Johnny Ludlow Fifth Series Part 34

"Rarely, without being noticed. Who did you boys see about the place that afternoon--tramp or gentleman? Come! You were at the house, Johnny: you bolted into it, head foremost, saying you had come from the d.y.k.e."

"I never saw a soul but Sanker: he was on the bench on the lawn, reading. I said so at the time, sir."

"Ah! yes; Sanker was there reading," quietly a.s.sented the Squire. "What were you hastening home for, Johnny?"

As if that mattered, or could have had anything to do with it! He had a knack of asking unpleasant questions; and I looked at Tod.

"Hugh got his blouse torn, and Johnny came in to get another,"

acknowledged Tod, readily. The fact was, Hugh's clothes that afternoon had come to uncommon grief. Hannah had made one of her usual rows over it, and afterwards shown the things to Mrs. Todhetley.

"Well, and now for to-day," resumed the pater. "Where have you all been?"

Where had we not? In the three-cornered paddock; with Monk in the pine-house; away in the rick-yard; once to the hay-field; at the rabbit-hutches; round at the stables; oh, everywhere.

"You two, and Sanker?"

"Not Sanker," I said. Sanker stayed on the lawn with his book. We had all been on the lawn for the last half-hour: he, us, Hugh, Lena, and the magpie. But not a suspicious character of any sort had we seen about the place.

"Sanker's fond of reading on the lawn," remarked Mr. Todhetley, in a careless tone. But he got no answer: we had been struck into silence.

He took one hand out of his pocket, and drummed on the table, not looking at either of us. Tod had laid hold of a piece of blotting-paper and was pulling it to pieces. I wondered what they were thinking of: I know what I was.

"At any rate, the first thing is to find the ring; _that_ only went this morning," said the Squire, as he left us. Tod sat on where he was, dropping the bits of paper.

"I say, Tod, do you think it _could_ be----?"

"Hold your tongue, Johnny!" he shouted. "No, I don't think it. The bank-note--light, flimsy thing--must have been lost in the yard, and the ring will turn up. It's somewhere on the floor here."

In five minutes the news had spread. Mr. Todhetley had told his wife, and summoned the servants to the search. Both losses were made known; consternation fell on the household; the women-servants searched the room; old Thomas bent his back double over the frame outside the gla.s.s-doors. But there was no ring.

"This is just like the mysterious losses we had at school," exclaimed Sanker, as a lot of us were standing in the hall.

"Yes, _it is_," said the Squire.

"Perhaps, sir, your ring is in a corner of some odd pocket?" went on Sanker.

"Perhaps it may be," answered the Squire, rather emphatically; "but not in mine."

Happening to look at Mrs. Todhetley, I saw her face had turned to a white fright. Whether the remark of Sanker or the peculiarity of the Squire's manner brought to her mind the strange coincidence of the losses, here and at school, certain it was the doubt had dawned upon her. Later, when I and Tod were hunting in the room on our own account, she came to us with her terror-stricken face.

"Joseph, I see what you are thinking," she said; "but it can't be; it can't be. If the Sankers are poor, they are honest. I wish you knew his father and mother."

"I have not accused any one, Mrs. Todhetley."

"No; neither has your father; but you suspect."

"Perhaps we had better not talk of it," said Tod.

"Joseph, I think we must talk of it, and see what can be done. If--if he should have done such a thing, of course he cannot stay here."

"But we don't know that he has, therefore he ought not to be accused of it."

"Oh! Joseph, don't you see the pain? None of you can feel this as I do.

He is my relative."

I felt so sorry for her. With the trouble in her pale, mild eyes, and the quivering of her thin, meek lips. It was quite evident that _she_ feared the worst: and Tod threw away concealment with his step-mother.

"We must not accuse him; we must not let it be known that we suspect him," he said; "the matter here can be hushed up--got over--but were suspicion once directed to him on the score of the school losses, the disgrace would never be lived down, now or later. It would cling to him through life."

Mrs. Todhetley clasped her slender and rather bony fingers, from which the wedding-ring looked always ready to drop off. "Joseph," she said, "you a.s.sume confidently that he has done it; I see that. Perhaps you know he has? Perhaps you have some proof that you are concealing?"

"No, on my honour. But for my father's laying stress on the curious coincidence of the disappearances at school I should not have thought of Sanker. 'Losses there; losses here,' he said----"

"Now then, Peter!" mocked the bird, from his perch on the old tree.

"Be quiet!" shouted Tod. "And then the Squire went on adroitly to the fact, without putting it into words, that n.o.body else seems to have been within hail of this room either time."

"He has had so few advantages; he is kept so short of money," murmured poor Mrs. Todhetley, seeking to find an excuse for him. "I would almost rather have found my boy Hugh--when he shall be old enough--guilty of such a thing, than Edward Sanker."

"I'd a great deal rather it had been me," I exclaimed. "I shouldn't have felt half so uncomfortable. And we are not _sure_. Can't we keep him here, after all? It will be an awful thing to turn him out--a thief."

"He is not going to be turned out, a thief. Don't put in your oar, Johnny. The pater intends to hush it up. Why! had he suspected any other living mortal about the place, except Sanker, he'd have accused them outright, and sent for old Jones in hot haste."

Mrs. Todhetley, holding her hand to her troubled face, looked at Tod as he spoke. "I am not sure, Joseph--I don't quite know whether to hush it up entirely will be for the best. If he---- Oh!"

The exclamation came out with a shriek. We turned at it, having been standing together at the table, our backs to the window. There stood Sanker. How long he had been there was uncertain; quite long enough to hear and comprehend. His face was livid with pa.s.sion, his voice hoa.r.s.e with it.

"Is it possible that _I_ am accused of taking the bank-note and the ring?--of having been the thief at school? I thank you, Joseph Todhetley."

Mrs. Todhetley, always for peace, ran before him, and took his hands.

Her gentle words were drowned--Tod's were overpowered. When quiet fellows like Sanker do get into a rage, it's something bad to witness.

"Look here, old fellow," said Tod, in a breath of silence; "we don't accuse you, and don't wish to accuse you. The things going here, as they did at school, is an unfortunate coincidence; you can't shut your eyes to it; but as to----"

"Why are _you_ not accused?--why's Ludlow not accused?--you were both at school, as well as I; and you are both here," raved Sanker, panting like a wild animal. "You have money, both of you; you don't want helping on in life; I have only my good name. And that you would take from me!"

"Edward, Edward! we did not wish to accuse you; we said we would not accuse you," cried poor Mrs. Todhetley in her simplicity. But his voice broke in.

"No; you only suspected me. You a.s.sumed my guilt, and would not be honest enough to accuse me, lest I refuted it. Not another hour will I stay in this house. Come with me."

"Don't be foolish, Sanker! If we are wrong----"

"Be silent!" he cried, turning savagely on Tod. "I'm not strong; no match for you, or I would pound you to atoms! Let me go my own way now.

You go yours."

Half dragging, half leading Mrs. Todhetley with him, the angry light in his eyes frightening her, he went to his bedroom. Taking off his jacket; turning his pockets inside out; emptying the contents of his trunk on the floor, he scattered the articles, one by one, with the view of showing that he had nothing concealed belonging to other people. Mrs.

Todhetley, great in quiet emergencies, had her senses hopelessly scared away in this; she could only cry, and implore of him to be reasonable.

He flung back his things, and in five minutes was gone. Dragging his box down the stairs by its stout cord, he managed to hoist it on his shoulders, and they saw him go fiercely off across the lawn.