I was getting near home then. The sounds came from the back of a building standing alone in a solitary place on the left-hand side of the road. It belonged to the Squire, and was called the yellow barn, its walls being covered with a yellow wash; but it was in fact used as a storehouse for corn. I was pa.s.sing in front of it when the voices rose upon the air. Round the building I ran, and saw--Maria Lease: and something else that I could not at first comprehend. In the pursuit of her vow, not to go to rest until she had "had it out" with Daniel Ferrar, Maria had been abroad searching for him. What ill fate brought her looking for him up near our barn?--perhaps because she had fruitlessly searched in every other spot.
At the back of this barn, up some steps, was an unused door. Unused partly because it was not required, the princ.i.p.al entrance being in front; partly because the key of it had been for a long time missing.
Stealing out at this door, a bag of corn upon his shoulders, had come Daniel Ferrar in a smock-frock. Maria saw him, and stood back in the shade. She watched him lock the door and put the key in his pocket; she watched him give the heavy bag a jerk as he turned to come down the steps. Then she burst out. Her loud reproaches petrified him, and he stood there as one suddenly turned to stone. It was at that moment that I appeared.
I understood it all soon; it needed not Maria"s words to enlighten me.
Daniel Ferrar possessed the lost key and could come in and out at will in the midnight hours when the world was sleeping, and help himself to the corn. No wonder his poultry throve; no wonder there had been grumblings at Crabb Cot at the mysterious disappearance of the good grain.
Maria Lease was decidedly mad in those few first moments. Stealing is looked upon in an honest village as an awful thing; a disgrace, a crime; and there was the night"s earlier misery besides. Daniel Ferrar was a thief! Daniel Ferrar was false to her! A storm of words and reproaches poured forth from her in confusion, none of it very distinct. "Living upon theft! Convicted felon! Transportation for life! Squire Todhetley"s corn! Fattening poultry on stolen goods! Buying gold chains with the profits for that bold, flaunting French girl, Harriet Roe! Taking his stealthy walks with her!"
My going up to them stopped the charge. There was a pause; and then Maria, in her mad pa.s.sion, denounced him to me, as representative (so she put it) of the Squire--the breaker-in upon our premises! the robber of our stored corn!
Daniel Ferrar came down the steps; he had remained there still as a statue, immovable; and turned his white face to me. Never a word in defence said he: the blow had crushed him; he was a proud man (if any one can understand that), and to be discovered in this ill-doing was worse than death to him.
"Don"t think of me more hardly than you can help, Master Johnny," he said in a quiet tone. "I have been almost tired of my life this long while."
Putting down the bag of corn near the steps, he took the key from his pocket and handed it to me. The man"s aspect had so changed; there was something so grievously subdued and sad about him altogether, that I felt as sorry for him as if he had not been guilty. Maria Lease went on in her fiery pa.s.sion.
"You"ll be more tired of it to-morrow when the police are taking you to Worcester gaol. Squire Todhetley will not spare you, though your father was his many-years bailiff. He could not, you know, if he wished; Master Ludlow has seen you in the act."
"Let me have the key again for a minute, sir," he said, as quietly as though he had not heard a word. And I gave it to him. I"m not sure but I should have given him my head had he asked for it.
He swung the bag on his shoulders, unlocked the granary door, and put the bag beside the other sacks. The bag was his own, as we found afterwards, but he left it there. Locking the door again, he gave me the key, and went away with a weary step.
"Good-bye, Master Johnny."
I answered back good night civilly, though he had been stealing. When he was out of sight, Maria Lease, her pa.s.sion full upon her still, dashed off towards her mother"s cottage, a strange cry of despair breaking from her lips.
"Where have you been lingering, Johnny?" roared the Squire, who was sitting up for me. "You have been throwing at the owls, sir, that"s what you"ve been at; you have been scudding after the hares."
I said I had waited for Mr. Cole, and had come back slower than I went; but I said no more, and went up to my room at once. And the Squire went to his.
I know I am only a m.u.f.f; people tell me so, often: but I can"t help it; I did not make myself. I lay awake till nearly daylight, first wishing Daniel Ferrar could be screened, and then thinking it might perhaps be done. If he would only take the lesson to heart and go on straight for the future, what a capital thing it would be. We had liked old Ferrar; he had done me and Tod many a good turn: and, for the matter of that, we liked Daniel. So I never said a word when morning came of the past night"s work.
"Is Daniel at home?" I asked, going to Ferrar"s the first thing before breakfast. I meant to tell him that if he would keep right, I would keep counsel.
"He went out at dawn, sir," answered the old woman who did for him, and sold his poultry at market. "He"ll be in presently: he have had no breakfast yet."
"Then tell him when he comes, to wait in, and see me: tell him it"s all right. Can you remember, Goody? "It is all right.""
"I"ll remember, safe enough, Master Ludlow."
Tod and I, being on our honour, went to church, and found about ten people in the pews. Harriet Roe was one, with her pink ribbons, the twisted gold chain showing outside a short-cut velvet jacket.
"No, sir; he has not been home yet; I can"t think where he can have got to," was the old Goody"s reply when I went again to Ferrar"s. And so I wrote a word in pencil, and told her to give it him when he came in, for I could not go dodging there every hour of the day.
After luncheon, strolling by the back of the barn: a certain reminiscence I suppose taking me there, for it was not a frequented spot: I saw Maria Lease coming along.
Well, it was a change! The pa.s.sionate woman of the previous night had subsided into a poor, wild-looking, sorrow-stricken thing, ready to die of remorse. Excessive pa.s.sion had wrought its usual consequences; a re-action: a re-action in favour of Daniel Ferrar. She came up to me, clasping her hands in agony--beseeching that I would spare him; that I would not tell of him; that I would give him a chance for the future: and her lips quivered and trembled, and there were dark circles round her hollow eyes.
I said that I had not told and did not intend to tell. Upon which she was going to fall down on her knees, but I rushed off.
"Do you know where he is?" I asked, when she came to her sober senses.
"Oh, I wish I did know! Master Johnny, he is just the man to go and do something desperate. He would never face shame; and I was a mad, hard-hearted, wicked girl to do what I did last night. He might run away to sea; he might go and enlist for a soldier."
"I dare say he is at home by this time. I have left a word for him there, and promised to go in and see him to-night. If he will undertake not to be up to wrong things again, no one shall ever know of this from me."
She went away easier, and I sauntered on towards South Crabb. Eager as Tod and I had been for the day"s holiday, it did not seem to be turning out much of a boon. In going home again--there was nothing worth staying out for--I had come to the spot by the three-cornered grove where I saw Maria, when a galloping policeman overtook me. My heart stood still; for I thought he must have come after Daniel Ferrar.
"Can you tell me if I am near to Crabb Cot--Squire Todhetley"s?" he asked, reining-in his horse.
"You will reach it in a minute or two. I live there. Squire Todhetley is not at home. What do you want with him?"
"It"s only to give in an official paper, sir. I have to leave one personally upon all the county magistrates."
He rode on. When I got in I saw the folded paper upon the hall-table; the man and horse had already gone onwards. It was worse indoors than out; less to be done. Tod had disappeared after church; the Squire was abroad; Mrs. Todhetley sat upstairs with Lena: and I strolled out again.
It was only three o"clock then.
An hour, or more, was got through somehow; meeting one, talking to another, throwing at the ducks and geese; anything. Mrs. Lease had her head, smothered in a yellow shawl, stretched out over the palings as I pa.s.sed her cottage.
"Don"t catch cold, mother."
"I am looking for Maria, sir. I can"t think what has come to her to-day, Master Johnny," she added, dropping her voice to a confidential tone.
"The girl seems demented: she has been going in and out ever since daylight like a dog in a fair."
"If I meet her I will send her home."
And in another minute I did meet her. For she was coming out of Daniel Ferrar"s yard. I supposed he was at home again.
"No," she said, looking more wild, worn, haggard than before; "that"s what I have been to ask. I am just out of my senses, sir. He has gone for certain. Gone!"
I did not think it. He would not be likely to go away without clothes.
"Well, I know he is, Master Johnny; something tells me. I"ve been all about everywhere. There"s a great dread upon me, sir; I never felt anything like it."
"Wait until night, Maria; I dare say he will go home then. Your mother is looking out for you; I said if I met you I"d send you in."
Mechanically she turned towards the cottage, and I went on. Presently, as I was sitting on a gate watching the sunset, Harriet Roe pa.s.sed towards the withy walk, and gave me a nod in her free but good-natured way.
"Are you going there to look out for the ghosts this evening?" I asked: and I wished not long afterwards I had not said it. "It will soon be dark."
"So it will," she said, turning to the red sky in the west. "But I have no time to give to the ghosts to-night."
"Have you seen Ferrar to-day?" I cried, an idea occurring to me.
"No. And I can"t think where he has got to; unless he is off to Worcester. He told me he should have to go there some day this week."
She evidently knew nothing about him, and went on her way with another free-and-easy nod. I sat on the gate till the sun had gone down, and then thought it was time to be getting homewards.