Chapter Twenty One.
The Coming Home.
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the girl; “it’s Mark—it’s Mark! Oh, oh, oh!” she kept on in a peculiar sob. But she tottered to the window and undid the brass latch with trembling hands, when Mark pressed the glass door open, sprang in, closed the leaf, fastened it, and, flinging one arm round the sobbing girl, clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Hold your row, you silly fool! Couldn’t you see it was me?”
“Ye-ye-yes, Mark. Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come.”
“Seems like it—squealing everybody else out of bed to come and ketch me.”
“Oh, oh, oh, Mark dear!” sobbed the girl. “Take care,” and she clung to him.
“Why, of course I will,” whispered the groom. “My word! I didn’t know you could come hysterics like that,” and as he spoke he tried to comfort the trembling girl, succeeding to some extent, while another singular thing took place in that certainly unhaunted room.
For the big ugly pair of boots began, not to walk according to their nature when set in motion, but to glide in a singular way in the moonlight, following their tightened strings, passing round the head of the quilted couch and into the conservatory, but without a sound.
“Oh, oh, Mark!” sobbed the girl, with a shudder.
“What, beginning again? What a little silly it is!”
“But come away.”
“Well, I’m coming away. Come on.”
“No, no; not that way. Oh!”
“Be quiet, or you’ll be waking someone,” whispered Mark.
“I can’t help it,” sobbed Jane. “It wasn’t you that frightened me, Mark dear, it was the burglars.”
“The what? Where?”
“Oh, I’d dropped asleep, Mark, and the lamp burnt out, and the clock woke me up, and then I saw it. Oh, horrid!”
“Be quiet, I tell you. What did you see?”
“That great big pair of boots in the moonlight there.”
“Where?” cried Mark, doubtingly.
“Down there by the blue couch.”
“Stuff! There ain’t no boots—old boots nor any other boots.”
“Ain’t there, Mark? Oh, there was, there was.”
“Bosh! You’ve been dreaming.”
“Have I?” said the girl, after a long stare about the moonlit carpet. “I thought I saw them.” Then, with a quick change: “Wherever have you been?”
“Oh, only to the races with the guv’nor.”
“But you ain’t been racing till this time o’ night?” cried the girl, suspiciously.
“Well, not quite. Some on ’em—bookies and jocks—got up a bit o’ dinner.”
“I don’t believe it. What for?”
“All along o’ settling up, and that sort of thing.”
“Settling up? What’s that—paying up?”
“Yes, my gal.”
“I know what that means. Now then, out with it.”
“Wait till the morning,” said Mark, grinning.
“How much was it? No keeping it back. If you do, it’s all off, and I’ll never speak to you again. Now then, let this be a lesson to you. I will know. How much have you lost?”
“Guess.”
“I won’t guess. It’s too serious a matter.”
“So it is, my lass; so it is, and I’ll make a clean breast of it, Jenny.”
“Yes, you’d better.”
“I’ve won!” he cried, catching the girl in his arms.
“What! I don’t believe it.”
“I have, and enough, with what the brewers would advance, to take a nice little country pub—one we can make into a hotel.”
“Ah, well,” said Jane, primly, “it ain’t no time to be talking about no hotels nor publics in the middle o’ the night like this.”
“Why not?”
“Because it ain’t proper. Look here; is Mr Trimmer coming home?”
“What, ain’t he at home neither?”
“No, nobody’s come back but you. What about master? Is he along with her ladyship?”
“No; he was took bad just afore the race, but Dr Granton give him a pick-me-up that kep’ him going till he’d won the race.”
“Her ladyship had give him a talking-to, I suppose?”
Mark grinned, winked, and lifted his elbow in a peculiar way, suggestive of drinking.
“Oh-h-h!” exclaimed Jane, in a half-whisper. “What a shame!”
“Sh!” whispered the groom. “Not a word. Don’t say a word to a soul. I wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with it, Jenny. I believe it was on’y a glass or two of fizz on the top of a bucketful of excitement because he was going to ride.”
“But there it is, you see, Mark! horses and racing leads to drinking, and I mean to think twice before I tie myself to anyone who drinks and gambles. Is master with her ladyship now?”
“No, I tell you; he’s badly, and stopping at Simpkins’s, with Master Syd taking care of him; and her ladyship was took bad too, after a rumpus at the hotel.”
“Oh, how disgraceful!” interrupted Jane. “Her ladyship stooping to do that, and master getting tipsy and running races. I shall give notice, Mark. I’ve got a character to lose.”
“You’d better! You don’t leave here till—you know.”
“Oh, no, I don’t; and now I’m going to bed. But tell me, where did you say her ladyship was?”
“How many more times?” cried the groom, impatiently. “I’ve told you five or six times.”
“You haven’t, Mark.”
“I have. Her ladyship was took bad at the hotel when she found the guv’nor looking quite tight afore he went off to win the race, and only just in time to get up to the scratch. Then as soon as it was over the doctor has to physic him and see to her ladyship, and the doctor and Lady Tilborough takes her to Oakleigh.”
“Why didn’t they bring her home?” said Jane, sharply.
“How should I know? Because Lady Tilborough thought perhaps that master would join ’em there and make it up. But I dunno. Had too much business of my own to ’tend to.”
“What business?” said Jane, suspiciously. “Getting along with a bad set of touts, drinking, I suppose.”
“Get out! I was making sure of the money I’d won while I could. That’s right; hang away from a fellow! Just like a woman! Think you’re going to ketch something?”
“That will do,” said the girl, coldly. “You smell horrid of beer and smoke. Oh, Mark!” she whispered; and he had no room for complaints of a want of warmth, for the girl flung her arms about him, clinging tightly, and placed her lips closely to his ear. “There,” she cried, in an agitated way; “hark! Is that fancy? There are burglars in the house.”
Mark drew the girl more into the shade near the fireplace, and softly picked up the brightly-polished poker from where it lay. For he had distinctly heard a soft rattle as if of a latchkey, the opening and closing of the hall door, and then as he stood listening there was the scratch of a match which faintly lit up the hall as far as they could see through the drawing-room door.
Directly after there was a click, as of a candlestick being removed, an augmentation of the light which approached, and in the full intention of—to use the groom’s own words—“letting ’em have it,” Mark thrust the girl behind him, and made ready to bring the poker down heavily upon the burglar’s head.
But he did not, for the head and face, looking yellow and ghastly by the light of a chamber candle, were those of Lady Lisle’s agent and confidential man.
Possibly from weariness, there was no spasmodic start, Trimmer staring glassy-eyed and strange, and with his black felt hat looking battered and soiled, while in their revulsion of feeling Jane and Mark found no words to say.
“What are you two doing here?” said Trimmer at last, speaking in rather a tongue-tied fashion, but as if in full possession of his faculties.
“Waiting up to let you in, sir,” said Jane, sharply.
“It is not true,” said the agent. “You must have known I could let myself in. You two are holding a disgraceful clandestine meeting; and I shall consider it my duty to report these proceedings when her ladyship sees me after breakfast. I am called away for a few hours to London, and upon my return the whole house is in disorder.”
“Thank ye, sir; then I shall speak to her ladyship myself as soon as she comes home,” said Jane, pertly.
“What! Her ladyship not returned yet?”
“No, sir; and I’ve got to sit up till she do.”
“Er—where has she gone? Someone ill?”
“Haw, haw, haw! Hark at that, Jane! He didn’t see her ladyship’s carriage at the races. Oh, no! He didn’t go and see old Sam Simpkins, the trainer, and make a bet or two; not him! And I wasn’t close behind him in the crowd when the guv’nor came in a winner, and I didn’t see him bang his hat down on the ground and stamp on it. Oh, no! You give me that hat, Mr Trimmer, sir, and I’ll brush and sponge it and iron it into shape so that it’ll look as good as new.”
The agent’s countenance went through several changes before it settled down into a ghastly smile.
“Well, well,” he said, “I must confess to being attracted to seeing the big race, but I did not know you would be there, Mark. But you surprise me. Sir Hilton and her ladyship not returned? A great surprise, though, Mark—Jane. You know, of course? Sir Hilton returning to the old evil ways.”
“Yah? Chuck it up, Mr Trimmer, sir,” said Mark, in a tone of disgust; “and when you tell her ladyship you caught me and Jane here talking after she let me in, just you tell her how much you won on the race.”
“Won—won—won, my lad?” said the agent, with loud, louder, loudest in his utterance of the word. “I’ve lost; I’m nearly ruined. Oh, it has been a horrible day. Here, I’m ill. I must have a little brandy, I’m ready to faint.”
“Sorry for you, sir,” said Mark, as the ghastly-looking man turned to go back across the hall.
“Same here, sir,” said Jane, with a grave curtsey; “but I don’t see as it’ll do you any good now you’re ruined to try and ruin us.”
“And if I was you, sir, I wouldn’t touch another drop, sir,” put in Mark. “I’ve seen chaps in your state before after a race—chaps who have lost every penny—go and fly to the drink.”
Trimmer gazed vacantly at the speaker, passed his tongue over his parched lips, and said feebly—
“Do I—do I look as if I had been drinking, Mark?”
“That’s so, sir; and as if, seeing what a stew you’re in over your losses, it hadn’t took a bit of effect upon you.”
“No, no,” said the agent, slowly. “I don’t feel as if I had had more than a glass.”
“And all the time, sir, as the conductors say, you’re ‘full up’; and if you put any more on it you’ll soon find it out, and come on with a fit of the horrors, same as some poor beggars have before there’s an inquest.”
The agent shuddered, and unconsciously began to play with the extinguisher of the plated candlestick, lifting it off the cone upon which it rested, putting it back, and ending by lifting it off quickly, and, as if to illustrate the groom’s meaning, putting out the light.
“Pst! Hark! What’s that?” cried Jane, excitedly. “Here they are!”
Trimmer started violently. “Oh,” he cried, “I can’t meet anybody now. Mark—Jane—don’t say that I have been out I shall not—tell her ladyship—a word.”
“Thank ye for nothing,” said Mark, mockingly, as the door closed upon the departing agent. “How the dickens did he do that?” he added, for a flower-pot in the conservatory fell with a crash upon the encaustic tiled floor, and Jane uttered a gasp.
But the next instant the front door-bell was rung violently.
“Come with me, Mark,” whispered the girl, and they both hurried into the hall, the groom to open the door, and Jane to busy herself with trembling hands striking matches to light a couple of the chamber candlesticks standing ready upon the slab.