about it
when a girl, and how her Aunt Fanny, as she called her, used to prophesy
that one day we should be very rich.”
“And what else?”
“She made me point out the route which I believed was taken by the old
subterranean passage. That’s why we walked through the fields and were
seen together.”
“Well,” I said at last, “I want you to do something for me, Knutton, and
if you carry it through successfully I’ll give you a sovereign instead
of half a sovereign. I want you to go over to the Glebe Farm this
afternoon and take a letter to her. It must be given to her in secret,
remember. Ask for a reply, merely yes or no. You understand?”
“Oh, I’ll take the letter, sir, an’ be glad to do it,” the old labourer
cried eagerly.
“Very well, we’ll go back together to your cottage and I’ll write it.
Then you take it, and I’ll wait at the Sonde Arms until you return with
the reply. You must be careful, however, that this man Purvis doesn’t
see you, or you may make it awkward for Miss Drummond in a variety of
ways.”
“Trust me, sir,” was his response. “I knows my way about the Glebe Farm.
I worked there on and off for three years.”
“Then you know the big barn. Underneath it is a door leading to some
steps. Do you know them?”
“Know them, why, o’ course I do. The steps lead nowhere. There was once
a well at the bottom, they say, but it’s been bricked up because it used
to over-flow up to the barn door.”
It was evident that the entrance had been unsuspected, and that the
subterranean communication had only very recently been opened.
The old fellow shouldered his spade and with bent back walked beside me
into Rockingham, where, upon a leaf from my note-book, I wrote an urgent
line to the woman whose great beauty and sweet grace had enchanted me. I
prayed of her to do me a favour and give me an appointment at a spot on
the high road between Great Easton and Caldecott which I had noticed
that morning—a place where, according to the sign-post, the road to
Market Harborough joined that to Wellingborough. I sealed the note and,
having watched the old fellow down the road, turned into the Sonde Arms
to smoke and kill time until his return.
What he had told me added a further touch of romance to that pale-faced,
troubled woman who had so strangely entered my life. Impatient and
fidgety I lounged in the inn, smoking and trying to read the newspaper,
until at last Ben, after an absence of an hour and a half, returned.
“I managed to send a message in to her by old Sam Lucas, the shepherd,
and she came out and met me behind the barn. She read your letter, sir,
and turned a little red. She seemed to hesitate like, and then asked me
if I knowed you. When I told her I did, she said I was to say she’d meet
you at eight o’clock to-night at the place you mentioned.”
My heart leaped for joy.
I slipped the coin agreed upon into the old fellow’s horny palm, and
with injunctions to secrecy left the place and hurried along the road,
over the level crossing, into Caldecott, where I told my companions of
my tryst.
During my absence they had taken up the flooring of one of the
downstairs rooms, but the search had been in vain, and they were now
working in their shirt-sleeves replacing the boards.
“We shall have another visit from them swabs to-night, doctor,” Seal
said, as he mopped the perspiration from his sea-bronzed face. “There’ll
be some fun in this house before morning, that’s my firm belief.”
By “fun,” the skipper meant fighting, for if he met Black Bennett we
knew there would be blows—and hard ones too.
Punctually at eight o’clock I halted beneath the weather-worn sign-post.
The crimson after-glow had faded and the still evening was far advanced.
Away in the west the red glow still showed from behind the hills, but in
the east crept up the dark night-clouds. The hour struck from the church
towers of several villages, and away in the far distance the curfew
commenced to toll solemnly, just as it has ever done since the far-back
Norman days.
With eyes and ears on the alert, I stood awaiting her coming.
She was late—as a woman always is—but at last I saw the flutter of a
light dress approaching in the twilight, and went eagerly forward to
meet her.
In the fading light I saw her face. To me it looked more beautiful than
before, because the cheeks were slightly flushed as I raised my hat to
greet her.
I took her hand, and it trembled in my grasp. She looked for a single
instant into my face, then dropped her eyes without uttering a word. By
that sign I felt convinced that the satisfaction of our clandestine
meeting was mutual.
Ah! how deeply I loved her! So deeply, indeed, that in the first moments
of our meeting I was tongue-tied.
Surely ours was a strange wooing; but, as will be seen, its dénouement
was far stranger.