For three months Anne had prayed constantly for Jane. Living alone in an
orderly and quiet house with one window open towards her Invisible
Friend, she had spoken with Him of her desire for Jane's recovery, until
it appeared to her that He too must yearn as she did for this definite
thing. Elizabeth Richardson had been removed to the Infirmary and was at
peace, so that Anne's thoughts were of little else than Jane and her
re-instatement in the country. It was not the chagrin of the failure of
her visit to Burton's house which troubled her, but her helplessness. If
she went again she could do no more than plead as she had done before.
But it might be that the girl had by this time felt her need of outside
friends. It was fully three months ago. As Anne was returning from the
nearest village one afternoon in the solemn winter sunshine, she
determined suddenly to pay a second visit to Jane. And she would try to
be less hard on Burton, which would perhaps draw Jane to her. It might
be that she needed a friend by now. Half a mile from her own cottage she
came to a three-cornered patch of the way where several roads met. By
one side was a pond with two posts painted white as a mark for drivers
at night-time. The sloping edge of the pond was trodden into mud by the
feet of horses stopping to drink, and as Anne, crossing the road to
avoid the mud, arrived opposite one of the posts, she saw a bill posted
upon it announcing a sale.
"I must see what it is," she said. "Perhaps it's something for Mary."
She read the heading. "Sale of Bankrupt Stock."
"It seems to be nothing but horses," she said as she read the list. Two
men carrying forks on their shoulders came at that moment from the
Ashley Road and joined her, looking over her shoulder at the bill.
"I heard about it this morning," said one. "I thought he couldn't last
long at that rate. It was always spending and making a show."
"There was someone else in it," said the other. "They say Burton's done
a moonlight flitting and gone to America."
Anne, whose thoughts had been engrossed by a new opportunity for Mary,
became aware of calamity of a new sort. She turned to the men.
"What has happened?" she asked, though even as she spoke she had grasped
it all. The man, a young, fair-haired man of twenty-six, with great
breadth of chest and long straight legs, answered with the willingness
of a countryman to spread news.
"Why, that Richard Burton's gone bankrupt and made a bolt. They say
it'll take the house as well as the horses to pay it all up. The
bailiffs was in to-day as I passed taking it all down. It's a bad job
for _somebody_, I heard," he said winking at the other man. He, glancing
at Anne, looked embarrassed and pretended not to see.
"Can either of you tell me where the girl who was living there has gone?
Is she still there?" she asked the latter man.
"Not she!" answered the former.
"They say she walked in the night to Ashley Union," said the elder man.
"She's there now and nobody saw her go, so I suppose she must have done.
It's a good eight miles of a walk."
"Do her good," said the younger man; and they began to discuss the list
and quality of the horses for sale.
Anne walked on. It had come then, and sooner than it was looked for.
Jane's fancy-work and "lady-like" life seemed like the play-things of a
baby by the side of a scaffold, as helpless and as foolish.
"I was going to the Union to-morrow anyway for Elizabeth Richardson,"
said Anne, as she unlocked her door, trying not to see Jane Evans
walking all alone, with no new house or protector, through the darkness
of which she was afraid, to the formidable iron gate of the Union.