Johnny Ludlow First Series Part 86

"Harriet, what's the matter with you?" she asked, in a kinder tone.

"Nothing."

"_Nothing!_ Why, you look as ill as you can look. You are trembling all over."

"It's true I don't feel very well this evening, aunt, but I think it is nothing. I often feel as if I had a touch of ague."

Miss Timmens bent her face nearer; it had a strange concern in it.

"Harriet, look here. There's some mystery about this place; won't you tell me what it is? I--seem--to--be--afraid--for--_you_," she concluded, in a slow and scarcely audible whisper.

For answer, Miss Timmens found the window slammed down in her face. An impression arose--she hardly knew whence gathered, or whether it had any foundation--that it was not Harriet who had slammed it, but some one concealed behind the curtain.

"Well I'm sure!" cried she. "It might have taken my nose off."

"It was so cold, aunt!" Harriet called out apologetically through the gla.s.s. "Good night."

Miss Timmens walked off in dudgeon. Revolving matters along the broad field-path, she liked their appearance less and less. Harriet was looking as ill as possible: and what meant that trembling? Was it caused by sickness of body, or terror of mind? Mrs. Hill, when consulted, summed it up comprehensively: "It is David about the place: _that's_ killing her."

Harriet Roe did not make her appearance at the school-house, and the next day but one Miss Timmens went up again. The door was bolted. Miss Timmens knocked, but received no answer. Not choosing to be treated in that way she made so much noise, first at the door and then at the window, that the former was at length unclosed by Mrs. James, in list shoes and a dressing-gown, as if her toilette had been delayed that day.

The chain was kept up--a new chain that Miss Timmens had not seen before--and she could not enter.

"I want to see Harriet, Mrs. James."

"Harriet's gone," replied Mrs. James.

"Gone! Gone where?"

"To London. She went off there yesterday morning."

Miss Timmens felt, as she would have said, struck into herself. An idea flashed over her that the words had not a syllable of truth in them.

"What did she go to London for?"

Mrs. James glanced over her two shoulders, seemingly in terror herself, and sunk her voice to a whisper. "She had grown afraid of the place, this dark winter weather. Miss Timmens--it's as true as you're there--nothing would persuade her out of the fancy that she was always seeing David Garth. He used to stand in a sheet at the end of the upstairs pa.s.sage and look at her. Leastways, _she_ said so."

This nearly did for Miss Timmens. It might be true; and she could not confute it. "Do _you_ see him, Mrs. James?"

"Well, no; I never have. Goodness knows, I don't want to."

"But Harriet was not well enough to take a long journey," contended Miss Timmens. "She never could have undertaken one in her state of health."

"I don't know what you mean by 'state,' Miss Timmens. She would shake a bit at times; but we saw nothing else the matter with her. Perhaps _you_ would shake if you had an apparition in the house. Any way, well or ill, she went off to London. Louis took her as far as the station and saw her away."

"Will you give me her address? I should like to write to her."

Mrs. James said she could not give the address, because she did not know it. Nothing more was to be got out of her, and Miss Timmens reluctantly departed.

"I should hope they've not murdered her--and are concealing her in the house as Hill concealed David," was the comment she gave vent to in her perplexity and wrath.

From that time, nothing could be heard of Harriet Roe. A week went on; nearly two weeks; but she never was seen, and no tidings came of her. So far as could be ascertained, she had not gone away by train: neither station-master nor porter remembered to have seen her. Miss Timmens grew as thin as a ghost herself: the subject worried her night and day. That some ill had happened to Harriet; or been _done_ to her, she did not doubt. Once or twice she managed to see Roe; once or twice she saw Mrs.

James: speaking to them at the door with the chain up. Roe said he heard from his wife nearly every other day; but he would not show the letters, or give the address: a conclusive proof to the mind of Miss Timmens that neither had any existence. _What had they done with Harriet?_ Miss Timmens could not have been in much worse mental trouble had she herself made away with her.

One morning the postman delivered a letter at the school-house. It bore the London post-mark, and purported to be from Harriet. A few lines only--saying she was well and enjoying herself, and should come back sometime--the writing shaky and blotted, and bearing but a slight resemblance to hers. Miss Timmens dashed it on the table.

"The fools, to think they can deceive me this way! That's no more Harriet's writing than it is mine."

But Miss Timmens's pa.s.sion soon subsided into a grave, settled, awful dread. For she saw that this had been written to delude her into the belief that Harriet was in health and life--when she might be in neither one nor the other. She brought the letter to Crabb Cot. She took it round the parish. She went with it to the police-station; imparting her views of it to all freely. It was a sham; a blind; a forgery: and _where_ was she to look for poor lost Harriet Roe?

That same evening the ghost appeared again. Miss Timmens and others went up to the cottage, intending to demand an interview with Roe; and they found the house shut up, apparently deserted. Reconnoitring the windows from all points, their dismayed eyes rested on something at the end cas.e.m.e.nt: a thin, shadowy form, robed in white. Every one of them saw it; but, even as they looked, it seemed to vanish away. Yes, there was no question that the house was haunted. Perhaps Harriet had died from fright, as poor David died.

Things could not go on like this for ever. After another day or two of discomfort, Mr. Todhetley, as a county magistrate, incited by the feeling in the parish, issued a private mandate for Roe to appear before him, that he might be questioned as to what had become of his wife. It was not a warrant; but a sort of friendly invitation, that could offend no one. Jiff the policeman was entrusted with the delivery of the message, a verbal one, and I went with him.

As if she had scented our errand for herself, and wanted to make a third in it, who should meet us in the broad path, but Miss Timmens. Willow Cottage might or might not be haunted, but I am sure her legs were: they couldn't be still.

"What are _you_ doing up here, Jiff?" she tartly asked.

Jiff told her. Squire Todhetley wanted Roe at Crabb Cot.

"It will be of no use, Jiff; the door's sure to be fast," groaned Miss Timmens. "My opinion is that Roe has left the place for good."

Miss Timmens was mistaken. The shutters were open, and the house showed signs of life. Upon knocking at the door--Miss Timmens took off her patten to do it with, and you might have heard the echoes at North Crabb--it was flung wide by Mrs. James.

Mr. Roe? No, Mr. Roe was not at home. Mrs. Roe was.

Mrs. Roe was! "What, Harriet?" cried excited Miss Timmens.

Yes, Harriet. If we liked to walk in and see her, we could do so.

By the kitchen fire, as being biggest and hottest, in a chair stuffed about with blankets, sat Harriet Roe. Worn, white, shadowy, she was evidently just getting over some desperate illness. I stared; the policeman softly whistled; you might have knocked Miss Timmens down with a feather.

"Good patience, child--why, where have you been hiding all this while?"

cried she. "And what on earth has been the matter with you?"

"I have been upstairs in my room, Aunt Susan, keeping my bed. As to the illness, it turned out to be ague and low fever."

"Upstairs where?"

"Here."

Jiff went out again; there was nothing to stay for. I followed, leaving Miss Timmens and Harriet to have it out together.

She had really been ill in bed all the time, Mrs. James and Roe attending on her. It did not suit them to admit visitors; for James Roe, who had fallen into some difficulty in London, connected with forged bills, was lying concealed at Willow Cottage. That's why people were kept out. It would not have done by any means for Miss Timmens and her sharp eyes to go upstairs and catch a glimpse of him; so they concocted the tale that Harriet was away. James Roe was safely away now, and Louis with him. Louis had been mixed up in the bill trouble in a lesser degree: but quite enough so to induce him to absent himself from London for a time, and to stay quietly at North Crabb.

"Was it fear or ague that caused you to shake so that last evening I saw you here?" questioned Miss Timmens.

"Ague. I never got out of bed after that night. I could hardly write that letter, aunt, that Louis sent to London to be posted to you."

"And--did you really see David Garth?"