Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series Part 58

"They have been singularly verified. The man has been murdered."

"Not on board the _Rose of Delhi_."

"No. Off it."

"I should rather call it death by misadventure," said Jack, looking calmly at the broker. "At the worst, done in a scuffle; possibly in a fall."

"Most people, as I think you will find, will call it murder, Captain Tanerton."

"I fear they will."

Mr. Freeman stood before Jack, waiting--at least it struck me so--to hear him add, "But I did not commit it"--or words to that effect. I waited too. Jack never spoke them: he remained silent and still. Since the past day his manner had changed. All the light-hearted ease had gone out of it; the sunny temperament seemed exchanged for one of thought and gloom.

Fine tidings to travel down to Timberdale!

On Wednesday, the day following this, the Squire stood at the gate of Crabb Cot after breakfast, looking this way and that. Dark clouds were chasing each other over the face of the sky, now obscuring the sun, now leaving it to s.h.i.+ne out with intense fierceness.

"It won't do to-day," cried the Squire. "It's too windy, Joe. The fish would not bite."

"They'd bite fast enough," said Tod, who had set his mind upon a day's fis.h.i.+ng, and wanted the Squire to go with him.

"Feel that gust, Joe! Why, if--halloa, here comes Letsom!"

Colonel Letsom was approaching at the pace of a steam-engine, his mild face longer than usual. Tod laughed.

The colonel, never remembering to say How d'ye do, or to shake hands, dragged two letters out of his pocket, all in a flurry.

"Such fearful news, Todhetley!" he exclaimed. "Pym--you remember that poor Pym?"

"What should hinder me?" cried the Squire. "A fine dance we had, looking for him and Verena Fontaine the other night in London! What of Pym!"

"He is dead!" gasped the colonel. "Murdered."

The pater took off his spectacles, thinking they must affect his hearing, and stared.

"And it is thought," added the colonel, "that--that Captain Tanerton did it."

"Good mercy, Letsom! You can't mean it."

Colonel Letsom's answer was to read out portions of the two letters. One of them was written to his daughter Mary Ann by Coralie Fontaine; three sheets full. She gave much the same history of the calamity that has been given above. It could not have been done by any hand but Captain Tanerton's, she said; though of course not intentionally; n.o.body thought that: her father, Sir Dace, scorned any worse idea. Altogether, it was a dreadful thing; it had struck Verena into a kind of wild despair, and bewildered them all. And in a postscript she added what she had apparently forgotten to say before--that Captain Tanerton denied it.

Tod looked up, a flush on his face. "One thing may be relied upon, colonel--that if Tanerton did do it, he will avow it. He would never deny it."

"This other letter is from Sir Dace," said the colonel, after putting Coralie's aside. And he turned round that we might look over his shoulder while he read it.

It gave a much shorter account than Coralie's; a _lighter_ account, as if he took a less grave view of the affair; and it concluded with these words: "Suspicion lies upon Tanerton. I think unjustly. Allowing that he did do it, it could only have been done by a smartly-provoked blow, devoid of ill-intention. No one knows better than myself how quarrelsome and overbearing that unfortunate young man was. But I, for one, believe what Tanerton says--that he was not even present when it happened. I am inclined to think that Pym, in his unsteady state, must in some way have fallen when alone, and struck his head fatally."

"Sir Dace is right; I'll lay my fortune upon it," cried Tod warmly.

"Don't talk quite so fast about your fortune, Joe; wait till you've got one," rebuked the pater. "I must say it is grievous news, Letsom. It has upset me."

"I am off now to show the letters to Paul," said the colonel. "It will be but neighbourly, as he is a connection of the Fontaines."

Shaking hands, he turned away on the road to Islip. The Squire, leaning on the gate, appeared to be looking after him: in reality he was deep in a brown study.

"Joe," said he, in a tone that had a sound of awe in it, "this is curious, taken in conjunction with what Alice Tanerton told us yesterday morning."

"Well, it does seem rather queer," conceded Tod. "Something like the dream turning up trumps."

"Trumps?" retorted the pater.

"Truth, then. Poor Alice!"

A singular thing had happened. Especially singular, taken in conjunction (as the Squire put it) with this unfortunate news. And when the reader hears the whole, though it won't be just yet, he will be ready to call out, It is not true. But it is true. And this one only fact, with its truth and its singularity, induced me to recount the history.

On Tuesday morning, the day after the calamity in s.h.i.+p Street--you perceive that we go back a day--the Squire and Tod turned out for a walk. They had no wish to go anywhere in particular, and their steps might just as well have been turned Crabb way as Timberdale way--or, for that matter, any other way. The morning was warm and bright: they strolled towards the Ravine, went through it, and so on to Timberdale.

"We may as well call and see how Herbert Tanerton is, as we are here,"

remarked the Squire. For Herbert had a touch of hay-fever. He was always getting something or other.

The Rector was better. They found him pottering about his garden; that prolific back-garden from which we once saw--if you don't forget it--poor, honest, simple-minded Jack bringing strawberries on a cabbage-leaf for crafty Aunt Dean. The suspected hay-fever turned out to be a bit of a cold in the head: but the Rector could not have looked more miserable had it been in the heart.

"What's the matter with you now?" cried the Squire, who never gave in to Herbert's fancies.

"Matter enough," he growled in answer: "to have a crew of ridiculous women around you, no better than babies! Here's Alice in a world of a way about Jack, proclaiming that some harm has happened to him."

"What harm? Does she know of any?"

"No, she does not know of any," croaked Herbert, flicking a growing gooseberry off a bush with the rake. "She says a dream disclosed it to her."

The pater stared. Tod threw up his head with a laugh.

"You might have thought she'd got her death-warrant read out to her, so white and trembling did she come down," continued Herbert in an injured tone. "She had dreamt a dream, foreshadowing evil to Jack, she began to tell us--and not a morsel of breakfast could she touch."

"But that's not like Alice," continued the Squire. "She is too sensible: too practical for such folly."

"It's not like any rational woman. And Grace would have condoled with her! Women infect each other."

"What was the dream?"

"Some nonsense or other, you may be sure. I would not let her relate it, to me, or to Grace. Alice burst into tears and called me hard-hearted.

I came out here to get away from her."

"For goodness' sake don't let her upset herself over a rubbis.h.i.+ng dream, Tanerton," cried the Squire, all sympathy. "She's not strong, you know, just now. I dreamt one night the public hangman was appointed to take my head off; but it is on my shoulders yet. You tell her that."