Chapter Fifteen.
Leigh hardly heard his sister’s words, for he hurried out and sprang into the dog-cart, where the groom was full of the past day’s trouble, and ready to pour into unwilling ears what he had heard from Samuel, who knew that Mr Garstang, the solicitor from London, knocked down young Master about money, he thought, and that he had heard Mr Claud say something about his father kicking him.
“Missus wanted to send for you last night, sir, but Master wouldn’t have it, and this morning they couldn’t make him hear in his room. Poor chap, I expect he’s very bad.”
The man would have gone on talking, but finding his companion silent and thoughtful, he relapsed into a one-sided conversation with the horse he drove, bidding him “come on,” and “look alive,” and “be steady,” till he turned in at the avenue and cantered up to the hall door.
Mrs Wilton was there, tearful and trembling.
“Oh, do make haste, Mr Leigh,” she cried. “How long you have been!”
“I came at once, madam; is your son in his room?”
“Yes, yes—dead by this time. Pray, come up.”
He sprang up the stairs in a very unprofessional way, forgetting the necessity for a medical man being perfectly calm and cool, and Wilton met him on the landing.
“Oh, here you are. Haven’t got the door open yet. Curse the old wood! It’s like iron. Maria, go and get all the keys you can find.”
“Yes, dear, but while the men are doing that hadn’t we better try and get poor Claud’s door open?”
“No, hers first,” cried Wilton, and Leigh started.
“I understood that it was your son who needed help,” he said.
“Never mind him for a bit. You must see to my niece first;” and in a few seconds Leigh was in possession of the fact that the maid had been unable to make her mistress hear; that since then they could get no response to constant calling and knocking, and the door had resisted all their efforts to get it open.
On reaching the end of the corridor Leigh found the maid, white and trembling, holding her apron pressed hard to her lips, while the footman and two gardeners, after littering the floor with unnecessary tools, were now trying to make a hole with a chisel large enough to admit the point of a saw, so as to cut round the lock.
“Wood’s like iron, sir,” said the gardener, who was operating.
“But would it not be easier to put a ladder to the window, and break a pane of glass?” said Leigh, impatiently.
“Oh, Lord!” cried Wilton, “who would be surrounded with such a set of fools! Come along. Of course. Here, one of you, go and fetch a ladder.”
The second gardener hurried off down the back stairs, while his master led the way to the front, leaving Mrs Wilton and the maid tapping at the bedroom door.
“Oh, do, do speak, my darling,” sobbed Mrs Wilton. “If it’s only one word, to let us know you are alive.”
“Oh, don’t, don’t pray say that ma’am,” sobbed the maid. “My poor dear young mistress! What shall I do—what shall I do?”
Mrs Wilton made no reply, but, free from her husband’s coercion now, she hurried along the corridor to the other wing, to begin knocking at her son’s door, and then went down upon her knees, with her lips to the keyhole, begging him within to speak.
“Such a set of blockheads,” growled Wilton; “and I was just as bad, Doctor. In the hurry and excitement that never occurred to me. You see you’ve come in cool, and ready to grasp everything. Poor girl, she was a bit upset yesterday, and I suppose it was too much for her. Boys will be boys, and I had a quarrel with my son.”
This in a confidential whisper, as they crossed the hall, but Leigh hardly heard him in his anxiety, and as they passed out and along the front of the house he said, hurriedly:
“I’ll go on, sir. I see they have the ladder there.”
“What!” cried Wilton, excitedly, “they can’t have got it yet, and—God bless me! what does this mean?”
He broke into a run, for there, in full view now, at the end of the house, with its broad foot in a flower-bed, was one of the fruit-gathering ladders, just long enough to reach the upper windows, and resting against the sill beneath that of Kate’s room.
He reached the place first, clapped his hands upon the sides, and ascended a couple of rounds, but stepped back directly, with his florid face mottled with white, and his lips quivering with excitement as he spoke.
“Here, you’re a lighter man than I, Doctor; go up. The window’s open, too.”
Leigh sprang up, mad now with anxiety and a horrible dread; but as he reached the window he paused and hesitated, for more than one reason, the principal being a fear of finding that which he suspected true.
“In with you, man—in with you,” cried Wilton; “it is no time for false delicacy now;” and as he spoke he began to ascend in turn.
Leigh sprang in, and at a glance saw that the bed had not been pressed, and that there was no sign of struggle and disturbance in the daintily furnished room. No chair overset, no candlestick upon the floor, but all looking as if ready for its occupant, save that an extinguisher was upon one of the candles beside the dressing-table glass.
“Gone!” cried a hoarse voice behind him, as he stood there, shrinking in the midst of the agony he felt, for it seemed to him like a sacrilege to be present.
Leigh started round, to find Wilton’s head at the open casement, and directly after the heavy man stepped in.
“No, no,” he shouted back, as the ladder began to bend again. “Not you. Stop below. No; take this ladder to the hall door, and wait.”
He banged to, and fastened the casement, after seizing the top of the ladder, and giving it a thrust which sent it over with a crash on to the gravel.
“Don’t seem like a doctor’s business, sir,” continued Wilton, gravely; “but you medical men have to be confidential, so keep your tongue quiet about what you have seen.”
Leigh bowed his head, for he could not speak. A horrible sensation, as if he were about to be attacked by a fit, assailed him, and he had to battle with it to think and try to grasp what this meant. One moment there was the fear that violence had been used; the next that it meant a willing flight; and he was fiercely struggling with the bitter thoughts which came, suggesting that his love for this delicate, gentle girl was a mockery, for she was either weak, or had long enough before bound herself to another, when he was brought back to the present by the action of the Squire, who, after a sharp glance round, stooped to pick up the door-key from where it lay on the carpet after being turned and pushed out by means of a piece of wire, in the hope, as suggested by Samuel, that it could be picked out afterwards at the bottom of the door, a plan which had completely failed.
Wilton thrust in the key, turned it, and opened the door, to admit his wife and the maid.
“Miss Kate, Miss Kate,” cried the latter.
“Call louder,” said Wilton, mockingly. “There’s no one here.”
“James, James, my dear, what does this mean?” cried Mrs Wilton excitedly.
“Bed not been slept in; window open—ladder outside—can’t you see?”
Eliza looked at him wildly, as if she could not grasp his words; then with a cry she rushed to a wardrobe, dragged it open, and examined the hooks and pegs.
“Hat—waterproof!” she cried; and then with a faint shriek—“Gone?”
“Yes, gone,” said Wilton brutally. “Here, Maria; this way.”
“Yes, yes; Claud’s room. Come quickly, Doctor, pray.”
Pierce Leigh followed the Wiltons along the corridor, hardly knowing where he was going, in the wild turmoil which raged, in his brain. There were moments when he felt as if he were going mad; others when he was ready to think that he was suffering from some strange aberration which distorted everything he saw and heard, till he was brought back to himself by the Squire’s voice which begat an intense desire to know the worst.
“Here, Claud,” he shouted, after thumping hard at his son’s bedroom door without result. “Claud! No nonsense, sir; I want you. Something serious has happened. Answer at once if you are here.”
There was not a sound to be heard, and Mrs Wilton sobbed aloud.
“Oh, my boy, my boy! I’m sure he is dead.”
“Bah!” cried Wilton, angrily. “Here, who has been trying to get in this room?”
No one answered, and Wilton bent down and looked through the keyhole.
“Has anyone pushed the key out to make it fall inside?”
A low murmur of inquiry followed the question, but there was no reply.
“Come round to the front, Doctor,” said Wilton then, and Leigh followed him in silence downstairs and out to where the men were waiting with the ladder.
This was placed up against the window which matched with Kate’s at the other end of the house, and at a sign from Wilton, Leigh once more mounted, acting in a mechanical way, as if he were no longer master of his own acts, but completely influenced by his companion.
“Window fastened?” cried Wilton.
“Yes.”
“Break it. Mind; don’t cut your hand.”
But as Wilton spoke there was the crash of glass, Leigh thrust in his hand, and unfastened the casement, which he flung open and stepped in, the Squire following.
In this case the bed was tumbled from Claud having been lying down outside, but it was evident to his father that he had descended in the ordinary way, after locking his room and placing the key in his pocket, so as to make it seem that he was still in the room.
“That will do,” said Wilton, gruffly. “We can go down, and it must be by the way we came.”
He looked at the young doctor as if expecting him to ask some questions, but Leigh did not speak a word, merely drawing back for his companion to descend.
“You’ll hold your tongue about all this, Mr Leigh?” he said.
“Of course, sir,” said the young man coldly. “It is no affair of mine.”
“No, nor anybody else’s but mine,” cried Wilton, fiercely. Then as soon as he reached the foot of the ladder he gazed fiercely at his two men.
“Take that ladder back,” he said; “and mind this: if I find that any man I employ has been chattering about this business, I discharge him on the instant.—Thank you, Doctor, for coming. Of course, you will make a charge. The young lady seems to prefer fresh air.”
Leigh looked at him wildly, and strode rapidly away.
“Disappointed at losing his patient,” muttered Wilton, as he went in, to find his wife waiting for him with both her trembling hands extended.
“Quick!” she cried; “tell me the worst,” as she caught his arm.
He passed his arm about her waist, and seemed to sweep her into the library, where he closed the door, and pushed her down into an easy chair.
“There is no worst,” he said, in a low voice. “Now, look here; you must keep your mouth shut, and be as surprised as I am. It’s all right. She was only a bit scared yesterday. The boy knew what he was about. The cunning jade has bolted with him.”
“Gone—Kate?” cried Mrs Wilton.
“Yes; Claud was throwing dust in our stupid old eyes. The money won’t go out of the family, old girl. They’re on the way to be married now, and as for John Garstang—let him do his worst.”
“Pierce, darling, what has happened?” cried Jenny, as her brother entered the room and sank into a chair. “Oh,” she cried wildly, as she flew to him to throw her arms about his neck and gazed in his ghastly face, “it was for Kate. Oh, Pierce, don’t say she’s dead!”
“Yes,” he said, in a voice full of agony; “dead to me.”