by Ellen Wood
“Where did it go to?” asked Tod, practically.
“That is just the question — where? I concluded that it must have stuck to my coat in some unaccountable way, and got lost out-of-doors. I don’t conclude so now.”
Tod seemed to take the news in his usual careless fashion, and kept privately telegraphing signs to the magpie, sitting now on the old tree-stump opposite.
“Yes, sir. Well?”
“I think now, Joe, that somebody came in at these open doors, and took the note,” said the pater, impressively. “And I want to find out who it was.”
“Now then, Peter!” cried the bird, hopping down on the gravel; at which Tod laughed. The Squire got up in a rage, and shut the doors with a bang.
“If you can’t be serious for a few moments, you had better say so. I can tell you this is likely to turn out no laughing business.”
Tod turned his back to the glass-doors, and left the magpie to its devices.
“Whoever it was, contrived to slip round here from the front, during my temporary absence; possibly without ill intention: the sight of the note lying open might have proved too strong a temptation for him.”
“Him!” put in Tod, critically. “It might have been a woman.”
“You might be a jackass: and often are one,” said the pater. And it struck us both, from the affable retort, that his suspicions were pointing to some particular person of the male gender.
“This morning, after breakfast, I was here, writing a letter,” he went on. “While sealing it, Thomas called me away in a hurry, and I was absent the best part of an hour. When I got back, my ring had disappeared.”
“Your ring, sir!” cried Tod.
“Yes, my ring, sir,” mocked the pater; for he thought we were taking up the matter lightly, and it nettled him. “I left it on the seal, expecting to find it there when I returned. Not so. The ring had gone, and the letter lay on the ground. We have got a thief about the house, boys — a thief — within or without. Just the same sort of thief, as it seems to me, that you had at school.”
Tod suddenly leaned forward, his elbow on his knee, his whole interest aroused. Some unpleasant doubt had struck him, as was evident by the flush upon his face.
“Of course, anybody that might be about, back or front, could find their way down here if they pleased,” he slowly said. “Tramps get in sometimes.”
“Rarely, without being noticed. Who did you boys see about the place that afternoon — tramp or gentleman? Come! You were at the house, Johnny: you bolted into it, head foremost, saying you had come from the Dyke.”
“I never saw a soul but Sanker: he was on the bench on the lawn, reading. I said so at the time, sir.”
“Ah! yes; Sanker was there reading,” quietly assented the Squire. “What were you hastening home for, Johnny?”
As if that mattered, or could have had anything to do with it! He had a knack of asking unpleasant questions; and I looked at Tod.
“Hugh got his blouse torn, and Johnny came in to get another,” acknowledged Tod, readily. The fact was, Hugh’s clothes that afternoon had come to uncommon grief. Hannah had made one of her usual rows over it, and afterwards shown the things to Mrs. Todhetley.
“Well, and now for to-day,” resumed the pater. “Where have you all been?”
Where had we not? In the three-cornered paddock; with Monk in the pine-house; away in the rick-yard; once to the hay-field; at the rabbit-hutches; round at the stables; oh, everywhere.
“You two, and Sanker?”
“Not Sanker,” I said. Sanker stayed on the lawn with his book. We had all been on the lawn for the last half-hour: he, us, Hugh, Lena, and the magpie. But not a suspicious character of any sort had we seen about the place.
“Sanker’s fond of reading on the lawn,” remarked Mr. Todhetley, in a careless tone. But he got no answer: we had been struck into silence.
He took one hand out of his pocket, and drummed on the table, not looking at either of us. Tod had laid hold of a piece of blotting-paper and was pulling it to pieces. I wondered what they were thinking of: I know what I was.
“At any rate, the first thing is to find the ring; that only went this morning,” said the Squire, as he left us. Tod sat on where he was, dropping the bits of paper.
“I say, Tod, do you think it could be —— ?”
“Hold your tongue, Johnny!” he shouted. “No, I don’t think it. The bank-note — light, flimsy thing — must have been lost in the yard, and the ring will turn up. It’s somewhere on the floor here.”
In five minutes the news had spread. Mr. Todhetley had told his wife, and summoned the servants to the search. Both losses were made known; consternation fell on the household; the women-servants searched the room; old Thomas bent his back double over the frame outside the glass-doors. But there was no ring.
“This is just like the mysterious losses we had at school,” exclaimed Sanker, as a lot of us were standing in the hall.
“Yes, it is,” said the Squire.
“Perhaps, sir, your ring is in a corner of some odd pocket?” went on Sanker.
“Perhaps it may be,” answered the Squire, rather emphatically; “but not in mine.”
Happening to look at Mrs. Todhetley, I saw her face had turned to a white fright. Whether the remark of Sanker or the peculiarity of the Squire’s manner brought to her mind the strange coincidence of the losses, here and at school, certain it was the doubt had dawned upon her. Later, when I and Tod were hunting in the room on our own account, she came to us with her terror-stricken face.
“Joseph, I see what you are thinking,” she said; “but it can’t be; it can’t be. If the Sankers are poor, they are honest. I wish you knew his father and mother.”
“I have not accused any one, Mrs. Todhetley.”
“No; neither has your father; but you suspect.”
“Perhaps we had better not talk of it,” said Tod.
“Joseph, I think we must talk of it, and see what can be done. If — if he should have done such a thing, of course he cannot stay here.”
“But we don’t know that he has, therefore he ought not to be accused of it.”
“Oh! Joseph, don’t you see the pain? None of you can feel this as I do. He is my relative.”
I felt so sorry for her. With the trouble in her pale, mild eyes, and the quivering of her thin, meek lips. It was quite evident that she feared the worst: and Tod threw away concealment with his step-mother.
“We must not accuse him; we must not let it be known that we suspect him,” he said; “the matter here can be hushed up — got over — but were suspicion once directed to him on the score of the school losses, the disgrace would never be lived down, now or later. It would cling to him through life.”
Mrs. Todhetley clasped her slender and rather bony fingers, from which the wedding-ring looked always ready to drop off. “Joseph,” she said, “you assume confidently that he has done it; I see that. Perhaps you know he has? Perhaps you have some proof that you are concealing?”
“No, on my honour. But for my father’s laying stress on the curious coincidence of the disappearances at school I should not have thought of Sanker. ‘Losses there; losses here,’ he said — —”
“Now then, Peter!” mocked the bird, from his perch on the old tree.
“Be quiet!” shouted Tod. “And then the Squire went on adroitly to the fact, without putting it into words, that nobody else seems to have been within hail of this room either time.”
“He has had so few advantages; he is kept so short of money,” murmured poor Mrs. Todhetley, seeking to find an excuse for him. “I would almost rather have found my boy Hugh — when he shall be old enough — guilty of such a thing, than Edward Sanker.”
“I’d a great deal rather it had been me,” I exclaimed. “I shouldn’t have felt half so uncomfortable. And we are not sure. Can’t we keep him here, after all? It will be an awful thing to turn him out — a thief.”
“He is not going to be turned
out, a thief. Don’t put in your oar, Johnny. The pater intends to hush it up. Why! had he suspected any other living mortal about the place, except Sanker, he’d have accused them outright, and sent for old Jones in hot haste.”
Mrs. Todhetley, holding her hand to her troubled face, looked at Tod as he spoke. “I am not sure, Joseph — I don’t quite know whether to hush it up entirely will be for the best. If he —— Oh!”
The exclamation came out with a shriek. We turned at it, having been standing together at the table, our backs to the window. There stood Sanker. How long he had been there was uncertain; quite long enough to hear and comprehend. His face was livid with passion, his voice hoarse with it.
“Is it possible that I am accused of taking the bank-note and the ring? — of having been the thief at school? I thank you, Joseph Todhetley.”
Mrs. Todhetley, always for peace, ran before him, and took his hands. Her gentle words were drowned — Tod’s were overpowered. When quiet fellows like Sanker do get into a rage, it’s something bad to witness.
“Look here, old fellow,” said Tod, in a breath of silence; “we don’t accuse you, and don’t wish to accuse you. The things going here, as they did at school, is an unfortunate coincidence; you can’t shut your eyes to it; but as to — —”
“Why are you not accused? — why’s Ludlow not accused? — you were both at school, as well as I; and you are both here,” raved Sanker, panting like a wild animal. “You have money, both of you; you don’t want helping on in life; I have only my good name. And that you would take from me!”
“Edward, Edward! we did not wish to accuse you; we said we would not accuse you,” cried poor Mrs. Todhetley in her simplicity. But his voice broke in.
“No; you only suspected me. You assumed my guilt, and would not be honest enough to accuse me, lest I refuted it. Not another hour will I stay in this house. Come with me.”
“Don’t be foolish, Sanker! If we are wrong — —”
“Be silent!” he cried, turning savagely on Tod. “I’m not strong; no match for you, or I would pound you to atoms! Let me go my own way now. You go yours.”
Half dragging, half leading Mrs. Todhetley with him, the angry light in his eyes frightening her, he went to his bedroom. Taking off his jacket; turning his pockets inside out; emptying the contents of his trunk on the floor, he scattered the articles, one by one, with the view of showing that he had nothing concealed belonging to other people. Mrs. Todhetley, great in quiet emergencies, had her senses hopelessly scared away in this; she could only cry, and implore of him to be reasonable. He flung back his things, and in five minutes was gone. Dragging his box down the stairs by its stout cord, he managed to hoist it on his shoulders, and they saw him go fiercely off across the lawn.
I met him in the plantation, beyond the Dyke. Mrs. Todhetley, awfully distressed, sent me flying away to find the pater; she mistakenly thought he might be at Rimmell’s, who lived in a cottage beyond it. Running home through the trees, I came upon Sanker. He was sitting on his box, crying; great big sobs bursting from him. Of course he could not carry that far. Down I sat by him, and put my hand on his.
“Don’t, Sanker! don’t, old fellow! Come back and have it cleared up. I dare say they are all wrong together.”
His angry mood had changed. Those fierce whirlwinds of passion are generally followed by depression. He did not seem to care an atom for his sobs, or for my seeing them.
“It’s the cruelest wrong I ever had dealt to me, Johnny. Why should they pitch upon me? What have they seen in me that they should set me down as a thief? — and such a thief! Why, the very thought of it, if they send her word, will kill my mother.”
“You didn’t do it, Sanker. I — —”
He got up, and raised his hand solemnly to the blue sky, just as a man might have done.
“I swear I did not. I swear I never laid finger on a thing in your house, or at school, that was not mine. God hears me say it.”
“And now you’ll come back with me, Ned. The box will take no harm here till we send for it.”
“Go back with you! that I never will. Fare you well, Johnny: I’ll wish it to you.”
“But where are you going?”
“That’s my business. Look here; I was more generous than some of you have been. All along, I felt as sure who it was, cribbing those things at school, as though I had seen it done; but I never told. I just whispered to the fellow, when we were parting: ‘Don’t you go in for the same game next half, or I shall have you dropped upon;’ and I don’t think he will.”
“Who — which was it?” I cried, eagerly.
“No: give him a chance. It was neither you nor me, and that’s enough to know.”
Hoisting the box up on to the projecting edge of a tree, he got it on his shoulders again. Certain of his innocence then, I was in an agony to get him back.
“It’s of no use, Johnny. Good-bye.”
“Sanker! Ned! The Squire will be fit to smother us all, when he finds you are off; Mrs. Todhetley is in dreadful grief. Such an unpleasant thing has never before happened with us.”
“Good-bye,” was all he repeated, marching resolutely off, with the black box held safe by the cord.
Fit to smother us? I thought the pater would have done it, when he came home late in the afternoon; laying the blame of Sanker’s going, first on Mrs. Todhetley, then on Tod, then on me.
“What is to be done?” he asked, looking at us all helplessly. “I wouldn’t have had it come out for the world. Think of his parents — of his own prospects.”
“He never did it, sir,” I said, speaking up; “he swore it to me.”
The pater gave a sniff. “Swearing does not go for much in such cases, I’m afraid, Johnny.”
It was so hopeless, the making them understand Sanker’s solemn truth as he did swear it, that I held my tongue. I told Tod; also, what he had said about the fellow he suspected at school; but Tod only curled his lip, and quietly reminded me that I should never be anything but a muff.
Three or four days passed on. We could not learn where Sanker went to, or what had become of him; nothing about him except the fact that he had left his box at Goody Picker’s cottage, asking her to take charge of it until it was sent for. Mrs. Todhetley would not write to Wales, or to the school, for fear of making mischief. I know this: it was altogether a disagreeable remembrance, whichever way we looked at it, but I was the only one who believed in his innocence.
On the Monday another loss occurred; not one of value in itself, but uncommonly significant. Since the explosion, Mrs. Todhetley had moved about the house restlessly, more like a fish out of water than a reasonable woman, following the Squire to his room, and staying there to talk with him, as she never had before. It was always in her head to do something to mend matters; but, what, she could not tell; hence her talkings with the pater. As each day passed, bringing no news of Sanker, she grew more anxious and fidgety. While he was in his room on the Monday morning, she came in with her work. It was the unpicking some blue ribbons from a white body of Lena’s. There had been a child’s party at the Stirlings’ (they were always giving them), and Lena had a new frock for it. The dressmaker had put a glistening glass thing, as big as a pea, in the bows that tied up the sleeves. They looked like diamonds. The pater made a fuss after we got home, saying it was inconsistent at the best; she was too young for real diamonds, and he would not have her wear mock rubbish. Well, Mrs. Todhetley had the frock in her hand, taking these bows off, when she came to the Squire on the Monday morning, chattering and lamenting. I saw and heard her. On going away she accidentally left one of them on the table. The Squire went about as usual, dodging in and out of the room at intervals like a dog in a fair. I sat on the low seat, on the other side of the hedge, in the vegetable garden, making a fishing-line and flinging stones at the magpie whenever he came up to his perch on the old tree’s stump. All was still; nothing to be heard but his occasional croak, “Now then, Peter!” Presently I caught a soft low w
histle behind me. Looking through the hedge, I saw Roger Monk coming out of the room with stealthy steps, and going off towards his greenhouses. I thought nothing of it; it was his ordinary way of walking; but he must have come up to the room very quietly.
“Johnny,” came the Squire’s voice by-and-by, and I ran round: he had seen me sitting there.
“Johnny, have you a mind for a walk to — —”
He had got thus far when Mrs. Todhetley came in by the inner door, and began looking on the table. Nothing in the world was on it except the inkstand, the Worcester Herald, and the papers before the Squire.
“I must have left one of the blue knots here,” she said.
“You did; I saw it,” said the Squire; and he took up his papers one by one, and shook the newspaper.
Well, the blue shoulder-knot was gone. Just as we had searched for the ring, we searched for that: under the matting, and above the matting, and everywhere; I and those two. A grim look came over the Squire’s face.
“The thief is amongst us still. He has taken that glittering paste thing for a diamond. This clears Sanker.”
Mrs. Todhetley burst into glad sobs. I had never seen her so excited; you might have thought her an hysterical girl. She would do all sorts of things at once; the least of which was, starting in a post-chaise-and-four for Wales.
“Do nothing,” said the Squire, with authority. “I had news of Sanker this morning, and he’s back at school. He wrote me a letter.”
“Oh, why did you not show it me?” asked Mrs. Todhetley, through her tears.
“Because it’s a trifle abusive; actionable, a lawyer might say,” he answered, stopping a laugh. “Ah! ha! a big diamond! I’m as glad of this as if anybody had left me a thousand pounds,” continued the good old pater. “I’ve not had that boy out of my head since, night or day. We’ll have him back to finish his holidays — eh, Johnny?”
Whether I went along on my head or my tail, doing the Squire’s errand, I didn’t exactly know. To my mind the thief stood disclosed — Roger Monk. But I did not much like to betray him to the Squire. As a compromise between duty and disinclination, I told Tod. He went straight off to the Squire, and Roger Monk was ordered to the room.
