Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series Part 43

I did not remember to have seen them; or Fred Scott either.

"Just go out and look for the two girls, will you, Johnny. It's too late for them to be out, though it is a warm night. Tell them I say they are to come in at once," said Mrs. Cramp.

Not half a stone's throw from the house I found them--quarrelling. Their noisy voices guided me. A brilliant moon lighted up the scene. The young ladies were taunting one another; Juliet in frantic pa.s.sion; Cherry in sarcastic mockery. Fred Scott, after trying in vain to throw oil upon the troubled waters, had given it up as hopeless, and stood leaning against a tree in silent patience.

"It's quite true," Cherry was saying tauntingly when I got up. "We _are_ engaged. We shall be married shortly. Come!"

"You are not," raved Juliet, her voice trembling with the intense rage she was in. "He was engaged to me before you came here; he is engaged to me still."

Cherry laughed out in mockery. "Dear me! old maids do deceive themselves so!"

Very hard, that, and Juliet winced. She was five or six years older than the fairy. How Fred relished the bringing home to him of his sins, I leave you to judge.

"I say, can't you have done with this, you silly girls?" he cried out meekly.

"In a short time you'll have our wedding-cards," went on Cherry. "It's all arranged. He's only waiting for me to decide whether it shall take place here or at Gretna Green."

Juliet dashed round to face Fred Scott. "If this be true; if you do behave in this false way to me, I'll not survive it," she said, hardly able to bring the words out in her storm of pa.s.sion. "Do you hear me?

I'll not live to see it, I say; and my ghost shall haunt her for her whole life after."

"Come now, easy, Juliet," pleaded Fred uncomfortably. "It's all nonsense, you know."

"I think it is; I think she is saying this to aggravate me," a.s.sented Juliet, subsiding to a sort of calmness. "If not, take you warning, Cherry Dawson, for I'll keep my word. My apparition shall haunt you for ever and ever."

"It had better begin to-night, then, for you'll soon find out that it's as true as gospel," retorted Cherry.

Managing at last to get in a word, I delivered Mrs. Cramp's message: they were to come in instantly. Fred obeyed it with immense relief and ran in before me. The two girls would follow, I concluded, when their jarring had spent itself. The last glimpse I had of them, they were stretching out their faces at each other like a couple of storks.

Juliet's straw hat had fallen from her head and was hanging by its strings round her neck.

"Oh, they're coming," spoke up Fred, in answer to Mrs. Cramp. "It's very nice out there; the moon's bright as day."

And presently I heard the laugh of Cherry Dawson amidst us. Her golden hair, her scarlet cheeks and her blue eyes were all sparkling together.

III

It was the next morning. We were at breakfast, answering Mr. and Mrs.

Todhetley's questions about the harvest home, when old Thomas came in, all sad and scared, to tell some news. Juliet Chandler was dead: she had destroyed herself.

Of course the Squire at once attacked Thomas for saying it. But a sick feeling of conviction arose within me that it was true. One of the servants, out of doors on an errand, had heard it from a man in the road. The Squire sat rubbing his face, which had turned hot.

Leaving the breakfast table, I started for Mrs. Cramp's. Miss Susan Dennet was standing at her gate, her white handkerchief thrown over her head, her pale face limp with fright.

"Johnny," she called to me, "have you heard? Do you think it can be true?"

"Well, I hope not, Miss Susan. I am now going there to see. What I'm thinking of is this--if it is not true, how can such a report have arisen?"

Tod caught me up, and we found the farm in distress and commotion. It was all true; and poor Mrs. Cramp was almost dumb with dismay. These were the particulars: The previous evening, Juliet did not appear at the late supper, laid in the dining-room for the guests; at least, no one remembered to have seen her. Later, when the guests had left, and Mrs.

Cramp was in the kitchen busy with her maids, Cherry Dawson looked in, bed-candle in hand, to say good-night. "I suppose Juliet is going up with you," remarked Mrs. Cramp. "Oh, Juliet went up ages ago," said Cherry, in answer.

The night pa.s.sed quietly. Early in the morning one of the farm men went to the eel-pond to put in a net, and saw some clothes lying on the brink. Rushing indoors, he brought out Sally. She knew the things at once. There lay the white dress and the pink ribbons which Juliet had worn the night before; the straw hat, and a small fleecy handkerchief which she had tied round her neck at sundown. Pinned to the sash and the dress was a piece of paper on which was written in ink, in a large hand--Juliet's hand:

"I SAID I WOULD DO IT; AND I WILL HAUNT HER FOR EVERMORE."

Of course she had taken these things off and left them on the bank, with the memorandum pinned to them, to make known that she had flung herself into the pond.

"I can scarcely believe it; it seems so incredible," sighed poor Mrs.

Cramp, to the Squire, who had come bustling in. "Juliet, as I should have thought, was one of the very last girls to do such a thing."

The next to appear upon the scene, puffing and panting with agitation, was Fred Scott. He asked which of the two girls it was, having heard only a garbled account; and now learned that it was Juliet. As to Cherry Dawson, she was shut up in her bedroom in shrieking hysterics. Men were preparing to drag the pond in search of----well, what was lying there.

The pond was at the end of the garden, near the fence that divided it from the three-acre field. Nothing had been disturbed. The white frock and pink ribbons were lying with the paper pinned to them; the hat was close by. A yard off was the white woollen handkerchief; and near it I saw the faded bunch of mignonette which Juliet had worn in her waistband. It looked as if she had flung the things off in desperation.

Standing later in the large parlour, listening to comments and opinions, one question troubled me--Ought I to tell what I knew of the quarrel?

It might look like treachery towards Scott and the girl upstairs; but, should that poor dead Juliet----

The doubt was suddenly solved for me.

"What I want to get at is this," urged the Squire: "did anything happen to drive her to this? One doesn't throw oneself into an eel-pond for nothing in one's sober senses."

"Miss Juliet and Miss Dawson had a quarrel out o' doors last night,"

struck in Joan, for the two servants were a.s.sisting at the conference.

"Sally heard 'em."

"What's that?" cried Mrs. Cramp. "Speak up."

"Well, it's true, ma'am," said Sally, coming forward. "I went out to shake a tray-cloth, and heard voices at a distance, all in a rage like; so I just stepped on a bit to see what it meant. The two young la.s.ses was snarling at one another like anything. Miss Juliet was----"

"What were they quarrelling about?" interrupted the Squire.

"Well, sir, it seemed to be about Mr. Scott--which of 'em had him for a sweetheart, and which of 'em hadn't. Mr. Johnny Ludlow ran up as I came in: perhaps he heard more than I did."

After that, there was nothing for it but to let the past scene come out; and Mrs. Cramp had the pleasure of being enlightened as to the rivalry which had been going on under her roof and the ill-feeling which had arisen out of it. Fred Scott, to do him justice, spoke up like a man, not denying the flirtation he had carried on, first with Juliet, next with Cherry, but he declared most positively that it had never been serious on any side.

The Squire wheeled round. "Just say what you mean by that, Mr.

Frederick. What do you call serious?"

"I never said a word to either of them which could suggest serious intentions, sir. I never hinted at such a thing as getting married."

"Now look here, young man," cried Mrs. Cramp, taking her handkerchief from her troubled face, "what right had you to do that? By what right did you play upon those young girls with your silly speeches and your flirting ways, if you meant nothing?--nothing to either of them?"

"I am sorry for it now, ma'am," said Scott, eating humble pie; "I wouldn't have done it for the world had I foreseen this. It was just a bit of flirting and nothing else. And neither of them ever thought it was anything else; they knew better; only they became snappish with one another."

"Did not think you meant marrying?" cried the Squire sarcastically, fixing Scott with his spectacles.

"Just so, sir. Why, how could I mean it?" went on Scott in his simple way. "I've no money, while my mother lives, to set up a wife or a house; she wouldn't let me. I joked and laughed with the two girls, and they joked and laughed back again. I don't care what they may have said between themselves--they _knew_ there was nothing in it."

Scott was right, so far. All the world, including the Chandlers and poor Juliet, knew that Scott was no more likely to marry than the man in the moon.