by Ellen Wood
Jane sat in a low elbow-chair before the fire, her head leaning on her hand, her hair a little tumbled. It was very pretty hair, dark chestnut, and her eyes were hazel. Robert Ashton was fair-haired and blue-eyed; Saxon all over, and very good-looking.
“I have brought you some pudding, Jane.”
“Oh, Johnny! why did you leave the table? I can’t eat it.”
“But Mrs. Coney says you are to; and some mince-pie also, or you’ll have no luck.”
As if in obedience she ate a little of the pudding, cut a quarter of the mince-pie with her fork, and ate that.
“There, Johnny, that’s quite enough for ‘luck.’ Go back now to your dinner; I dare say you’ve not had any pudding yourself.”
“I’ll stay with you, and finish this: as it is going begging.”
She neither said yes nor no. She was looking frightfully uneasy.
“Are you vexed that Robert Ashton’s not here, Jane?”
“I am not vexed, because I know he would have been here if he could. I think something has happened to him.”
I stared at her. “What! because he is a little late in coming? Why, Jane, you must be nervous.”
She kept looking into the fire, her eyes fixed. I sat on a stool on the other side of the hearth; the empty pudding-plate standing on the rug between us, where I had put it.
“Robert was sure to come for this dinner, Johnny, all being well, and to be in time.”
“Tell me what you fear, Jane — and why?”
“I think I will tell you,” she said, after a pause. “I should like to tell some one. I wish I had told Robert when he called this morning; but I was afraid he would laugh at me. You will laugh too.”
And Jane Coney told it. In a low, dread voice, her eyes staring into the fire as before, just as though they could see through the blaze into the future.
Early that morning she had had a dream; a disagreeable, ugly dream about Robert Ashton. She thought he was in some frightful peril, that she cried to him to avoid it, or it would stop their marriage. He seemed not to take the least notice of her, but to go right on to it, and in the alarm this brought her, she awoke. I listened in silence, saying nothing to the end; no, nor then.
“The dream was so intensely real, Johnny. It seemed to be to-day; this very day then dawning; and we both of us knew that it was; the one before our marriage. I woke up in a fever; and but that it was night and not day, should have had difficulty in persuading myself at first that we were not really enacting the scene — it was, as I say, so vividly real. And Robert went out to the peril, never heeding me.”
“What was the peril?”
“That’s what I can’t tell. A consciousness lay upon me that it was something very bad and frightful; but of its nature I saw nothing. I did not go to sleep again: it must have been about six o’clock, but the mornings are very dark, you know. I got up soon: what with this dinner-party and other things, there has been a great deal to do to-day, and I soon forgot my dream. Robert called after breakfast, and the sight of him put me in mind of it. I felt a great inclination to tell him to take especial care of himself; but he would only have laughed at me. He drove away direct to the Timberdale Station, to take the train for Worcester.”
She did not say, though, what he had gone for to Worcester. To get the ring and licence.
“I have not felt the smallest fear of the dream all along, Johnny, since I awoke. Excepting for the few minutes Robert was here, I don’t remember even to have thought of it. But when his brothers and Mr. West came in without him to-night, it flashed into my mind like a dart. I felt sure then that something had happened. I dare say we shall never be married now.”
“Jane!”
“Well, Johnny Ludlow, I think it.”
To me it seemed to be growing serious. There might be nothing at all in what she had said; most people would have said there was nothing; but, sitting there in the quiet room listening to her earnest voice, seeing her anxious face, a feeling came over me that there was. What had become of Robert Ashton? Where could he be?
“I wish you would give me that shawl of mamma’s,” she said, pointing to one on a chair. “I feel cold.”
She was shivering when I put it over her pretty white shoulders and arms. And yet the fire was roaring to the very top of the grate.
“Alone here, while you were at dinner, I went over all sorts of probabilities,” she resumed, drawing the shawl round her as if she were out in the snow. “Of course there are five hundred things that might happen to him, but I can only think of one.”
“Well?” for she had stopped. She seemed to be speaking very unwillingly.
“If he walked he would be almost sure to take the near way, across the Ravine.”
Was she ever coming to the point? I said nothing. It was better to let her go on in her own way.
“I dare say you will say the idea is far-fetched, Johnny. What I think is, that he may have fallen down the Ravine, in coming here.”
Well, I did think it far-fetched. I’d as soon have expected her to say fallen down the chimney.
“Those zigzag paths are not very safe in good weather, especially the one on the Timberdale side,” she went on. “With the snow on them, perhaps ice, they are positively dangerous. One false step at the top — and the fall might kill him.”
Put in this way, it seemed feasible enough. But yet — somehow I did not take to it.
“Robert Ashton is strong and agile, Jane. He has come down the zigzag hundreds of times.”
“I seem to see him lying there, at the bottom of the Ravine,” she said, staring as before into the fire. “I — wish — some of you would go and look for him.”
“Perhaps we had better. I’ll make one. Who’s this?”
It was Tom Coney. His mother had sent him to see after me. I thought I’d tell him — keeping counsel about the dream — that Robert Ashton might have come to grief in the Ravine.
“What kind of grief?” asked Tom.
“Turned a summersault down the zigzag, and be lying with a leg broken.”
Tom’s laugh displayed his small white teeth: the notion amused him excessively. “What else would you like to suppose, Johnny?”
“At any rate, Jane thinks so.”
She turned round then, the tears in her eyes, and went up to Tom in an outburst of grief. It took him aback.
“Tom! Tom! if no one goes to see after him, I think I must go myself. I cannot bear the suspense much longer!”
“Why, Jenny girl, what has taken you?”
That had taken her. The fear that Robert Ashton might be lying disabled, or dead, in the Ravine. Tom Coney called Tod quietly out of the dining-room, and we started. Putting on our dark great-coats in silence, we went out at the back-door, which was nearest the Ravine. Jane came with us to the gate. I never saw eyes so eager as hers were, as she gazed across the snow in the moonlight.
“Look here,” said Tom, “we had better turn our trousers up.”
The expedition was not pleasant, I can assure you, especially the going down the zigzag. Jane was right about its being slippery: we had to hold on by the trees and bushes, and tread cautiously. When pretty near the bottom, Tod made a false step, and shot down into the snow.
“Murder!” he roared out.
“Any bones broken?” asked Tom Coney, who could hardly speak for laughing. Tod growled, and shied a handful of snow at him.
But the slip brought home to us the probability of the fear about Robert Ashton. To slip from where Tod did was fun; to slip from the top of the opposite zigzag, quite another thing. The snow here at the bottom was up to our calves, and our black evening trousers got rolled up higher. The moonlight lay cold and white on the Ravine: the clustering trees, thick in summer, were leafless now. Had any fellow been gazing down from the top, we must have looked, to him, like three black-coated undertakers, gliding along to a funeral.
“I’ll tell you what,” cried Tod: “if Ashton did lose his footing, he wouldn’t come to s
uch mortal grief. The depth of snow would save him.”
“I don’t believe he did fall,” said Tom Coney, stoutly. “Bob Ashton’s as sure-footed as a hare. But for Jane’s being so miserable, I’d have said, flatly, I wouldn’t come out on any such wild-goose errand.”
On we went, wading through the snow. Some of us looked round for the ghost’s light, and did not see it. But rumour said that it never came on a bright moonlit night. Here we were at last! — at the foot of the other zigzag. But Robert Ashton wasn’t here. And, the best proof that he had not fallen, was the unbroken surface of the snow. Not so much as a rabbit had scudded across to disturb it.
“I knew it,” said Tom Coney. “He has not come to grief at all. It stands to reason that a fellow must have heaps to do the day before his wedding, if it’s only in burning his old letters from other sweethearts. Bob had a heap of them, no doubt; and couldn’t get away in time for dinner.”
“We had better go on to the Court, and see,” I said.
“Oh, that be hanged!” cried the other two in a breath.
“Well, I shall. It’s not much farther. You can go back, or not, as you like.”
This zigzag, though steeper than the one on our side, was not so slippery. Perhaps the sun had shone on it in the day and melted the snow. I went up it nearly as easily as in good weather. Tod and Coney, thinking better of the turning back, came after me.
We should have been at Timberdale Court in five minutes, taking the short-cut over hedges and ditches, but for an adventure by the way, which I have not just here space to tell about. It had nothing to do with Robert Ashton. Getting to the Court, we hammered at it till the door was opened. The servant started back in surprise.
“Goodness me!” said she, “I thought it was master.”
“Where is the master?” asked Tom.
“Not come home, sir. He has not been in since he left this morning.”
It was all out. Instead of pitchpolling into Crabb Ravine and breaking his limbs, Bob Ashton had not got back from Worcester. It was very strange, though, what could be keeping him, and the Court was nearly in a commotion over it.
When we got back to the Farm, they were laying the table for the wedding-breakfast. Plenty of kickshaws now, and some lovely flowers. The ladies, helping, had their gowns turned up. This helping had not been in the evening’s programme; but things seemed to have been turned upside down, and they were glad to seize upon it. Jane and her sister, Mrs. West, sat alone by the drawing-room fire, never saying a word to one another.
“Johnny, I don’t half like this,” whispered Mrs. Todhetley to me.
“Like what, good mother?”
“This absence of Robert Ashton.”
I don’t know that I liked it either.
Morning came. In an uncertainty such as this, people go to each other’s houses indiscriminately. The first train came in from Worcester before it was well light; but it did not bring Robert Ashton. As to the snow on the ground, it was pretty well beaten now.
“He wouldn’t travel by that slow parliamentary thing: he’ll come by the express to South Crabb Junction,” said Tom Coney, thinking he would cheer away the general disappointment. Jane we had not seen.
The express would be at the Junction between nine and ten. A whole lot of us went down there. It was not farther off than Timberdale Station, but the opposite way. I don’t think one of us was more eager than another, unless it was the Squire. The thing was getting serious, he told us; and he went puffing about like a man looking for his head.
To witness the way he seized upon the doors when the express steamed in, and put his old red nose inside all the carriages, looking for Robert Ashton, was a rare sight. The guard laid hold of his arm, saying he’d come to damage. But Robert Ashton was not in the train.
“He may come yet,” said old Coney, looking fit to cry. “There’ll be a train in again at Timberdale. Or, he may drive over.”
But every one felt that he would not come. Something told us so. It was only making believe to one another, saying he would.
“I shall go to Worcester by the next down train,” said the Squire to old Coney.
“The next does not stop here.”
“They’d better stop it for me,” said the Squire, defiantly. “You can’t come, Coney. You must remain to give Jane away.”
“But if there’s no bridegroom to give her to?” debated old Coney.
“There may be. You must remain on the strength of it.”
The down train came up, and obeyed the signal to stop made by the station-master. The Squire, Tod, and Tom Coney got in, and it steamed on again.
“Now mind, I shall conduct this search,” the Squire said to the others with a frown. “You young fellows don’t know your right hand from your left in a business of this sort. We must go about it systematically, and find out the different places that Robert Ashton went to yesterday, and the people he saw.” Tod and Tom Coney told us this later.
When they arrived at Worcester, the first man they saw at Shrubb Hill Station was Harry Coles, who had been seeing somebody off by the train, which was rather curious; for his brother, Fred Coles, was Robert Ashton’s great chum, and was to be groom’s-man at the wedding. Harry Coles said his brother had met Ashton by appointment the previous day, and went with him to the Registrar’s office for the marriage licence — which was supplied to them by Mr. Clifton himself. After that, they went to the jeweller’s, and chose the wedding-ring.
“Well, what after that?” cried the impatient Squire.
Harry Coles did not know what. His brother had come back to their office early in the afternoon — about one o’clock — saying Ashton was going, or had gone, home.
“Can’t you tell which he said — going, or gone?” demanded the Squire, getting red.
“No, I can’t,” said Harry Coles. “I was busy with some estimates, and did not pay particular attention to him.”
“Then you ought to have paid it, sir,” retorted the Squire. “Your brother? — where is he?”
“Gone over to Timberdale ages ago. He started the first thing this morning, Squire; a big coat thrown over his wedding toggery.”
The Squire growled, as a relief to his feelings, not knowing what in the world to do. He suddenly said he’d go to the Registrar’s office, and started for Edgar Street.
Mr. Clifton was not there, but a clerk was. Yes, Mr. Ashton of Timberdale had been there the previous day, he said, in answer to the Squire, and had got his licence. The governor (meaning Mr. Clifton, who knew the Ashtons and the Coneys well) had joked a bit with young Ashton, when he gave it. As to telling where Ashton of Timberdale and Mr. Coles had gone to afterwards, the clerk did not know at all.
So there was nothing to be gathered at the Registrar’s office, and the Squire turned his steps up the town again, Tod and Coney following him like two tame lambs; for he wouldn’t let them make a suggestion or put in a word edgeways. He was on his way to the jeweller’s now: but as he had omitted to ask Harry Coles which of the jewellers’ shops the ring was bought at, he took them all in succession, and hit upon the right one after some difficulty.
He learnt nothing there, either. Mr. Ashton of Timberdale had bought the ring and keeper, and paid for them, the master said. Of course every one knew the young lady was Miss Jane Coney: he had brought one of her rings as a guide for size: a chased gold ring, with small garnet stones in it.
“I am not asking for rings and stones,” interrupted the Squire, wrathfully. “I want to know if Mr. Ashton said where he was going to afterwards?”
“He said never a word about it,” returned the master. “When they went out of here — young Fred Coles was with him — they took the way towards the Hop Market.”
The Squire went to the Crown next — the inn used by the Ashtons of Timberdale. Robert Ashton had called in the previous day, about one o’clock, the waiter said, taking a little bread-and-cheese, observing that he had no time for anything else, and a glass of table-beer. Mr. Coles ha
d come down Broad Street with him, as far as the inn door, when they shook hands and parted; Mr. Coles going back again. The waiter thought Mr. Ashton was not in the house above five minutes at the most.
“And don’t you know where he went to next?” urged the Squire.
“No,” the waiter replied. The impression on his mind was, that Mr. Ashton’s business in Worcester was over, and that he was returning home again.
The Squire moved slowly up Broad Street, more gloomy than an owl, his hands in his pockets, his nose blue. He boasted of his systematic abilities, as applied to seekings and searchings, but he knew no more what to be at next than the man in the moon. Turning up the Cross, he came to an anchor outside the linen-draper’s shop; propping his back against the window, as if the hanging silks had offended him. There he stood staring up at St. Nicholas’s clock opposite.
“Tom,” said he, virtually giving in, “I think we had better talk to the police. Here’s one coming along now.”
When the policeman was abreast, the Squire took his hands from his pockets, and pinned the man by his button-hole.
“Mr. Ashton of Timberdale? — oh, he has got into trouble, sir,” was the man’s ready answer. “He is before the magistrates now, on a charge of — —”
The railway omnibus, coming along at the moment, partially drowned the word.
“Charge of what?” roared the Squire.
The policeman repeated it. The omnibus was making a frightful rattle, and the Squire only just caught it now. With a great cry he dashed over to the fly-stand, got into one, and ordered it to gallop away with him. Tom Coney and Tod barely escaped having to hang on behind.
“Drive like mad!” stamped the Squire.
“Yes, sir,” said the man, obeying. “Where to?”
“Go on, will you, sir! To the deuce.”
“To the police-court,” corrected Tom Coney.
Arrived there, the Squire left them to pay the fare, and fought his way inside. The first thing his spectacles caught sight of distinctly was the fair Saxon face and fine form of Robert Ashton, standing, a prisoner, in the criminal dock.
