Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series

I

October was setting in beautifully. Some people say it is the most lovely month in the year when the skies are blue and genial.

Seated at the breakfast-table at Caramel Cottage that Tuesday morning, with the window thrown open to the warm, pleasant air, the small party of three might have enjoyed that air, but for being preoccupied with their own reflections. Edgar Reste was thinking of the bank-notes which the postman had just brought him in Captain Amphlett’s letter; Katrine Barbary sat shrinking from the vague fear imparted to her by the curious avowal her father had made in language not too choice, as his covetous eyes rested on the money: “For that, a man might be tempted to smother his grandmother.” While Mr. Barbary had started instantly up and flung the window higher, as if in the silence that followed the words, they had struck back upon himself unpleasantly, and he sought to divert attention from them.

“A grand day for the outlying crops,” he remarked, his lithe, slender form, his pale, perfect features showing out well in the light of the brilliant morning. “But most of the grain is in, I think. We shall have a charming walk to Church Leet, Edgar.”

“Yes,” assented Mr. Reste, as he folded the notes together and placed them in his pocket-book. There were six of them for £10 each.

Breakfast over, Katrine set off for Dyke Manor that morning as usual, to talk to Lena in French, and teach her to read it. She stayed luncheon with us. Chancing to say that her father and his guest were gone to Church Leet, Mrs. Todhetley kept her.

At four o’clock, when Katrine went home, she found they had returned, and were then shut up in the gun-room. Katrine could hear the hum of their voices, with now and again a burst of merry laughter from Edgar Reste.

“Have they had dinner?” she enquired of Joan.

“Ay, sure they have, Miss Katrine. They got back at two o’clock, and I prepared the dinner at once.”

I had lent Katrine that afternoon the “Vicar of Wakefield,”—which she said she had never read; one could hardly believe such a thing of an English girl, but I suppose it was through her having lived over in France. Taking it into the back garden, she sat down on a rustic bench, one or two of which stood about. By-and-by Edgar Reste came out and sat down beside her.

“Had you a nice walk to-day?” she asked.

“Very,” he answered. “What a quaint little village Church Leet is! Hardly to be called a village, though. Leet Hall is a fine old place.”

“Yes, I have heard so. I have not seen it.”

“Not seen it! Do you mean to say, Katrine, that you have never been to Church Leet?”

“Not yet. Nobody has ever invited me to go, and I cannot walk all that way by myself, you know.”

He was sitting sideways, his left arm leaning on the elbow of the bench, his kindly, luminous brown eyes fixed on her fair pretty face, all blushes and dimples. Ah, if fortune had but smiled upon him!—if he might but have whispered to this young girl, who had become so dear to him, of the love that filled his whole heart!

“Suppose you walk over with me one of these fine days before I leave?” he continued. “It won’t be too far for you, will it?”

“Oh no. I should like to go.”

“There is the prettiest churchyard you ever saw, to rest in. And such a quaint little church, covered with ivy. The Rectory, standing by, is quite a grand mansion in comparison with the church.”

“And the church has a history, I believe.”

“Ay, as connected with the people of the Hall and the Rectory; and with its own chimes, that never played, I hear, but disaster followed. We will go then, Katrine, some afternoon between now and Saturday.”

Her face fell; she turned it from him. “Must you leave on Saturday, Edgar?”

“My dear little cousin, yes. Cousins in name, you know we are, though not in reality.”

“You did say you might stay until Monday.”

“Ay, my will would be good to stay till Monday, and many a Monday after it: but you see, Katrine, I have neglected my work too long, and I cannot break into another week. So you must please make the most of me until Saturday,” he added playfully, “when I shall take the evening train.”

“You English do not care to travel on a Sunday, I notice.”

“We English! Allow me to remind Mademoiselle that she is just as much English as are the rest of us.”

Katrine smiled.

“My good mother instilled all kinds of old-world notions into me, Katrine. Amongst them was that of never doing week-day work on a Sunday unless compelled by necessity.”

“Do you never work on a Sunday—at your reviews and writings, and all that?”

“Never. I am sure it would not bring me luck if I did. Suppose we fix Thursday for walking to Church Leet?”

“That will do nicely. Unless—Squire Todhetley invited you to go with him to Evesham one day, you know,” broke off Katrine. “He may just fix upon Thursday.”

“In that case we will take our walk on Friday.”

A silence ensued. Their hearts were very full, and that makes speech reticent. Katrine glanced now and again at the pages of the “Vicar of Wakefield,” which lay in her lap, but she did not read it. As to the barrister, he was looking at her; at the face that had become so dear to him. They might never meet again, nothing on earth might come of the present intimacy and the sweet burning longings, but he knew that he should remember her to the end of time. A verse of one of Moore’s melodies passed through his mind: unconsciously he began to hum it:

“Here comes Joan to say tea is ready,” interrupted Katrine.

They strolled indoors slowly, side by side. The tea-tray waited in the parlour. Mr. Barbary came in from the gun-room, and they all sat down to the table.

After tea he went back to the gun-room, Mr. Reste with him, leaving Katrine alone. She had the candles lighted and began to mend a piece of Mrs. Todhetley’s valuable old lace. Presently Joan came in to ask a question.

“Miss Katrine, is it the brace of partridges or the pheasants that are to be cooked for supper? Do you know?”

“No, that I don’t,” said Katrine. “But I can ask.”

Putting down her work, she went to the gun-room and gently opened the door. Upon which, she heard these remarkable words from Mr. Reste:

“I wouldn’t hesitate at all if it were not for the moon.”

“The moon makes it all the safer,” contended Mr. Barbary. “Foes can’t rush upon one unawares when the moon’s shining. I tell you this will be one of the best possible nights for you.”

“Papa, papa,” hurriedly broke in Katrine, speaking through the dusk of twilight, “is Joan to cook the pheasants or the partridges?”

“The pheasants,” he answered sharply. “Shut the door.”

So the pheasants were dressed for supper, and very nice they proved with their bread-sauce and rich gravy. Mr. Barbary especially seemed to enjoy them; his daughter did not.

Poor Katrine’s senses were painfully alert that night, as she lay listening after getting to bed. The words she had overheard in the gun-room seemed to her to bear but one meaning—that not only was her father going abroad into the wilds of danger, but Edgar Reste also. They had gone to their respective rooms early, soon after she went to hers; but that might be meant as a blind and told nothing.

By-and-by, she caught a sound as of the stairs creaking. Mr. Reste and her father were both creeping down them. Katrine flew to her window and peeped behind the blind.

They went out together by the back door. The bright moonbeams lay full upon the yard. Mr. Reste seemed to be attired like her father, in high leggings and a large old shooting-coat, no doubt borrowed plumes. Each of them carried a gun, and they stole cautiously out at the little side gate.

“Oh,” moaned the unhappy Katrine, “if papa would but take better care of himself! If he would but leave off doing this most dreadful and dangerous thing!”

Whether Katrine fell asleep after that, or not, she could never decide: it appeared as though but a short time had elapsed, when she was startled by a sharp sound outside, close to the house. It might have been the report of a gun, but she was not sure. This was followed by some stir in the yard and covert talking.

“They are bringing in the game they have shot,” thought Katrine, “but oh, I am thankful they have got back safely!” And she put the pillow over her head and ears, and lay shivering.

Squire Todhetley was as good and lenient a man at heart as could be found in our two counties, Warwickshire and Worcestershire; fonder of forgiving sins and sinners than of bringing them to book, and you have not read of him all these years without learning it. But there was one offence that stirred his anger up to bubbling point, especially when committed against himself. And that was poaching.

So that, when we got downstairs to breakfast at Dyke Manor on the following morning, Wednesday, and were greeted with the news that some poachers had been out on our land in the night, and had shot at the keepers, it was no wonder the Squire went into a state of commotion, and that the rest of us partook of it.

“Johnny, tell Mack to fetch Jones; to bring him here instantly,” fumed he. “Those Standishes have been in this work!”

I went to carry the orders to Mack in the yard. In passing back, after giving them, I saw that the dog-kennel was empty and the chain lying loose.

“Where’s Don?” I asked. “Who has taken him out?”

“Guess he have strayed out of hisself, Master Johnny,” was Mack’s answer. “He was gone when I come on this morning, sir, and the gate were standing wide open.”

“Gone then?—and the gate open? Where’s Giles?”

But, even as I put the question, I caught sight of Giles at the stable pump, plunging his head and face into a pail of water. So I knew what had been the matter with him. Giles was a first-rate groom and a good servant, and it was very seldom indeed that he took more than was good for him, but it did happen at intervals.

Old Jones arrived in obedience to the summons, and stood on his fat gouty legs in the hall while the Squire talked to him. The faith he put in that old constable was surprising, whose skill and discernment were about suited to the year One.

His tale of the night’s doings, as confirmed by other tales, was not very clear. At least, much satisfaction could not be got out of it. Some poachers congregated on a plot of land called Dyke’s Neck—why it should have been so named nobody understood—were surprised by the keepers early in the night. A few stray shots were interchanged, no damage being done on either side, and the poachers made off, escaping not only scot-free but unrecognised. This last fact bore the keenest sting of all, and the Squire paced the hall in a fury.

“You must unearth them,” he said to Jones: “don’t tell me. They can’t have buried themselves, the villains!”

“No need to look far for ’em, Squire,” protested Jones. “It’s them jail-birds, the three Standishes. If it’s not, I’ll eat my head.”

“Then why have you not taken up the three Standishes?” retorted the Squire. “Of course it is the Standishes.”

“Well, your honour, because I can’t get at ’em,” said Jones helplessly. “Jim, he is off somewhere; and Dick, he swears through thick and thin that he was never out of his bed last night; and t’other, Tom, ain’t apperiently at home at all just now. I looked in at their kitchen on my way here, and that was all I could get out of Mary.”

It was at this juncture that Katrine arrived, preparatory to her morning’s work with Lena. Old Jones and the Squire, still in the hall, were chanting a duet upon the poachers’ iniquity, and she halted by me to listen. I was sitting on the elbow of the carved-oak settle. Katrine looked pale as a sheet.

Girls, thought I, do not like to hear of these things. For I knew nothing then of her fears that the offenders had been her father and Mr. Reste.

“If the poachers had been taken, sir—what then?” she said tremblingly to the Squire, in a temporary lull of the voices.

“What then, Miss Barbary? Why then they would have been lodged in gaol, and the neighbourhood well rid of them,” was the impulsive answer.

“Snug and safe, miss,” put in old Jones, shuffling on his gouty legs in his thick white stockings, “a-waiting to stand their trial next spring assizes at Worcester. Which it would be transportation for ’em, I hope—a using o’ their guns indeed!”

“Were they known at all?” gasped Katrine. “And might not the gamekeepers have shot them? Perhaps have killed them?”

“Killed ’em or wounded ’em, like enough,” assented Jones, “and it would be a good riddance of such varmint, as his worship says, miss. And a misfortin it is that they be not known. Which is an odd thing to my mind, sir, considering the lightness o’ the night: and I’d like to find out whether them there keepers did their duty, or didn’t do it.”

“I can’t see the dog anywhere, father,” interrupted Tod, dashing in at this moment in a white heat, for he had been racing about in search of Don.

“What, is the dog off?” exclaimed old Jones.

“Yes, he is,” said Tod. “And if those poachers have stolen him, I’ll try and get them hanged.”

Leaving us to our commotion, Katrine Barbary passed on to the nursery with Lena, where the lessons were taken. This straying away of Don made one of the small calamities of the day. Giles, put to the torture of confession, admitted that he remembered unchaining Don the past night as usual, but could not remember whether or not he locked the gate. Of course the probability was that he left it wide open, Mack having found it so in the morning. So that Mr. Don, finding himself at liberty, might have gone out promenading as early in the night as he pleased. Giles was ready to hang himself with vexation. The dog was a valuable animal; a prize for any tramp or poacher, for he could be sold at a high price.

We turned out on our different quests; old Jones after the poachers, I and Tod after Don: and the morning wore on.

Katrine went home at midday. This news of the night encounter between the keepers and the poachers had thrown her into a state of anxious pain—though of course the reader fully understands that I am, so far, writing of what I knew nothing about until later. That her father and Edgar Reste had been the poachers of the past night she could not doubt, and a dread of the discovery which might ensue lay upon her with a sick fear. The Standishes might have been included in the party; more than likely they were; Ben Gibbon also. Mr. Jim Standish had contrived to let Katrine believe that they were all birds of a feather, tarred with the same brush. But how could Edgar Reste have allowed himself to be drawn into it even for one night? She could not understand that.

Entering Caramel Cottage by its side gate, Katrine found Joan seated in the kitchen, slicing kidney beans for dinner. Her father was in his favourite den, the gun-room, Mr. Reste was out. When she left in the morning, neither of them had quitted his respective chamber, an entirely unusual thing.

“How late you are with those beans, Joan!” listlessly observed Katrine.

“The master sent me to the Silver Bear for a bottle of the best brandy, and it hindered me,” explained Joan. “They were having a fine noise together when I got back,” she added, dropping her voice.

“Who were?” quickly cried Katrine.

“The master and Mr. Reste. Talking sharply at one another, they were, like two savages. I could hear ’em through my deafness. Ben Gibbon was here when I went out, but he’d gone when I came in with the brandy.”

What with one thing and another, Katrine felt more uncomfortable than an oyster out of its shell. Mr. Reste came in at dinner-time, and she saw nothing amiss then, except that he and her father were both unusually silent.

Afterwards they went out together, and Katrine hoped that the unpleasantness between them was at an end.

She was standing at the front gate late in the afternoon, looking up and down the solitary road, which was no better than a wide field path, when Tod and I shot out of the dark grove by Caramel’s Farm, and made up to her.

“You look hot and tired,” she said to us.

“So would you, Miss Barbary, if you had been scouring the fields in search of Don, as we have,” answered Tod, who was in a desperate mood.

At that moment Mr. Barbary came swinging round the corner of the short lane that led to the high-road, his guest following him. They nodded to us and went in at the gate.

“You do not happen to have seen anything of our Newfoundland dog to-day, I suppose, Mr. Barbary?” questioned Tod.

“No, I have not,” he answered. “My daughter mentioned to me that he had strayed away.”

“Strayed away or been stolen,” corrected Tod. “The dog was a favourite, and it has put my father out more than you’d believe. He thinks the Standishes may have got him: especially if it is they who were out in the night.”