It was at the appointed trysting place they found him--"half-way between the stiles". But not till late that evening, when Betsy, more alarmed by his absence than by her mistress"s not returning, at last struggled out through the deep-lying snow to alarm the nearest neighbours.
"The missis and Miss Nell will have stayed the night in the town," she said. "But I mis...o...b.. me if the master will ever have got so far, though he may have been tempted on when he did not meet them."
By this time the fury of the storm had spent itself, and they found poor Giles after a not very protracted search, and brought him home--dead, they thought at first.
No, he was not dead, but it was less than half _life_ that he returned to. For his first inquiry late the next day, when glimmering consciousness had begun to revive--"Marion, the baby?"--seemed by some subtle instinct to answer itself truthfully, in spite of the kindly endeavour to deceive him for the time.
"Dead!" he murmured. "I knew it. Half-way between the stiles," and he turned his face to the wall.
They almost wished he had died too--the rough but kind-hearted country-folk who were his neighbours. But he lived. He never asked and never knew the details of the tragedy, which, indeed, was never fully known by any one.
All that came to light was that the dead body of Marion Giles was brought by some semi-gipsy wanderers to the workhouse of a town several miles south of Colletwood, early on the morning after the blizzard. They had found it, they said, at some little distance from the road along which they were journeying, so that she must have lost her way long before approaching the Monksholdings confines, not improbably, indeed, in attempting to retrace her steps to the town which she had so imprudently quitted. But of the child the tramps said nothing, and after making the above deposition, they were allowed to go on their way, which they expressed themselves as anxious to do; for reasons of their own, no doubt; possibly the same reasons which had prevented their returning to Colletwood with the young woman"s corpse, as would have seemed more natural.
And afterwards no very special inquiry was made about the baby. The father was incapable of it, and in those days people accepted things more carelessly, perhaps. It was taken for granted that "Little Nell"
had fallen down some cliff, no doubt, and lay buried there, with the snow for her shroud, like a strayed lambkin. Her tiny bones might yet be found, years hence, maybe, by a shepherd in search of some bleating wanderer, or--no more might ever be known of the infant"s fate!
Barnett Giles rose from his bed, after many weeks, with all the look of a very old man. At first it was thought that his mind was quite gone; but it did not prove to be so. After a time, with the help of an excellent foreman, or bailiff, he showed himself able to manage his farm with a strange, mechanical kind of intelligence. It seemed as if the sense of duty outlived the loss of other perceptions, though these, too, cleared by degrees to a considerable extent, and material things, curious as it may appear, prospered with him.
But he rarely spoke unless obliged to do so; and whenever he felt himself at leisure, and knew that his work was not calling for him, he seemed to relapse into the half-dreamy state which was his more real life. Then he would pa.s.s through the village and slowly climb the slope to the stile, where he would stand for hours together, patiently gazing before him, while he murmured the old refrain: ""Half-way between the stiles," she said. I shall meet them there, "half-way between the stiles"."
Fortunately, perhaps, it was not often he attempted to climb over; he contented himself with standing and gazing. Fortunately so, for otherwise the changes at Monksholdings would have probably terribly shocked his abnormally sensitive brain. But he did not seem to notice them, nor the new route of the old right-of-way agreed to by the compromise. He was content with his post--standing, leaning on the stile, and gazing before him.
His, of course, was the worn, wistful face which had half frightened, half appealed to Sybil Raynald.
But she forgot about it again, or other things put it temporarily aside, so that when the Raynalds came down to Monksholdings again the following Easter it did not at once occur to her to remind her father of the inquiry he had promised to make.
Miss March was not with her pupils and their parents at first. She had gone to spend a holiday week with the friends who had brought her up and seen to her education--good, benevolent people, if not specially sympathetic, but to whom she felt herself bound by ties of sincerest grat.i.tude, though her five years with the Raynald family had given her more of the feeling of a "home" than she had ever had before.
And her arrival at Monksholdings was the occasion of much rejoicing.
There was everything to show her, and every one, from Mark down to little Robin, wanted to be her guide. It was not till the morning of the next day that Sybil managed to get her to herself for a _tete-a-tete_ stroll.
Ellinor had some things to tell her quondam pupil. Mrs. Bellairs, her self-appointed guardian, was growing old and somewhat feeble.
"I fear she is not likely to live many years," said Miss March, "and she thinks so herself. She has a curious longing, which I never saw in her before, to find out my history--to know if there is no one really belonging to me to whom she can give me back, as it were, before she dies. She gave me the little parcel containing the clothes I had on when she rescued me from being sent to a workhouse. They are carefully washed and mended, and though I was a poor, dirty little object when I was found, they do not look really as if I had been a beggar child," with a little smile.
"You a beggar child!" exclaimed Sybil indignantly. "Of course not.
Perhaps, on the contrary, you were somebody very grand."
"No, no," said Ellinor sensibly. "In that case I should have been advertised for and inquired after. No, I have never thought that, and I should not wish it. I should be more than thankful to know I came of good, honest people, however simple; to have some one of my very own."
"I forget the actual details," said Sybil, "though you have often told me about it. You were found--no, not literally in the workhouse, was it?"
"They were going to take me there," said Miss March. "It was at a village near Bath where Mr. and Mrs. Bellairs were then living, and one day, after a party of gipsies had been encamping on the common, a cottager"s wife heard something crying in the night, and found me in her little garden. She was too poor to keep me herself, and felt certain I was a child the gipsies had stolen and then wanted to get rid of. I was fair-haired and blue-eyed, not like them. She was a friend or relation of some of Mrs. Bellairs"s servants, and so the story got round to my kind old friend. And you know the rest--how they first thought of bringing me up in quite a humble way, and then finding me--well, intelligent and naturally rather refined, I suppose, I got a really good education, and my good luck did not desert me, dear, when I came to be your governess."
Sybil smiled.
"And can you remember _nothing_?"
Ellinor hesitated.
"Queer, dreamy fragments come back to me sometimes," she said. "I have a feeling of having seen hills long, long ago. It is strange," she went on, for by this time they had left the private grounds and were strolling along the hill-path in the direction of the town, "it is strange that since I came here I seem to have got hold of a tiny bit of these old memories, if they are such. It must be the hills," and she stood still and gazed round her with a deep breath of satisfaction, "I could only have been between two and three when I was found," she went on. "The only words I said were "Dada" and "Nennie"--it sounded like "Nelly". That was why Mrs. Bellairs called me "Ellinor," and "March,"
because it was in that month she took me to her house."
Sybil walked on in silence for a moment or two.
"It _is_ such a romantic story," she said at last. "I am never tired of thinking about it."
They entered Monksholdings again from the east entrance, Ellinor glanced at the stile.
"By-the-bye," she said, "this is one of the two old stiles, I suppose.
Have you ever seen your ghost again, Sybil? Have you found out anything about him?"
Sybil looked round her half nervously.
"It is the other stile he haunts," she said. "I rather avoid it, at least, I mean to do so now. It is curious you speak of it, for till yesterday I had not seen him again, and had almost forgotten about it.
But yesterday afternoon, just before you came, there he was--exactly the same, staring in. I meant to speak to papa about it, but with the pleasure and bustle of your arrival, I forgot it. Remind me about it. I am afraid he is out of his mind."
"Poor old man!" said Ellinor. "I wish we could do something to comfort him. I feel as if everybody _must_ be happy here. It is such a charming, exhilarating place. Dear me, how windy it is! The path is all strewn with the white petals of the cherry blossom."
"They have degenerated into wild cherry trees," said Sybil. "Long ago papa says these must have been good fruit trees of many kinds, and this is a great cherry country, you know."
The wind dropped that afternoon, but only temporarily. It rose again so much during the night that by the next morning the grounds looked, to use little Annis"s expression, "quite untidy".
"And down in the village, or just beyond it," said Mark, who had been for an early stroll, "at one place it really looks as if it had been snowing. The road skirts that old farmhouse; you know it, father? I forget the name--there"s a grand cherry orchard there."
""Mayling Farm," you must mean," said Mr. Raynald. "Farmer Giles"s. Oh, by the way, that reminds me, Sybil," but a glance round the table made him stop short. They were at breakfast. He scarcely felt inclined to relate the tragic story before the younger children, "they might look frightened or run away if they came across the poor fellow," he reflected. "I will tell Sybil about it afterwards."
Easter holidays were not yet over, though the governess had returned, so regular routine was set aside, and the whole of the young party, Ellinor included, spent that morning in a scramble among the hills.
The children seemed untirable, and set off again somewhere or other in the afternoon. Sybil was busy with her mother, writing letters and orders to be despatched to London, so that towards four o"clock or so, when Miss March, having finished her own correspondence, entered the drawing-room, she found it deserted.
Sybil had promised to practise some duets with her, and while waiting on the chance of her coming, Ellinor seated herself at the piano and began to play--nothing very important--just s.n.a.t.c.hes of old airs which she wove into a kind of half-dreamy harmony, one melting into another as they occurred to her.
All at once a shadow fell on the keys, and then she remembered having heard the door softly open a moment or two before--so softly, that she had not looked round, imagining it to be the wind, which, though fallen now, still lingered about.
Now her ideas took another shape.
"It is Sybil, no doubt," she thought with a smile. "She is going to make me jump," and she waited, half expecting to feel Sybil"s hands suddenly clasped over her eyes from behind.
But this was not to be the mode of attack, apparently, though she heard what sounded like stealthy footsteps.
"You need not try to startle me, Sybbie," she exclaimed laughingly, without turning or ceasing to play, "I hear you."
It was no laughing voice which replied.
On the contrary, a sigh, almost a groan, close to her made her look up sharply--a trifle indignant perhaps at the joke being carried so far--and she saw, a pace or two from her only, the figure of an old man--a white-haired, somewhat bent form, a worn face with wistful blue eyes--gazing at her.