Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series. Henry Wood

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he did marry her: and I don’t see that he was a fool at all for it. I wish I’d got the whip-hand of those two wicked blades who came down here and turned him from his good ways. I wonder how they’ll answer for it in heaven.”

      “Would you like to take a drop of cider?” asked Stephen.

      “I don’t care if I do.”

      The cider was brought in by Eunice Gibbon: a second edition, so far as looks went, of Mrs. Stephen Radcliffe, whose younger sister she was. She lived there as servant, the only one kept. Holt had left when old Mr. Radcliffe died.

      “Come, Stephen Radcliffe, you must make Annet some allowance,” said the Squire, after taking a long draught and finding the cider uncommonly sour. “The neighbours will cry out upon you if you don’t.”

      “The neighbours can do as they choose.”

      “Just take this much into consideration. If that little child of theirs had lived, the money would have been his.”

      “But he didn’t live,” argued Stephen.

      “I know he didn’t—more’s the pity. He’d have been a consolation to her, poor thing. Come! you can’t, I say, take all from her and leave her with nothing.”

      “Nothing! Hasn’t she got the farm-stock and the furniture? She’s all that to the good. ’Twas bought with Frank’s money.”

      “No, it was not. Half the money was hers. Look here. Unless she gets help somewhere, I don’t see how she is to stay on at Pitchley’s.”

      “And ’twould be a sight better for her not to stay on at Pitchley’s,” retorted Stephen. “Let her go back to her mother’s again, over in the other parish. Or let her emigrate. Lots of folks is emigrating now.”

      “This won’t do, Stephen Radcliffe,” said the Squire, beginning to lose his temper. “You can’t for shame bring every one down upon your head. Allow her a trifle, man, out of the income that has lapsed to you: let the world have to say that you are generous for once.”

      Well, not to pursue the contest—which lasted, hot and sharp, for a couple of hours, for the Squire, though he kept getting out of one passion into another, would not give in—I may as well say at once that Stephen at last yielded, and agreed to allow her fifty pounds a-year. “Just for a year or so,” as he ungraciously put it, “while she turned herself round.”

      And it was so tremendous a concession for Stephen Radcliffe that no one believed it at first, the Squire included. It must be intended as a thanksgiving for his brother’s death, said the world.

      “Only, Ste Radcliffe is not the one to offer thanksgivings,” observed old Brandon. “Take care that he pays it, Squire.”

      And thus things fell into the old grooves again, and the settling down of Frank Radcliffe amongst us seemed but as a very short episode in Church Dykely life. Stephen Radcliffe, in funds now, bought an adjoining field that was to be sold, and added it to his land: but he and his wife and the Torr kept themselves more secluded than ever. Frank’s widow took up her old strength by degrees, and worked and managed incessantly: she in the house, and David Skate out of it; to keep Pitchley’s Farm together. And the autumn drew on.

      The light of the moon streamed in slantwise upon us as we sat round the bay-window. Tod and I had just got home for the Michaelmas holidays: and we sat talking after dinner in the growing dusk. There was always plenty to relate, on getting home from school. A dreadful thing had happened this last quarter: one of the younger ones had died at a game of Hare and Hounds. I’ll tell you of it some time. The tears glistened in Mrs. Todhetley’s eyes, and we all seemed to be talking at once.

      “Mrs. Francis Radcliffe, ma’am.”

      Old Thomas had opened the door and interrupted us. Annet came in quietly, and sat down after shaking hands all round. Her face looked pale and troubled. We asked her to stay tea; but she would not.

      “It is late to come in,” she said, some apology in her tone. “I meant to have been here earlier; but it has been a busy day, and I have had interruptions besides.”

      This seemed to imply that she had come over for some special purpose. Not another word, however, did she say. She just sat in silence, or next door to it: answering Yes and No in an abstracted sort of way when spoken to, and staring out into the moonlight like any one dreaming. And presently she got up to leave.

      We went out with her and walked across the field; the pater, I, and Tod. Nearly every blade of the short grass could be seen as distinctly as in the day. At the first stile she halted, saying she expected to meet David there, who had gone on to Dobbs the blacksmith on some errand connected with the horses.

      Tod saw a young hare scutter across the grass, and rushed after it, full chase. The moon, low in the heavens, as autumn moons mostly are, lighted up the perplexity on Annet’s face. It was perplexed. Suddenly she turned it on the Squire.

      “Mr. Todhetley, I am sure you must wonder what I came for.”

      “Well, I thought you wanted something,” said the Squire candidly. “We are always pleased to have you; you ought to have stayed tea.”

      “I did want something. But I really could not muster courage to begin upon it. The longer I sat there—like a statue, as I felt—the more my tongue failed me. Perhaps I can say it here.”

      It was a curious thing she had to tell, and must have sounded to the Squire’s ears like an incident out of a ghost story. The gist of it was this: an impression had taken hold of her mind that her husband had not been fairly dealt with. In plain words, had not come fairly by his end. The pater listened, and could make no sense of it.

      “I can’t tell how or when the idea arose,” she said; “it seems to have floated in my mind so long that I do not trace the beginning. At first it was but the merest shadow of a doubt; hardly that; but it has grown deeper and darker, and I cannot rest for it.”

      “Bless my heart!” cried the Squire. “Johnny, hold my hat a minute.”

      “Just as surely as that I see that moon in the sky, sir,” she went on, “do I seem to see in my mind that some ill was wrought to Frank by his brother. Mrs. Radcliffe said it would be.”

      “Dear me! What Mrs. Radcliffe?”

      “Frank’s mother. She had the impression of it when she was dying, and she warned Frank that it would be so.”

      “Poor Selina! But—my dear lady, how do you know that?”

      “My husband told me. He told me one night when we were sitting alone in the parlour. Not that he put faith in it. He had escaped Stephen’s toils until then, he said in a joking tone, and thought he could take care of himself and escape them still. But I fear he did not.”

      “Now what is it you do fear?” asked the Squire. “Come.”

      She glanced round in dread, and then spoke with considerable hesitation and in a low whisper.

      “I fear—that Stephen—may have—murdered him.”

      “Mercy upon us!” uttered the Squire, recoiling a step or two.

      She put her elbow on the stile and raised her hand to her face, showing out so pale and distressed under its white net border.

      “It СКАЧАТЬ