"Do you know her husband?"
"Don"t know him from Adam. Johnny, I hope that"s not a stolen child!
Fair as she is, she can"t be the woman"s: there"s nothing of the gipsy in her composition."
"How well the gipsy appears to speak! With quite a refined accent."
"Gipsies often do, I"ve heard. Let us get on."
What with this adventure, and dawdling, and taking a wrong turn or two, it was past one o"clock when we got in, and they were laying the cloth for dinner. The green, mossy glade, with the sheltering trees around, the banks and the dells, the ferns and wild-flowers, made a picture of a retreat on a broiling day. The table (some boards, brought from the Hall, and laid on trestles) stood in the middle of the gra.s.s; and Helen and Anna Whitney, in their green-and-white muslins, were just as busy as bees placing the dishes upon it. Lady Whitney (with a face redder than beetroot) helped them: she liked to be always doing something. Miss Cattledon and the mater were pacing the dell below, and Miss Deveen sat talking with the Squire and Sir John.
"Have they not got here?" exclaimed William.
"Have who not got here?" retorted Helen.
"Todhetley and the boys."
"Ages ago. They surmised that you two must be lost, stolen, or strayed."
"Then where are they?"
"Making themselves useful. Johnny Ludlow, I wish you"d go after them, and tell them of all things to bring a corkscrew. No one can find ours, and we think it is left behind."
"Why, here"s the corkscrew, in my pocket," called out Sir John.
"Whatever brings it there? And---- What"s that great thing, moving down to us?"
It was Tod with a wooden stool upon his head, legs upwards. Rednal the gamekeeper lived close by, and it was arranged that we should borrow chairs, and things, from his cottage.
We sat down to dinner at last--and a downright jolly dinner it was.
Plenty of good things to eat; cider, lemonade, and champagne to drink: and every one talking together, and bursts of laughter.
"Look at Cattledon!" cried Bill in my ear. "She is as merry as the rest of us."
So she was. A whole sea of smiles on her thin face. She wore a grey gown as genteel as herself, bands of black velvet round her pinched-in waist and long throat. Cattledon looked like vinegar in general, it"s true; but I don"t say she was bad at heart. Even she could be genial to-day, and the rest of us were off our head with jollity, the Squire"s face and Sir John"s beaming back at one another.
If we had only foreseen how pitifully the day was to end! It makes me think of some verses I once learnt out of a journal--Chambers"s, I believe. They were written by Mrs. Plarr.
"There are twin Genii, who, strong and mighty, Under their guidance mankind retain; And the name of the lovely one is Pleasure, And the name of the loathly one is Pain.
Never divided, where one can enter Ever the other comes close behind; And he who in Pleasure his thoughts would centre Surely Pain in the search shall find!
"Alike they are, though in much they differ-- Strong resemblance is "twixt the twain; So that sometimes you may question whether It can be Pleasure you feel, or Pain.
Thus "tis, that whatever of deep emotion Stirreth the heart--be it grave or gay Tears are the Symbol--from feeling"s ocean These are the fountains that rise to-day.
"Should not this teach us calmly to welcome Pleasure when smiling our hearths beside?
If she be the substance, how dark the shadow; Close doth it follow, the near allied.
Or if Pain long o"er our threshold hover, Let us not question but Pleasure nigh Bideth her time her face to discover, Rainbow of Hope in a clouded sky."
Yes, it was a good time. To look at us round that dinner-table, you"d have said there was nothing but pleasure in the world. Not but that ever and anon the poor young gipsy woman"s troubled face and her sad wild eyes, and the warning some subtle instinct seemed to be whispering to her about her husband, would rise between me and the light.
The afternoon was wearing on when I got back to the glade with William Whitney (for we had all gone strolling about after dinner) and found some of the ladies there. Mrs. Todhetley had gone into Rednal"s cottage to talk to his wife, Jessy; Anna was below in the dell; all the rest were in the glade. A clean-looking, stout old lady, in a light cotton gown and white ap.r.o.n, a mob cap with a big border and bow of ribbon in front of it, turned round from talking to them, smiled, and made me a curtsy.
The face seemed familiar to me: but where had I seen it before? Helen Whitney, seeing my puzzled look, spoke up in her free manner.
"Have you no memory, Johnny Ludlow? Don"t you remember Mrs. Ness!--and the fortune she told us on the cards?"
It came upon me with a rush. That drizzling Good Friday afternoon at Miss Deveen"s, long ago, and Helen smuggling up the old lady from downstairs to tell her fortune. But what brought her here? There seemed to be no connection between Miss Deveen"s house in town and Briar Wood in Worcestershire. I could not have been more at sea had I seen a Chinese lady from Pekin. Miss Deveen laughed.
"And yet it is so easy of explanation, Johnny, so simple and straightforward," she said. "Mrs. Ness chances to be aunt to Rednal"s wife, and she is staying down here with them."
Simple it was--as are most other puzzles when you have the clue. The old woman was a great protegee of Miss Deveen"s, who had known her through her life of misfortune: but Miss Deveen did not before know of her relationship to Rednal"s wife or that she was staying at their cottage.
They had been talking of that past afternoon and the fortune-telling in it, when I and Bill came up.
"And what I told you, miss, came true--now didn"t it?" cried Mrs. Ness to Helen.
"True! Why, you told me _nothing_!" retorted Helen. "There was nothing in the fortune. You said there was nothing in the cards."
"I remember it," said Mother Ness; "remember it well. The cards showed no husband for you then, young lady; they might tell different now. But they showed some trouble about it, I recollect."
Helen"s face fell. There had indeed been trouble. Trouble again and again. Richard Foliott, the false, had brought trouble to her; and so had Charles Leafchild, now lying in his grave at Worcester: not to speak of poor Slingsby Temple. Helen had got over all those crosses now, and was looking up again. She was of a nature to look up again from any evil that might befall her, short of losing her head off her shoulders. All dinner-time she had been flirting with Featherston"s nephew.
This suggestion of Mrs. Ness, "the cards might tell different now,"
caught hold of her mind. Her colour slightly deepened, her eyes sparkled.
"Have you the cards with you now, Mrs. Ness?"
"Ay, to be sure, young lady. I never come away from home without my cards. They be in the cottage yonder."
"Then I should like my fortune told again."
"Oh, Helen, how can you be so silly!" cried Lady Whitney.
"Silly! Why, mamma, it is good fun. You go and fetch the cards, Mrs.
Ness."
"I and Johnny nearly had our fortune told to-day," put in Bill, while Mrs. Ness stood where she was, hardly knowing what to be at. "We came upon a young gipsy woman in the wood, and she wanted to promise us a wife apiece. A little girl was with her that may have been stolen: she was too fair to be that brown woman"s child."
"It must have been the Norths," exclaimed Mrs. Ness. "Was there some tinware by "em, sir; and some rabbit skins?"
"Yes. Both. The rabbit skins were hanging out to dry."
"Ay, it"s the Norths," repeated Mrs. Ness. "Rednal said he saw North yesterday; he guessed they"d lighted their campfire not far off."
"Who are the Norths? Gipsies?"
"The wife is a gipsy, sir; born and bred. He is a native of these parts, and superior; but he took to an idle, wandering life, and married the gipsy girl for her beauty. She was Bertha Lee then."
"Why, it is quite a romance," said Miss Deveen, amused.
"And so it is, ma"am. Rednal told me all on"t. They tramp the country, selling their tins, and collecting rabbit skins."