Chapter Nine
In the Wood
One night, about a fortnight after Florence Whittaker’s arrival at Ashcroft, Edgar Cunningham had a dream – a vivid dream – of his brother Alwyn’s face. Edgar could scarcely have called up the face before his mind’s eye; but this dream-face was as vivid and as real as Alwyn’s own had been when he planned out the fatal trick that had led to so much misery. Only, instead of the bold mocking eyes, half mirthful, half scornful, of the old Alwyn, these eyes were earnest and full of tenderness. Edgar woke, feeling as if his brother had really been near him. He had never dreamed of him in any marked way before. Although he had been fond of him in a boyish way, he had no reason to think well of him, and, though he could make many excuses for him, he would never have imagined him with such a look on his face as this. Edgar bore his own troubles with the same defiant gaiety that had marked his brother – he hardly ever pitied himself, and he had never blinked the fact that Alwyn was not likely to have improved during his absence. He resented his own ignorance of what he believed his father to know, but, except on the occasion of which he had spoken to his cousin, he had been willing to let matters alone. It was the Cunningham way; his father went about his business, and thought as little as he could of his disgraced son, saw as little as he could of his sick one; his brother had gone off with a laugh and a bitter joke from his home and his heirship. Geraldine sang when she was kept indoors, and made rhymes of the lesson she was told to learn for a punishment, and he himself prided himself on never complaining, never giving in, and taking his sufferings as a matter of course. The dream was accountable enough; Florence Whittaker’s name and face had recalled old days to him; his cousin had stirred up his thoughts on the subject, but nothing had ever so roused his feelings as the look on that dream-face. He got out the photograph, which in a rare moment of depression he had once shown to Wyn Warren. Yes – he had seen Alwyn; but Alwyn, as if with another soul. And then an awful thought came into Edgar’s mind, that in life Alwyn never could have looked at him so. Be that as it might, he took a sudden resolution, he would speak again to his father, and he felt that this time he should get a hearing. His father always visited him in the morning, either in his room or on the terrace, asking him how he was – commented on the news in the paper, or talked a little about local matters. The effort should be made on the first opportunity. James Cunningham had been perfectly right, and Edgar felt that only the passive languor of ill-health could have induced him to acquiesce so long in uncertainty.
It was very hard to begin when Mr Cunningham came in as usual, and talked in dry, short sentences about the harvest and about a foreign battle that had taken place, as if he had to think between his words of something else to say to his son. Want of resolution, however, was not a Cunningham failing.
“Father,” said Edgar presently, “will you be kind enough to shut the window for me? I want to speak to you – quite alone. I want to ask you to tell me exactly what you yourself know about Alwyn. It is a painful subject; but I think I ought to know.”
Mr Cunningham came back and sat down opposite his son’s couch.
“You’re right,” he said, “you should. I have been thinking so. A few words will do it. You recall, I dare say, that your brother and I were on very bad terms. His conduct had been unprincipled, and his behaviour to me was unfeeling. He was perfectly hard and reckless. You know how the scandalous practical joke at Ravenshurst was cut short by the terror of Mrs Fletcher’s little niece and the illness caused by it. When Mrs Fletcher came up to bed she missed such of her jewels as she had not worn at the ball; which she had carelessly left on her dressing-table. Some of the servants knew that Alwyn had had a confederate in Harry Whittaker, as another absurd figure was seen close to the ball-room windows. He was at once suspected, and the next morning Lilian Fletcher confessed that she had hidden the jewels in the garden for fun, and had intended to pretend that the ghost had stolen them, to heighten the excitement. When she took her mother to the place – of course no jewels. She vowed that no one knew what she had done. Alwyn had declared himself when the child was frightened, and between him and Ned Warren they made out so good an alibi for Whittaker that it was impossible to commit him. The thing was investigated privately; but Mrs Fletcher was ill at the time, and very much afraid of her daughter’s share in the business being made public. Nothing was discovered. But you know all this.”
“Most of it,” said Edgar. “But I do not know what you believe about the jewels.”
“It is my belief that somehow Whittaker had them, after all! I should have committed him for trial. Alwyn took his part, violently swore I insulted him by having such an idea in connection with his companion. He chose to misinterpret what I said, and swore he would never come home till the jewels were found or I had begged his pardon. He behaved as if I had accused him of the theft himself.”
“Father,” said Edgar, “you have at least allowed other people to imagine that you thought so.”
“No, Alwyn left his home. I did not cast him off, nor cut him off with a shilling. I told him that I could not allow him to associate with you – he said he wished to emigrate. I lodged a sum of money for him in a New York bank, and told him he could communicate with me through the bankers. He never did communicate with me; but he drew the money.”
“And you don’t know where he is now?”
“No. I never saw him after that night – Beresford did the business with him in London. Whittaker went away with him. Now for what I suppose you really want to know. You are my heir, and have been so, ever since that occurrence.”
“Father,” said Edgar again, “you must know that I am very unlikely to outlive you.”
“In that ease the estates will pass to your cousin James. I object to the idea of marrying Geraldine for the sake of a master for Ashcroft, and she is amply provided for.”
“Father,” said Edgar, “I don’t see that Alwyn has done anything to forfeit his heirship. As for his dissipations – I was quite ready to follow his example had I had the chance. A practical joke, however improper, is not cause sufficient. Will you take no steps to find him?”
“No,” said Mr Cunningham, “it is in his power to find me if he chooses.”
“It is right to tell you that, should I ever have the power, I should try to find him.”
“That would be as you please,” said Mr Cunningham, “but the estate is secured to your cousin. He doesn’t know it, though, and I don’t wish him to find it out.”
It was an odd, hard scene. Edgar’s manner was rather polite than respectful; his father showed no feeling whatever.
“I think,” said Edgar with one last effort, “that the matter has been made to appear more disgraceful than it is.”
“I never thought much of appearances,” said Mr Cunningham. “But there is no more I can tell you. If there is anything that you wish for yourself, you have only to name it. That night’s business cost you much as well as myself.”
“Nothing but the fall kept me out of the scrape myself,” said Edgar, “and Alwyn never knew that he startled me.”
“I never understood your share in the matter,” said Mr Cunningham.
“Alwyn tried to get some fun out of me, by refusing to tell me his plan. When I missed him from the dancing, I ran upstairs to find out; but the old monk’s figure made me jump, and I fell backwards down the stairs. I didn’t know I was hurt, and guessed directly who it was. I was going back to see the effect, when I turned so faint that I had to get away into my room instead.”
As Mr Cunningham looked down at his son’s prostrate figure it was perhaps inevitable that the bitterness of his recollection should increase rather than otherwise, especially as he knew that Edgar’s determined concealment of the extent of his injury for weeks afterwards had destroyed his chance of recovery.
“I’ll leave you to rest now,” he said. “The past is beyond recall, and nothing is gained by dwelling on it.”
Edgar lay still when his father left him, and reflected. He had hoped that more had been known about his brother. His father’s last words had been the key of his own life. Was nothing to be gained by a recall of the past? The Cunninghams had been brought up to a correct performance of such religious observances as were suitable to their position; but of vital religion they knew little or nothing. They “set a proper example” in the village, but all Edgar’s endurance and pluck had wanted the help that might have made it go so much deeper, and be so much more real. He could ignore his troubles, but he did not know what spiritual comfort or inward strength was. He held his tongue and disliked pity, even from himself. He was clear-headed and sensible, but neither a thinker nor a reader. It was strange to him that the thought of Alwyn’s death, which his dream had brought into his mind, impressed him so much. It would simplify the family complication, and he never, most likely, would see him again. Edgar had often faced his own probable early death as the loss of life here – he had never faced it as opening out a life hereafter. He was glad to be roused from thoughts that troubled him by Wyn’s appearance, looking eager and happy as usual.
“Please, sir, if you’re pretty well to-day, there’s a part of the wood I know I can take Dobbles to. And please, sir, there’s a pond and water-lilies, and I believe, that odd sort of flowering rush as you wanted. And, sir, wouldn’t you like to see it growing?”
“Well – I should, Wyn,” said Edgar. “Bring Dobbles round directly after lunch, and we’ll make a long afternoon of it.”
It was a lovely summer afternoon; the wood was green and cool, with long shafts of golden light penetrating the boughs overhead. Wyn led the sober Dobbles slowly along the green walks, explaining, as he went, that, some underwood having been cut down, the pond was now for the first time approachable by the pony.
“So you’ve never seen it, sir, and it’s uncommon pretty.”
“Oh yes, I have, Wyn; I remember it quite well. Last time I was there I waded in after the lilies, and started a heron. He’d come over from the Duke’s heronry. I can’t think how Dobbles is to get there.”
“Please, sir, he can; even Mr Robertson would say it was quite safe since they made the clearing.”
If Edgar loved anything on earth, it was the wood; the great trees, the birds and the squirrels, the ferns and the flowers, gave him real pleasure, and he never felt so nearly independent and, as he called it, locomotive, as when he was out in this way with no one but Wyn.
It was perhaps as well that Mr Robertson was not there to express an opinion on the nature of the ground over which Dobbles was taken; but at last they came almost to the edge of the little woodland pond, and Edgar exclaimed with delight at the white and yellow lilies on its surface, the tall reeds round the edge. He raised himself up as much as possible, and looked eagerly over it.
“Wyn,” he cried, “there are all sorts of treasures on the opposite bank – real yellow loose-strife and rosebay willow herb. That’s not common cream and codlins. There’s none of it about elsewhere in the wood. And all sorts of flowering grass. Go round and get a great bunch of whatever you can see – I’ll wait here; give me the rein – but Dobbles knows his duty.”
Wyn ran off and plunged into the brushwood. He had been trained to have keen eyes, and he had soon collected a large bunch of reeds and flowers. Dobbles and his master were quite out of sight, and Wyn had got to the other side of the pond, among a mass of ferns and brambles not likely to yield much out of the common, when he heard a rustling and saw a tall man standing on the little track beyond him, with his back turned. Wyn was a keeper’s son, and as soon as he perceived that the man was a stranger he at once jumped to the conclusion that he was after no good, and that he, Mr Edgar’s only protector, had left him alone at some distance. And, though Mr Edgar was only game in the sense that nothing would frighten him, he had a watch and a purse, and was of course perfectly defenceless. As he prepared to hurry back to him the man turned, showing a sunburnt face and a long yellowish beard. He looked at Wyn.
“I say, boy, do you belong to these parts?” he said.
“Yes,” said Wyn, “do you? For this wood ain’t open to the public.”
“Do you happen to know if Mr Edgar Cunningham’s at home just now?”
“What do you want of him?” said Wyn.
“Well, I want you to give him this note if you could see him by himself any time. Here’s a shilling.”
“No, thank ye,” said Wyn. “I can give my master a note; but this wood ain’t open to the public, and you’d best turn to the left, and go out by the stile.”
“All right,” said the stranger. “I’ve missed my way.”
He turned to the left and walked off, and Wyn hurried back to his master, relieved to see Dobbles exactly where he had left him, and Mr Edgar lying, looking up at the trees overhead, evidently perfectly safe and undisturbed.
“Oh, please, sir,” said Wyn, “here are the flowers. But please, sir, we’d best go home. There’s characters about, and – why – wherever can it be?”
“Why, what’s the matter? You look quite scared. What’s missing?”
“Please, sir, I met a chap as I don’t think had any business there, and he gave me a note for you, and, sir, I can’t find it nowhere. I had it in my hand, and I must have dropped it.”
“I suppose it was one of the men from Ashwood or Raby,” said Edgar, mentioning two places in the neighbourhood. “Very careless of you, Wyn, to lose the note, and very silly to get a scare about it. Well,” after some time spent in searching, “we must get back now, and to-morrow, if it’s fine, I’ll come here again, and you can have a hunt for it.”
Wyn was so upset, or, as he would have expressed it, “put about,” by the sight of the stranger, the loss of the note, and by Mr Edgar’s rare reproof, that he quite forgot at the moment either to realise to himself or to tell his master that the man could have been no one from the neighbourhood, since he had asked if Mr Edgar was at home, which everyone knew was invariably the case.
Chapter Ten
Florence’s Duty
On the same afternoon that Wyn and his master went to see the water-lily pond, Florrie Whittaker, seized with a fit of impatience, went off without leave for a ramble in the wood.
She didn’t think she could bear it much longer. There was no one to chatter to, there was no one to chatter about. Mrs Lee’s shop was far more lively than Mrs Warren’s parlour, and Carrie and Ada were much more congenial than Grace Elton. Florence, lazy and sociable, had made a strong effort to strike up a friendship with that pretty, pleasant girl, but Grace, as Florence put it, was “that particular,” and so often blushed and said, “Mother wouldn’t like it,” when Florence’s ill-trained tongue went its natural way, that Florence would have been quite disgusted with her but for the thought that “Miss Geraldine” wouldn’t like it either. Florence had once begun to astonish Grace with the history of how she had run after the boys down to the canal, and had then stopped with an odd new feeling that she wouldn’t like Miss Geraldine to know she had done that. Should she write home and say she would be a good girl, and go into any business Father and Aunt Stroud wished, knowing that some sort of fun could be got out of life at Rapley; or should she wait and let Aunt Charlotte “comb her down,” as she vigorously put it, till she thought her fit for a place at Ashcroft or at “The Duke’s?” That implied lilac cotton gowns in the week and a neat bonnet on Sundays; but then she had heard of servants’ dances and parties, and the great household wouldn’t be very dull, surely. Florence strolled on, thinking of one thing and another, swinging her hat in her hand, and now and then snatching at a foxglove or a bit of honeysuckle, till she suddenly became aware that she had lost her way. She stopped and looked round her. Which little green track would take her home? There was a good deal of undergrowth in the part of the wood to which she had wandered, and, so far as she knew, she might be miles from any outlet but the one by which she had come. The great trees arched over her head, the green solemn light was all around her. The tap of a woodpecker, the coo of a wood-pigeon or the whir of its wing, the soft indefinite murmur of the leaves, were all the sounds that broke the stillness of the August wood. If Florence had lost her way in a town she would have asked it of a policeman with perfect composure. No crowd of passengers, no bustle of life, would have impressed her in the least, but this stillness and silence and loneliness struck on her unaccustomed nerves, and an unaccountable fear took possession of her. What was there to be afraid of?
Snakes and water-rats were the only definite objects of terror that occurred to her; and, as she had never seen a specimen of either of these animals, they were not very present to her imagination. She did not know what she was afraid of, but for the first time in her life she knew what fear was. She stood quite still at the turn of the little foot track, suddenly afraid to go to the right or the left; her heart beat, her breath came in gasps, tears filled her eyes, and she burst out crying like a baby – she, who never cried except from bad temper or toothache, cried with fear.
Suddenly a rapid, light step ran down the track, and Geraldine Cunningham, in her blue cotton frock, and a basket in her hand, came into view.
“Why! Florence Whittaker! What’s the matter?”
“I’ve – I’ve lost my way, Miss; I can’t get out!” sobbed Florence, still too much scared to be ashamed of her fright.
“Lost your way! Dear me, you’re standing in the way back to Warren’s lodge. Come, don’t cry, I’ll show you.”
“Oh, thank you, Miss,” said Florence with unwonted meekness, and wiping her eyes. Then, recovering a little, “I’m a great silly, but the trees is so tall, and there ain’t nobody about.”
“Why, that’s the beauty of it,” said Geraldine. “One couldn’t run about in the wood if there was anybody about. But it’s just like the garden, nobody ever comes here.”
As Geraldine said this in her clear, outspoken voice, a tall man came into view along the opposite track: he was dark and slight, and dressed in a rough suit that might have belonged to anyone, gentle or simple, in a country place.
“We’ll go on,” whispered Geraldine, straightening herself up, and taking Florence by the hand.
The man came up to the two girls and looked at them rather keenly; then he touched his hat, and said: “Excuse me, young ladies, can you tell me the way out of the wood?”
“Yes,” said Geraldine, with her straightforward gaze; “if you go straight back and turn to the right, you’ll come into the Raby road.”
The stranger lingered a moment as if he would have liked to say more, but contented himself with saying rather oddly, “Thank you – Miss,” and walking away.
“How very odd!” said Geraldine, “that there should be a stranger in the wood. Who can he be?”
“He was very civil in his speech,” said Florrie. “Yes; but the wood’s private; he oughtn’t to be here. Come along, Florence, we’ll tell Mr Warren we saw him.”
The two girls talked a little as they walked on together, Florence feeling suddenly shy, and as if she had nothing to say for herself. Presently, as they came near the lodge, they met Wyn, looking hot and hurried. “Oh, if you please, Miss Geraldine,” he said, touching his cap, “you haven’t seen anything like a letter lying about in the forest?”
“A letter in the forest? Why, Wyn, how ever could a letter get there?”
“I’ve lost one, ma’am, as a man gave me for Mr Edgar, and I’m going to look for it again.”
“Oh,” said Geraldine, “that must be the man that spoke to us just now, and asked his way. If you run right on, Wyn, you could catch him.”
Wyn rushed off, but presently came back, overtaking the girls again as they came up to the lodge.
“It wasn’t the same man, Miss Geraldine,” he said. “The man I met was a stout party with a red beard, and this one was a deal thinner, and a black-haired chap, too.”
“Then there’s two strange men in the wood,” said Florence.
At this moment the keeper himself appeared, carrying his gun, and saluting his young lady; and all three children began to tell their stones. Warren took them very quietly. “I’ll keep a look-out, ma’am,” he said to Geraldine; “but strangers do pass through the wood. There’s artists about nowadays. They scare the birds dreadful. And, as for you, Wyn, you’d best go and look for that there note first thing in the morning: you’d no business to let it drop.”
“I think the man who spoke to me looked like an artist,” said Geraldine as she went off.
“Florrie,” said Wyn, as his father went into the house, “I don’t think that the man who gave me the letter for Mr Edgar was one of the Raby or Ashwood keepers or gardeners; he hadn’t the cut somehow, and he’d have known Mr Edgar was at the Hall. And he did stare that hard at me.”
“So did the other man at us,” said Florence.
“Was he a bird-catcher down from London, do you think?” said Wyn astutely.
“No,” said Florence, “he looked too much the gentleman.”
“I’m sure he hadn’t a red beard, aren’t you?” said Wyn.
“Red beard? No – d’ye think I haven’t eyes in my head? He’d a pointed sort of black beard – same shape as Mr Cunningham’s – only his is grey; and black eyes, looking right at you, like the squire’s do. But, dear me, I think a fellow creature or two’s a great improvement in that there lonesome wood. I’d sooner meet a man than a snake any day. And I believe I’d sooner meet a snake than nothing among all them trees!”
“The trees don’t set no traps nor springs,” said Wyn, “and snakes aren’t common in our wood, and wriggles off pretty quick if you do meet with one.”
“Do you think your man was a poacher?” said Florence.
“Well, Florrie,” said Wyn, “there’s all sorts of people come after game in these days. I shall keep my eyes open. Hallo! here’s mother calling us in to supper.”
In pursuance of this resolve, Wyn kept his eyes the next day open at their widest, but neither red beard, black eyes, nor letter came into his view, and the only thing he did see when he came disconsolately back again was a great owl’s nest that had apparently been pulled out of an old hollow tree on the Ravenshurst side of the wood and thrown on the ground. Wyn was sorry; he thought the owls would never nest there again, and he would have had a chance next spring of getting a young one for Mr Edgar.
“You’re to take the pony round again this afternoon, Wyn,” said his mother when he got back, “and don’t you be careless and drop any more letters about, anyhow.”
Florence was very much interested in the mysterious strangers in the wood, and in the lost letter. She went for a stroll with Wyn before it was time for him to fetch the pony, and they worked themselves up into a state of excitement, and a general idea that their keen observation of suspicious characters was highly to their credit. In the course of their walk they met two of the under-keepers, and Wyn stopped and asked them if they had seen anybody about. He described his man with the red beard much as if he had been a giant, and Florence chimed in with her suspicions of the dark man who had spoken to Miss Geraldine, till her description of him would have befitted the villain in a melodrama. The boy and girl succeeded in setting the young men on the look-out, and preparing discomfort for the strangers if they were seen. Florence found a chat with the young keepers a pleasant variety in her quiet life, especially when it was so justifiable, and she lingered, talking and joking, till Wyn pulled her skirts, and said Mr Edgar would be ready.
“You see what we’ll bring you, Miss,” said one of the lads as he went off.
“You ain’t men enough to get them there poachers,” said Florence.
“Ain’t we though?” cried the other youth.
“They’d best not come our way in a hurry.”
Florence laughed, and ran off after Wyn, who remarked virtuously:
“We’ve done our duty, I’m sure, in spreading about all we’ve noticed.”
“Your father knows too,” said Florrie.
“Yes,” said Wyn, with a slight suspicion that his father could have warned his own under-keepers for himself; “but father can’t be everywhere at once. They might rob Mr Edgar.”
“Or frighten Miss Geraldine,” said Florence, “so it’s quite our duty to give a warning.”