The House 'Round the Corner Part 30

"That Percy Whittaker is daft, an' it's easy to see what ails him. If I was Miss Meg I wouldn't have him if he was hung with diamonds."

"You're n.o.bbut a fond la.s.s," commented Mrs. Jackson, cracking an egg on the side of a basin preparatory to emptying its contents into a frying-pan. "Always thinkin' of young men, like the rest of 'em. Poor Meg Garth has other things to bother her. If you hadn't lost a good father when you were too little to ken owt about it, you'd know what she's goin' through now."

"But she says her father is livin'," said Betty.

"Tell me summat fresh," retorted her mother. "Wouldn't it be better for her if he wasn't? You mark my words. There'll be a bonny row i' this house afore we're much older. Now, hurry up with t' toast. No matter what else happens, folk mun eat."

CHAPTER XIII

DEUS EX MACHINA

After a while, Betty came to Armathwaite again.

"If you please, sir, breakfast is ready. Shall I bring it in, or will you wait for Miss Meg?" she said.

That a second inquiry as to Marguerite's whereabouts should be necessary seemed to surprise him.

"You were looking for Miss Garth a few minutes ago. Didn't you find her?" he inquired.

"No, sir. She's not in the house."

"But what can have become of her?"

"I thought, sir, she might ha' gone into t' village."

"Why?"

"She knows everybody i' t' place. She said last night that now she was makin' a bit of a stay she'd be seein' some o' t' folk."

"I think I should have noticed her if she had gone out by the gate," he said, weighing the point. "Smith!" he called, "has Miss Meg left the house recently--within the past ten minutes, I mean?"

"Not that I know of, sir," said Smith; "but I'm that worritted by the state of some o' these here beds that ammost owt (almost anything) might ha' happened without me givin' it heed."

"Bang that gong at the front door," said Armathwaite to Betty. "It should be heard in every house in Elmdale, and she will understand."

The gong was duly banged, and its effect on Elmdale was immediately perceptible. Old Mrs. Bolland vowed afterwards that she would sit permanently at the back bedroom window, because, being rheumaticky, she couldn't get upstairs quickly enough, and there was summat to see nowadays at t' Grange.

But the tocsin failed to reach the one ear for which it was intended.

The village produced every live inhabitant except Marguerite Ogilvey.

"Was Miss Meg friendly with the Burts?" inquired Armathwaite, when he and Betty realized it was useless to gaze expectantly either at the corner of the roadway visible from the porch, or at such small cross-sections of the village "street" as could be seen at irregular intervals between the houses.

"Yes, sir. She'd often walk over there," said the girl, gazing at once in the direction of the Castle Farm, which was the name of the holding.

"She would know that breakfast was on the way?"

"Oh, yes, sir! I axed her meself when I brought her a cup of tea. She said that nine o'clock would suit."

Betty turned involuntarily to consult the grandfather's clock in the hall. The hands stood at ten minutes past nine; but, in the same moment, she remembered that the clock was not going. Armathwaite followed her glance, and looked at his watch.

"Ten minutes past nine," he answered, with a laugh. "The old clock is right to a tick. Was it in use while the Sheffield lady remained in the house?"

"No, sir. It stopped at that time when the old man died."

Then she giggled. There is hardly a man or woman in Yorkshire who does not know that the words of a famous song were suggested by the behavior of a clock which is still exhibited in an inn on the south side of the Tees at Pierce Bridge, and the girl had unconsciously repeated the tag of verses and chorus.

Armathwaite had yet to learn of this treasured possession of the county of broad acres, so he eyed Betty rather disapprovingly. Moved by an impulse which he regarded as nothing more than a desire to check such undue levity, he strode into the hall, found a key resting on a ledge of the clock's canopy, wound up the heavy weights, and started the pendulum.

"Perhaps our ancient friend may be more accurate than you, Betty," he said. "You mean, I suppose, that it stopped at that time because it was not wound. How do _you_ know the hour, or even the day, anyone died here?"

"Well, I don't, sir, an' that's a fact," she admitted. "But what about breakfast?"

"Attend to Mr. Whittaker--I'll wait!"

He went out again, and saw Smith hobbling down the bye-road.

"Hi!" he cried, "if you're going into the village you might ask if anyone has seen Miss Meg!"

Smith replied with a hand wave. He was thinking mainly of begonias, planning a magician's stroke, because his new master had told him to spare no expense. Within ten minutes he returned, but not alone. Four able-bodied rustics came with him, each carrying a spade or a garden fork. But he had not forgotten Armathwaite's request.

"Miss Meg hasn't gone that way, sir," he said. "Plenty of folk saw her in t' garden, an' they couldn't ha' missed her had she been in t'

street. But she'll be comin' i' now. No fear o' her bein' lost, stolen, or strayed i' Elmdale. These chaps are good for a day's diggin' at four shillin' an' two quarts o' beer each. Is that right, sir?"

"Make it five shillings and no beer," said Armathwaite.

The laborers grinned.

"No beer is even to be bought during working hours," he added sharply.

"You can work harder and longer on tea. You may have all the tea, milk, bread and cheese you want, but not a drop of beer, this day or any other day, while at work here. I know what I am talking about. I am no teetotal fanatic, but I've proved the truth of that statement during many a day of more trying labor than digging soft earth."

The terms were agreed to without a murmur. The incident, slight as it was, had its bearing on the day's history. Smith was leading his cohort to the attack, when one of the men, apparently bethinking himself, approached Armathwaite and touched his cap.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "but was ye axin' about Miss Meg?"

"Yes."

"Well, I seed her goin' up t' moor road nigh on half an hour sen"

(since).

The Grange itself was the only house on the moor road for many a mile, and it was most unlikely that Marguerite would take a protracted stroll in that direction at such an hour. Somehow, Armathwaite was aware of a chill in the air which he had not felt earlier. It was his habit to disregard those strange glimpses of coming events, generally of misfortune, which men call premonitions. When confronted by accomplished facts, he acted as honor and experience dictated; for the rest, he said, with Milton--

"I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart and hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward."

But this all-sufficing rule of conduct had availed him little from the moment he crossed the threshold of the Grange. Right well had it served him in the strenuous years of vigilant governance now so remote; since his coming to Elmdale he seemed ever to be striving against shapeless phantoms. He had sought quiet and content in that peaceful-looking village; he had found only care and gnawing foreboding, brightened, it is true, by a day-dream, which itself left bitter communing when it waned. For he was his own severest censor. He regarded himself as one already in the sere and yellow leaf. Fortune had called him to the high places only to cast him forth discredited, if not humbled. That he, a man who believed he had done with the great world, should think of allying his shattered life with the sweet and winsome creature whose feminine charm was enhanced by a frank girlishness, was a tantalizing prospect which, like the mirage in a desert, merged with the arid wastes when subjected to close scrutiny. With Marguerite near, reason fled, and all things seemed possible; when the thrall of her presence was withdrawn, cold judgment warned him that grat.i.tude for help rendered should not be mistaken for love.