Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

II

You would not have known the place again. Virginia Cottage, the unpretending little homestead, had been converted into a mansion. Hyde Stockhausen had built a new wing at one end, and a conservatory at the other; and had put pillars before the rustic porch, over which the Virginia creeper climbed.

We heard last month about Ketira the gipsy: and of the unaccountable disappearance of her daughter, Kettie; and of the indignant anger displayed by Hyde Stockhausen when it was suggested that he might have kidnapped her. Curiously enough, within a few days of that time, Hyde himself disappeared from Church Dykely: not in the mysterious manner that Kettie had, but openly and with intention.

The inducing cause of Hyde’s leaving, as was stated and believed, was a quarrel with his step-father, Massock. It chanced that the monthly settling-day, connected with the brickfields, fell just after Kettie vanished. Massock came over for it as usual, and was overbearing as usual; and perhaps Hyde, already in a state of inward irritation, was less forbearing than usual. Any way, ill-words arose between them. Massock accused Hyde of neglecting his interests, and of being too much of a gentleman to look after the work and the men. Hyde retorted: one word led to another, and there ensued a serious quarrel. The upshot was, that Hyde threw up his post. Vowing he would never again have anything to do with old Massock or his precious bricks as long as he lived, he packed up a small portmanteau and quitted Church Dykely there and then, to the intense tribulation of his ancient nurse and servant, Deborah Preen.

“Leave him alone,” said Massock roughly. “He’ll be back safe enough in a day or two.”

“Where is he gone?” asked Ketira the gipsy: who, hovering still around Virginia Cottage, had seen Hyde’s exit with his portmanteau.

Massock stared at her, and at her red cloak: she had penetrated to his presence to ask the question. He had never before seen Ketira; never heard of her.

“What is it to you?” he demanded, in his coarse manner. “Who are you? Do you come here to tell his fortune? Be off, old witch!”

“His fortune may be told sooner than you care to hear it—if you are anything to him,” was the gipsy’s answer. And that same night she quitted Church Dykely herself, wandering away to be lost in the “wide wide world.”

Massock’s opinion, that Hyde would return in a day or two, proved to be a mistaken one. Rimmer, at the Silver Bear, got a letter from a lawyer in Worcester, asking him to release Mr. Stockhausen from Virginia Cottage—which Hyde had taken for three years. But, this, Rimmer refused to do. So Hyde had to make the best of his bargain: and every quarter, as the quarters went on, the rent was punctually remitted to Henry Rimmer by the lawyer: who gave, however, no clue to his client’s place of abode. It was said that Hyde had been reconciled to his uncle, Parson Hyde (now getting into his dotage), and was by him supplied with funds.

One fine evening, however, in the late spring, when not very far short of a twelvemonth had elapsed, Hyde astonished Deborah Preen by his return. After a fit of crying, to show her joy, Deborah brought him in some supper and stood by while he ate it, telling him the news of what had transpired in the village since he left.

“Are those beautiful brickfields being worked still?” he asked.

“‘Deed but they are then, Master Hyde. A sight o’ bricks seems to be made at ’em. Pitt the foreman, he have took your place as manager, sir, and keeps the accounts.”

“Good luck to him!” said Hyde, drinking a glass of ale. “That queer old lady in the red cloak: what has become of her?”

“What, that gipsy hag?” cried Preen. “She’s dead, sir.”

“Dead!”

“Yes, sir, dead: and a good riddance, too. She went away the very night you went, Mr. Hyde, and never came back again. A week or two ago Abel Carew got news that she was dead.”

(Shortly before this, some wandering gipsies had set up their camp within a mile or two of Church Dykely. Abel Carew, never having had news of Ketira since her departure, went to them to make inquiries. At first the gipsies seemed not to understand of whom he was speaking; but upon his making Ketira clear to them, they told him she had been dead about a month; of her daughter, Kettie, they knew nothing.)

“She’s not much loss,” observed Hyde in answer to Deborah: and his face took a brighter look, as though the news were a relief—Preen noticed it. “The old gipsy was as mad as a March hare.”

“And ten times more troublesome than one,” put in Preen. “Be you come home to stay, master?”

“I dare say I shall,” replied Hyde. “As good settle down here as elsewhere: and there’d be no fun in paying two rents.”

So we had Hyde Stockhausen amidst us once more. He did not intend to take up with brickmaking again, but to live as a gentleman. His uncle made him an allowance, and he was going to be married. Abel Carew questioned him about Kettie one day when they met on the common, asking whether he had seen her. Never, was the reply of Hyde. So that what with the girl’s prolonged disappearance and her mother’s death, it was assumed that we had done with the two gipsies for ever.

Hyde was engaged to a Miss Peyton. A young lady just left an orphan, whom he had met only six weeks ago at some seaside place. He had fallen in love with her at first sight, and she with him. She had two or three hundred a-year: and Hyde, there was little doubt, would come into all his uncle’s money; so he saw no reason why he should not make Virginia Cottage comfortable for her, and went off to the Silver Bear, to talk to Henry Rimmer about it.

The result was, that improvements were put in hand without delay. A wing (consisting of a handsome drawing-room downstairs, and a bed and dressing-room above) was added to the cottage on one side; on the other side, Hyde built a conservatory. The house was also generally embellished and set in order, and some new furniture brought in. And I think if ever workmen worked quickly, these did; for the alterations seemed no sooner to be begun than they were done.

“So you have sown your wild oats, Master Hyde,” remarked the Squire one day in passing, as he stood to watch the finishing touches, then being put to the outside of the house.

“Don’t know that I ever had many to sow, sir,” said Hyde, nodding to me.

“And what sort of a young lady is this wife that you are about to bring home?” went on the pater.

Hyde’s face took a warm flush and his lips parted with a half-smile; which proved what she was to him. “You will see, sir,” he said in answer.

“When is the wedding to be?”

“This day week.”

“This day week!” echoed the Squire, surprised: and Hyde, who seemed to have spoken incautiously, looked vexed.

“I did not intend to say as much; my thoughts were elsewhere,” he observed. “Don’t mention it again, Mr. Todhetley. Even old Deborah has not been told.”

“I’ll take care, lad. But it is known all over the place that the wedding is close at hand.”

“Yes: but not the day.”

“When do you go away for it?”

“On Saturday.”

“Well, good luck to you, lad! By the way, Hyde,” continued the Squire, “what did they do about that drain in the yard? Put a new pipe?”

“Yes,” said Hyde, “and they have made a very good job of it. Will you come and see it?”

Pipes and drains held no attraction for me. While the pater went through the house to the yard, I strolled outside the front-gate and across to the little coppice to wait for him. It was shady there: the hot midsummer sun was ablaze to-day.

And I declare that a feather might almost have knocked me down. There, amidst the trees of the coppice, like a picture framed round by green leaves, stood Ketira the gipsy. Or Ketira’s ghost.

Believing that she was dead and buried, I might have believed it to be the latter, but for the red cloth cloak: that was real. She was staring at Hyde’s house with all the fire of her glittering eyes, looking as though she were consumed by some inward fever.

“Who lives there now?” she abruptly asked me without any other greeting, pointing her yellow forefinger at the house.

“The cottage was empty ever so long,” I carelessly said, some instinct prompting me not to tell too much. “Lately the workmen have been making alterations in it. How is Kettie? Have you found her?”

She lifted her two hands aloft with a gesture of despair: but left me unanswered. “These alterations: by whom are they made?”

But the sight of the Squire, coming forth alone, served as an excuse for my making off. I gave her a parting nod, saying I was glad to see her again in the land of the living.

“Ketira the gipsy is here, sir.”

“No!” cried the pater in amazement. “Why do you say that, Johnny?”

“She is here in the coppice.”

“Nonsense, lad! Ketira’s dead, you know.”

“But I have just seen her, and spoken to her.”

“Then what did those gipsy-tramps mean by telling Abel Carew that she had died?” cried the Squire explosively, as he marched across the few yards of greensward towards the coppice.

“Abel did not feel quite sure at the time that he and they were not talking of two persons. That must have been the case, sir.”

We were too late. Ketira was already half-way along the path that led to the common: no doubt on her road to pay a visit to Abel Carew. And I can only relate what passed there at second hand. Between ourselves, Ketira was no favourite of his.

He was at his early dinner of bread-and-butter and salad when she walked in and astonished him. Abel, getting over his surprise, invited her to partake of the meal; but she just waved her hand in refusal, as much as to say that she was superior to dinner and dinner-eating.

“Have you found Kettie?” was his next question.

“It is the first time a search of mine ever failed,” she replied, beginning to pace the little room in agitation, just as a tiger paces its confined cage. “I have given myself neither rest nor peace since I set out upon it; but it has not brought me tidings of my child.”

“It must have been a weary task for you, Ketira. I wish you would break bread with me.”

“I was helped.”

“Helped!” repeated Abel. “Helped by what?”

“I know not yet, whether angel or devil. It has been one or the other:—according as he has, or has not, played me false.”

“As who has played you false?”

“Of whom do you suppose I speak but him?” she retorted, standing to confront Abel with her deep eyes. “Hyde Stockhausen has in some subtle manner evaded me: but I shall find him yet.”

“Hyde Stockhausen is back here,” quietly observed Abel.

“Back here! Then it is no false instinct that has led me here,” she added in a low tone, apparently communing with herself. “Is Ketira with him?”

“No, no,” said Abel, vexed at the question. “Kettie has never come back to the place since she left it.”

“When did he come?”

“It must be about two months ago.”

“He is in the same dwelling-house as before! For what is he making it so grand?”

“It is said to be against his marriage.”

“His marriage with Ketira?”

“With a Miss Peyton; some young lady he has met. Why do you bring up Ketira’s name in conjunction with this matter—or with him?”

She turned to the open casement, and stood there, as if to inhale the sweet scent of Abel’s flowers, and listen to the hum of his bees. Her face was working, her strange eyes were gleaming, her hands were clasped to pain.

“I know what I know, Abel Carew. Let him look to it if he brings home any other wife than my Ketira.”

“Nay,” remonstrated peaceful old Abel. “Because a young man has whispered pretty words in a maiden’s ear, and given her, it may be, a moonlight kiss, that does not bind him to marry her.”

“And would I have wished to bind him had it ended there?” flashed the gipsy. “No; I should have been thankful that it had so ended. I hated him from the first.”

“You have no proof that it did not so end, Ketira.”

“No proof; none,” she assented. “No tangible proof that I could give to you, her father’s brother, or to others. But the proof lies in the fatal signs that show themselves to me continually, and in the unerring instinct of my own heart. If the man puts another into the place that ought to be hers, let him look to it.”

“You may be mistaken, Ketira. I know not what the signs you speak of can be: they may show themselves to you but to mislead; and nothing is more deceptive than the fancies of one’s imagination. Be it as it may, vengeance does not belong to us. Do not you put yourself forward to work young Stockhausen ill.”

“I work him ill!” retorted the gipsy. “You are mistaking me altogether. It is not I who shall work it. I only see it—and foretell it.”

“Nay, why speak so strangely, Ketira? It cannot be that you–”

“Abel Carew, talk not to me of matters that you do not understand,” she interrupted. “I know what I know. Things that I am able to see are hidden from you.”

He shook his head. “It is wrong to speak so of Hyde Stockhausen—or of any one. He may be as innocent in the matter as you or I.”

“But I tell you that he is not. And the conviction of it lies here”—striking herself fiercely on the breast.

Abel sighed, and began to put his dinner-plates together. He could not make any impression upon her, or on the notion she had taken up.

“Do you know what it is to have a breaking heart, Abel Carew?” she asked, her voice taking a softer tone that seemed to change it into a piteous wailing. “A broken heart one can bear; for all struggle is over, and one has but to put one’s head down on the green earth and die. But a breaking heart means continuous suffering; a perpetual torture that slowly saps away the life; a never-ending ache of soul and of spirit, than which nothing in this world can be so hard to battle with. And for twelve months now this anguish has been mine!”

Poor Ketira! Mistaken or not mistaken, there could be no question that her trouble was grievous to bear; the suspense, in which her days were passed, well-nigh unendurable.

This, that I have told, occurred on Thursday morning. Ketira quitted Abel Carew only to bend her steps back towards Virginia Cottage, and stayed hovering around the house that day and the next. One or another, passing, saw her watching it perpetually, herself partly hidden. Now peeping out from the little coppice; now tramping quickly past the gate, as though she were starting off on a three-mile walk; now stealing to the back of the house, to gaze at the windows. There she might be seen, in one place or another, like a haunting red dragon: her object, as was supposed, being to get speech of Hyde Stockhausen. She did not succeed. Twice she went boldly to the door, knocked, and asked for him. Deborah Preen slammed it in her face. It was thought that Hyde, who then knew of her return and that the report of her death was false, must be on the watch also, to avoid her. If he wanted to go abroad and she was posted at the back, he slipped out in front: when he wished to get in again and caught sight of her red cloak illumining the coppice, he made a dash in at the back-gate, and was lost amid the kidney beans.

By this time the state of affairs was known to Church Dykely: a rare dish of nuts for the quiet place to crack. Those of us who possessed liberty made pleas for passing by Virginia Cottage to see the fun. Not that there was much to see, except a glimpse of the red cloak in this odd spot or in that.

“Stockhausen must be silly!” cried the Squire. “Why does he not openly see the poor woman and inquire what it is she wants with him? The idea of his shunning her in this absurd way! What does he mean by it, I wonder?”

Now, before telling more, I wish to halt and say a word. That much ridicule will be cast on this story by the intelligent reader, is as sure as that apples grow in summer. Nevertheless, I am but relating what took place. Certain things in it were curiously strange; not at all explainable hitherto: possibly never to be explained. I chanced to be personally mixed up with it, so to say, in a degree; from its beginning, when Ketira and her daughter first appeared at Abel Carew’s, to its ending, which has yet to be told. For that much I can vouch—I mean what I was present at. But you need not accord belief to the whole, unless you like.

Chance, and nothing else, caused me to be sent over this same evening to Mr. Duffham’s. It was Friday, you understand; and the eve of the day Hyde Stockhausen would depart preparatory to his marriage. One of our maids had been ailing for some days with what was thought to be a bad cold: as she did not get better, but grew more feverish, Mrs. Todhetley decided to send for the doctor, if only as a measure of precaution.

“You can go over to Mr. Duffham’s for me, Johnny,” she said, as we got up from tea—which meal was generally taken at the manor close upon dinner, somewhat after the fashion that the French take their tasse de café. “Ask him if he will be so kind as to call in to see Ann when he is out to-morrow morning.”

Nothing loth was I. The evening was glorious, tempting the world out-of-doors, calm and beautiful, but very hot yet. The direct way to Duffham’s from our house was not by Virginia Cottage: but, as a matter of course, I took it. Going along at tip-top speed until I came within sight of it, I then slackened to a snail’s pace, the better to take observations.

There’s an old saying, that virtue is its own reward. If any virtue existed in my choosing this circuitous and agreeable route, I can only say that for once the promise was at fault, for I was not rewarded. Were Hyde Stockhausen’s house a prison, it could not have been much more closely shut up. The windows were closed on that lovely midsummer night; the doors looked tight as wax. Not a glimpse could I catch of as much as the bow of Deborah Preen’s mob-cap atop of the short bedroom blinds; and Hyde might have been over in Africa for all that could be seen of him.

Neither (for a wonder) was there any trace of Ketira the gipsy. Her red cloak was nowhere. Had she obtained speech of Hyde, and so terminated her watch, or had she given it up in despair? Any way, there was nothing to reward me for having come that much out of my road, and I went on, whistling dolorously.

But, hardly had I got past the premises and was well on the field-path beyond, when I met Duffham. Giving him the message from home, which he said he would attend to, I enlarged on the disappointment just experienced in seeing nothing of anybody.

“Shut up like a jail, is it?” quoth Duffham. “I have just had a note from Stockhausen, asking me to call there. His throat’s troubling him again, he says: wants me to give him something that will cure him by to-morrow.”

I had turned with the doctor, and went walking with him up the garden, listening to what he said. But I meant to leave him when we reached the door. He began trying it. It was fastened inside.

“I dare say you can come in and see Hyde, Johnny. What do you want with him?”

“Not much; only to wish him good luck.”

“Is your master afraid of thieves that he bolts his doors?” cried Duffham to old Preen when she let us in.

“’Twas me fastened it, sir; not master,” was her reply. “That gipsy wretch have been about yesterday and to-day, wanting to get in. I’ve got my silver about, and don’t want it stolen. Mr. Hyde’s mother and Massock have been here to dinner; they’ve not long gone.”

Decanters and fruit stood on the table before Hyde. He started up to shake hands, appearing very much elated. Duffham, more experienced than I, saw that he had been taking quite enough wine.

“So you have had your stepfather here!” was one of the doctor’s first remarks. “Been making up the quarrel, I suppose.”

“He came of his own accord; I didn’t invite him,” said Hyde, laughing. “My mother wrote me word that they were coming—to give me their good wishes for the future.”

“Just what Johnny Ludlow here says he wants to give,” said Duffham: though I didn’t see that he need have brought my words up, and made a fellow feel shy.

“Then, by Jove, you shall drink them in champagne!” exclaimed Hyde. He caught up a bottle of champagne that stood under the sideboard, from which the wire had been removed, and would have cut the string but for the restraining hand of Duffham.

“No, Hyde; you have had rather too much as it is.”

“I swear to you that I have not had a spoonful. It has not been opened, you see. My mother refused it, and Massock does not care for champagne: he likes something heavier.”

“If you have not taken champagne, you have taken other wine.”

“Sherry at dinner, and port since,” laughed Hyde.

“And more of it than is good for you.”

“When Massock sits down to port wine he drinks like a fish,” returned Hyde, still laughing. “Of course I had to make a show of drinking with him. I wished the port at Hanover.”

By a dexterous movement, he caught up a knife and cut the string. Out shot the cork with a bang, and he filled three of the tumblers that stood on the sideboard with wine and froth—one for each of us. “Your health, doctor,” nodded he, and tossed off his own.