That day, Thursday, we had news of Don. And we had it in this way.
Tobias Jellico--who had a small draper's shop at Evesham, and went about
the country with a pack, out of which he seduced unwary ladies to buy
finery, more particularly some of our ladies living in Piefinch Cut--was
at Church Dykely to-day on one of his periodical visitations. We did not
like the man or his trade; but that's neither here nor there. Hearing
that the Squire's dog was lost, he at once said he had seen Dick
Standish that morning in Bengeworth (a portion of Evesham) with a large
Newfoundland dog. White-and-brown, he called it; which was a mistake,
for Don was white and black; but Jellico might not know colours. It was
Mr. Duffham who brought us this news in the afternoon: he had been sent
for to Lena, whose throat was getting worse. Duffham heard it from
Perkins the butcher, to whom Jellico told it.
I don't know which item pleased the Squire most: that Don was found, or
that the guilt of Tuesday night was traced home to the Standishes; for
the three brothers had in general a certain gentleman's own luck, and
were rarely caught.
"Don went out roaming, through that villain Giles unloosing him and
leaving the yard gate open," decided the Squire, in his excitement. "The
dog must have sprung upon them; he has a mortal enmity to tramps and
poachers, you know, Duffham; and the Standishes captured him. I'll send
a message to the police at Evesham at once, to look after Mr. Dick, and
go over myself in the morning."
"Anyway, I'm glad the dog's found," said Duffham. "But what an idiot
Dick Standish must be to allow himself to be seen with the dog in the
public streets."
"Johnny," said the Squire, turning to me as he was leaving the room to
send a man galloping on horseback to the Evesham police, "you run over
to Caramel Cottage. Make my compliments to young Reste; say that I am
going to drive to Evesham to-morrow morning, and shall be happy to take
him if he likes to accompany me. I offered to drive him over some day
before he left, but this bother has caused me to delay it. Shall start
at nine o'clock, tell him."
About the time the Squire was charging me with this message, Katrine
Barbary was sitting in the homely garden at Caramel Cottage, amidst the
fruit trees, the vegetables, and the late flowers. The October sunlight
fell on her pretty face, that somehow put you in mind of a peach with
its softest bloom upon it.
Katrine was striving to see daylight out of a mass of perplexity, of
which I then knew nothing, and she could not discern a single ray. Why
should that fine young barrister, Edgar Reste, staying with them so
peacefully for several weeks past, and fully intending to stay this
week out--why should he have run away by night, leaving behind him an
atmosphere of mystery? This question would never leave Katrine's mind by
night or by day.
Sitting there in the afternoon sun, she was running over mentally, for
the tenth time or so, the details of the affair. One or two of them
might have looked somewhat shady to a suspicious observer; to Katrine
they presented only a web of perplexity. She felt sure that when she
went to bed on the Wednesday night he had no thought of leaving; and yet
it seemed that he did leave. When Joan rose in the early morning, he had
disappeared--vanished, as may be said. The puzzle that Katrine could not
solve was this: why had he gone away in haste so great that he could not
take his clothes with him? and why had he gone at all in an unexpected,
stealthy way, saying nothing to anybody?
"It looks just as though he had run away to escape some imminent danger,
with not a minute to spare," mused Katrine.
At this moment Katrine met with an interruption to her thoughts in the
shape of me. Catching a glimpse of her print frock through the hedge, I
went straight in at the little side gate, without troubling the front
door.
"Sit down, Johnny," she said, holding out her hand, and making room for
me on the bench. And as I took the seat, I said what I had come for--to
deliver the Squire's message to Mr. Reste.
"Mr. Reste has left us," said Katrine. "He went away last night."
"Went away last night!" I exclaimed, the news surprising me uncommonly.
"What took him off so suddenly?"
Open-natured as the day, Katrine told me the particulars (which proved
that she had no dark fears about it as yet), of course saying nothing
about the poaching. And she did mention the quarrel.
"It is so strange that he should leave all his things behind him--don't
you see that, Johnny?" she said. "Even that little desk, full of private
papers, is left, and he never travels without it; his boots are left."
"He must have had some news to call him away. A letter perhaps."
"The only letter he has had lately came on Tuesday morning," returned
Katrine. "It had a good deal of money in it in bank-notes; sixty pounds;
but it did not call him away. _Nothing_ called him away, that I can
discover. You can't think how it is worrying me; it seems just a
mystery."
"Look here, Katrine," I said, after mentally twisting the matter this
way and that, "I've known the most unaccountable problems turn out to be
the simplest on explanation. When you hear from him, as you most likely
will in a day or two, I dare say he will tell you he was called away
unexpectedly, and had to go at once. Does not Mr. Barbary know why he
went?"
"Well, yes; I fancy he does: he is indoors now, packing Mr. Reste's
things: but he does not tell me."
After talking a little longer, we strolled up the path together, and had
reached the yard when Mr. Barbary suddenly opened the kitchen door to
shake the dust from a coat that seemed covered with it. His handsome
face took a haughty expression, and his slender, shapely form was drawn
up in pride as he looked sternly at me, as much as to say, "What do you
want here?"
I turned, on my way to the side gate, to explain: that Don had been seen
at Evesham in the company of Dick Standish, that the Squire would be
driving thither on the morrow, and had thought Mr. Reste might like to
go with him.
"Very kind of Mr. Todhetley," drawled Barbary in his stand-off manner.
"Tell him, with my compliments and thanks for his courtesy, that my
nephew has left for London."
"Left for good, I suppose?" I said.
"For the present, at any rate. A pressing matter of business recalled
him, and he had to attend to it without delay."