"So the dog is at Evesham!" remarked Mr. Barbary. "The Standishes are
great rogues, all three of them, and Dick's the worst. But--I think--had
you gone after him to-day, instead of delaying it until to-morrow, there
might have been more certainty of finding him. Mr. Dick may give you
leg-bail in the night."
"The police will see he does not do that; the Squire has sent a
messenger to warn them," I replied. "I suppose you have not heard any
more rumours about the poaching on Tuesday night, Mr. Barbary?"
"I've heard no more than was said at first--that the keepers reported
some poachers were out, and they nearly came to an encounter with the
rascals. Wish they had--and that I had seen the fun. Reste and I had
walked to Church Leet and back that day; we were both tired and went
upstairs betimes."
To hear him coolly assert this, to see his good-looking face raised
unblushingly to the sun as he said it, must have been as a bitter farce
to Katrine, who had believed him, until a few days back, to be next door
to a saint for truth and goodness. _I_ put faith in it, not being then
behind the scenes.
Mr. Barbary did his packing leisurely. Tea was over, and dusk set in
before the portmanteau was shut up and its direction fastened to it.
Katrine read the card. "Edgar Reste, Esq., Euston Square Station,
London. _To be left till called for._"
Very lonely felt Katrine, sitting by herself that evening, working a
strip of muslin for a frill. _He_ was not there to talk to her in his
voice of music--for that's what she had grown to think it, like other
girls in love. She wondered whether they should ever meet again--ever,
ever? She wondered how long it would be before a letter came from him,
and whether he would write to _her_.
Mr. Barbary appeared at supper-time, ate some cold lamb in silence,
seeming to be buried in thought, and went back to the gun-room when he
had finished. Katrine got to her work again, did a little, then put it
away for the night, and turned to the book-shelf to get a book.
Standing to make a choice of one, Katrine was seized with consternation.
On the lower shelf, staring her right in the face, was Mr. Reste's
Bible. It had been given him by his dead father, and he set store by it.
He must have left it downstairs the previous Sunday, and Joan had put it
away on the shelves amongst the other books.
"I wonder if papa would mind opening the portmanteau again?" thought
Katrine, as she hastened to the gun-room, and entered.
"Papa! papa! here's Mr. Reste's Bible left out," she cried, impulsively.
"Can you put it into the portmanteau?"
Mr. Barbary stood by the small safe in the wall, the door of which was
open. In his hand lay some bank-notes; he was holding them towards the
candle on the deal table, and seemed to be counting them. Katrine,
thinking of the Bible and of nothing else, went close to him, and her
eye fell on the notes. He flung them into the cupboard in a covert
manner, gave the door a slam, turned an angry face on Katrine, and a
sharp tongue.
"Why do you come bursting in upon me in this boisterous fashion? I won't
have it. What? Will I undo the portmanteau to put in a Bible? No, I
won't. Keep it till he chooses to come for it."
She shrank away frightened, softly closing the door behind her. Those
bank-notes belonged to Mr. Reste: they were the same she had seen him
put into his pocket-book two days ago. Why had he not taken them with
him?--what brought them in her father's possession? The advance shadow
of the dark trouble, soon to come, crept into Katrine Barbary's heart.
In no mood for reading now, she went to bed, and lay trying to think it
out. What did it all mean? Had her father conjured the pocket-book by
sleight-of-hand out of Mr. Reste's keeping and _stolen_ the notes? She
strove to put the disgraceful thought away from her, and could not. The
distress brought to her by the poaching seemed as nothing to this, bad
though that was.--And would he venture abroad to-night again?
Joan's light foot-fall passed her door, going up to her bed in the roof.
Once there, nothing ever disturbed the old servant or her deafness until
getting-up time in the morning. Katrine lay on, no sleep in her eyes;
half the night it would have seemed, but that she had learned how slowly
time passes with the restless. Still, it was a good while past twelve,
she thought, when curious sounds, as of _digging_, seemed to arise from
the garden. Sounds too faint perhaps to have been heard in the day-time,
but which penetrated to her ear unless she was mistaken, in the deep,
uncanny, undisturbed silence of the night. She sat up in bed to listen.
There, it came again! What could it be? People did not dig up gardens at
midnight. Slipping out of bed, she drew the blind aside and peeped out.
The night was light as day, with a bright, clear, beautiful moon: the
hunters' moon. Underneath the summer-apple tree, close at this end of
the garden, bent Mr. Barbary, digging away with all his might, his large
iron spade turning up the earth swiftly and silently. Katrine's eyes
grew wide with amazement. He had dug up that same plot of ground only a
few days ago, in readiness to plant winter greens: she and Edgar Reste
had stood looking on for a time, talking with him as to the sort of
greens he meant to put in. Why was he digging up the same ground
again?--and why was he doing it at this unearthly hour?
It appeared to be a hole that was being dug now, for he threw the
spadefuls of mould up on each side pretty far. The ground seemed quite
soft and pliant; owing perhaps to its having been so recently turned.
As the hole grew larger; wider and longer and deeper; an idea flashed
over Katrine that it looked just as though it were meant for a grave.
Not that she thought it.
Putting a warm shawl on her shoulders and slippers on her feet, she
sat down before the window, drew the blind up an inch or two, and kept
looking out, her curiosity greatly excited. The moon shone steadily, the
time passed, and the hole grew yet larger. Suddenly Mr. Barbary paused
in his work, and held up his head as if to listen. Did he fear, or
fancy, a noise in the field pathway outside, or in the dark grove to the
right near Caramel's Farm? Apparently so: and that he must not be seen
at his work. For he got out of the hole, left the spade in it, came with
noiseless, swift, stealthy movement up the yard, and concealed himself
in the dark tool-shed. Presently, he stole across to the little gate,
looked well about him to the right and left, and then resumed his
digging.
Quite six feet long it soon looked to Katrine, and three or more feet
wide, and how deep she knew not. _Was it for a grave?_ The apprehension
really stole across her, and with a sick faintness. If so, if so--? A
welcome ray of possibility dawned then. Had her father (warned by this
stir that was going on, the search for poachers and their spoil) a lot
of contraband game in his possession that must be hidden away out of
sight? Perhaps so.
It seemed to be finished now. The moon had sailed ever so far across the
sky by this time, but was still shining full upon it. Mr. Barbary crept
again to the gate and stood listening and looking up and down in the
silence of the night. Then he crossed to the brewhouse, took the key
from his pocket, unlocked it, and went inside. Katrine could see the
flash of the match as he struck a light.
When he emerged from the brewhouse he was dragging a weight along
the ground with two strong cords. A huge, unshapely, heavy substance
enveloped in what looked like matting or sacking. Dragging it straight
over the yard to the grave, Mr. Barbary let it fall carefully in, cords
and all, and began to shovel in the mould upon it with desperate haste.
Terror seized on Katrine. What was in that matting? All in an instant,
a little corner of the veil--that had obscured from her understanding
so much which had seemed mysterious and unfathomable--lifted itself,
bringing to her an awful conviction. Was it Edgar Reste that was being
put out of the way; buried for ever from the sight of man? Her father
must have killed him; must have done it in a passion! Katrine Barbary
cried out with a loud and bitter cry.
Fascinated by the sight of terror, she was unable to draw her eyes away.
But the next moment they had caught sight of another object, bringing
equal terror, though of a different nature: some one, who had apparently
crept in at the gate unheard, was standing at the corner of the garden
hedge, looking on. Was it an officer of the law, come to spy upon her
father and denounce his crime? But, even as she gazed, the figure drew
back to make its exit by the gate again, and to Katrine it seemed to
take my form.
"It is Johnny Ludlow!" she gasped. "Oh, I pray that it may be! I think
_he_ would not betray him."
Katrine watched on. She saw the grave filled in; she saw her father
stamp it down; she saw him carry the superfluous mould to a place under
the wall, near the manure bed, and she saw him stamp that down, and then
cover it loosely with some of the manure, so that it might look like a
part of the heap. Then he seemed to be coming in, and Katrine thought it
must be nearing the dawn.
Creeping into bed, she hid her face, that never again ought to show
itself amidst honest men, under the clothes. Some covert stir yet seemed
to be going on in the yard, as of pumping and scrubbing. Turning from
hot to cold, from cold to hot, Katrine was seized with a shivering fit.
"And who really was it watching?" she moaned. "It looked like Johnny,
yet I can't be sure; he stood in the shade."
But it was _me_, as the schoolboys say. And the reason of my being
there at the small, unearthly hours of the morning, together with the
conclusion of this appalling story, will be found in the next chapter.