by Ellen Wood
One required a respite after the whistle-hunt. I put my back against the wall in the large room, and watched the different sets of long tails, then pulling fiercely at “Oranges and Lemons.” Mrs. Hill and Maria Lease sat side by side on one of the benches, both looking as sad as might be, their memories, no doubt, buried in the past. Maria Lease had never, so to say, worn a smiling countenance since the dreadful end of Daniel Ferrar.
A commotion! Half-a-dozen of the “lemons,” pulling too fiercely, had come to grief on the ground. Maria went to the rescue.
“I was just thinking of poor David, sir,” Mrs. Hill said to me, with a sigh. “How he would have enjoyed this scene: so merry and bright!”
“But he is in a brighter scene than this, you know.”
“Yes, Master Johnny, I do know it,” she said, tears trickling slowly down her cheeks. “Where he is, all things are beautiful.”
In her palmy days Mrs. Todhetley used to sing a song, of which this was the first verse: —
“All that’s bright must fade, The brightest still the fleetest; All that’s sweet was made But to be lost when sweetest.”
Mrs. Hill’s words brought this song to my memory, and with it the damping reminder that nothing lasts in this world, whether of pleasure or brightness. All things must fade, or die: but in that better life to come they will last for ever. And David had entered upon it.
“Now, where’s that senseless little Nettie?”
The words, spoken sharply, came from Miss Timmens. But if she did possess a sharp-toned tongue, she was good and kind at heart. The young crew were sitting down at the long table to the savoury pies and tartlets; Miss Timmens, taking stock of them, missed Nettie.
“Jane Bright, go and find Nettie Trewin.”
Not daring to disobey the curt command, but looking as though she feared her portion of the good things would be eaten up during her absence, Jane Bright disappeared. Back she came in a brace of shakes, saying Nettie “was not there.”
“Maria Lease, where’s Nettie Trewin?” asked Miss Timmens.
Maria turned from the table. “Nettie Trewin?” she repeated, looking about her. “I don’t know. She must be somewhere or other.”
“I wish to goodness you’d find her then.”
Maria Lease could not see anything of the child. “Nettie Trewin” was called out high and low; but it brought forth no response. The servants were sent to look over the house, with no better result.
“She is hiding somewhere in her shyness,” said Miss Timmens. “I have a great mind to punish her for this.”
“She can’t have got into the rain-water butt?” suggested the Squire. “Molly, go and look.”
It was not very likely: as the barrel was quite six feet high. But, as the Squire once got into the water-butt to hid himself when he was a climbing youngster, and had reasons for anticipating a whipping, his thoughts naturally flew to it.
“Well, she must be somewhere,” cried he when we laughed at him. “She could not sink through the floor.”
“Who saw her last?” repeated Miss Timmens. “Do you hear, children? Just stop eating for a minute, and answer.”
Much discussion — doubt — cross-questioning. The whole lot seemed to be nearly as stupid as owls. At last, so far as could be gathered, none of them had noticed Nettie since they began “Puss-in-the-corner.”
“Jane Bright, I told you to take Nettie to play with the rest, and to find her a corner. What did you do with her?”
Jane Bright commenced her answer by essaying to take a sly bite at her pie. Miss Timmens stopped her midway, and turned her from the table to face the company.
“Do you hear me? Now don’t stand staring like a gaby! Just answer.”
Like a “gaby” did Jane Bright stand: mouth wide open, eyes round, countenance bewildered.
“Please, governess, I didn’t do nothing with her.”
“You must have done something with her: you held her hand.”
“I didn’t do nothing,” repeated the girl, shaking her head stolidly.
“Now, that won’t do, Jane Bright. Where did you leave her?”
“’Twas in the corner,” answered Jane Bright, apparently making desperate efforts of memory. “When I was Puss, and runned across and came back again, I didn’t see her there.”
“Surely, the child has not stolen out by herself and run off home!” cried Mrs. Coney: and the schoolmistress took up the suggestion.
“It is the very thought that has been in my mind the last minute or two,” avowed she. “Yes, Mrs. Coney, that’s it, depend upon it. She has decamped through the snow and gone back to her mother’s.”
“Then she has gone without her things,” interposed Maria Lease, who was entering the room with a little black cloak and bonnet in her hand. “Are not these Nettie’s things, children?” And a dozen voices all speaking together, hastened to say Yes, they were Nettie’s.
“Then she must be in the house,” decided Miss Timmens. “She wouldn’t be silly enough to go out this cold night with her neck and arms bare. The child has her share of sense. She has run away to hide herself, and may have dropped asleep.”
“It must be in the chimbleys, then,” cried free Molly from the back of the room. “We’ve looked everywhere else.”
“You had better look again,” said the Squire. “Take plenty of light — two or three candles.”
It seemed rather a queer thing. And, while this talking had been going on, there flashed into my mind the old Modena story, related by the poet Rogers, of the lovely young heiress of the Donatis: and which has been embodied in our song “The Mistletoe Bough.” Could this timid child have imprisoned herself in any place that she was unable to get out of? Going to the kitchen for a candle, I went upstairs, taking the garret first, with its boxes and lumber, and then the rooms. And nowhere could I find the least trace or sign of Nettie.
Stepping into the kitchen to leave the candle, there stood Luke Mackintosh, whiter than death; his back propped against Molly’s press, his hands trembling, his hair on end. Tod stood in front of him suppressing his laughter. Mackintosh had just burst in at the back-door in a desperate state of fright, declaring he had seen a ghost.
It’s not the first time I have mentioned the man’s cowardice. Believing in ghosts and goblins, wraiths and witches, he could hardly be persuaded to cross Crabb Ravine at night, on account of the light sometimes seen there. Sensible people told him that this light (which, it was true, no one had ever traced to its source) was nothing but a will-o’-the-wisp, an ignis-fatuus arising from the vapour; but Luke could not be brought to reason. On this evening it chanced that the Squire had occasion to send Mackintosh to the Timberdale post-office, and the man had now just come in from the errand.
“I see the light, too, sir,” he was saying to Tod in a scared voice, as he ran his shaking hand through his hair. “It be dodging about on the banks of the Ravine for all the world like a corpse-candle. Well, sir, I didn’t like that, and I got up out of the Ravine as fast as my legs would bring me, and were making straight for home here, with my head down’ards, not wanting to see nothing more, when something dreadful met me. All in white, it was.”
“A man in his shroud, who had left his grave to take a moonlight walk,” said Tod, gravely, biting his lips.
“‘Twere in grave-clothes, for sure; a long, white garment, whiter than the snow. I’d not say but it was Daniel Ferrar,” added Luke, in the low dread tones that befitted the dismal subject. “His ghost do walk, you know, sir.”
“And where did his ghost go to?”
“Blest if I saw, sir,” replied Mackintosh, shaking his head. “I’d not have looked after it for all the world. ‘Twarn’t a slow pace I come at, over the field, after that, and right inside this here house.”
“Rushing like the wind, I suppose.”
“My heart was all a-throbbing and a-skeering. Mr. Joseph, I hope the Squire won’t send me through the Ravine after dark again! I couldn’t stand it, sir; I’d a’m
ost rather give up my place.”
“You’ll not be fit for this place, or any other, I should say, Mackintosh, if you let this sort of fear run away with your senses,” I put in. “You saw nothing; it was all fancy.”
“Saw nothing!” repeated Mackintosh in the excess of desperation. “Why, Mr. Johnny, I never saw a sight plainer in all my born days. A great, white, awesome apparition it were, that went rushing past me with a wailing sound. I hope you won’t ever have the ill-luck to see such a thing yourself, sir.”
“I’m sure I shan’t.”
“What’s to do here?” asked Tom Coney, putting in his head.
“Mackintosh has seen a ghost.”
“Seen a ghost!” cried Tom, beginning to grin.
Mackintosh, trembling yet, entered afresh on the recital, rather improving it by borrowing Tod’s mocking suggestion. “A dead man in his shroud come out walking from his grave in the churchyard — which he feared might be Ferrar, lying on the edge on’t, just beyond consecrated ground. I never could abear to go by the spot where he was put in, and never a prayer said over him, Mr. Tom!”
But, in spite of the solemnity of the subject, touching Ferrar, Tom Coney could only have his laugh out. The servants came in from their fruitless search of the dairy and cellars, and started to see the state of Mackintosh.
“Give him a cup of warm ale, Molly,” was Tod’s command. And we left them gathered round the man, listening to his tale with open mouths.
From the fact that Nettie Trewin was certainly not in the house, one only deduction could be drawn — that the timid child had run home to her mother. Bare-headed, bare-necked, bare-armed, she had gone through the snow; and, as Miss Timmens expressed it, might just have caught her death.
“Senseless little idiot!” exclaimed Miss Timmens in a passion. “Sarah Trewin is sure to blame me; she’ll say I might have taken better care of her.”
But one of the elder girls, named Emma Stone, whose recollection only appeared to come to her when digesting her supper, spoke up at this juncture, and declared that long after “Puss-in-the-corner” was over, and also “Oranges and Lemons,” which had succeeded it, she had seen and spoken to Nettie Trewin. Her account was, that in crossing the passage leading from the store-room, she saw Nettie “scrouged against the wall, half-way down the passage, like anybody afeared of being seen.”
“Did you speak to her, Emma Stone?” asked Miss Timmens, after listening to these concluding words.
“Yes, governess. I asked her why she was not at play, and why she was hiding there.”
“Well, what did she say?”
“Not anything,” replied Emma Stone. “She turned her head away as if she didn’t want to be talked to.”
Miss Timmens took a long, keen look at Emma Stone. This young lady, it appeared, was rather in the habit of romancing; and the governess thought she might be doing it then.
“I vow to goodness I saw her,” interrupted the girl, before Miss Timmens had got out more than half a doubt: and her tone was truthful enough. “I’m not telling no story, ‘m. I thought Nettie was crying.”
“Well, it is a strange thing you should have forgotten it until this moment, Emma Stone.”
“Please, ‘m, it were through the pies,” pleaded Emma.
It was time to depart. Bonnets and shawls were put on, and the whole of them filed out, accompanied by Miss Timmens, Mrs. Hill, and Maria Lease: good old motherly Dame Coney saying she hoped they would find the child safe in bed between the blankets, and that her mother would have given her some hot drink.
Our turn for supper came now. We took it partly standing, just the fare that the others had had, with bread-and-cheese added for the Squire and old Coney. After that, we all gathered round the fire in the dining-room, those two lighting their pipes.
And I think you might almost have knocked some of us down with a feather in our surprise, when, in the midst of one of old Coney’s stories, we turned round at the sudden opening of the door, and saw Miss Timmens amongst us. A prevision of evil seemed to seize Mrs. Todhetley, and she rose up.
“The child! Is she not at home?”
“No, ma’am; neither has she been there,” answered Miss Timmens, ignoring ceremony (as people are apt to do at seasons of anxiety or commotion) and sitting down uninvited. “I came back to tell you so, and to ask what you thought had better be done.”
“The child must have started for home and lost her way in the snow,” cried the Squire, putting down his pipe in consternation. “What does the mother think?”
“I did not tell her of it,” said Miss Timmens. “I went on by myself to her house; and the first thing I saw there, on opening the door, was a little pair of slippers warming on the fender. ‘Oh, have you brought Nettie?’ began the mother, before I could speak: ‘I’ve got her shoes warm for her. Is she very, very cold? — and has she enjoyed herself and been good?’ Well, sir, seeing how it was — that the child had not got home — I answered lightly: ‘Oh, the children are not here yet; my sister and Maria Lease are with them. I’ve just stepped on to see how your bruises are getting on.’ For that poor Sarah Trewin is good for so little that one does not care to alarm her,” concluded Miss Timmens, as if she would apologize for her deceit.
The Squire nodded approval, and told me to give Miss Timmens something hot to drink. Mrs. Todhetley, looking three parts frightened out of her wits, asked what was to be done.
Yes; what was to be done? What could be done? A sort of council was held amongst them, some saying one thing, some another. It seemed impossible to suggest anything.
“Had harm come to her in running home, had she fallen into the snow, for instance, or anything of that sort, we should have seen or heard her,” observed Miss Timmens. “She would be sure to take the direct path — the way we came here and returned.”
“It might be easy enough for the child to lose her way — the roads and fields are like a wide white plain,” observed Mrs. Coney. “She might have strayed aside amongst the trees in the triangle.”
Miss Timmens shook her head in dissent.
“She’d not do that, ma’am. Since Daniel Ferrar was found there, the children don’t like the three-cornered grove.”
“Look here,” said old Coney, suddenly speaking up. “Let us search all these places, and any others that she could have strayed to, right or left, on her road home.”
He rose up, and we rose with him. It was the best thing that could be done: and no end of a relief, besides, to pitch upon something to do. The Squire ordered Mackintosh (who had not recovered himself yet) to bring a lantern, and we all put on our great-coats and went forth, leaving the mater and Mrs. Coney to keep the fire warm. A black party we looked, in the white snow, Miss Timmens making one of us.
“I can’t rest,” she whispered to me. “If the child has been lying on the snow all this while, we shall find her dead.”
It was a still, cold, lovely night; the moon high in the sky, the snow lying white and pure beneath her beams. Tom Coney and Tod, all their better feelings and their fears aroused, plunged on fiercely, now amidst the deep snow by the hedges, now on the more level path. The grove, which had been so fatal to poor Daniel Ferrar, was examined first. And now we saw the use of the lantern ordered by the Squire, at which order we had secretly laughed: for it served to light up the darker parts where the trunks of the trees grew thick. Mackintosh, who hated that grove, did not particularly relish his task of searching it, though he was in good company. But it did not appear to contain Nettie.
“She would not turn in here,” repeated Miss Timmens, from the depth of her strong conviction; “I’m sure she wouldn’t. She would rather bear onwards towards her mother’s.”
Bounding here, trudging there, calling her name softly, shouting loudly, we continued our search after Nettie Trewin. It was past twelve when we got back home and met Mrs. Todhetley and Mrs. Coney at the door, both standing there in their uneasiness, enveloped in woollen shawls.
“No. No success.
Can’t find her anywhere.”
Down sank the Squire on one of the hall-chairs as he spoke, as though he could not hold himself up a minute longer, but was dead beat with tramping and disappointment. Perhaps he was. What was to be done next? What could be done? We stood round the dining-room fire, looking at one another like so many helpless mummies.
“Well,” said the pater, “the first thing is to have a drop of something hot. I am half-frozen. What time’s that?” — as the clock over the mantelpiece chimed one stroke. “Half-past twelve.”
“And she’s dead by this time,” gasped Miss Timmens, in a faint voice, its sharpness gone clean out of it. “I’m thinking of the poor widowed mother.”
Mrs. Coney (often an invalid) said she could do no good by staying longer, and wanted to be in bed. Old Coney said he was not going in yet; so Tom took her over. It might have been ten minutes after this — but I was not taking any particular account of the time — that I saw Tom Coney put his head in at the parlour-door, and beckon Tod out. I went also.
“Look here,” said Coney to us. “After I left mother indoors, I thought I’d search a bit about the back-ground here: and I fancy I can see the marks of a child’s footsteps in the snow.”
“No!” cried Tod, rushing out at the back-door and crossing the premises to the field.
Yes, it was so. Just for a little way along the path leading to Crabb Ravine the snow was much trodden and scattered by the footsteps of a man, both to and fro. Presently some little footsteps, evidently of a child, seemed to diverge from this path and go onwards in rather a slanting direction through the deeper snow, as if their owner had lost the direct way. When we had tracked these steps half-way across the field. Tod brought himself to a halt.
“I’m sure they are Nettie’s,” he said. “They look like hers. Whose else should they be? She may have fallen down the Ravine. One of you had better go back and bring a blanket — and tell them to get hot water ready.”
Eager to be of use, Tom Coney and I ran back together. Tod continued his tracking. Presently the little steps diverged towards the path, as if they had suddenly discovered their wanderings from it; and then they seemed to be lost in those other and larger footsteps which had kept steadily to the path.
