Gwen Wynn Part 48

"Yes; well?"

"We wor just abreast o' it when ye bid me hold way. In course we must a heard the screech just then."

"Hold way now! Pull back a length or two. Steady her. Keep opposite the tree!"

The boatman obeys, first pulling the back stroke, then staying his craft against the current.

Once more relapsing into silence, Ryecroft sends his gaze down stream, as though noting the distance to Llangorren Court, whose chimneys are visible in the moonlight now on. Then, as if satisfied with some mental observation, he directs the other to row off. But as the kiosk-like structure comes within sight, he orders another pause, while making a minute survey of the summer-house, and the stretch of water between.

Part of this is the main channel of the river, the other portion being the narrow way behind the eyot; on approaching which the pavilion is again lost to view, hidden by a tope of tall trees. But once within the bye-way, it can be again sighted; and when near the entrance to this the waterman gets the word to pull into it.

He is somewhat surprised at receiving this direction. It is the way to Llangorren Court, by the boat-stair, and he knows the people now living there are not friends of his fare--not even acquaintances, so far as he has heard. Surely the Captain is not going to call on Mr. Lewin Murdock--in amicable intercourse?

So queries Jack Wingate, but only of himself, and without receiving answer. One way or other he will soon get it; and thus consoling himself, he rows on into the narrower channel.

Not much farther before getting convinced that the Captain has no intention of making a call at the Court, nor is the _Mary_ to enter that little dock, where more than once she had lain moored beside the _Gwendoline_. When opposite the summer-house, he is once more commanded to bring to, with the intimation added,--

"I'm not going any farther, Jack."

Jack ceases stroke, and again holds the skiff so as to hinder it from drifting.

Ryecroft sits with eyes turned towards the cliff, taking in its _facade_ from base to summit, as though engaged in a geological study, or trigonometrical calculation.

The waterman, for a while wondering what it is all about, soon begins to have a glimmer of comprehension. It is clearer when he is directed to scull the boat up into the little cove where the body was found. Soon as he has her steadied inside it, close up against the cliff's base, Ryecroft draws out a small lamp, and lights it. He then rises to his feet, and, leaning forward, lays hold of a projecting point of rock. On that resting his hand, he continues for some time regarding the scratches on its surface, supposed to have been made by the feet of the drowned lady in her downward descent. Where he stands they are close to his eyes, and he can trace them from commencement to termination. And so doing, a shadow of doubt is seen to steal over his face, as though he doubted the finding of the coroner's jury, and the belief of every one that Gwendoline Wynn had there fallen over.

Bending lower, and examining the broken branches of the juniper, he doubts no more, but is sure--convinced of the contrary!

Jack Wingate sees him start back with a strange surprised look, at the same time exclaiming,--

"I thought as much! No accident!--no suicide--murdered!"

Still wondering, the waterman asks no questions. Whatever it may mean, he expects to be told in time, and is therefore patient.

His patience is not tried by having to stay much longer there. Only a few moments more, during which Ryecroft bends over the boat's side, takes the juniper twigs in his hand, one after the other, raises them up as they were before being broken, then lets them gently down again!

To his companion he says nothing to explain this apparently eccentric manipulation, leaving Jack to guesses. Only when it is over, and he is apparently satisfied, or with observation exhausted, giving the order,--

"Way, Wingate! Row back--up the river!"

With alacrity the waterman obeys, but too glad to get out of that shadowy pa.s.sage; for a weird feeling is upon him, as he remembers how there the screech owls mournfully cried, as if to make him sadder when thinking of his own lost love.

Moving out into the main channel and on up stream, Ryecroft is once more silent and musing. But on reaching the place from which the pavilion can be again sighted, he turns round on the thwart and looks back. It startles him to see a form under the shadow of its roof--a woman!--how different from that he last saw there! The ex-cocotte of Paris--faded flower of the Jardin Mabille--has replaced the fresh beautiful blossom of Wyeside--blighted in its bloom!

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE CRUSHED JUNIPER.

Notwithstanding the caution with which Captain Ryecroft made his reconnaisance, it was nevertheless observed, and from beginning to end.

Before his boat drew near the end of the eyot, above the place where for the second time it had stopped, it came under the eye of a man who chanced to be standing on the cliff by the side of the summer-house.

That he was there by accident, or at all events not looking out for a boat, could be told by his behaviour on first sighting this; neither by change of att.i.tude nor glance of eye evincing any interest in it. His reflection is,--

"Some fellows after salmon, I suppose. Have been up to that famous catching place by the ferry, and are on the way home downward--to Rock Weir, no doubt! Ha!"

The e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n is drawn from him by seeing the boat come to a stop, and remain stationary in the middle of the stream.

"What's that for?" he asks himself, now more carefully examining the craft.

It is still full four hundred yards from him, but the moonlight being in his favour, he makes it out to be a pair-oared skiff with two men in it.

"They don't seem to be dropping a net," he observes, "nor engaged about anything. That's odd!"

Before they came to a stop, he heard a murmur of voices, as of speech, a few words, exchanged between them, but too distant for him to distinguish what they had said. Now they are silent, sitting without stir; only a slight movement in the arms of the oarsman to keep the boat in its place.

All this seems strange to him observing: not less when a flood of moonlight brighter than usual falls over the boat, and he can tell by the att.i.tude of the man in the stern, with face turned upward, that he is regarding the structure on the cliff.

He is not himself standing beside it now. Soon as becoming interested by the behaviour of the men in the boat, from its seeming eccentricity, he had glided back behind a bush, and there now crouches, an instinct prompting him to conceal himself.

Soon after he sees the boat moving on, and then for a few seconds it is out of sight, again coming under his view near the upper end of the islet, evidently setting in for the old channel. And while he watches, it enters!

As this is a sort of private way, the eyot itself being an adjunct of the ornamental grounds of Llangorren, he wonders whose boat it can be, and what its business there. By the backwash, it must be making for the dock and stair; the men in it, or one of them, for the Court.

While still surprisedly conjecturing, his ears admonish him that the oars are at rest, and another stoppage has taken place. He cannot see the skiff now, as the high bank hinders. Besides, the narrow pa.s.sage is arcaded over by trees still in thick foliage; and, though the moon is shining brightly above, scarce a ray reaches the surface of the water.

But an occasional creak of an oar in its rowlock, and some words spoken in low tone--so low he cannot make them out--tell him that the stoppage is directly opposite the spot where he is crouching--as predatory animal in wait for its prey.

What was at first mere curiosity, and then matter of but slight surprise, is now an object of keen solicitude. For of all places in the world, to him there is none invested with greater interest than that where the boat has been brought to. Why has it stopped there? Why is it staying? For he can tell it is by the silence continuing. Above all, who are the men in it?

He asks these questions of himself, but does not stay to reason out the answers. He will best get them by his eyes; and to obtain sight of the skiff and its occupants, he glides a little way along the cliff, looking out for a convenient spot. Finding one, he drops first to his knees, then upon all fours, and crawls out to its edge. Craning his head over, but cautiously, and with a care it shall be under cover of some fern leaves, he has a view of the water below, with the boat on it--only indistinct on account of the obscurity. He can make out the figures of the two men, though not their faces, nor anything by which he may identify them--if already known. But he sees that which helps to a conjecture, at the same sharpening his apprehensions--the boat once more in motion, not moving off, but up into the little cove, where a dead body late lay! Then, as one of the men strikes a match and sets light to a lamp, lighting up his own face with that of the other opposite, he on the bank above at length recognises both.

But it is no longer a surprise to him. The presence of the skiff there, the movements of the men in it--like his own, evidently under restraint and stealthy--have prepared him for seeing whom he now sees--Captain Ryecroft and the waterman Wingate.

Still, he cannot think of what they are after, though he has his suspicions; the place, with something only known to himself, suggesting them--conjecture at first soon becoming certainty, as he sees the ex-officer of Hussars rise to his feet, hold his lamp close to the cliff's face, and inspect the abrasions on the rock!

He is not more certain, but only more apprehensive, when the crushed juniper twigs are taken in hand, examined, and let go again. For he has by this divined the object of it all.

If any doubt lingered, it is set at rest by the exclamatory words following, which, though but muttered, reach him on the cliff above, heard clear enough--

"No accident--no suicide--murdered!"

They carry tremor to his heart, making him feel as a fox that hears the tongue of hound on its track. Still distant, but for all causing it fear, and driving it to think of subterfuge.

And of this thinks he, as he lies with his face among the ferns; ponders upon it till the boat has pa.s.sed back up the dark pa.s.sage out into the river, and he hears the last light dipping of its oars in the far distance.

He even forgets a woman, for whom he was waiting at the summer-house, and who there without finding him has flitted off again.

At length rising to his feet, and going a little way, he too gets into a boat--one he finds, with oars aboard, down in the dock. It is not the _Gwendoline_--she is gone.