Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series Part 88

"Well, you have only to tell them you don't in an honest manner; I dare say they'll believe you. Abel Carew is one of the most reasonable men I ever knew; sensible, too. Try and find the child yourself; help them to do it, if you can see a clue; make common cause with them."

"You would not like to be told that you had 'spirited' somebody away, more than I like it," grumbled Hyde; who, thoroughly put out, was hard to bring round. "I'm sure you are as likely to turn kidnapper as I am.

It must be a good two weeks since anybody saw me speak to the girl."

"I shall have my patients thinking I am kidnapped if I don't get off to them," cried Duffham. "Mrs. G.o.dfrey's ill, and she is the very essence of impatience. Good-day."

Thoroughly at home in the house, Duffham made no ceremony of departing by the back-door, it being more convenient for the road he was going.

Deborah Preen was was.h.i.+ng endive at the pump in the yard. She turned round to address Duffham as he was pa.s.sing.

"Has the master spoke to you about his throat, sir?"

"No," said Duffham, halting. "What is amiss with his throat?"

"He has been given to sore throats all his life, Dr. Duffham. Many's the time I have had him laid up with them when he was a child. Yesterday he was quite bad with one, sir; and so he is this morning."

"Perhaps that's why he's cross," remarked Duffham.

"Cross! and enough to make him cross!" returned she, taking up the implication warmly. "I ask your pard'n, sir, for speaking so to you; but I'd like to know what gentleman could help being cross when that yellow gipsy comes to attack him with her slanderous tongue, and say to him, Have you come across to my hut in the night and stole my daughter out of it?"

"You think your master did not go across and commit the theft?"

"I know he did not," was Preen's indignant answer. "He never stirred out of his own home, sir, all last night; he was nursing his throat indoors.

At ten o'clock he went to bed, and I took him up a posset after he was in it. Well, sir, I was uneasy, for I don't like these sore throats, and between two and three o'clock I crept into his room and found him sleeping quietly; and I was in again this morning and woke him up with a cup o' tea."

"A pretty good proof that he did not go out," said Duffham.

"He never was as much as out of his bed, sir. The man that sleeps indoors locked up the house last night, and opened it again this morning. Ketira the gipsy would be in gaol if she got her deservings!"

"I wonder where the rest of us would be if we got ours!" quoth Duffham.

"I suppose I had better go back and take a look at this throat!"

To see the miserable distress of Ketira that day, and the despair upon her face as she dodged about between Virginia Cottage and the brickfields, was like a gloomy picture.

"Do you remember telling me once that you feared Kettie might run away to the tribe?" I asked, meeting her on one of these wanderings in the afternoon. "Perhaps that is where she is gone?"

The suggestion seemed to offend her mortally. "Boy, I know better," she said, facing round upon me fiercely. "With the tribe she would be safe, and I at rest. The stars never deceive me."

And, when the sun went down that night and the stars came out, the environs of Virginia Cottage were still haunted by Ketira the gipsy.

II.

You would not have known the place again. Virginia Cottage, the unpretending little homestead, had been converted into a mansion. Hyde Stockhausen had built a new wing at one end, and a conservatory at the other; and had put pillars before the rustic porch, over which the Virginia creeper climbed.

We heard last month about Ketira the gipsy: and of the unaccountable disappearance of her daughter, Kettie; and of the indignant anger displayed by Hyde Stockhausen when it was suggested that he might have kidnapped her. Curiously enough, within a few days of that time, Hyde himself disappeared from Church d.y.k.ely: not in the mysterious manner that Kettie had, but openly and with intention.

The inducing cause of Hyde's leaving, as was stated and believed, was a quarrel with his step-father, Ma.s.sock. It chanced that the monthly settling-day, connected with the brickfields, fell just after Kettie vanished. Ma.s.sock came over for it as usual, and was overbearing as usual; and perhaps Hyde, already in a state of inward irritation, was less forbearing than usual. Any way, ill-words arose between them.

Ma.s.sock accused Hyde of neglecting his interests, and of being too much of a gentleman to look after the work and the men. Hyde retorted: one word led to another, and there ensued a serious quarrel. The upshot was, that Hyde threw up his post. Vowing he would never again have anything to do with old Ma.s.sock or his precious bricks as long as he lived, he packed up a small portmanteau and quitted Church d.y.k.ely there and then, to the intense tribulation of his ancient nurse and servant, Deborah Preen.

"Leave him alone," said Ma.s.sock roughly. "He'll be back safe enough in a day or two."

"Where is he gone?" asked Ketira the gipsy: who, hovering still around Virginia Cottage, had seen Hyde's exit with his portmanteau.

Ma.s.sock stared at her, and at her red cloak: she had penetrated to his presence to ask the question. He had never before seen Ketira; never heard of her.

"What is it to you?" he demanded, in his coa.r.s.e manner. "Who are _you_?

Do you come here to tell his fortune? Be off, old witch!"

"His fortune may be told sooner than you care to hear it--if you are anything to him," was the gipsy's answer. And that same night she quitted Church d.y.k.ely herself, wandering away to be lost in the "wide wide world."

Ma.s.sock's opinion, that Hyde would return in a day or two, proved to be a mistaken one. Rimmer, at the Silver Bear, got a letter from a lawyer in Worcester, asking him to release Mr. Stockhausen from Virginia Cottage--which Hyde had taken for three years. But, this, Rimmer refused to do. So Hyde had to make the best of his bargain: and every quarter, as the quarters went on, the rent was punctually remitted to Henry Rimmer by the lawyer: who gave, however, no clue to his client's place of abode. It was said that Hyde had been reconciled to his uncle, Parson Hyde (now getting into his dotage), and was by him supplied with funds.

One fine evening, however, in the late spring, when not very far short of a twelvemonth had elapsed, Hyde astonished Deborah Preen by his return. After a fit of crying, to show her joy, Deborah brought him in some supper and stood by while he ate it, telling him the news of what had transpired in the village since he left.

"Are those beautiful brickfields being worked still?" he asked.

"'Deed but they are then, Master Hyde. A sight o' bricks seems to be made at 'em. Pitt the foreman, he have took your place as manager, sir, and keeps the accounts."

"Good luck to him!" said Hyde, drinking a gla.s.s of ale. "That queer old lady in the red cloak: what has become of her?"

"What, that gipsy hag?" cried Preen. "She's dead, sir."

"Dead!"

"Yes, sir, dead: and a good riddance, too. She went away the very night you went, Mr. Hyde, and never came back again. A week or two ago Abel Carew got news that she was dead."

(Shortly before this, some wandering gipsies had set up their camp within a mile or two of Church d.y.k.ely. Abel Carew, never having had news of Ketira since her departure, went to them to make inquiries. At first the gipsies seemed not to understand of whom he was speaking; but upon his making Ketira clear to them, they told him she had been dead about a month; of her daughter, Kettie, they knew nothing.)

"She's not much loss," observed Hyde in answer to Deborah: and his face took a brighter look, as though the news were a relief--Preen noticed it. "The old gipsy was as mad as a March hare."

"And ten times more troublesome than one," put in Preen. "Be you come home to stay, master?"

"I dare say I shall," replied Hyde. "As good settle down here as elsewhere: and there'd be no fun in paying two rents."

So we had Hyde Stockhausen amidst us once more. He did not intend to take up with brickmaking again, but to live as a gentleman. His uncle made him an allowance, and he was going to be married. Abel Carew questioned him about Kettie one day when they met on the common, asking whether he had seen her. Never, was the reply of Hyde. So that what with the girl's prolonged disappearance and her mother's death, it was a.s.sumed that we had done with the two gipsies for ever.

Hyde was engaged to a Miss Peyton. A young lady just left an orphan, whom he had met only six weeks ago at some seaside place. He had fallen in love with her at first sight, and she with him. She had two or three hundred a-year: and Hyde, there was little doubt, would come into all his uncle's money; so he saw no reason why he should not make Virginia Cottage comfortable for her, and went off to the Silver Bear, to talk to Henry Rimmer about it.

The result was, that improvements were put in hand without delay. A wing (consisting of a handsome drawing-room downstairs, and a bed and dressing-room above) was added to the cottage on one side; on the other side, Hyde built a conservatory. The house was also generally embellished and set in order, and some new furniture brought in. And I think if ever workmen worked quickly, these did; for the alterations seemed no sooner to be begun than they were done.

"So you have sown your wild oats, Master Hyde," remarked the Squire one day in pa.s.sing, as he stood to watch the finis.h.i.+ng touches, then being put to the outside of the house.

"Don't know that I ever had many to sow, sir," said Hyde, nodding to me.

"And what sort of a young lady is this wife that you are about to bring home?" went on the pater.

Hyde's face took a warm flush and his lips parted with a half-smile; which proved what she was to him. "You will see, sir," he said in answer.

"When is the wedding to be?"