Johnny Ludlow, First Series. Mrs. Henry Wood

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ returned Tod.

      “There was one at the door a while agone—an insolent one, too. Perhaps Miss Lena——”

      “Which way did she go?—which door was she at?” burst forth Tod.

      “ ’Twas a man, sir. He came up to the kitchen-door, and steps inside as bold as brass, asking me to buy some wooden skewers he’d cut, and saying something about a sick child. When I told him to march, that we never encouraged tramps here, he wanted to answer me, and I just shut the door in his face. A regular gipsy, if ever I see one,” continued Molly; “his skin tawny and his wild hair jet-black. Maybe, in revenge, he have stole off the little miss.”

      Tod took up the notion, and his face turned white. “Don’t say anything of this to Mrs. Todhetley,” he said to Molly. “We must just scour the country.”

      But in departing from the kitchen-door, the gipsy man could not by any possibility have made his way to the rick-field without going through the fold-yard. And he had not done that. It was true that Lena might have run round and got into the gipsy’s way. Unfortunately, none of the men were about, except Mack and old Thomas. Tod sent these off in different directions; Mrs. Todhetley drove away in her pony-chaise to the lanes round, saying the child might have strayed there; Molly and the maids started elsewhere; and I and Tod went flying along a by-road that branched off in a straight line, as it were, from the kitchen-door. Nobody could keep up with Tod, he went so fast; and I was not tall and strong as he was. But I saw what Tod in his haste did not see—a dark man with some bundles of skewers and a stout stick, walking on the other side of the hedge. I whistled Tod back again.

      “What is it, Johnny?” he said, panting. “Have you seen her?”

      “Not her. But look there. That must be the man Molly spoke of.”

      Tod crashed through the hedge as if it had been so many cobwebs, and accosted the gipsy. I followed more carefully, but got my face scratched.

      “Were you up at the great house, begging, a short time ago?” demanded Tod, in an awful passion.

      The man turned round on Tod with a brazen face. I say brazen, because he did it so independently; but it was not an insolent face in itself; rather a sad one, and very sickly.

      “What’s that you ask me, master?”

      “I ask whether it was you who were at the Manor-house just now, begging?” fiercely repeated Tod.

      “I was at a big house offering wares for sale, if you mean that, sir. I wasn’t begging.”

      “Call it what you please,” said Tod, growing white again. “What have you done with the little girl?”

      For, you see, Tod had caught up the impression that the gipsy had stolen Lena, and he spoke in accordance with it.

      “I’ve seen no little girl, master.”

      “You have,” and Tod gave his foot a stamp. “What have you done with her?”

      The man’s only answer was to turn round and walk off, muttering to himself. Tod pursued him, calling him a thief and other names; but nothing more satisfactory could he get out of him.

      “He can’t have taken her, Tod. If he had, she’d be with him now. He couldn’t eat her, you know.”

      “He may have given her to a confederate.”

      “What to do? What do gipsies steal children for?”

      Tod stopped in a passion, lifting his hand. “If you torment me with these frivolous questions, Johnny, I’ll strike you. How do I know what’s done with stolen children? Sold, perhaps. I’d give a hundred pounds out of my pocket at this minute if I knew where those gipsies were encamped.”

      We suddenly lost the fellow. Tod had been keeping him in sight in the distance. Whether he disappeared up a gum-tree, or into a rabbit-hole, Tod couldn’t tell; but gone he was.

      Up this lane, down that one; over this moor, across that common; so raced Tod and I. And the afternoon wore away, and we had changed our direction a dozen times: which possibly was not wise.

      The sun was getting low as we passed Ragley gates, for we had finally got into the Alcester road. Tod was going to do what we ought to have done at first: report the loss at Alcester. Some one came riding along on a stumpy pony. It proved to be Gruff Blossom, groom to the Jacobsons. They called him “Gruff” because of his temper. He did touch his hat to us, which was as much as you could say, and spurred the stumpy animal on. But Tod made a sign to him, and he was obliged to stop and listen.

      “The gipsies stole off little Miss Lena!” cried old Blossom, coming out of his gruffness. “That’s a rum go! Ten to one if you find her for a year to come.”

      “But, Blossom, what do they do with the children they steal?” I asked, in a sort of agony.

      “They cuts their hair off and dyes their skins brown, and then takes ’em out to fairs a ballad-singing,” answered Blossom.

      “But why need they do it, when they have children of their own?”

      “Ah, well, that’s a question I couldn’t answer,” said old Blossom. “Maybe their’n arn’t pretty children—Miss Lena, she is pretty.”

      “Have you heard of any gipsies being encamped about here?” Tod demanded of him.

      “Not lately, Mr. Joseph. Five or six months ago, there was a lot ’camped on the Markis’s ground. They warn’t there long.”

      “Can’t you ride about, Blossom, and see after the child?” asked Tod, putting something into his hand.

      Old Blossom pocketed it, and went off with a nod. He was riding about, as we knew afterwards, for hours. Tod made straight for the police-station at Alcester, and told his tale. Not a soul was there but Jenkins, one of the men.

      “I haven’t seen no suspicious characters about,” said Jenkins, who seemed to be eating something. He was a big man, with short black hair combed on his forehead, and he had a habit of turning his face upwards, as if looking after his nose—a square ornament, that stood up straight.

      “She is between four and five years old; a very pretty child, with blue eyes and a good deal of curling auburn hair,” said Tod, who was growing feverish.

      Jenkins wrote it down—“Name, Todhetley. What Christian name?”

      “Adalena, called ‘Lena.’ ”

      “Recollect the dress, sir?”

      “Pale blue silk; straw hat with wreath of daisies round it; open-worked white stockings, and thin black shoes; white drawers,” recounted Tod, as if he had prepared the list by heart coming along.

      “That’s bad, that dress is,” said Jenkins, putting down the pen.

      “Why is it bad?”

      “ ‘Cause the things is tempting. Quite half the children that gets stole is stole for СКАЧАТЬ