"But, father----" she began.
He waved his hand impatiently.
"It is a money payment," he said, "long outstanding, and if I do not get the man to-day at Longtown Tryst I may say good-bye to my chance of it."
He scarcely stayed to get the breakfast my mother had prepared. He did not answer when she pressed upon him this or that as "an extry."
However, along with sundry sandwiches, she slid a small "neat" flask into the side pocket of his riding-coat--"in case" as she said. For this was no habit of my father"s.
After that he called me into the yard to receive instructions as to various details about the sending out of the vans, and he gave Bob Kingsman "what for," because he had been so long saddling Dapple.
I can see him now as he rode away. Though a heavy man he rode well, and in fact never looked so well as when on horseback. I can remember, too, that my mother was at an upper window, my bedroom, in fact, whither she had gone to "put things in some sort of order."
My father waved his hand to her, with a more gracious gesture than I had ever before seen him use. I answered with my cap. For my mother, as I think, was so taken aback that she withdrew into the house, with something of the instinctive shyness of a girl who peeps at her sweetheart from behind the curtain.
Perhaps it was as well. She kept the little love token to herself. It was hers, to get out of it what dreary comfort she could, in the terror and suspense of the days that followed.
Longtown, to the Tryst or Fair of which my father set out, was about fourteen miles over the moors--quite, indeed, on the other side of the Cheviots. It had thriven because it formed a convenient meeting place for Scotch drovers and cattle rearers with the buyers from the big Midland towns, and even from London. Little more than a village in itself, it contained large auction marts for lamb sales, horse markets, and the general traffic of an agricultural district. The country folk went there of a Wednesday, which was its market day. My father"s road lay plainly enough marked across the Common, then by Brom Moor and the Drovers" Slap, a pa.s.s through the high, green Cheviots, with a little brook running over slaty stones at the bottom--ice-crusted now at the edges, and the water creeping like a slow black snake between the snow-dusted banks.
We waited up long for my father that night, mother and I. Bob had gone down to the village--to do some shopping, he said. But I could easily have told in what shop to find him--the one in which they don"t, as a general rule, do up the goods with string and brown paper.
Then in the slow night, I with a book and she with her stocking, my mother and I sat and waited. It would have been nothing very unusual if father had not returned at all that night. He sometimes did this, when business kept him at East Dene or Thorsby. On such occasions his orders were that we should lock up at eleven and go quietly to bed.
Mother mostly let the maid, Grace Rigley, go home to her father"s house at the other end of the village. Indeed, we were always glad when she did, for it let us have the house to ourselves, a pleasure which people who keep servants all the time never know.
We gave father till twelve that night--why, I do not know--except that the hill road was an unusual one for him to travel. And what with the sloughs and quags, the peat-faces and green, shaking bogs, it was not at all a canny country after dark.
I had to keep mother up, too.
"Why did he wave his hand to me this mornin", Joe?" she said, more than once; "he didn"t use to do that!"
"Oh, he just saw you at the window, mother," I answered her, "and perhaps he thought you were a bit "touched" at his not fancying his breakfast."
"No, Joe," she cried quite sharply; "me "touched"--with him--never! He knew better."
"Touched" was, of course, our local word for offended.
Then would mother knit a while, and run again to the door to listen.
"I thought I heard him!" she said. "I am nearly sure."
And there came a kind of white joy upon her face, curious in such a naturally rosy woman with cheeks like apples. But it was only some of the van horses moving restlessly or sc.r.a.ping their bedding in the stables.
Now our house with its big, bricked yard, and all the different out-buildings--stores, coal-sheds, salt-pens, granaries, oil-cake house and cellars, occupied quite a big quadrangle. At the corner was Bob McKinstrey"s room, through which was the only entrance excepting by the big gate. Bob had two doors, one opening out on a narrow lane, called Stye Alley, where poor people had kept pigs before my father and the local authority had made them clear off.
On the other side, Bob"s room looked into the yard, so that he could see at night that all was right. He could also enter the stable by a little side door, of which he alone had the key--that is, of course, excepting my father"s master key, which he always carried about with him.
Now I had locked the big double gate myself--the one by which the lorries and vans went and came. I had pushed home the bars. I had even gone round to see that Bob had closed his door behind him. The lock was a self-acting one, but Bob was apt to be careless.
I knew that my father, when he came, would let himself in by the big yard gate, opening the right-hand half of it to bring in Dapple.
Well, at twelve o"clock mother and I went to bed--I to sleep, but with half my clothes on me, in case father wanted anything when he should come. For if he did he made no allowances. Everybody had to be on the jump to get it.
I don"t think, however, that mother slept much. Afterwards I heard that she had never put out her light. It was, I think, about four o"clock and the moon was setting when I heard a light shower of stones and sand tinkle on my window.
I made sure that it was father, though what he wanted with me I could not imagine. For he always took a pa.s.s key with him, and the extra bolts of the house door were never shut when he was out anywhere on business. He never liked any one to interfere with his comings and goings, you see. So much so that we none of us durst so much as ask him when he got back in the morning, for fear of having our heads snapped off.
It was, however, Bob Kingsman who was below.
"Come down, Joe!" he whispered, "an" dinna let the mistress hear ye!"
I was at his side, with boots over my stockinged feet, almost before I could get myself awake.
"Is it father come home?" I asked sleepily.
Bob said nothing, but led me round to the stables. And there, nosing the lock of the inner door, saddled and bridled, stood Dapple, waiting to be let into her own stall.
"Pa.s.s your hand over her," said Bob.
The mare was warm, the perspiration and the flecks of foam still upon her. Bob held up his lantern. The bridle was fastened to a plaited thong of her mane.
And the plait was the same peculiar one which my father had remarked in the whip lash in the mail cart, the morning of the loss of poor Harry Foster!
By a sort of instinct Bob opened the stable door, and, just as if nothing had happened, the mare moved to her place. He was going to take off the saddle and undo the reins, but I stopped him. There was a great fear at my heart, for which after all there did not seem to be any very definite cause.
Father might have gone up to his room without awaking anybody. The great door of the yard was locked. Some one, therefore, must have unlocked it, let in Dapple, and relocked it. Who but my father could have done this? At worst he had met with some accident, and was even then dressing a wound or reposing himself.
That is what we said, the one to the other. But I am quite sure that neither of us believed it, even as the words were leaving our mouths.
Then we heard something that made us both jump--the voice of my mother.
She was speaking down from her window. I could see the white frill of her cap.
"Father," she called out in a voice in which she never spoke to me.
"Is that you?"
Then in quite another tone, "Who has left the stable door open?"
"Me, mistress--and Joe!" said Bob.
"Then there is something wrong! I am coming down."
And the next moment we could hear her, for she had never undressed, descending the stairway.
"What shall we do--quick--what shall we say?"
Bob Kingsman was never very quick at invention.