CHAPTER IX.

IN THE DUSK OF EVENING.

Never had the good people of Nullington had more food for gossip, wonder, and surmise--never had they been so startled out of the ordinary quietude of their lives, as during the Christmastide to which events have now brought us. The marriage, under somewhat romantic circumstances, of Philip Cleeve, and the coming home of himself and his bride, would, in ordinary times, have served as the chief topic of conversation for a month to come. But this comparatively tame episode was completely overshadowed by the startling revelations in connection with Captain Lennox.

Both Captain Lennox and his sister had vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed them up. They had been traced to London, but there the trail was lost, and it had not hitherto been found again. Lennox had never come back to complete the arrangements respecting the letting of the cottage to Mr. Norris. Something must have aroused his suspicions, and some one, probably one of his own servants, must have sent him timely information respecting the execution of the search-warrant. In any case, he was nowhere to be found after that day. Mr. Meath was at fault; the general police were at fault; and meanwhile the cottage remained in charge of the police local constabulary.

Christmas at Heron Dyke could not well have been spent more quietly. Conroy was away for a few days about this time. Mrs. Carlyon and Ella went into the town occasionally to see Maria and Philip, and that was about their only dissipation.

"It must have been Captain Lennox who took the jewel-case out of my dressing-room that night at Bayswater," remarked Mrs. Carlyon one day. "And to think I could not get rid of an uneasy suspicion that it might have been poor Philip Cleeve who had taken it!"

Ella looked up in surprise.

"Philip Cleeve!" she exclaimed.

"Well, yes; I am ashamed to say so, Ella."

"But what could possibly have led you to such a suspicion as that, Aunt Gertrude?"

"Captain Lennox led me. Otherwise I should no more have thought of Philip in the matter than I should have thought of you."

Ella felt bewildered.

"Surely Captain Lennox did not dare to accuse Philip!"

"Oh dear, no. One day, a few weeks after the loss, when Captain Lennox was in town and calling upon me, he inquired whether the jewels had been found. In talking of the affair, he dropped a word--it was little more than one--which somehow turned my thoughts to Philip. The Captain caught it up again--as if he had let it drop inadvertently, and I did not pursue it. Since then, when I have heard at times how fast Philip was supposed to be spending money at cards, billiards, and such like, that inadvertent word has returned to my mind doubtfully and most disagreeably."

"Do you suppose Captain Lennox wished you to think he accused Philip?"

"No," replied Mrs. Carlyon. "I think he wanted to instil a slight doubt of his possible guilt into my mind, so as to more completely throw any possible suspicion off himself. That is how I fancy it must have been."

"Aunt Gertrude," said Ella, musingly, "I wonder whether it was Captain Lennox who stole Freddy Bootle's watch and chain that same night--and then made out that his own purse was likewise stolen?"

"Little need to wonder! nothing was ever much more sure than that," said Mrs. Carlyon. "The man must have lived by these peculations. And to think what a gentleman he was through it all!"

Conroy came back. And whatever minor elements of disquietude might make themselves felt now and again, there was a certain sweet fulness of content about Ella's life just now, that nothing could seriously affect. She had won the sweetest guerdon a woman can win, and all things else, whether pleasing or displeasing, seemed dwarfed in comparison with that one supreme fact. The more she saw of Conroy, the more she seemed to find in him to love and appreciate. Day by day the choice she had made approved itself more fully to her heart. Even Mrs. Carlyon, now that she was domesticated daily with Conroy, no longer wondered at what she called Ella's infatuation.

It had been arranged that the marriage should take place early in spring. Ella wished to delay the event until the doubt as to the date of her uncle's death, and her own rightful inheritance of the property, should be cleared up; but Mr. Conroy urged that that was no good cause for delay.

"Suppose," she said to him one day, "that after we are married it should be discovered that I am not the true heiress, and Heron Dyke goes from me?"

"What then?" he answered. "We should still have enough for comfort. You possess some income that is indisputably your own; and I dare say I could match it, in one way or another."

"By your newspaper work?"

"By that or other things. I have given up the newspapers for the present: am not sure that I shall take to them again. Be at rest, my dear, and trust to me. We shall be able to keep up a modest home, and a cow, and a pony-carriage. What more can we want?"

"You are laughing at me, Edward."

"No, indeed. I only wish you not to be troubled about this property. It may be yours, or it may not be."

"I fancy you think it is not mine?"

"I fancy that if everybody possessed their legal rights, it would turn out to be at this moment Mr. Denison's. But we have yet no proof of that, and it may be that I am mistaken."

"The shortest way would be to give it up to him at once."

"My dear, Mr. Denison would not take it; he is one of the last men in the world to do so."

"Do you know Mr. Denison?"

"I have seen him. I know that he is a straightforward, honourable man."

Ella sighed.. She wished the doubt could be solved.

Mr. Conroy wished the same, though perhaps in a less ardent way. It did not _trouble_ him as it did her; he was more patient, more reconciled to let time work out its own ends. He held a secret conviction that Aaron was at the bottom of the plot, if there had been a plot; but Conroy kept that impression to himself.

Harsh, crabbed and unsympathetic as was Aaron Stone, both by nature and training, the shock of his grandson's sudden death, following so soon after that of the Squire, had not failed to leave its traces behind. In a few short months Aaron seemed to have grown a dozen years older. His hair was thinner and whiter, he had become more feeble in his gait, and he claimed the assistance of a stick in walking more frequently than before. He maundered in an undertone to himself as he walked about the Hall with his keys--his chief duty now was to shut up the old house at night and to open it in the morning; he did little else; and he would often speak out aloud as in answer to some question when nobody had asked him one. He would have liked to follow his mistress about much as a faithful old mastiff might have done, gazing from the doors when she was in the grounds, moving restlessly about her chair at dinner. To Conroy he had taken umbrage, and would mutter to himself that a strange man had no business at Heron Dyke; the best of 'em were but spies.

"What do he do up in that north wing so much?" soliloquised the old man in the homely speech he was pleased to indulge in when off duty. "I see him, evening after evening, a-creeping softly up and a-creeping down again. What do he do it for? What's he looking after? Do the young mistress know of it, I wonder? Who can answer for't that he warn't in that theft o' the jewels? Yah! Spies!"

Of all the inmates of the Hall, the one least tolerant of his crotchets and his failings was Mrs. Carlyon. On occasion she spoke of them to Ella.

"It is partly your fault, child; you give in to him so."

"I don't think I do, aunt. In what way do I?"

"In many ways. Look at that senseless fancy he has taken up of having no men-servants in the house but himself! And you fall in with it."

"We have enough maids for the work, Aunt Gertrude."

"I am aware of that--I suppose we have not much less than half-a-score here, including your maid and mine. That is not the question. In your position, mistress of this grand old place, it behoves you to keep men-servants as other people do. But because Aaron sets his face against it, you----"

"It is not that, aunt," interrupted Ella. "What I thought right to do I should do, in spite of Aaron; believe that. It is the uncertainty in which things are, that causes me to live quietly. Once I hear--if I ever do--that I am the rightful owner of Heron Dyke, you will find me make all changes that are suitable."

Mrs. Carlyon said no more then. She heartily wished her sojourn at Heron Dyke was at an end, that she might return to her own more comfortable home. For, in her opinion, the atmosphere of the Hall was not comfortable. Of that dark north wing she had a wholesome dread, as well as of the lost girl's spirit which was supposed to haunt it. To her niece she did not speak of this: but she and Mrs. Toynbee--who was very poorly at this time and kept much to her own chamber--talked confidentially together, and agreed that matters altogether were more doubtful than they ought to be.

"This is a queer thing, Miss Ella, that folks down at Nullington are whispering to one another," exclaimed Aaron, overtaking his mistress one afternoon in the new conservatory.

"What is it that they are whispering?" she turned to ask.

"About that Captain Lennox. If 'twas him that robbed the Hall, then he must have been the villain who destroyed my poor boy. Ah, ma'am, but it's a terrible world!"

"I fear some of us find it so, Aaron."

"To think of it! Captain Lennox! But I never liked him, ma'am. I never liked that sharp, foxy face of his."

Ella mentally wondered whom the old man had liked.

"I mistrusted him, Miss Ella, from the first time I saw him. When a man talks to you so soft and silky-like, as the Captain did, and at the same time fixes you with such a pair of cruel, hungry-looking eyes, it is best to have nothing to do with him. I set such a man down as dangerous."

Miss Winter had herself always felt a secret distrust of Lennox, without knowing the reason why. Perhaps, as Aaron had said, it was the contrast between his smooth, dulcet tones, and the expression in his cold, hard-set glances: any way, she had never taken cordially to Captain Lennox.

"Your wife seems but poorly to-day, Aaron," resumed Miss Winter, purposely quitting the other subject.

"She's a bigger ninny than ever," retorted Aaron, in an explosive tone. "I beg pardon ma'am; but the old woman be enough to wear one's patience out."

Dorothy Stone seemed to live in a chronic state of fear. What was it that she was afraid of, her husband would angrily ask her--and the most he could make of her trembling answers was, that she was afraid of the "ghosts." Heron Dyke had become a fearsome place, she would say: any night she might meet Katherine Keen in the passages; or, maybe, the dead Squire. Aaron, quite beside himself with wrath at all this, threatened to shake her: but the threat made no visible impression. Miss Winter would reason with her now and again; but the old woman's life had become a trouble to herself.

What little pleasure (a sadly negative one) she ever found in it, was when she recalled all her grandson's perfections, and her past love for him. To this she found sympathising listeners in the maids.

"Where was there another like him?" she would say, from the easy-chair before the fire in her own sitting-room, a huge black bow on her muslin cap. "So bold, and handsome, and high-spirited--he was fit to match with any gentleman in the land."

"And so he was, ma'am," would make answer to her Phemie or Eliza.

"When was that vision of the hearse and headless horses ever known to show its warning for the likes of you and me?" she would continue; "but it appeared for _him!_"

For it was generally believed that not often was that dire portent visible to mortal eye except when the scion of some great family was about to be summoned hence; thus, as Dorothy looked upon it, the vision must be regarded as a species of honour. It was for Macbeth alone that the witches worked their spells and brewed their potions; their business lay not with the rabble rout that called him captain.

But there came an hour when, pondering upon these matters, it occurred to Edward Conroy, a shrewd reasoner, that more might be in this nervous terror of Dorothy's than she allowed to meet the eye. _What_ was it that she was afraid of? He asked himself the question. Sitting by the blazing fire in her own parlour, or in the kitchen bright with sunlight, people around her within beck and call, it could not be that she feared to see a ghost there--that poor Katherine Keen in the spirit would walk in to confront her. Yet, that Dorothy would, and did, sit there often in the day-time in unmistakable terror could not be disputed.

"How much does Dorothy know about the circumstances of your uncle's death?" Mr. Conroy took an opportunity of inquiring of Ella.

"Indeed, I cannot tell," replied Ella. "I have not liked to question her. I dare say she knows no more than we know."

"Um--that's as it may be. She was _here_ during all the time."

"Oh yes, she was here."

"Rather a queer notion that of hers, which I hear she has taken up," continued Conroy after a long pause; "that she may meet the Squire's ghost if she goes near his old rooms at night."

"Dorothy was always so silly in that way. You have some motive, Edward, in saying this."

"Yes, I have been watching Dorothy--waylaying her when she steals out to that little patch of herbs which she calls her own garden, and turning in at other times to her sitting-room, ostensibly to hold with her a bit of chat--and she gives me the impression of a woman who has something on her mind; something that will not allow her to rest.

"She has her superstitious fancies."

"I don't mean her fancies. It is a more tangible fear--unless I am mistaken."

"A few days ago I found her crying and trembling," said Miss Winter. "She told me she had dozed off in her chair over her work, and had had a dream which frightened her.

"Did she tell you what the dream was about?"

"No. Except that she thought she saw my uncle in it."

"Ah! It strikes me he is on her mind too much. I wish, Ella, you would put a few questions to her about the Squire, and let me be present."

"Not questions to alarm her, I suppose?"

"My dear, if she knows of nothing wrong in connection with that time, how could they alarm her?"

"True. I will ask her to-morrow morning. She shall come in to take my orders instead of my going to her."

The next morning, Dorothy, full of her cares for dinner, for she was still the housekeeper, and bustling enough in the early part of the day, was summoned to Miss Winter's presence. Mr. Conroy had come to the Hall betimes that day, and sat at the back of the room reading a newspaper.

Ella quietly gave her orders; and Dorothy received them intelligently as usual. In her own department as housekeeper, the woman was capable yet.

"Is that all, Miss Ella?" she asked.

"All for the present. I think of having a few friends to dinner soon; Mr. Philip Cleeve and his wife, and the Vicar; and Lady Cleeve, if she is able to come. Just half-a-dozen or so, besides ourselves--but I will talk to you of that to-morrow."

"Yes, ma'am," assented Dorothy, about to move away.

"Wait a moment," said her mistress. "I wish to ask you a question or two, Dorothy, about that Mrs. Dexter: the woman who nursed my uncle, as I hear, during his last illness. I wish to see Mrs. Dexter. Can you tell me where to find her?"

Dorothy's hands began to tremble as though she had been suddenly smitten with ague. She threw a look at her mistress so frightened and imploring, that the latter almost regretted she had spoken, and then she glanced beyond her at Mr. Conroy: but he seemed to see nothing but his newspaper.

"Do you know where I could find Mrs. Dexter?" repeated Miss Winter.

"I don't know anything about Mrs. Dexter, ma'am," Dorothy whispered forth in a twittering voice. "Nor do I ever wish to know."

"You did not like her, then, Dorothy?"

"I did not like her, ma'am."

Miss Winter rose. "Sit down, Dorothy," she said kindly; "you need not be put out. There, sit in that chair. And now tell me why you did not like Mrs. Dexter."

The trembling woman wiped her lips. "I can't tell why, ma'am. I didn't, and that's all I know. When she first come here with Dr. Jago, I was finely put out; hurt, if one may put it so. My nursing had been good enough for my master up to then, and I thought it might have been good enough still. I told the Doctor my mind."

"Dorothy," continued Miss Winter, after a pause of thought, "I have never questioned you about my uncle's death. The subject was a painful one, and I was more deeply grieved than I can express that I was not allowed to be here at the time. Did you see him up to the day of his death?"

"No," gasped Dorothy.

"When did you see him last? How long before he died?"

Again that same imploring look: but no answer.

"You must tell me, Dorothy."

"Not for weeks and weeks, ma'am," spoke the woman then, but with evident reluctance.

"That was strange, was it not? considering that you were always so great a favourite with Uncle Gilbert."

Dorothy lifted the corner of her clean white linen apron, and wiped her face with trembling fingers. She seemed to gather a little courage. "When he had that Mrs. Dexter, ma'am, he didn't want me, I take it. She was the nurse, and she didn't let anybody go near the master."

"She kept him shut up behind the green baize doors, and would not let him be seen by anyone: that is what you mean?"

"That was just it, ma'am," assented Dorothy, more eagerly.

"But they let you see him after he was dead--you who had been his faithful servant for so many years? Surely they let you look for the last time on that dear face so soon to be hidden for ever?"

"Not even then did they let me see him," she cried. "No, ma'am, not even then. It was cruel--cruel."

"Cruel indeed. I did not think Aaron could have been so unkind to you. He had one of the keys of the green doors, and could have let you through at any time."

Dorothy sighed, and let fall her apron. All this was beginning to frighten her. Miss Winter advanced and stood in front of her.

"There was nothing going on behind those green baize doors, was there, Dorothy?" she asked in expressive tones, her eyes gazing straight into the woman's; "nothing that they wanted to keep from you and from everyone?"

Dorothy flung up her arms with a sudden gesture of dismay.

"Oh, mistress, ask me no more for heaven's sake!" she cried. "I know nothing; I have nothing to tell."

"_Nothing?_" repeated Miss Winter.

"No, ma'am, nothing."

And the poor shaking woman looked so distressed as she crept to the door, that Miss Winter let her escape.

"Ella," cried her lover quietly, rising from behind his newspaper, "it is from that woman we must get the clue. She knows more than she dares to tell. I am right; it is this trouble that is preying upon her mind."

"Certainly her manner is suggestive," assented Ella. "But look at her distress: how shall we get anything more from her?"

"That is just the point we have to consider," said Conroy.

"Of one thing I am persuaded--that she would never tell me what is not true."

"Under ordinary circumstances, no; I believe that. But she may be forced into it by Aaron and the rest of the conspirators."

"Oh, Edward! Conspirators! Poor old Aaron!"

"Well, my dear, time will show. If that old man has not a weighty secret on his back, tell me that my name is not Conroy."

For a few days, after this, things went on at the Hall in their usual state of quiet monotony: perhaps we might say _dis_-quiet, could the minds of some of its inmates have been read. Old Dorothy went about her duties in a dazed manner: but nothing more was said to her.

Gradually, finding herself let alone, the scare, which seemed to have taken up its abode permanently on her face, began to leave it.

"The young mistress must see that I can tell nothing," she told herself, "and she won't frighten me again by asking me to. Why should innocent folks suffer for the guilty? If that Dexter woman and that horrid Jago had but never come anigh this miserable house!"

Late one afternoon, when the sun had set and the dusk of the January evening was drawing on, there was heard a soft knock at the outer door, which opened from the kitchen corridor into the shrubbery at the back of the Hall.

Dorothy was in her own room, adjoining the kitchen, the door between them standing partly open. She had put down the grey stocking of her husband, which she had been mending, and sat in the firelight, doing nothing, save idly watching Phemie, who was preparing her tea in the kitchen, and wondering whether Aaron would be very late. For Aaron and the coachman had driven off to Nullington in the dog-cart, to despatch some matter of business for Miss Winter.

"Wasn't that a knock at the shrubbery-door, Phemie?" asked Dorothy, raising her voice.

"Well, I thought I heard something," replied Phemie, the only servant at the moment in the kitchen. "I'll see directly, ma'am. It's only Jem."

Before Phemie could finish buttering the muffin she had been toasting, the gentle knock was heard at the door a second time. Phemie ran along the short passage and opened it. Expecting to see only the gardener's boy, she started back in some alarm at sight of the strange figure confronting her. Standing between the two lights, one ruddy and homelike that streamed out of the kitchen doorway, the other pallid and ghastly that was dying slowly in the western sky, Phemie saw a tall and fierce-looking woman, tawny-skinned, and with bright black eyes. A scarlet kerchief was bound round the tangle of her black hair; a faded scarlet shawl was draped round her figure and knotted behind. Thick hoops of gold were in her ears; rings glittered on her yellow fingers. A gipsy fortune-teller without any doubt, as Phemie, after the first moment of surprise, at once felt assured. She had seen women attired somewhat like her in the country lanes round about. In her astonishment she did not speak. But the stranger did.

"Don't be afeard, honey. I am only an honest gipsy woman who has lost her way. I want to get to Nullington: being uncertain o' the road, I thought I'd make bold to turn aside here and ask it."

"The road's as straight as you can go," answered Phemie.

"Ah, but it's you that have a pair of wicked bright brown eyes, my lass," whispered the gipsy; "it's you that will make some fine young man's heart ache. Cross the poor gipsy's hand with a bit o' silver, and she'll tell you your fortune true and fair."

Phemie would have liked her fortune told very well indeed: but she glanced back in the direction of Mrs. Stone's parlour beyond the kitchen.

"I daren't do it," she whispered, and tried to shut the door.

By this time two or three of the other girls had come up, and were gathering round. There ensued some laughing and giggling.

"I want to tell your fortunes," said the gipsy, touching one and another in a persuasive, friendly manner. "I heard there was some pretty young women at this place, and I came to it o' purpose. Take me into your bright kitchen there."

"The old missis, she do be in the way," whispered the buxom kitchen-maid, who was from Sussex.

"Sure and the missus wouldn't want to deprive you of hearing o' the future--and the sort o' looks o' the man that's waiting for ye, my lass," returned the gipsy, walking boldly of her own accord into the kitchen. The giggling servants followed her, and one of them dexterously drew to the door of Mrs. Stone's parlour. Phemie hurried in with the tea-tray, which she arranged on the round table; and in going out shut the door.

Bright sixpences were brought forth, hands were crossed with the silver, and the credulous girls listened to "their fortunes." Presently Dorothy Stone, sipping her tea and eating her muffin in quietness, became aware of some unusual sounds, as of murmurings, in the kitchen, interspersed with smothered bursts of laughter.

"What can it be?" thought Dorothy. "They be always up to some nonsense when Aaron's away."

Opening the door, she looked out upon the scene; the wild, formidable gipsy woman seated in her scarlet trappings; and half-a-dozen of the girls standing round her. Dorothy, very much startled at the moment, shrieked out, and the girls looked round.

"What be you all at there?" she called out in a tremor. "Who is that? Sally, this kitchen is not your place; what do you do in it?"

The Sussex girl, who may have been addressed because she was the tallest and biggest, turned her laughing face to her mistress and went into the parlour. Dorothy, not feeling herself very competent to cope with this, was sitting down again.

"Oh, missus, do ye not be angry now," said the girl in her good-humoured way. "We be only having our fortins told; she'll be gone directly. She do be and say as my man'll be a soldier, and I'll have to ride on the baggige-waggin."

Dorothy took heart and courage--what would Miss Winter say if she knew that she had allowed this? "I order you to be gone," she said, her quavering voice marring the implied authority in no small degree. "Go out of the house at once; how dared you to come into it?"

"Who is that?" cried the gipsy.

"Hush! It be Mrs. Stone, the housekeeper," whispered Phemie. "You had better go."

The gipsy woman rose, showing her large white teeth, and strode to the door of the inner room. "Let the poor gipsy tell your fortune, good mistress," she said, with smiling lips and a curtsey.

For once Dorothy was roused to anger. "Go away, you bold woman!" she cried shrilly. "Don't attempt to tell your lies to me. You have told enough to those silly girls."

The gipsy's face darkened; she strode a pace or two into the room. "I have been telling lies, have I? Well, then, let me tell the truth to you:" and, bending her tall form, she whispered a few words rapidly in the old woman's ear.

Dorothy's face turned ashy white as she heard them. She sank back in her chair with a low cry.

"Is that the truth, or is it not?" asked the gipsy.

But Dorothy could not answer. She could only stare tremblingly and helplessly at the fortune-teller.

The gipsy turned to the wondering maids. "Shut that door and leave us together," she said in an imperious tone. "This good mistress here and I have something to say to each other."

The door was closed immediately, and the two women were left alone. The servants waited long enough to grow uncomfortable. What could that strange gipsy woman be doing with the old missis?

"We had better go in and see that all's right," at length spoke Phemie, who had perhaps a shade more thought than the rest, "She may have frighted her into a fit."

At that moment the parlour door was opened, and the gipsy came out. Shutting the door behind her, she strode through the kitchen without a word to the frightened group standing there, let herself out of the house, and departed by the shrubbery, as she had come.

The servants gazed into each other's faces in silence. Then, as with one accord, they opened the parlour door, and peeped in.

Dorothy Stone had her head bent on the table beside the tea-tray, and was sobbing tears, dreadful to hear, of fright, distress, and pain.