Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “What clothes?”

  “Them what I left in’t o’ Saturday night, Squire. My smock-frock and my boots, and my spotted cotton neck-handkecher. They be gone, they be.”

  “Nonsense!” said the Squire, whilst I and Tod kept our faces. “We have not had thieves here, man.”

  “But, ‘deed, and the things be gone, Squire. Clean gone! Not so much as a shred on ’em left! Please come and see for yourself, sir.”

  He turned, and went striding across the yard. The Squire followed, evidently at fault for comprehension; and the rest of us after him.

  “It’s a mercy as the horses and waggons bain’t took!” cried Mack, plunging into the barn. “And the harness! look at it, a-hanging up; and that there wheelbarrer — —”

  “But what do you say is taken, Mack?” interrupted the Squire, cutting him short, and looking round the barn.

  “All my traps, sir. My best smock-frock; and my boots, and my spotted cotton neck-handkecher. A beautiful pair o’ boots, Squire, that I generally keeps here, in case I be sent off to Alcester, or Evesham, or where not, and have to tidy myself up a bit.”

  Tod backed out of the barn doubled up. Nearly choking at the “beautiful” boots.

  “But why do you think they are stolen, Mack?” the Squire was asking.

  “I left ’em safe here o’ Saturday evening, sir, when I locked up the barn. The things be all gone now; you may see as they be, Squire. There bain’t a vestige of ‘em.”

  “Have any of the men moved them?”

  “’Twas me as unlocked the barn myself but now, Squire. The key on’t was on the nail where I put it Saturday night. If any of the men had unlocked it afore me this morning, they’d not ha’ shut it up again. We’ve all been away at work too on t’other side o’ the land since we come on at six o’clock. No, sir, it’s thieves — and what will become of me? A’most a new smock-frock, and the beautifulest pair o’ strong boots: they’d ha’ lasted me for years.”

  Tod shrieked out at last, unable to help himself. Mack cast a reproachful glance at him, as if he thought the merriment too cruel.

  “You must have been drinking on Saturday, Ben Mack, and fancied you left ’em here,” put in Molly, tartly.

  “Me been a-drinking!” retorted poor bereaved Mack, ready to cry at the aspersion. “Why, I’d never had a drop o’ nothing inside my lips since dinner-time, save a draught of skim milk as the dairy-maid gave me. They was in that far corner, them boots; and the smock-frock was laid smooth across the shaft of this here cart, the handkecher folded a-top on’t.”

  “Well, well, we must inquire after the things,” remarked the Squire, turning to go back to breakfast. “I don’t believe they are stolen, Mack: they’ll be found somewhere. If you had lost yourself, you could not have made more noise over it. I’m sure I thought the ricks must be on fire.”

  Tod could hardly eat his breakfast for laughing. Every now and then he came out with the most unexpected burst. The pater demanded what there was to laugh at in Mack’s having mislaid his clothes.

  But, as the morning went on, the Squire changed his tone. When no trace could be discovered of the articles, high or low, he took up the opinion that we had been visited by tramps, and sent off for old Jones the constable. Jones sent back his duty, and he would come across as soon as he could, but he was busy organizing the search after Master Westerbrook, and posting up the fresh bills.

  “Johnny, we must dispose of that hair of Fred’s in some way,” Tod whispered to me in the course of the morning. “To let any one come upon it would never do: they might fish and ferret out everything. Come along.”

  We went up, bolted ourselves in his room, and undid the hair. Fine, silky hair, not quite auburn, not quite like chestnut, something between the two, but as nice a colour as you would wish to see.

  “Better burn it,” suggested Tod.

  “Won’t it make an awful smell?”

  “Who cares? You can go away if you don’t like the smell.”

  “I shall save a piece for Edna Blake.”

  “Rubbish, Johnny! What good will it do her?”

  “She may like to have it. Especially if she never sees him again.”

  “Make haste, then, and take a lock. It’s quite romantic. I am going to put a match to it.”

  I chose the longest piece I could see, put it into an envelope, and fastened it up. Tod turned the hair into his wash-hand basin, and set it alight: the grate was filled up with the summer shavings. A frizzling and fizzing set in at once: and very soon a rare smell of singeing.

  “Open the window, Johnny.”

  I had hardly opened it, when the handle of the door was turned and turned, and the panel thumped at. Hannah’s voice came shrieking through the keyhole.

  “Mr. Joseph! — Master Johnny! Are you both in there? What’s the matter?”

  “What should be the matter?” called back Tod, putting his hand over my mouth that I should not speak. “Go back to your nursery.”

  “There’s something burning! My goodness! it’s just as if all the blankets in the house were singeing! You’ve been setting your blankets on fire, Mr. Joseph!”

  “And if I have!” cried Tod, blowing away at the hair to make it burn the quicker. “They are not yours.”

  “Good patience! you’ll burn us all up, sir! Fire — fire!” shrieked out Hannah, frightened beyond her wits. “For goodness’ sake, Miss Lena, keep away from the keyhole! Here, ma’am! Ma’am! Here’s Mr. Joseph with all his blankets on fire!”

  Mrs. Todhetley ran up the stairs, and her terrified appeal came to our ears through the door. Tod threw it open. The hair had burnt itself out.

  “Why don’t you go off for the parish engine?” demanded Tod of Hannah, as they came sniffing in. “Well, where’s the fire?”

  “But, my dears, something must be singeing,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “Where is it? — what is it?”

  “It can’t be anything but the blankets,” cried Hannah, choking and stifling. “Miss Lena, then, don’t I tell you to keep outside, out of harm’s way? Well, it is strong!”

  Mrs. Todhetley put her hand on my arm. “Johnny, what is it? Where is the danger?”

  “There’s no danger at all,” struck in Tod. “I suppose I can burn some old fishing-tackle rubbish in my basin if I please — horsehair, and that. You should not have the grates filled with paper, ma’am, if you don’t like the smell.”

  She went to the basin, found the smell did come from it, and then looked at us both. I was smiling, and it reassured her.

  “You might have taken it to the kitchen and burnt it there, Joseph,” she said mildly. “Indeed, I was very much alarmed.”

  “Thanks to Hannah,” said Tod. “You’d have known nothing about it but for her. I wish you’d just order her to mind her own business.”

  “It was my business, Mr. Joseph — smelling all that frightful smell of singeing! And if —— Why, whose boots are these?” broke off Hannah.

  Opening the closet to get out the hair, we had left Fred’s boots exposed. Hannah’s eyes, ranging themselves round in search of the singeing, had espied them. She answered her own question.

  “You must have brought them from school in your box by mistake. Mr. Joseph. These are men’s boots, these are!”

  “I can take them back to school again,” said Tod, carelessly.

  So that passed off. “And it is the best thing we can do with the boots, Johnny, as I think,” he said to me in a low tone when we were once more left to ourselves. “We can’t burn them. They’d make a choicer scent than the hair made.”

  “I suppose they wouldn’t fit Mack?”

  Tod laughed.

  “If he kept those other ‘beautiful boots’ for high days and holidays, what would he not keep these for? No, Johnny; they are too slender for Mack’s foot.”

  “I wonder how poor Fred likes his clumsy ones? — how he contrives to tramp it in them?”

  “I would give something to know that he was clear out of the count
ry.”

  Dashing over to the Parsonage under pretence of saying good-bye to the children, I gave the envelope containing the lock of hair to Edna, telling her what it was. The colour rushed into her face, the tears to her eyes.

  “Thank you, Johnny,” she said softly. “Yes, I shall like to keep it — just a little memorial of him. Most likely we shall never meet again.”

  “I should just take up the other side of the question, Edna, and look forward to meeting him.”

  “Not here, at any rate,” she answered. “How could he ever come back to England with this dreadful charge hanging over him? Good luck to you this term, Johnny Ludlow. Sometimes I think our school-days are our happiest.”

  We were to dine in the middle of the day, and start for school at half-past two. Tod boldly asked the Squire to give him a sovereign, apart from any replenishing of his pockets that might take place at starting. He wanted it for a particular purpose, he said.

  And the pater, after holding forth a bit about thrift versus extravagance, handed out the sovereign. Tod betook himself to the barn. There sat Mack on the inverted wheelbarrow, at his dinner of cold bacon and bread, and looking most disconsolate.

  “Found the things, Mack?”

  “Me found ‘em, Mr. Joseph! No, sir; and I bain’t ever likely to find ‘em, that’s more. They are clean walked off, they are. When I thinks o’ them there beautiful boots, and that there best smock-frock, I be fit to choke, I be!”

  Tod was fit to choke, keeping his countenance. “What was their value, Mack?”

  “They were of untold val’e, sir, to me. I’d not hardly ha’ lost ’em for a one-pound note.”

  “Would a pound replace them?”

  Mack, drawing his knife across the bread and bacon, looked up. Tod spoke more plainly.

  “Could you buy new ones with a pound?”

  “Bless your heart, sir, and where be I to get a pound from? I was just a-calkelating how long it ‘ud take me to save enough money up — —”

  “I wish you’d answer my question, Mack. Would a pound replace the articles that have been stolen?”

  “Why, in course it would, sir,” returned Mack, staring. “But where be I — —”

  “Don’t bother. Look here: there’s a pound” — tossing the sovereign to him. “Buy yourself new ones, and think no more of the old ones.”

  Mack could not believe his eyes or ears. “Oh, Mr. Joseph! Well, I never! Sir, you be — —”

  “But now, understand this much, Mack. I only give you the money on one condition — that you say nothing about it. Tell nobody.”

  “Well, I never, Mr. Joseph! A whole golden pound! Why, sir, it’ll set me up reg’lar in — —”

  “If you don’t attend to what I am saying, Mack, I’ll take it away again. You are not to tell any one that you have had it, do you hear?”

  “Sir, I’ll never tell a blessed soul.”

  “Very well. I shall expect you to keep your word. Once let it be known that your lost clothes have been replaced, and we should have the rest of the men losing theirs on speculation. So keep a silent tongue in your head; to the Squire as well as to others.”

  “Bless your heart, Mr. Joseph! I’ll take care, sir. Nobody shan’t know on’t from me. When the wife wants to ferret out where I got ‘em, I’ll swear to her I’ve went in trust for ‘em. And I’m sure I thank ye, sir, with all my — —”

  Tod walked away, cutting the thanks short.

  As we were turning out at the gates on our way back to school, Tod driving Bob and Blister (which he much liked to do, though it was not always the Squire trusted him) and Giles sitting behind us, Duffham was coming along on his horse. Tod pulled up, and asked what was the latest news of Gisby.

  “Well, strange to say, we are beginning to have some faint hopes of him,” replied the doctor. “There’s no doubt that at mid-day he was a trifle easier and better.”

  “That’s good news,” said Tod. “The man is a detestable sneak, but of course one does not want him to die. Save him if you can, Mr. Duffham — for Fred Westerbrook’s sake. Good-bye.”

  “God-speed you both,” returned Duffham. “Take care of those horses. They are fresh.”

  Tod gently touched the two with the whip, and called back a saucy word. He particularly resented any reflection on his driving.

  A year went by. We were at home for the Michaelmas holidays again. And who should chance to call at the Manor the very day of our arrival but old Westerbrook.

  Changes had taken place at the N. D. Farm. Have you ever observed that when our whole heart is set upon a thing, our entire aims and actions are directed to bringing it about, it is all quietly frustrated by that Finger of Fate that none of us, whether prince or peasant, can resist? Mrs. Westerbrook had been doing her best to move heaven and earth to encompass the deposition of Fred Westerbrook for her own succession, and behold she could not. Just as she had contrived that Fred should be crushed, and she herself put into old Westerbrook’s will in his place, as the inheritor of the N. D. Farm and all its belongings, Heaven rendered her work nugatory by taking her to itself.

  Yes, Mrs. Westerbrook was dead. She was carried off after a rather short illness: and Mr. Westerbrook was a widower, bereaved and solitary.

  He was better off without her. The home was ten times more peaceful. He felt that: but he felt it to be very lonely; and he more than once caught himself wishing Fred was back again. Which of course meant wishing that he had never gone away, and never turned out to be a scamp.

  Gisby did not die. Gisby had recovered in process of time, and was now more active on the farm than ever. Rather too active, its master was beginning dimly to suspect. Gisby seemed to haunt him. Gisby assumed more power than was at all necessary; and Gisby never ceased to pour into Mr. Westerbrook’s ear reiterations of Fred’s iniquity. Altogether, Mr. Westerbrook was growing a bit tired of Gisby. He had taken to put him down with curtness; and once when Gisby ventured to hint that it might be a convenient arrangement if he took up his abode in the house, Mr. Westerbrook swore at him. As to Fred, he was still popularly looked upon as cousin-german to the fiend incarnate.

  Nothing had been heard of him. Nothing of any kind since that moonlight night when he had made his escape. Waiting for news from him so long, and waiting in vain, I, and Tod with me, had at last made up our minds that nothing more ever would be heard of him in this world. In short, that he had slipped out of it. Perhaps been starved out of it. Starved to death.

  Well, Mr. Westerbrook called at the Manor within an hour of our getting home for Michaelmas, just twelve months after the uproar.

  To me, he looked a good deal changed: his manner was quiet and subdued, almost as though he no longer took much interest in life; his hair had turned much greyer, and he complained of a continual pain in the left leg, which made him stiff, and sometimes prevented him from walking. Duffham called it a touch of rheumatism. Mr. Westerbrook fancied it might be an indication of something worse.

  “But you have walked here, Westerbrook!” remarked the Squire.

  “And shall walk back again — round by the village,” he said. “It seems to me to be just this, Squire — that if I do not make an effort to walk while I can, I may be laid aside for good.”

  He gave a deep sigh as he spoke, as if he had the care of the whole parish upon him. The Squire began talking of the crop of oats on the N. D. Farm, saying what a famous crop it was.

  “You’ll net a good penny by them this year, Westerbrook.”

  “Passable,” was the indifferent reply. “Good crops no longer bring me the satisfaction they did, Squire. I’ve nobody to save for now. Will you spend a day with me before you go back, young gentlemen?” he went on, turning to us. “Come on Friday. It is pretty lonely there. It wants company to enliven it.”

  And we promised we would go.

  He said good-bye, and I went with him, to help him over the stile into the lane, on account of his stiffness — for that was the road he meant to take to Church
Dykely. In passing the ricks he laid his hand on my shoulder.

  “You won’t mind a lonely day with a lonely old man?”

  “We shall like it, sir. We will do our best to enliven you.”

  “It is not much that will do that now, Johnny Ludlow,” said he. “When a man gets to my age, and feels his health and strength failing, it seems hard to be left all alone.”

  “No doubt it does, sir. I wish you had Fred back again!” I boldly added.

  “Hush, Johnny! Fred is lost to me for good. He made his own bed, you know, and is lying on it. As I have to lie on mine — such as it is. Such as he left to me!”

  “Do you know where Fred is, sir?”

  “Do I know where Fred is?” he repeated in a tart tone. “How should I be likely to know? How could I know? I have never heard tidings of him, good or bad, since that wretched night.”

  We had reached the stile. Old Westerbrook rested his arms upon the top of it instead of getting over, tapping the step on the other side with his thick walking-stick.

  “Gisby’s opinion is that Fred threw himself into the first deep pond that lay in his way that night, and so put an end to his career for good,” said he. “My late wife thought so too.”

  “Don’t you believe anything of the kind, sir,” said I, in hot impulse.

  “It is what Gisby is always dinning into me, Johnny. I hate to hear him. With all Fred’s faults, he was not one to fly to that extremity, under — —”

  “I am quite sure he was not, sir. And did not.”

  “Under ordinary circumstances, I was about to say,” went on the old gentleman, with apathy, as he put one foot on the stile. “But when a man has the crime of murder upon his soul, there’s no answering for what he may be tempted to do in his remorse and terror.”

  “It was not murder at all, sir. Gisby is well again.”

  “But it was thought to be murder at the time. Who would have given a brass button for Gisby’s life that night? Don’t quibble, Master Johnny.”

  “Gisby was shot, sir; there’s no denying that, or that he might have died of it; but I am quite sure it was not Fred who shot him.”