Fenton's Quest Part 54

"There are some things that can never be explained," she wrote, "and my marriage is one of those. No one could save me from it, you least of all.

There was no help for me; and I believe, with all my heart, that, in acting as I did, I only did my duty. I had not the courage to write to you beforehand to tell you what was going to be. I thought it was almost better you should hear it from a stranger. The more hardly you think of me, the easier it will be for you to forget me. There is some comfort in that. I daresay it will be very easy for you to forget. But if, in days to come, when you are happily married to some one else, you can teach yourself to think more kindly of me, and to believe that in what I did I acted for the best, you will be performing an act of charity towards a poor unhappy girl, who has very little left to hope for in this world."

It was a hard thing for Ellen to think that, in the estimation of the man she loved, she must for ever seem the basest and most mercenary of womankind; and yet how poor an excuse could she offer in the vague pleading of her letter! She could not so much as hint at the truth; she could not blacken her father's character. That Frank Randall should despise her, only made her trial a little sharper, her daily burden a little heavier, she told herself.

With her mind full of these thoughts, she had very little sympathy to bestow upon Mrs. Tadman, whose fragmentary lamentations only worried her, like the murmurs of some troublesome not-to-be-pacified child; whereby that doleful person, finding her soul growing heavier and heavier, for lack of counsel or consolation, could at last endure this state of suspense no longer in sheer inactivity, but was fain to bestir herself somehow, if even in the most useless manner. She got up from her seat therefore, went over to the door, and, softly opening it, peered out into the darkness beyond.

There was nothing, no glimmer of Stephen's candle, no sound of men's footsteps or of men's voices; the merest blankness, and no more. The two men had been away from the parlour something more than half an hour by this time.

For about five minutes Mrs. Tadman stood at the open door, peering out and listening, and still without result. Then, with a shrill sudden sound through the long empty pa.s.sages, there came a shriek, a prolonged piercing cry of terror or of pain, which turned Mrs. Tadman's blood to ice, and brought Ellen to her side, pale and breathless.

"What was that?"

"What was that?"

Both uttered the same question simultaneously, looking at each other aghast, and then both fled in the direction from which that shrill cry had come.

A woman's voice surely; no masculine cry ever sounded with such piercing treble.

They hurried off to discover the meaning of this startling sound, but were neither of them very clear as to whence it had come. From the upper story no doubt, but in that rambling habitation there was so much scope for uncertainty. They ran together, up the staircase most used, to the corridor from which the princ.i.p.al rooms opened. Before they could reach the top of the stairs, they heard a scuffling hurrying sound of heavy footsteps on the floor above them, and on the landing met Mr. Whitelaw and his unknown friend; face to face.

"What's the matter?" asked the farmer sharply, looking angrily at the two scared faces.

"That's just what we want to know," his wife answered. "Who was it that screamed just now? Who's been hurt?"

"My friend stumbled against a step in the pa.s.sage yonder, and knocked his shin. He cried out a bit louder than he need have done, if that's what you mean, but not loud enough to cause all this fuss. Get downstairs again, you two, and keep quiet. I've no patience with such nonsense; coming flying upstairs as if you'd both gone mad."

"It was not your friend's voice we heard," Ellen answered resolutely; "it was a woman's cry. You must have heard it surely, Stephen Whitelaw."

"I heard nothing but what I tell you," the farmer muttered sulkily. "Get downstairs, can't you?"

"Not till I know what's the matter," his wife said, undismayed by his anger. "Give me your light, and let me go and see."

"You can go where you like, wench, and see what you can; and an uncommon deal wiser you'll be for your trouble."

And yet, although Mr. Whitelaw gave his wife the candlestick with an air of profound indifference, there was an uneasy look in his countenance which she could plainly see, and which perplexed her not a little.

"Come, Mrs. Tadman," she said decisively, "we had better see into this.

It was a woman's voice, and must have been one of the girls, I suppose.

It may be nothing serious, after all,--these country girls scream out for a very little,--but we'd better get to the bottom of it."

Mr. Whitelaw burst into a laugh--and he was a man whose laughter was as unpleasant as it was rare.

"Ay, my wench, you'd best get to the bottom of it," he said, "since you're so uncommon clever. Me and my friend will go back to the parlour, and take a gla.s.s of grog."

The gentleman whom Mr. Whitelaw honoured with his friendship had stood a little way apart all this time, wiping his forehead with a big orange coloured silk handkerchief. That blow upon his shin must have been rather a sharp one, if it had brought that cold sweat out upon his ashen face.

"Yes," he muttered; "come along, can't you? don't stand cawing here all night;" and hurried downstairs before his host.

It had been all the business of a couple of minutes. Ellen Whitelaw and Mrs. Tadman went down to the ground floor by another staircase leading directly to the kitchen. The room looked comfortable enough, and the two servant-girls were sitting at a table near the fire. One was a strapping rosy-cheeked country girl, who did all the household work; the other an overgrown clumsy-looking girl, hired straight from the workhouse by Mr.

Whitelaw, from economical motives; a stolid-looking girl, whose intellect was of the lowest order; a mere zoophyte girl, one would say--something between the vegetable and animal creation.

This one, whose name was Sarah Batts, was chiefly employed in the poultry-yard and dairy. She had a broad brawny hand, which was useful for the milking of cows, and showed some kind of intelligence in the management of young chickens and the treatment of refractory hens.

Martha Holden, the house-servant, was busy making herself a cap as her mistress came into the kitchen, droning some Hampshire ballad by way of accompaniment to her work. Sarah Batts was seated in an att.i.tude of luxurious repose, with her arms folded, and her feet on the fender.

"Was it either of you girls that screamed just now?" Ellen asked anxiously.

"Screamed, ma'am! no, indeed," Martha Holden answered, with an air of perfect good faith. "What should we scream for? I've been sitting here at my work for the last hour, as quiet as could be."

"And, Sarah,--was it you, Sarah? For goodness' sake tell the truth."

"Me, mum! lor no, mum. I was up with master showing him and the strange gentleman a light."

"You were upstairs with your master? And did you hear nothing? A piercing shriek that rang through the house;--you must surely have heard it, both of you."

Martha shook her head resolutely.

"Not me, mum; I didn't hear a sound. The kitchen-door was shut all the time Sarah was away, and I was busy at work, and thinking of nothing but my work. I wasn't upon the listen, as you may say."

The kitchen was at the extreme end of the house, remote from that direction whence the unexplainable cry seemed to have come.

"It is most extraordinary," Ellen said gravely, perplexed beyond all measure. "But you, Sarah; if you were upstairs with your master, you must surely have heard that shriek; it seemed to come from upstairs."

"Did master hear it?" asked the girl deliberately.

"He says not."

"Then how should I, mum? No, mum, I didn't hear nothink; I can take my Bible oath of that."

"I don't want any oaths; I only want to know the meaning of this business. There would have been no harm in your screaming. You might just as well speak the truth about it."

"Lor, mum, but it warn't me," answered Sarah Batts with an injured look.

"Whatever could go to put it in your head as it was me?"

"It must have been one or other of you two girls. There's no other woman in the house; and as you were upstairs, it seems more likely to have been you. However, there's no use talking any more about it. Only we both heard the scream, didn't we, Mrs. Tadman?"

"I should think we did, indeed," responded the widow with a vehement shudder. "My flesh is all upon the creep at this very moment. I don't think I ever had such a turn in my life."

They went back to the parlour, leaving the two servants still sitting by the fire; Sarah Batts with that look of injured innocence fixed upon her wooden countenance, Martha Holden cheerfully employed in the construction of her Sunday cap. In the parlour the two men were both standing by the table, the stranger with his back to the women as they entered, Stephen Whitelaw facing him. The former seemed to have been counting something, but stopped abruptly as the women came into the room.

There was a little heap of bank-notes lying on the table. Stephen s.n.a.t.c.hed them up hastily, and thrust them in a bundle into his waistcoat-pocket; while the stranger put a strap round a bulky red morocco pocket-book with a more deliberate air, as of one who had nothing to hide from the world.

That guilty furtive air of Stephen's, and, above all, that pa.s.sage of money between the two men, confirmed Mrs. Tadman in her notion that Wyncomb Farm was going to change hands. She resumed her seat by the fire with a groan, and accepted Ellen's offer of a gla.s.s of spirits-and-water with a doleful shake of her head.

"Didn't I tell you so?" she whispered, as Mrs. Whitelaw handed her the comforting beverage.

The stranger was evidently on the point of departure. There was a sound of wheels on the gravel outside the parlour window--the familiar sound of Stephen Whitelaw's chaise-cart; and that gentleman was busy helping his visitor on with his great-coat.

"I shall be late for the last train," said the stranger, "unless your man drives like the very devil."