Anne Hereford. Mrs. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ is nothing to me who sits down when I am not there."

      He departed with the ungracious reply ringing in his ears: and ungracious I felt it to be. She bolted the door again, and pulled the blue velvet cushion off my head.

      "Are you smothered, child? Get up. Now, mark me: you must not say a word to Mr. Edwin Barley of what happened at the summer-house. Do not mention it at all--to him, or to any one else."

      "But suppose I am asked, Selina?"

      "How can you be asked? Philip King is gone, poor fellow; George Heneage is not here, and who else is there to ask you? You surely have not spoken of it already?" she continued, in a tone of alarm.

      I had not spoken of it to any one, and told her so. Jemima had questioned me as to the cause of my terror, when I ran in from the wood, and I said I had heard a shot and a scream I had not courage to say more.

      "That's well," said Selina.

      She sent me to rest, ordering Jemima to stay by me until I was asleep. "The child may feel nervous," she remarked to her, in an undertone, but the words reached me. And I suppose Jemima felt nervous, for one of the other maids came too.

      The night passed; the morning came, Sunday, and with it illness for Mrs. Edwin Barley. I gathered from Jemima's conversation, while she was dressing me, that Selina had slept alone: Mr. Edwin Barley, with his brother and some more gentlemen, had been out a great part of the night looking for George Heneage. It was so near morning when they got back that he would not go to his wife's room for fear of disturbing her.

      I ran in when I went downstairs. She lay in bed, and her voice, as she spoke to me, did not sound like her own.

      "Are you ill, Selina? Why do you speak so hoarsely?"

      "I feel very ill, Anne. My throat is bad--or my chest, I can scarcely tell which: perhaps it is both. Go downstairs, and send Miss Delves to me."

      I have said that I was an imaginative, thoughtful, excitable child, and as I hastened to obey her, one sole recollection (I could have said fear) kept running through my brain. It was the oracular observation made by Duff, relating to his mistress and the fog: "It's enough to give her her death!" Suppose she had caught her death? My fingers, fastening my narrow waist-band, trembled at the thought.

      The first thing I saw when I went down was a large high screen of many folds, raised across the hall, shutting out part of it from view. It seemed to strike me back with fear. Sarah was coming out of the dining-room with a duster in her hand: it was early yet. I caught hold of her gown.

      "Sarah, what is behind there?"

      "The same that was last night, Miss," she answered. "Nothing is to be moved until the coroner has come.

      "Have they taken Mr. Heneage?"

      "Not that I have heard of, Miss. One of the police was in just now, and he told Miss Delves there was no news."

      "I want to find Miss Delves. Where is she?"

      "In master's study. You can go in. Don't you know which it is? It's that room built out at the back, half-way up the first flight of stairs. You can see the door from here."

      In the study sat Mr. Barley and Mr. Edwin Barley at breakfast, Charlotte Delves serving them. I gave her my aunt's message, but was nearly scared out of my senses at being laid hold of by Mr. Edwin Barley.

      "Go up at once, Charlotte, and see what it is," he said. "How do you say, little one--that her throat is bad?"

      "Yes, sir; she cannot speak well."

      "No wonder; she has only herself to thank," he muttered, as Charlotte Delves left the room. "The wonder would be if she were not ill."

      "Why?" asked Mr. Barley, curiously, lifting his head.

      "Oh, she got frightened last night when poor Philip was brought in, and ran out in the fog after me with nothing on."

      He released my arm, and Mr. Barley put a chair for me beside him, and gave me some breakfast. I had taken quite a liking to him, he was so simple and kind. He told me he had no little girls or boys of his own, and his wife was always ill, unable to go out.

      "Mrs. Edwin Barley appears exceedingly poorly," said Charlotte Delves, when she returned. "Lowe said he should be here this morning; he shall see her when he comes. She must have taken cold."

      Scarcely had she spoken when the surgeon arrived. Mr. Edwin Barley went upstairs with him. Mr. Lowe came down alone afterwards, and I caught a moment to speak to him when no one was listening.

      "Will my Aunt Selina get well, sir?"

      "I do not know, my dear," he answered, turning upon me his grave face. "I fear she is going to be very ill."

      Sunday came to an end; oh, such a dull day it had seemed!--and Monday morning dawned. It was Selina's birthday: she was twenty-one.

      Nothing could be heard of George Heneage. The police scoured the country; handbills were printed, offering a reward for his apprehension; no effort was left untried, but he was not found. Opinions were freely bandied about: some said he must have escaped in the fog, and got off by the railway from Nettleby, or by the other line beyond Hallam; others thought he was lying concealed near the spot still. Mr. Edwin Barley was in great anger at his escape, and avowed he would pursue him to the death.

      Not on this day, but the following one, Tuesday, Mr. Heneage's father came to the house--a fine old gentleman, with white hair. Mr. Lowe corrected me for calling him old, and said he could not be much more than fifty. I had not then the experience to know that while young people call fifty old, those past that age are apt to style it young. I saw him twice as he went along the passages, but was not close to him. He was a courteous, gentlemanly man, but seemed bowed down with grief. It was said he could not understand the calamity at all, and decidedly refused to believe in his son's guilt. If the shot had in truth proceeded from him, the gun must have gone off by accident.

      "Then why should he run away?" argued Mr. Edwin Barley.

      He stayed in the house altogether but about two hours, and had an interview with Mrs. Edwin Barley in her bedroom before his departure. Refreshments were laid for him, but he declined to touch anything: I heard the servants commenting on it.

      In the afternoon the coroner's inquest sat. It was held in the dining-room. The chief witness was Mr. Edwin Barley. I was not called upon, and Selina said it was a proof that he had not mentioned I was present at the time. You may be sure I took care not to mention it; neither did she. Nothing transpired touching the encounter at the summer-house; therefore the affair appeared to the public involved in mystery. Mr. Edwin Barley protested that it was a mystery to him. He could not conceive what motive Heneage could have had in taking Philip King's life. Mr. Edwin Barley testified that Philip King, in dying, had asserted he saw George Heneage take aim and fire at him, and there was nobody to contradict the assertion. I knew Philip King had not said so much; but no one else knew it, save Mrs. Edwin Barley, and she only from me. They did not require her to appear at the inquest; it was assumed that she knew nothing whatever about the transaction.

      Charlotte Delves was called, at the request of the jury, because Philip King had sat with her in her parlour for half an hour the morning of his death; but she proved that he had not touched upon anything unpleasant, or spoken then СКАЧАТЬ