Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series Part 17

"The police will see he does not do that; the Squire has sent a messenger to warn them," I replied. "I suppose you have not heard any more rumours about the poaching on Tuesday night, Mr. Barbary?"

"I've heard no more than was said at first--that the keepers reported some poachers were out, and they nearly came to an encounter with the rascals. Wish they had--and that I had seen the fun. Reste and I had walked to Church Leet and back that day; we were both tired and went upstairs betimes."

To hear him coolly a.s.sert this, to see his good-looking face raised unblushingly to the sun as he said it, must have been as a bitter farce to Katrine, who had believed him, until a few days back, to be next door to a saint for truth and goodness. _I_ put faith in it, not being then behind the scenes.

Mr. Barbary did his packing leisurely. Tea was over, and dusk set in before the portmanteau was shut up and its direction fastened to it.

Katrine read the card. "Edgar Reste, Esq., Euston Square Station, London. _To be left till called for._"

Very lonely felt Katrine, sitting by herself that evening, working a strip of muslin for a frill. _He_ was not there to talk to her in his voice of music--for that's what she had grown to think it, like other girls in love. She wondered whether they should ever meet again--ever, ever? She wondered how long it would be before a letter came from him, and whether he would write to _her_.

Mr. Barbary appeared at supper-time, ate some cold lamb in silence, seeming to be buried in thought, and went back to the gun-room when he had finished. Katrine got to her work again, did a little, then put it away for the night, and turned to the book-shelf to get a book.

Standing to make a choice of one, Katrine was seized with consternation.

On the lower shelf, staring her right in the face, was Mr. Reste's Bible. It had been given him by his dead father, and he set store by it.

He must have left it downstairs the previous Sunday, and Joan had put it away on the shelves amongst the other books.

"I wonder if papa would mind opening the portmanteau again?" thought Katrine, as she hastened to the gun-room, and entered.

"Papa! papa! here's Mr. Reste's Bible left out," she cried, impulsively.

"Can you put it into the portmanteau?"

Mr. Barbary stood by the small safe in the wall, the door of which was open. In his hand lay some bank-notes; he was holding them towards the candle on the deal table, and seemed to be counting them. Katrine, thinking of the Bible and of nothing else, went close to him, and her eye fell on the notes. He flung them into the cupboard in a covert manner, gave the door a slam, turned an angry face on Katrine, and a sharp tongue.

"Why do you come bursting in upon me in this boisterous fashion? I won't have it. What? Will I undo the portmanteau to put in a Bible? No, I won't. Keep it till he chooses to come for it."

She shrank away frightened, softly closing the door behind her. Those bank-notes belonged to Mr. Reste: they were the same she had seen him put into his pocket-book two days ago. Why had he not taken them with him?--what brought them in her father's possession? The advance shadow of the dark trouble, soon to come, crept into Katrine Barbary's heart.

In no mood for reading now, she went to bed, and lay trying to think it out. What did it all mean? Had her father conjured the pocket-book by sleight-of-hand out of Mr. Reste's keeping and _stolen_ the notes? She strove to put the disgraceful thought away from her, and could not. The distress brought to her by the poaching seemed as nothing to this, bad though that was.--And would he venture abroad to-night again?

Joan's light foot-fall pa.s.sed her door, going up to her bed in the roof.

Once there, nothing ever disturbed the old servant or her deafness until getting-up time in the morning. Katrine lay on, no sleep in her eyes; half the night it would have seemed, but that she had learned how slowly time pa.s.ses with the restless. Still, it was a good while past twelve, she thought, when curious sounds, as of _digging_, seemed to arise from the garden. Sounds too faint perhaps to have been heard in the day-time, but which penetrated to her ear unless she was mistaken, in the deep, uncanny, undisturbed silence of the night. She sat up in bed to listen.

There, it came again! What could it be? People did not dig up gardens at midnight. Slipping out of bed, she drew the blind aside and peeped out.

The night was light as day, with a bright, clear, beautiful moon: the hunters' moon. Underneath the summer-apple tree, close at this end of the garden, bent Mr. Barbary, digging away with all his might, his large iron spade turning up the earth swiftly and silently. Katrine's eyes grew wide with amazement. He had dug up that same plot of ground only a few days ago, in readiness to plant winter greens: she and Edgar Reste had stood looking on for a time, talking with him as to the sort of greens he meant to put in. Why was he digging up the same ground again?--and why was he doing it at this unearthly hour?

It appeared to be a hole that was being dug now, for he threw the spadefuls of mould up on each side pretty far. The ground seemed quite soft and pliant; owing perhaps to its having been so recently turned.

As the hole grew larger; wider and longer and deeper; an idea flashed over Katrine that it looked just as though it were meant for a grave.

Not that she thought it.

Putting a warm shawl on her shoulders and slippers on her feet, she sat down before the window, drew the blind up an inch or two, and kept looking out, her curiosity greatly excited. The moon shone steadily, the time pa.s.sed, and the hole grew yet larger. Suddenly Mr. Barbary paused in his work, and held up his head as if to listen. Did he fear, or fancy, a noise in the field pathway outside, or in the dark grove to the right near Caramel's Farm? Apparently so: and that he must not be seen at his work. For he got out of the hole, left the spade in it, came with noiseless, swift, stealthy movement up the yard, and concealed himself in the dark tool-shed. Presently, he stole across to the little gate, looked well about him to the right and left, and then resumed his digging.

Quite six feet long it soon looked to Katrine, and three or more feet wide, and how deep she knew not. _Was it for a grave?_ The apprehension really stole across her, and with a sick faintness. If so, if so--? A welcome ray of possibility dawned then. Had her father (warned by this stir that was going on, the search for poachers and their spoil) a lot of contraband game in his possession that must be hidden away out of sight? Perhaps so.

It seemed to be finished now. The moon had sailed ever so far across the sky by this time, but was still shining full upon it. Mr. Barbary crept again to the gate and stood listening and looking up and down in the silence of the night. Then he crossed to the brewhouse, took the key from his pocket, unlocked it, and went inside. Katrine could see the flash of the match as he struck a light.

When he emerged from the brewhouse he was dragging a weight along the ground with two strong cords. A huge, unshapely, heavy substance enveloped in what looked like matting or sacking. Dragging it straight over the yard to the grave, Mr. Barbary let it fall carefully in, cords and all, and began to shovel in the mould upon it with desperate haste.

Terror seized on Katrine. What was in that matting? All in an instant, a little corner of the veil--that had obscured from her understanding so much which had seemed mysterious and unfathomable--lifted itself, bringing to her an awful conviction. Was it Edgar Reste that was being put out of the way; buried for ever from the sight of man? Her father must have killed him; must have done it in a pa.s.sion! Katrine Barbary cried out with a loud and bitter cry.

Fascinated by the sight of terror, she was unable to draw her eyes away.

But the next moment they had caught sight of another object, bringing equal terror, though of a different nature: some one, who had apparently crept in at the gate unheard, was standing at the corner of the garden hedge, looking on. Was it an officer of the law, come to spy upon her father and denounce his crime? But, even as she gazed, the figure drew back to make its exit by the gate again, and to Katrine it seemed to take my form.

"It is Johnny Ludlow!" she gasped. "Oh, I pray that it may be! I think _he_ would not betray him."

Katrine watched on. She saw the grave filled in; she saw her father stamp it down; she saw him carry the superfluous mould to a place under the wall, near the manure bed, and she saw him stamp that down, and then cover it loosely with some of the manure, so that it might look like a part of the heap. Then he seemed to be coming in, and Katrine thought it must be nearing the dawn.

Creeping into bed, she hid her face, that never again ought to show itself amidst honest men, under the clothes. Some covert stir yet seemed to be going on in the yard, as of pumping and scrubbing. Turning from hot to cold, from cold to hot, Katrine was seized with a shivering fit.

"And who really was it watching?" she moaned. "It looked like Johnny, yet I can't be sure; he stood in the shade."

But it was _me_, as the schoolboys say. And the reason of my being there at the small, unearthly hours of the morning, together with the conclusion of this appalling story, will be found in the next chapter.

CARAMEL COTTAGE

III.--DON THE SECOND

I

We have a saying in England, "It never rains but it pours," as applied, not to the rain, but to the occurrences of daily life. d.y.k.e Manor was generally quiet enough, but on Thursday evening--the Thursday already told of--we were destined to have visitors. First of all, arrived Mr.

Jacobson, our neighbour at Elm Farm, with his nephew, young Harry Dene; he had his gig put up, meaning to make an evening of it. It turned out to be a night, or nearly so, as you will soon find. Close upon that, Charles Stirling of the Court (my place) came in; and Mrs. Todhetley went to the kitchen to say that we should require supper. The stirring events of the week had brought them over--namely, the encounter on our land between the poachers and the keepers, and the flight of the valuable yard dog, Don, a Newfoundland.

That afternoon, Thursday, we had heard, as may be remembered, that Don was at Evesham, under the keeping of Mr. d.i.c.k Standish; and I had been told by Katrine Barbary that Mr. Reste had suddenly and unexpectedly disappeared from Caramel Cottage. Old Jacobson predicted that d.i.c.k Standish would come to be hanged; Charles Stirling said he ought to be transported.

"Of course you will prosecute him, Squire?" said Charles Stirling.

"Of course I shall," replied the Squire, warmly. "The police have him already safe enough if they've done their duty, and I shall be over at Evesham in the morning."

After a jolly supper they got to their pipes, and the time went by on wings. At least, that's what the master of Elm Farm said when the clocks struck eleven, and he asked leave to order his gig.

It was brought round by Giles, the groom; and we were all a.s.sembled in the hall to speed the departure, when old Jones, the constable, burst in upon us at the full speed of his gouty legs, his face in a white heat.

Private information had reached Jones half an hour ago that the poachers intended to be out again that night, but he could not learn in which direction.

Then commotion arose. The Squire and his friend Jacobson were like two demented wild Indians, uncertain what was best to be done to entrap the villains. The gig was ordered away again.

Some time pa.s.sed in discussion. In these moments of excitement one cannot always bring one's keenest wits to the fore. Charles Stirling offered to go out and reconnoitre; we, you may be quite sure, were eager to second him. I went with Charles Stirling one way; Tod and Harry Dene went another--leaving the Squire and Mr. Jacobson at the gate, listening for shots, and conferring in whispers with old Jones.

How long we marched about under the bright moonlight, keeping under the shade of the trees and hedges, I cannot tell you; but when we all four met at d.y.k.e Neck, which lay between the Manor and the Court, we had seen nothing. Mr. Stirling went straight home then, but we continued our ramblings. A schoolboy's ardour is not quickly damped.

Beating about fresh ground together for a little while, we then separated. I went across towards the village: the other two elsewhere.

It was one of the loveliest of nights, the full moon bright as day, the air warm and soft. But I neither saw nor heard signs of any poachers, and I began to suspect that somebody had played a trick on the old constable.