The Tree of Knowledge Part 17

cried Elaine, aghast.

"I don't see no other way for it," said Jane, calmly, drawing her thimble down a seam to flatten it, with a rasping noise which set her charge's teeth on edge.

"Well, Jane, I never heard of such a thing!" she burst forth after a pause of speechless indignation.

"I can't help it, miss; I must teach you to take care of your clothes.

You're not going flaunting over to Mrs. Battishill's in that ostrich feather o' yours. Maybe, next time you drop your hat in the road, you'll remember to pick it up again."

Surely Elaine's fairy G.o.dmother spoke through the untutored lips of Jane Gollop!

Instead of presenting herself to Claud in a headgear covered with yellow satin ribbon and a bright blue feather, Elsa appeared downstairs in her wide-brimmed garden-hat, simply trimmed with muslin; and narrowly escaped looking picturesque.

How different was the road to Poole, now that she trod it with such companions! Her heart was light as air, her young spirits were all stretched eagerly, almost yearningly forward into the unknown country whose border she had crossed so lately.

Her fancy played sweetly around the image of the artist-hero, her pulses beat a glad chime because he was living, and not dead. She waxed less shy, and chatted to her companions,--even daring to ask questions, a thing her aunts never permitted. She gave them reminiscences of her childish days, when she lived in London, and of a dream she had constantly of streets full of houses, one after another, in endless succession, with very few trees among them.

"That is all I know of London," she said, "and I hardly remember anything that happened, except hearing the baby cry in the night. It was G.o.dfrey. I used to wake up in my little bed, and see nurse sitting with the baby near the lamp, rocking him in her arms. I remember being taken in to kiss papa when he was dead; but that was not in London--it was somewhere in the country--at Fallowmead, where G.o.dfrey's uncle has his racing-stud. I remember mamma; she was not my real mamma. I could not bear her. She used to whip me, and once I bit her in the arm."

"My dear Elsa!" said Lady Mabel.

"I did. I was a very naughty little girl--at least, Jane always says so. I remember being shut up alone for a punishment."

As she spoke, they turned a bend in the road, and came in sight of the spot where the crime had been perpetrated.

Two men stood there talking together. One was Mr. d.i.c.kens of Scotland Yard, the other Elsa greeted with a glad wave of the hand in greeting.

"Oh," cried she, springing forward, "it's Mr. Fowler, it's my G.o.dfather!

I did not know he had come back!"

At the sound of her voice, Mr. Fowler turned round, and his face lighted up as she came towards him.

"Why, Elsie!" he said, "there you are, my child! And I'm hearing such doings of yours, it makes me quite proud of you. And you, sir," he went on, addressing Claud, "are Mr. Cranmer, I suppose, and ent.i.tled to my very hearty goodwill for your behavior in this matter."

Claud had heard of Mr. Fowler before, as a local justice of the place, and he gladly shook hands with him, scrutinizing, of course, as he did so, the general mien and bearing of his new acquaintance.

Mr. Fowler was short, square, st.u.r.dy, and plain. His hair and thick short beard had once been jet black, but were now iron grey. His skin was exceedingly dark, almost swarthy, and his eyes, big, soft, and luminous, were his one redeeming feature. His manner was a curious mixture of gentleness and strength; he never raised his voice, but his first order was always instantly obeyed. Something there was about him which invited confidence; he was not exactly polished, yet his manner to women was perfect. Gentle as was his eye, it yet had a curiously penetrating expression, and Lady Mabel, used as she was to what should be the best school of breeding in England, was yet struck with the simplicity and repose of his address.

"I only came back to Edge Combe yesterday," he said, and, though he had lived all his life in South Devon, Claud noticed at once that the rough burr of the "r" was absent from his quiet voice. "I am often absent for some months, on and off, managing some tin mines in Cornwall; and it was through the medium of the newspapers I learned what had been going forward in our little valley. And now, Mr. Cranmer, what do you think about it?"

"I'm afraid I must postpone my opinion till Mr. Allonby himself has been questioned," said Claud.

"Exactly what I've been telling Mr. Fowler," observed Mr. d.i.c.kens, who wore a baffled and humbled look. "Nothing can be done till Mr. Allonby speaks. It's a case of _vendetta_, I'll go bail; and it's done by one that's accustomed to the work, too; accustomed to cut the stick and leave no traces."

"Cut the stick--the stick they knocked him down with?" asked Elsa in low, horrified tones.

Claud smiled.

"Your theory hardly holds with Dr. Forbes, Mr. d.i.c.kens," he said rather shortly. "He declares the blows were given by a novice--by a hand that didn't know where to plant his blows."

"Well, I don't know what to say," snapped the detective. "Here's a man beat almost to death on the high-road in broad daylight; some one must have done it. Where is he? There ain't a trace of him. n.o.body has met a single soul that could be taken up on suspicion--n.o.body has seen anybody as so much as looked suspicious. Miss Brabourne and her servant met n.o.body as they came along not half-an-hour afterwards. It ought to be some one uncommon deep, and not a tramp nor a fishy-looking party of any kind."

All this was true. Claud was inclined to think that the detective had done his best, and his ill-success was owing to the very strange nature of the case, and not to his inability.

They left him sadly ruminating by the wayside, and crossed the Waste to the farm, Elaine with her hand clasped tightly in the square, short, hard palm of her G.o.dfather.

"This has been an adventure for you, little woman," he said. "What do the aunts say?"

"They are surprised," answered she, with her usual paucity of vocabulary.

"I should think they were! And horrified too--eh?"

"Yes, very. Aunt Fan nearly had hysterics."

"Poor Aunt Fan! I don't wonder. I have a great respect for the Misses Willoughby," he said, turning to Lady Mabel. "I have known them all my life."

His voice seemed to soften involuntarily as he said it, and, as his eyes rested lingeringly on Elaine's face, Lady Mabel could not help framing a romance of twenty years ago, in which he and pretty Alice Willoughby were the leading characters; and a swift bitter thought of the complications of life crossed her mind. Had Alice mated with the deep patient love that waited for her, and chosen a home by "Devon's leafy sh.o.r.es" instead of the hot swamps of the Ganges, she had probably been a happy blooming wife and mother now, with the enjoyment of her G.o.dmother's fortune duly secured to her children.

And now here stood Elsa, comparatively poor, fatherless, motherless; while Henry Fowler, like Philip Ray, had gone ever since "bearing a life-long hunger in his heart." All this, of course, was pure surmise, yet it seemed to invest the homely features and square figure of the Devonian with a halo of tender feeling in her eyes; for Lady Mabel had a romance of her own.

"Did you have hysterics, Elsie?" asked Mr. Fowler.

"No; I lost my hat," answered she, in a matter-of-fact way which made them all three laugh.

"It was a wiser thing to do," he answered, in his quiet voice. "But the whole affair must have been a great shock to you, la.s.sie."

"Yes," said the girl--an inadequate, halting answer.

Dimly she was feeling that that day had been not all darkness--that it was the beginning of life. She did not know the inviolable law of humanity, that no new life is born without a pang; but imperfectly she felt that her pain had been followed by a feeling of gladness for which she could not account, and that the days now were not as the days that had been.

"What a solitude," says somebody in some book, "is every human soul." At that moment the solitude of Elaine Brabourne's soul was very great. She was standing where the brook and river met; vaguely she heard the sound of coming waters foaming down into the quiet valley. It awed her, but did not terrify. There was excitement, but no fear. And of all this those who walked beside her knew nothing.

Henry Fowler was one of those who surround womanhood with a halo, and his feminine divinity had taken form and shape. It had borne a name, the name of Alice Willoughby--for Lady Mabel's surmise had been correct.

Had he known how near the torrent stood near the untried feet of Alice's daughter, he would have flung out his strong right arm, caught her in a firm hold, and cried, "Beware!"

But he did not know. He saw only with his waking eyes, and those told him that Elaine had grown prettier--nothing more. She was safe and sound--she was walking at his side. The vital warmth of her young hand lay in his. No care for her future troubled him just then.

He chatted to Claud about the details of the mysterious a.s.sault. There seemed but one subject on which it was natural to converse, in the Combe, in those days.

When they came to the bridge, he made the girl pa.s.s over its crazy planks before him, and jumped her from the top of the stile.

As they neared the farm-house, a sound of loud crying, or rather roaring, greeted them; and when Mr. Fowler, with the privilege of old custom, walked into the house, and through to the kitchen, there lay Saul the idiot, his whole length stretched on the floor, his face purple with weeping, and kicking strenuously.

Clara Battishill stood against the table, the color in her pretty little cheeks, her chest heaving as with recent encounter, her mien triumphant.

"Saul Parker, hold your noise at once--get up off the flags--stand up, I say! What's all this about, eh?" said Mr. Fowler, in his even, unruffled tones.

Saul left off howling directly, and, after taking a furtive look at the company, hid his tear-strained visage with a wriggle of anguish.