WHEN once the secret concerning the identity of the stranger at the cottage had been let out, it spread mysteriously throughout the length of the straggling village with astonishing rapidity. Ned Mitchell had come back; and, remembering the character for pigheaded obstinacy he had borne at home when he was a boy, it was safe to prophecy that there would shortly be a “shindy” somewhere. Two or three old people now declared that they had recognized him from the first, though they had been too discreet to make known the fact; and towards the close of the day following that on which he had revealed his name to Miss Denison, it became plain to him, from the whispers of young girls and the curtsies of old women, that he was the hero of the hour.
In the evening he had the honor of a call from the chief of the village busybodies, a superannuated postman, who clung to his old trade of news carrier to the community. As Ned Mitchell lived by himself, and locked up his house when he was out, the visitor had to sit on a broken horse trough which stood on the green under the trees opposite to the cottage until the colonist returned from one of his long daily rambles.
“Good-evening, squire,” said the old postman, rising with fussy respect, and hobbling quickly to the gate lest his unwilling host should shut him out before he could reach it.
Mitchell glanced towards him, and jerked at him an indifferent nod. The old man was not to be rebuffed. He had that quality of dogged and patient energy which we can most of us show in other people’s business.
“Pardon, squire,” he said, with a beggar’s humility. “Don’t be affronted with me for wishing to be one o’ t’ first to pay my respects to ye.”
“Respects!” echoed Mitchell, shortly, thrusting his hands into his pockets with an instinctive perception that these contained his most respect-worthy attribute.
“Ay, squire. I’m proud to be one o’ t’ first to welcome ye back to yer owd home.”
“Old home! What, do you call this wretched little heap of mouldy bricks and worm-eaten boards a home for me?” asked the colonist, contemptuously.
“Noa, squire; leastways it didn’t ought to be. But as them as have no right to ’t have got t’ Hall Farm instead o’ them that was born and bred there, it’s summat to welcome ye back to t’ village that’s proud to have you belonging to it.”
“Proud! Why proud?” asked Mitchell, bluntly. “If the village has got to be proud of me, I ought to be ashamed of it, I should think. And who can have a greater right to the farm than the man who’s paying the rent of it.”
The old postman was not abashed. Each snub administered to him did but increase, in his eyes, the importance of the administrator. He felt, too, that the opportunity he gave the colonist of sharpening his wit upon him was inclining that gentleman to look upon him with favor.
“Very true, squire. You that travel get a different way o’ looking at things from what us stay-at-home folk do. All t’ same, squire, I hope as I may be allowed to give you a bit of a hint that may, or it may not”—and the old man nodded with mystery and importance—“be of use to you on your business here.”
“My business here! And what’s that?” asked Mitchell, abruptly.
“Well they do say as how it were on account of summat as happened ten years ago that were never cleared up.”
“Oh?”
“And if so be as that’s true, which I don’t say—neither do I say otherwise, as it aren’t true, why then what I say is,” went on the old man, whose style grew more involved the nearer he came to the point, “that Martha Lowndes, as were her foster-sister, and them two always as thick as thieves, which that is a party as knows more’n she tells.”
Ned Mitchell, who had been taking nuts from his pocket, opening them with a penknife, and devouring them ravenously, shut up his knife and laid his hand on his garden gate without the smallest sign of interest in the information he had received.
“Is that all?” he asked, feeling his pockets to make sure that not one nut still lurked in the corners.
“Well—” began the gossip, rather disconcerted, but ready to make the best of a bad business.
“Ah, it is all, I see,” interrupted Mitchell.
And with a nod of stolid indifference, he turned and strolled up the cottage path.
But Ned Mitchell, though he had no notion of being grateful for the old man’s information, was not long in making use of it. No sooner had the April evening closed in than he, having already found out Martha Lowndes’ dwelling, knocked at the door of a small, tumble-down cottage, where he was admitted at once by a woman who looked about fifty, and whose face was careworn and deeply furrowed.
“Martha Lowndes?” said Ned.
“Yes,” answered the woman, looking at him curiously.
“I thought you were younger.”
“I’m thirty-five,” said the woman, shortly. “You’re Ned Mitchell, I suppose. I’d forgotten you; but they told me you were about; so I suppose it’s you.”
“Right you are.”
“Come in, then.”
He at once accepted the not very gracious invitation, and sat down on one of the wooden chairs, which she dusted for him.
“And so you’re come at last. You didn’t hurry yourself.”
“No, I didn’t hurry myself, but I meant to come.”
“Well, I thought it was odd if you didn’t, and her your favorite as she always was.”
“Yes, that’s true. But that was in the old days, when I was sentimental. If it had happened when I first went away, with nothing but the shirt on my back and my mother’s Bible, I should have worked my passage home by the next boat, and run amuck among these fine gentlemen till I got the right one by the throat. But when it did happen, I’d got sheep farms of my own, and a wife and family, and was making my pile. So I let justice wait till my liver wanted a change. But it’ll be justice none the less for that.”
The woman stood with her arms akimbo, regarding him solemnly. Indeed all capacity for gaiety or even cheerfulness seemed to be dead in her.
“Well,” she said, presently, “and what do you want with me?”
“You can tell me something, or else I’ve been made a fool of.”
“Yes, that’s right enough. I can tell you something. It’s been on my mind this ten year, and it’s what has made an old woman of me before my time. You remember me, ‘flirting Mattie’ they called me then, and I don’t say but what I was as good as my name. There were a pair of us, they said; and we were together a good deal. ‘Birds of a feather,’ you know. But Nell was always closer than me; if I fancied anybody, all the world might know. But she, she’d carry on with half a dozen, and you might never know which was the one she’d a liking for, or if it was in her to care for anybody. It wasn’t for a long time I myself guessed there was something up—not till she grew mopish and fidgety like, and set me wondering. For awhile she’d own to nothing, and it wasn’t till one day I took her unawares like that I found out how serious it was with her.”
“Serious?”
“Yes. As serious as it could be. I taxed her with it quite sudden one day as she was sitting there on that same chair like as it might be you. And she turned quite white and confessed, and said as how it wasn’t that as troubled her most, but that he’d got tired of her, and wanted to get shut of her, and was crazy at the thought of the exposure and disgrace. ‘Why, it’s you that’s got the worst of that to bear; not him!’ cried I. And all on a sudden she gets quite quiet, and as it might be bites her lips together, so as no words she didn’t want to use mightn’t force themselves through. ‘Why don’t you speak to your brother?’ said I; ‘he’d get the fellow to do the right thing by you.’ But she only shook her head, and got up, and began to walk about, and just said in a low voice that I didn’t understand. And I began to guess it was a gentleman.”
“You taxed her with that?”
“Yes. She took it all in the same sullen way, and would name no names. But she said he loved another woman, and she’d have forgiven him anything but that.”
“But you should have got her to say who he was, woman!”
“Do you think, if wild horses could have dragged it from her, I shouldn’t have known? I tell you I never knew before what was in the girl; how obstinate she could be, nor what strong feelings she had. It was something quite different to what I’d ever felt, and I wasn’t the same with her as I’d been before. When she passed through this door that evening, it seemed as if a fierce, revengeful woman had gone out where just a giddy girl like myself had come in.”
Ned Mitchell was not moved by this recital to any show of deep emotion, but the woman could see that he was touched, and she went on in a voice less studiously cold—
“I didn’t see her again for some days—not for near a fortnight, I think. But when I did, it didn’t need her words to point out the change in her. I didn’t dare ask her many questions that time, but I’d got some inkling by then as to who those might be that was bringing her to this pass. I thought I’d try to get at the truth in a roundabout way if I could; so I began, ‘I didn’t see you at church on Sunday evening, Nell.’ Her face grew sullen at once. You see, sir, I’d heard of a certain clergyman that was often at the Hall Farm of an evening.”
“You mean Vernon Brander, I suppose?”
“Yes. And how Nell had been seen late o’ nights down by St. Cuthbert’s.”
“Well, now, I think his coming openly to the farm is more in his favor than not.”
“Unless it was a blind.”
“Well?”
“Well, I dursn’t say more then, but presently, as she sat at tea with me, I caught her eating some green gages that was on the table in an oddly ravenous way, stones and all. ‘What ever are you doing, Nell?’ says I. ‘You’ll be ill for sure if you swallow those stones like that.’ And she looks at me with an odd smile. ‘I’m practising,’ says she. ‘I may have to swallow worse than that some day.’ I stared at her, thinking perhaps her trouble had touched her head, poor thing! And then I got quite cold, fancying perhaps she had it in her mind to make away with herself. And I says, ‘Nell, if ever you feel tempted to do a mischief to yourself, think of them that cares for you truly—of poor Ned, away across the seas!’—yes, I said that, Ned—‘and of me, that’s always cared for you like as if you’d been one of my own!’ Then up she started from her chair, and began to roam about the room again, restless like, just as she’d done the last time. ‘Don’t be afraid, lass,’ says she to me, in a voice she meant to be rough. ‘I’m not going to do anything foolish—not more foolish than I’ve done already, that is. While there’s life there’s hope, they say, though perhaps there’s not much of either left for me!’ ‘What do you mean, Nell?’ says I, frightened. She didn’t answer me for a minute; then suddenly she turned, with her great black eyes flashing, and said, ‘If I’m found dead, Mattie, you’ll know I didn’t put an end to myself. And I tell you I’ll let others know it too, if my body lies buried fifty years first.’ Oh, Ned, I shall never forget her face. It was white like death, and the lips all drawn back from her teeth. ’Twas as if all life and the wish to live were burning out of her. ‘Why, Nell, this man, whoever he is, he surely never threatened to kill you!’ ‘Not in words, no,’ says she, with her eyes fixed in front of her. ‘But there was murder in his eyes the last time I saw him. If he’s past caring for me, he may kill me; I don’t care. But he shan’t live happy with the love of that other woman; I swear it. I’ve been true to him. I’ve done for him what there’s hardly a girl in England would have done; I’ve held my tongue when just to speak would have ruined him. But I’ll not die, and be put out of the way, and him go unpunished!’ I was that frightened, Ned, I could scarcely speak. I told her not to have such dreadful thoughts, and I reminded her again of you, and how fond you were of her. ‘Yes,’ says she, with a queer smile that made me feel cold; ‘Ned would see me righted if any one tried to wrong me. And whether I’m alive or dead he will.’”
Ned Mitchell did not move. His face was set like a rock, and, beyond the fact that he was deeply attentive to every detail, it was impossible to guess what effect the story had upon him. He nodded to the woman to go on.
“‘Alive or dead, Nell!’ says I, when I could speak for trembling. ‘What makes you harp so on death, if you mean rightly by yourself and them that love you? As for the rascal that’s brought you to this, if you won’t make a clean breast of it to your brother Sam, you’d best keep out of the creature’s way, seeing you think so ill of him as to believe him ready to do you a mischief. It’s no good of courting harm. You’ve no need to give way. If Sam was to turn against you when it all comes out, you could go away to Ned; he’d receive you fast enough, whatever you’d done, I’ll warrant. Keep a heart in you, my girl.’ But she took no notice, and went on eating the green gages, stones and all, in just the same way, till I tried to take the dish away. Then she threw back her head with a hard laugh, and, says she, ‘Look here, Mattie, you may as well leave those things here. I’m not cracked; I’ve a reason for what I’m doing. I shall go and meet him again; I tell you I’m that mad about him I can’t keep away when he tells me to come. But if he tries any tricks with me, I’ve made up my mind that I’ll find a chance to swallow something of his, if it’s but a shirt stud or a button, so as my body, when it’s found, shall bear witness against him just as well as my tongue could if I was alive. Now you remember that, Mattie, if things come to the worst.’
“And with that she was off and out of the house. But I ran after her, and caught up with her, and, ‘Nell,’ says I, ‘when are you going to see this man?’ For I had it in my mind to stop her. And she gave me a queer look out of the corners of her eyes. ‘I’m going to meet him to-morrow night,’ says she. And she snatched away her arm and ran off. That was the last I saw of her, alive or dead.”
There was a short pause.
“Then you might have saved her,” said Ned Mitchell, at last, in a rasping voice.
“Don’t say that, Ned,” pleaded the woman in low tones. “Many and many’s the time I’ve said that to myself, and reproached myself. But, remember, she said, ‘To-morrow night’—”
“Well, you might have known it was only a blind, with her heart set on the fellow like that. I should have known. However, it’s no use wasting words over it now. You thought you would see about it next day, and when next day came it was all over with the girl.”
“You’ve no right to be so hard, Ned; you that were content to let the man who murdered your sister lie peacefully in his bed these ten years!”
“That’s different. If I’d come over next day I couldn’t have brought her back to life again,” said he, in a dogged tone. But the man’s conscience was uneasy, and this made him the more harsh towards Martha. “Why didn’t you tell this yarn you’ve been pitching me to somebody that would have seen into things?”
“I did tell it to Sam. But you know Sam, how timid he was, and slow at things. And his wife never could abide Nell, and nothing would ever persuade her the girl hadn’t gone off with somebody; and, indeed, many people believe that now, and say Nell Mitchell was always a light sort, and it was just what they’d expected, for her to make a bolt of it with somebody. But I know better.”
“How about the parsons? How did they take it?”
“Well, I can tell you the rights of a little story that’s not generally known. Next morning, before anybody knew Nell had disappeared, Parson Vernon was at Matherham Railway Station in time for the first train to London. His brother Meredith, who’d been called out of his bed in the small hours to see a dying man, came up with him while he was standing on the platform. My cousin Dick—you remember Dick, the miller’s son—saw the meeting; and he says he never saw such a contrast between brothers as those two made; the one coming up all fresh and smiling, and surprised; the other pale and ghastly, with bloodshot eyes, and a wild, hunted look in his face already. ‘Why, Vernie,’ says the vicar, ‘what are you doing here at this time in the morning?’ Dick says the other looked as scared as if the hangman’s rope was about his neck. He stammered and said something about a morning paper; for Dick had edged near enough to hear. But then the railway ticket fell from his fingers on to the ground, and Mr. Meredith picked it up sharp as a needle. Dick saw by the color it was a third class ticket to London. Then the brothers looked at each other, and Mr. Vernon saw it wouldn’t do. The other took his arm and led him from the station, and I suppose Vernon made a clean breast of it, and told him how bad it would look for him to run away. And sure enough, when the inquiry was made, the best point in Vernon’s favor was that he had done nothing to escape it. Dick kept his own counsel, except to me that he could trust; and the few people that was about just then had no wish to come forward. For though Mr. Vernon was looked upon as a bit wild for a parson, he was popular too in a way, and then if not for him they’d have held their tongues for the vicar’s sake. So there was just a fuss and a scandal and an inquiry, and Mr. Vernon was had up on suspicion, because some one had heard cries of ‘Murder!’ near St. Cuthbert’s that night. And then it all died away, and everything was the same as before except Mr. Vernon and me; the shock made me what you see; and as for Mr. Vernon, he’s been a changed man, and he’s that loved now that if you was to have him up again, on something stronger than suspicion, it’s my belief the miners would lynch you.”
“I shall take my chance of that,” said Ned Mitchell, stolidly, as he rose to go. “So this precious vicar that everybody thinks so much of does all he can to shield his brother?”
“You can hardly blame him for that. You’d do the same yourself.”
“Blest if I should! Let those suffer that do wrong, say I. My sister did wrong; but she had her punishment, else I’d not have lifted a finger for her. As for these sermon vampers, it would be small harm if they both swung together, I expect. I’ve not much respect for parsons out of their proper place, the pulpit.”
But Martha looked scandalized at this speech, and seemed to regret her frankness.
“You’ll not go insulting the vicar, I hope, Ned,” she said, uneasily. “‘By their works ye shall know them,’ the Scripture says, and if so, you’ve got nothing against the vicar but a weakness for his own flesh and blood.”
“Well, what are his ‘works?’ What does he do? Does he live in a poor house, to have more to spare for folks poorer than himself? Does he deny himself a wife and children, that he may be a better father to his flock? Or, if he despises temporal things for his parishioners, if not for himself, does he trudge it on foot, all weathers, to give spiritual consolation to people too ill to come for it?”
“No-o; that’s Mr. Vernon that does all that. But Mr. Meredith is—just what a vicar ought to be.”
“A pretty figure for a pulpit? I see. Oh, I’ll let him alone. Nothing I shall say shall take a single one of the well-to-do creases out of his fat face. I’ve other fish to fry than to go hurting the feelings of your pretty vicar: never fear. Good-evening.”
He did not wait for his curt salutation to be returned; but slightly touching the hat it had not occurred to him take off, he opened the door, and walked out with his usual ponderous, deliberate step. But after going a few paces he stopped short, and returning to the cottage, thrust open the door and addressed Martha again—
“You say some one heard the cry of ‘Murder!’ on the night my sister disappeared. Who was it?”
“A lass that was coming back from Sheffield with her young man—Jane Askew. They’re married now, and she’s Mrs. Tims. They both heard it.”
“And they saw nothing, and looked for nothing?”
“They couldn’t agree as to where the sound came from; and perhaps neither of them’s over brave, and near a churchyard at night too. But going along they met somebody that knew more than them, they think; for he was limping along at a great rate with a scared look on his face, and he came straight from the churchyard.”
“Hey, and who was that?” asked Mitchell, with strong interest.
“A tramp called Abel Squires.”
“Perhaps he was mixed up in it?”
“Oh, no, I hardly think that. She was a strapping lass, and he’s a poor crippled fellow with only one leg. Besides, what should he do it for?”
“Anyhow, where is he to be found?”
“Ah, that’s just what nobody knows. He used to be seen about here often enough, but since that night he’s only been caught sight of once or twice, and then always in company with the same person.”
“And that person is—”
“Mr. Vernon Brander!”
“Thanks. That’ll do for me, I think.”
And with that he left her as abruptly as before, and this time walked straight back to his own dwelling without a pause, or so much as a glance to right or left of him.
For some days after that, the stolid figure of the colonist was missed from the village. People began to think that he had decided that the object of his stay was hopeless, and that he had slunk away quietly to avoid the humiliation of owning that his dogged obstinacy had been beaten. The old woman who swept his rooms and washed up his tea things, though much questioned, could tell nothing. He had paid her up to the day of his departure, and had simply told her that he was going away. But whether for a day, a week, or forever he did not say. No board, however, was put up before the cottage to announce that it was to let; so that speculation was in favor of his return. Martha Lowndes was the only person who rightly guessed on what errand he had gone. She alone would have felt no surprise if she could have followed the track of Ned Mitchell as he wandered about the country spending a day here, three days there, always stolidly unsociable, and yet always contriving to get more information out of his neighbors than the chattiest and cheeriest of travellers could have done. He was tracking a man down with the feeblest of clues—a wooden leg and a Yorkshire accent. But he was gifted with a dogged energy and patience which nothing could daunt, and so in the end he found his man. The place was a common lodging house; the time was three weeks after he started on his search; the man was Abel Squires.
Ned Mitchell, when he found himself face to face with the crippled tramp, thought that his work was practically done—a witness found ready to his hand. But he was mistaken. Luckily for his object, he broached the matter with the caution of a skillful diplomatist, so that Abel had no idea of the interest he took in it. But the Yorkshireman in tatters was as keen and canny on his side as the Yorkshireman in broadcloth was on his; he was impervious to attack, either direct or indirect, and at the mere suggestion of bribery he grew closer than ever. Mitchell, however, did not give up the game, and at last he hit upon the means of opening the tramp’s mouth. Poor Abel had a partiality for strong liquor, and the temptation to indulge in it was more than he could resist. The wily Ned was cautious, and contrived to treat his ragged companion, not wisely but too well without exciting his suspicion. But even under the soft influence of rum and water, the tramp was more difficult to manage than his tempter would have supposed possible. It was not until after a long convivial evening that, Abel’s rough head having fallen at last on to the table in a drunken sleep, Ned Mitchell was able to stand over him and say to himself, with a gleam of savage and doubtful satisfaction breaking through the heavy stolidity of his expression—
“You miserable, tattered old beggar! Have I got all out of you that you have to tell, I wonder? Anyhow, I think I know enough to hang the right rascal by. But I shall have to work, work, work.”
On the following day, just three weeks after he left Rishton, Ned Mitchell was again seen leaning over his little cottage gate, smoking a bad cigar, and staring placidly at the broken stocks in the village green. The first persons to note his return were the vicar and his brother Vernon, who strolled through the churchyard together while he was standing at his gate. The younger man changed color at the sight of the colonist; the elder wished him a cheery “Good-day.”
“Ha, Mr. Mitchell, you can’t keep up your incognito any longer. We thought you had gone back to Australia without bidding us good-bye.”
“Never fear, Parson Brander,” returned Mitchell, drily, looking straight into the clergyman’s kindly eyes; “there’s another man has got to say good-bye to you all before I go back.” He glanced from one brother to the other as he uttered these words. Vernon kept his eyes on the ground, but he looked livid. The vicar smiled, and gently shook his head.
“You’ll have to tell me this riddle by-and-by,” said he, in his genial tones.
“Whenever you please, vicar,” said Ned.
And as the two clergymen passed on, Ned Mitchell, without deigning so much as to glance at the younger, raised his hat to the Reverend Meredith Brander, a most unheard-of mark of respect for him to bestow on any dignitary of the Church.