In the little dining-room at Shingle End Miss Bostal and Nell were
sitting by the fire, the latter still absorbed in thoughts of Clifford,
while the former tried to divert her companion’s gloomy reverie by
gossip about the doings of the vicar’s wife and the high price of
vegetables.
Miss Bostal looked anxiously from time to time into the coal-scuttle,
divided between a wish to be economical with the fuel, on the one hand,
and to have a good fire ready for her father’s return on the other.
“How late he is to-night!” she presently exclaimed, with an astonished
glance at the clock.
It was nearly ten o’clock, and the colonel, who spent most of the day,
on all week-days, either at his club at Stroan or at the golf-links,
was in the habit of returning home punctually at nine.
Nell looked up with a start.
“Why, child, how scared you look! What is the matter?”
And Miss Bostal took up the tongs, and picking out from the grate the
little bits of cinder which had fallen from the fire, she arranged them
judiciously on the top to prevent a wasteful blaze.
“Do I?” said Nell, trying to smile, but shivering as she did so. “Well,
I think I have had enough to scare me to-day, haven’t I?”
“Oh, my dear, I shouldn’t worry myself too much if I were you. It was
a very terrible thing, and I felt bound to scold you at the time for
bringing this young man down here at all. But it will be a lesson to
you to be careful, and I have no doubt that both the young men will
have time to think the matter over, and will make up their minds to
control their passions better in future.”
“But Clifford--Mr. King! I am afraid he is seriously hurt!” whimpered
Nell, with the tears, at last released, running down her cheeks.
But it was not for him that Miss Bostal spent her sympathy.
“It will be a lesson to him!” she repeated, rather frigidly.
“And Jem--he will certainly keep his word and give information to the
police this time!”
“Information of what?”
“Why, of--the robbery; of what he says he saw!” said Nell, fixing
anxious eyes on her friend, and dropping her voice.
Miss Bostal smiled in an amused way.
“Haven’t you got over your dread of that yet? For my part, I shall be
very glad when something is known. My father has been to the expense
of an extra bolt on our back door since this scare has been about; and
I myself can never sleep more than an hour without jumping up with the
fancy that I hear a burglar in the dining-room underneath.”
But Nell said nothing. She remained sitting in a constrained, almost
awkward attitude, crouching over the fire, and throwing at her
companion, from time to time, glances full of shy inquiry and of
unmistakable alarm.
Miss Bostal began to regard her _protégée_ with looks, if not of
suspicion, at least of perplexity.
It was plain that the old difficulty of a maid and her lovers had begun
to cast the shadow of estrangement between the friends.
There had been silence on both sides for some minutes, when, at last,
the colonel’s knock was heard at the front door. It had been his habit,
until the news of the robberies at the Blue Lion was whispered about,
to let himself into his house by simply turning the handle. But now, in
common prudence, they deemed it necessary to keep the doors fastened
from the inside.
With a sigh of relief Miss Bostal sprang up and hurried out to admit
her father.
“Why, papa, what makes you so late? Nell has been with me, or I should
have felt quite nervous.”
The colonel came in with much quicker steps than usual, but he stopped
short on hearing the girl’s name mentioned.
“Nell!” exclaimed he. And by his manner Miss Theodora saw that
something unusual had occurred. Before, however, she had time to ask
any questions, he added, with a slight toss of the head: “Oh, well, the
girl must hear it. Where is she?”
Nell had not moved from her seat by the fire; but she held up her head,
listening. It was in this attitude that Colonel Bostal discovered her
when he threw open the dining-room door and entered, followed by his
daughter.
“Well, papa, what is this wonderful news of yours?” chirped Miss
Theodora, quite anxious for a little bit of gossip.
“Well, it’s something very serious, very dreadful, indeed. A man was
found lying by the side of the road this evening, just outside Stroan,
and it seems it is Jem Stickels.”
“Dear, dear, not intoxicated again, I hope, after all his promises?”
said Miss Theodora, anxiously.
“No, poor fellow,” answered her father, gravely. “He was dead.”
Both his hearers uttered cries of astonishment and horror.
“But it’s not possible! They must have made a mistake,” urged Miss
Bostal. “Why, Nell and I were talking to him a little before seven
o’clock! And he was then quite well, perfectly recovered.”
The colonel looked from one to the other in surprise.
“You were talking to him! Where?”
“At Mrs. Mann’s cottage, where he lodges. He came to the door and spoke
to us himself. He was very disagreeable and rude to us, poor fellow,”
said Miss Theodora, who seemed unable to grasp the fact that the man
who had been so very full of life and its passions three hours before
should now be lying dead.
“Ah, well, then you will both have to make your appearances as
witnesses, that’s certain. For there will be an inquest held to-morrow.”
“As witnesses? How dreadful! Besides, what can we prove? He was quite
well then.”
“That’s what you will have to prove. And I hope you may succeed,”
said the colonel, dubiously. “For if you don’t, the young fellow
that knocked him down and stunned him--” Nell looked up, pallid with
fear--“this King, will certainly be had up for manslaughter.”
Nell started up with a heartbroken cry.
“Oh, no, oh, no! How can that be possible? He had quite recovered when
we saw him; Miss Theodora tells you so; Mr. and Mrs. Mann can prove it,
too. He spoke just as you do. He looked just the same as ever. He must
have got tipsy afterward; everybody knows he was always getting tipsy.
And he must have quarreled with some man and been thrown down, or else
he must have fallen into the ditch and been suffocated, or--or--”
“I don’t think you ought to try to throw fresh obloquy upon the dead,”
said Miss Bostal, gravely. “He was quite sober when we saw him, and it
must have been very little later when he died.”
“But if the fall in my uncle’s garden had killed him--”
“The blow, you mean,” interposed Miss Bostal.
“It would have killed him at once,” protested Nell. “You can’t be
stunned and recover entirely, and then die of the blow that stunned you
an hour afterward. Is that possible, colonel?”
“I have never heard of such a case that I know of,” said he, with
reserve. “But I should not like to give an opinion until we have heard
the doctors’ evidence.”
“But didn’t you hear what the doctor said? Didn’t you wait to hear it?”
persisted Nell.
“I waited to hear it, but I didn’t succeed,” said the colonel, in an
offended tone.
The fact was that he and a number of other nobodies, who on one account
or other considered themselves persons of great importance in the
neighborhood, had been cruelly snubbed by the two medical men who had
made an examination of the body when it had been brought into the
town. For, after making their examination, they had both passed out
of the building and through the throng which awaited them as quickly
as possible, and had both declined at that stage to give a definite
opinion as to the cause of death. So all the little-great men felt
grossly insulted, and departed to their respective homes at a white
heat of indignation.
“For all I know, they may bring it in ‘Murder’ against this fellow,
King,” said the colonel, irritably, not with any feeling of animosity
against the person in question, but in order to get Nell to sympathize
with his own grievance.
But the effect of his words upon the girl was electrical.
“Murder! Against Clifford!” cried she, springing to the door and
gasping for breath. “Oh, you don’t mean that! You can’t!”
She burst into a violent fit of weeping, which made the colonel rather
ashamed of himself. He tried to calm her, assuring her that nobody but
the doctors, who were pompous asses without an idea how to treat men of
powers and position vastly superior to their own, would ever entertain
such a monstrous opinion. But she could not find enough comfort in
his words; and at last, in spite of his and his daughter’s efforts to
detain her, she set off to walk to the Blue Lion, that she might at
least have the assurance she longed for that nobody there shared the
colonel’s rashly expressed opinion.
“Mind, Nell, you are to come back here to sleep,” commanded Miss
Bostal, who objected to the girl’s remaining in the vicinity of her
highly undesirable lover.
But Nell would give no promise. She was deeply anxious, not only to
hear how Clifford was and what people thought of Jem Stickels’s death,
but, also, to know how soon she would be able to speak to Clifford,
whose advice had become more necessary than ever.
Refusing, therefore, a rather perfunctory offer on the colonel’s part
to escort her along the lonely road, she bade her friends good-by and
started on her way to the Blue Lion.
But she got little reward for her pains. The house was shut up when
she reached it; and Meg, who let her in, started at the sight of her,
and hurried her up to her room, with scant information. Of course, the
servant had heard of the finding of Jem Stickels’s body; but she either
would not or could not offer any opinions, either her own or anybody
else’s, as to the manner in which it came about; and Nell, fearing to
rouse suspicion, was fain to go to bed unsatisfied. Only one piece
of comfort was given her: Mr. King, who had a professional nurse in
attendance on him, was getting on as well as they could hope.
On the following morning, George Claris, who looked worried and
anxious, told his niece, as soon as breakfast was over, to pack her
trunk for her journey to London. Nell did not dare to make any protest,
nor even to ask any questions of her uncle, whose mood was clearly one
to be respected. She had to content herself with Meg’s report, obtained
from the nurse, that Clifford had passed a good night.
Before ten o’clock Nell and her uncle were driving toward Stroan in the
dog-cart, with her trunk behind them.
They had not gone far when they noticed that something unusual was
going on along the road. A party of men, among whom were two or three
of the Stroan police, were busily engaged in examining the road
itself and the ditch on either side. Nell, with feminine quickness of
perception, guessed that this search was in some way connected with
the discovery of Jem Stickels’s body on the previous evening; but her
uncle, being less acute, pulled up his horse, and made inquiries.
“Hallo, what’s up?” said he, addressing the nearest policeman.
“Oh, nothing in particular,” replied the man, with a glance at Nell.
“Nothing as would interest _you_,” added another of the searchers, and
he, too, looked in an odd manner at the young girl who sat with pale
face and silent lips beside George Claris.
“Well, you might give a civil answer to a civil question, I should
think!” said the innkeeper, angrily.
His niece, more by gestures and coaxing little touches of his sleeve
than by words, tried to induce him to drive on. But he was obstinate.
As an old inhabitant, and one, moreover, who had always been on good
terms with every one, he thought he had a right to the information he
had innocently asked for.
“Come now,” he persisted, leaning out of the dog-cart and speaking in a
confidential tone: “If it’s a secret, you know as I can keep it. I’ve
kept secrets enough before, haven’t I?”
But to his great indignation, he saw on some of the faces of the men at
work what he took for a pitying smile.
He lost his temper.
“Now then, out with it!” said he, in a sullen tone.
The policeman to whom he had first spoken repressed the smile on his
own face, and answered seriously enough:
“We’re not at liberty to say any more at present. But you’ll know as
much as we do very soon--this afternoon, most likely.”
“Uncle George, we shall lose the train,” said Nell, in a quavering
voice.
Then the policeman glanced from George Claris to the trunk behind; and,
as the dog-cart drove off, he whispered some words to the man nearest
to him, which sent him running at a good pace in the direction of
Stroan.
Uncle and niece had scarcely got on the platform of the little station
when the local police superintendent dashed through the doorway after
them.
“Ah, Mr. Claris, I’m just in time, I see,” he sang out cheerily, as he
touched his hat politely to Nell. “Going up to London for a holiday?”
“Not me. Can’t afford holidays,” replied Claris, rather surlily. “I’m
seeing my niece off, that’s all.”
“Well, I’m sorry to have to stop the lady’s trip, but we shall want
her as a witness at the inquest that’s to be held this afternoon.
Very sorry, Miss,” he went on to Nell, “but it’s only putting off the
pleasure for a few days.”
But Nell looked as much overwhelmed as if the summons of the
superintendent had been a death-warrant. She made no answer, but stood
silently, tearless but terror-struck, in front of the two men staring
at the approaching train, with her lips parted and a wild look in her
eyes.
Her uncle roused her with a rough shake of the arm.
“What’s come to the girl? Don’t look like that!” said he in her ear.
“Folks’ll think you had a hand in it yourself if you go into court with
that face!”
To his surprise and chagrin she took him at his word.
“Will they say that, uncle? Will they dare to say that?” she asked,
with such breathless earnestness that he stepped back with a frown on
his honest red face.
“Bless the girl! You give me quite a turn with your whisperings and
your scared face,” said he, testily. “Come along back home, and for
goodness’ sake don’t let them think as you wanted to get away. The Lord
only knows what people say at these times if you don’t keep your wits
about you, and answer questions like a reasonable creature.”
Nell said nothing. But the innkeeper’s heart sank within him as he
drove her home, and perceived that his once light-hearted and merry
little niece was trembling like a leaf the whole way.