Johnny Ludlow, Second Series. Mrs. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ our black evening trousers got rolled up higher. The moonlight lay cold and white on the Ravine: the clustering trees, thick in summer, were leafless now. Had any fellow been gazing down from the top, we must have looked, to him, like three black-coated undertakers, gliding along to a funeral.

      “I’ll tell you what,” cried Tod: “if Ashton did lose his footing, he wouldn’t come to such mortal grief. The depth of snow would save him.”

      “I don’t believe he did fall,” said Tom Coney, stoutly. “Bob Ashton’s as sure-footed as a hare. But for Jane’s being so miserable, I’d have said, flatly, I wouldn’t come out on any such wild-goose errand.”

      On we went, wading through the snow. Some of us looked round for the ghost’s light, and did not see it. But rumour said that it never came on a bright moonlit night. Here we were at last!—at the foot of the other zigzag. But Robert Ashton wasn’t here. And, the best proof that he had not fallen, was the unbroken surface of the snow. Not so much as a rabbit had scudded across to disturb it.

      “I knew it,” said Tom Coney. “He has not come to grief at all. It stands to reason that a fellow must have heaps to do the day before his wedding, if it’s only in burning his old letters from other sweethearts. Bob had a heap of them, no doubt; and couldn’t get away in time for dinner.”

      “We had better go on to the Court, and see,” I said.

      “Oh, that be hanged!” cried the other two in a breath.

      “Well, I shall. It’s not much farther. You can go back, or not, as you like.”

      This zigzag, though steeper than the one on our side, was not so slippery. Perhaps the sun had shone on it in the day and melted the snow. I went up it nearly as easily as in good weather. Tod and Coney, thinking better of the turning back, came after me.

      We should have been at Timberdale Court in five minutes, taking the short-cut over hedges and ditches, but for an adventure by the way, which I have not just here space to tell about. It had nothing to do with Robert Ashton. Getting to the Court, we hammered at it till the door was opened. The servant started back in surprise.

      “Goodness me!” said she, “I thought it was master.”

      “Where is the master?” asked Tom.

      “Not come home, sir. He has not been in since he left this morning.”

      It was all out. Instead of pitchpolling into Crabb Ravine and breaking his limbs, Bob Ashton had not got back from Worcester. It was very strange, though, what could be keeping him, and the Court was nearly in a commotion over it.

      When we got back to the Farm, they were laying the table for the wedding-breakfast. Plenty of kickshaws now, and some lovely flowers. The ladies, helping, had their gowns turned up. This helping had not been in the evening’s programme; but things seemed to have been turned upside down, and they were glad to seize upon it. Jane and her sister, Mrs. West, sat alone by the drawing-room fire, never saying a word to one another.

      “Johnny, I don’t half like this,” whispered Mrs. Todhetley to me.

      “Like what, good mother?”

      “This absence of Robert Ashton.”

      I don’t know that I liked it either.

      Morning came. In an uncertainty such as this, people go to each other’s houses indiscriminately. The first train came in from Worcester before it was well light; but it did not bring Robert Ashton. As to the snow on the ground, it was pretty well beaten now.

      “He wouldn’t travel by that slow parliamentary thing: he’ll come by the express to South Crabb Junction,” said Tom Coney, thinking he would cheer away the general disappointment. Jane we had not seen.

      The express would be at the Junction between nine and ten. A whole lot of us went down there. It was not farther off than Timberdale Station, but the opposite way. I don’t think one of us was more eager than another, unless it was the Squire. The thing was getting serious, he told us; and he went puffing about like a man looking for his head.

      To witness the way he seized upon the doors when the express steamed in, and put his old red nose inside all the carriages, looking for Robert Ashton, was a rare sight. The guard laid hold of his arm, saying he’d come to damage. But Robert Ashton was not in the train.

      “He may come yet,” said old Coney, looking fit to cry. “There’ll be a train in again at Timberdale. Or, he may drive over.”

      But every one felt that he would not come. Something told us so. It was only making believe to one another, saying he would.

      “I shall go to Worcester by the next down train,” said the Squire to old Coney.

      “The next does not stop here.”

      “They’d better stop it for me,” said the Squire, defiantly. “You can’t come, Coney. You must remain to give Jane away.”

      “But if there’s no bridegroom to give her to?” debated old Coney.

      “There may be. You must remain on the strength of it.”

      The down train came up, and obeyed the signal to stop made by the station-master. The Squire, Tod, and Tom Coney got in, and it steamed on again.

      “Now mind, I shall conduct this search,” the Squire said to the others with a frown. “You young fellows don’t know your right hand from your left in a business of this sort. We must go about it systematically, and find out the different places that Robert Ashton went to yesterday, and the people he saw.” Tod and Tom Coney told us this later.

      When they arrived at Worcester, the first man they saw at Shrubb Hill Station was Harry Coles, who had been seeing somebody off by the train, which was rather curious; for his brother, Fred Coles, was Robert Ashton’s great chum, and was to be groom’s-man at the wedding. Harry Coles said his brother had met Ashton by appointment the previous day, and went with him to the Registrar’s office for the marriage licence—which was supplied to them by Mr. Clifton himself. After that, they went to the jeweller’s, and chose the wedding-ring.

      “Well, what after that?” cried the impatient Squire.

      Harry Coles did not know what. His brother had come back to their office early in the afternoon—about one o’clock—saying Ashton was going, or had gone, home.

      “Can’t you tell which he said—going, or gone?” demanded the Squire, getting red.

      “No, I can’t,” said Harry Coles. “I was busy with some estimates, and did not pay particular attention to him.”

      “Then you ought to have paid it, sir,” retorted the Squire. “Your brother?—where is he?”

      “Gone over to Timberdale ages ago. He started the first thing this morning, Squire; a big coat thrown over his wedding toggery.”

      The Squire growled, as a relief to his feelings, not knowing what in the world to do. He suddenly said he’d go to the Registrar’s office, and started for Edgar Street.

      Mr. Clifton was not there, but a clerk was. СКАЧАТЬ