Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series Part 20

Can any one picture, I wonder, Katrine Barbary's distress of mind, the terrible dread that had taken possession of it? Shuddering dread, amounting to a panic: dread of the deed itself, dread for her father, dread of discovery.

On the following morning, Sunday, a letter was delivered at Caramel Cottage for Mr. Reste, the postmark being London, the writing in the same hand as the last--Captain Amphlett's. Mr. Barbary took it away to his gun-room; Katrine saw it, later in the day, lying on the deal-table there, unopened.

The next Thursday afternoon, Lena being then almost well--for children are dying to-day and running about again to-morrow--I called at the Cottage to ask after Katrine. We heard she had an attack of fever. The weather was lovely again; the October sky blue as in summer, the sun hot and bright.

Well, she did look ill! She sat in the parlour at the open window, a huge shawl on, and her poor face about half the size it was before. What had it been, I asked, and she said ague; but she was much better now and intended to be at the Manor again on Monday.

"Sit down please, Johnny. I suppose Lena has been glad of the holiday?"

"She just has. That young lady believes French was invented for her especial torment. Have you heard from Mr. Reste, Katrine?----What does he say about his impromptu flitting?"

She turned white as a ghost, never answering, looking at me strangely.

I thought a spasm might have seized her.

"Not yet," she faintly said. "Papa thinks--thinks he may have gone abroad."

While I was digesting the words, some vehicle was heard rattling up the side lane; it turned the corner and stopped at the gate. "Why, Katrine,"

I said, "it is a railway fly from Evesham!"

A little fair man in a grey travelling-suit got out of the fly, came up the path, and knocked at the door. Old Joan answered it and showed him into the room. "Captain Amphlett," she said. Katrine looked ready to die.

"I must apologize for intruding," he began, with a pleasant voice and manner. "My friend Edgar Reste is staying here, I believe."

Katrine was taken with a shivering fit. The stranger looked at her with curiosity. I said she had been ill with ague, and was about to add that Edgar Reste had left, when Mr. Barbary came in. Captain Amphlett turned to him and went on to explain: he was on his way to spend a little time in one of the Midland shires, and had halted at Evesham for the purpose of looking up Edgar Reste--from whom he had been expecting to hear more than a week past; could not understand why he did not. Mr. Barbary, with all the courtesy of the finished gentleman, told him, in reply to this, that Edgar Reste had left Caramel Cottage a week ago.

"Dear me!" cried the stranger, evidently surprised. "And without writing to tell me. Was his departure unexpected?"

Mr. Barbary laughed lightly. That man would have retained his calmest presence of mind when going down in a wreck at sea. "Some matter of business called him away, I fancy," he replied.

"And to what part of England was he going?" asked Captain Amphlett, after a pause. "Did he say?"

Mr. Barbary appeared to have an impulsive answer on his lips, but closed them before he could speak it. He glanced at me, and then turned his head and glanced at Katrine, as if to see whether she was there, for he was sitting with his back to her. A thought struck me that we were in the way of his plain speaking.

"He went to London," said Mr. Barbary.

"To London!" echoed the Captain. "Why, that's strange. He has not come to London, I a.s.sure you."

"I can a.s.sure you it is where he told me he was going," said Mr.

Barbary, smiling. "And it was to London his luggage was addressed."

"Well, it is altogether strange," repeated Captain Amphlett. "I went to his chambers in the Temple yesterday, and Farnham, the barrister who shares them with him, told me Reste was still in Worcestershire; he had not heard from him for some time, and supposed he might be returning any day now. Where in the world can he be hiding himself? Had he come to London, as you suppose, Mr. Barbary, he would have sought me out the first thing."

Whiter than any ghost ever seen or heard of, had grown Katrine as she listened. I could not take my eyes from her terrified face.

"I do not comprehend it," resumed Captain Amphlett, looking more helpless than a rudderless ship at sea. "Are you sure, sir, that there is no mistake; that he was really going to London?"

"Not at all sure; only that he said it," returned Mr. Barbary in a half mocking tone. "One does not inquire too closely, you know, into the private affairs of young men. We have not heard from him yet."

"I cannot understand it at all," persisted Captain Amphlett; "or why he has not written to me; or where he can have got to. He ought to have written."

"Ah, yes, no doubt," suavely remarked Mr. Barbary. "He was careless about letter-writing, I fancy. Can I offer you any refreshment?"

"None at all, thank you; I have no time to spare," said the other, rising to depart. "I suppose you do not chance to know whether Reste had a letter from me last Tuesday week?"

"Yes, he had one. It had some bank-notes in it. He opened it here at the breakfast table."

Quite a relief pa.s.sed over Captain Amphlett's perplexed face at the answer. "I am glad to hear you say that, Mr. Barbary. By his not acknowledging receipt of the money, I feared it had miscarried."

Bidding us good afternoon, and telling Katrine (at whose sick state he had continued to glance curiously) that he wished her better, the stranger walked rapidly out to his fly, attended by Mr. Barbary.

"Katrine," I asked, preparing to take my own departure, "what was there in Captain Amphlett to frighten you?"

"It--it was the ague," she answered, bringing out the words with a jerk.

"Oh--ague! Well, I'd get rid of such an ague as that. Good-bye."

But it was not ague; it was sheer fear, as common sense told me, and I did not care to speculate upon it. An uneasy atmosphere seemed to be hanging over Caramel Cottage altogether; to have set in with Edgar Reste's departure.

A day or two later our people departed for Crabb Cot for change of air for Lena, and we returned to school, so that nothing more was seen or heard at present of the Barbarys.

III

December weather, and snow on the ground, and Caramel Cottage looking cold and cheerless. Not so cheerless, though, as poor Katrine, who had a blue, pinched face and a bad cough.

"I can't get her to rouse herself, or to swallow hardly a morsel of food," lamented Joan to Mr. Duffham. "She sits like a statty all day long, sir, with her hands before her."

"Sits like a statue, does she?" returned Duffham, who could see it for himself, and for the hundredth time wondered what it was she had upon her mind. He did his best, no doubt, in the shape of tonics and lectures, but he could make nothing of his patient. Katrine vehemently denied that she was worrying herself over any sweetheart--for that's how Duffham delicately shaped his questions--and said it was the cold weather.

"The voyage will set her up, or--_break_ her up," decided Duffham, who had never treated so unsatisfactory an invalid. "As to not having anything on her mind, why she may tell that to the moon."

Katrine was just dying of the trouble. The consciousness of what the garden could disclose filled her with horror, whilst the fear of discovery haunted her steps by day and her dreams by night. She could not sleep alone, and Joan had brought her mattress down to the room and lay on the floor. When the sun shone, Mr. Barbary would compel her to sit or walk in the garden; Katrine would turn sick and faint at sight of that plot of ground under the apple tree, and the winter greens growing there. At moments she thought her father must suspect the source of her illness; but he gave no sign of it. Since Captain Amphlett's visit, no further inquiry had been made after Edgar Reste. Katrine lived in daily dread of it. Now and then the neighbours would ask after him. Duffham had said one day in the course of conversation: "Where's that young Reste now?" "Oh, in London, working on for his silk gown," Mr. Barbary lightly answered. Katrine marvelled at his coolness.

Upon getting back to the Manor for Christmas we heard that Mr. Barbary was quitting Church d.y.k.ely for Canada. "And the voyage will either kill or cure the child," said Duffham, for it was he who gave us the news; "she is in a frightfully weak state."

"Is it ague still?" asked Mrs. Todhetley.

"It is more like nerves than ague," answered Duffham. "She seems to live in a chronic state of fear, starting and shrinking at every unexpected sound. I can't make her out, and that's the truth; she denies having received any shock.--So you have never found Don, Squire!" he broke off, leaving the other subject.

"No," said the Squire angrily. "d.i.c.k Standish has been too much for us this time. The fellow wants hanging. Give him rope enough, and he'll do it."

Brazer's dog was returned to him, safe and sound, but our dog had never come back to us, and the Squire was looking out for another. d.i.c.k Standish protested his innocence yet; but he had gone roving the country with that other dog, and no doubt had sold Don to somebody at a safe distance. Perhaps had dyed him a fine gold first; as the dyer dyed his dog at Evesham.

"Now, Miss Katrine, there's not a bit of sense in it!"

It was Christmas Eve. Katrine was sitting in the twilight by the parlour fire, and Joan was scolding. She had brought in a tray of tea with some bread-and-b.u.t.ter; Katrine was glad enough of the tea, but said she could not eat; she always said so now.