Johnny Ludlow, First Series. Mrs. Henry Wood
of self-torture and repentance.
It occurred when we were at home for the summer holidays, just after the crop of hay was got in, and the bare fields looked as white in the blazing sun as if they had been scorched. Tod and I were in the three-cornered meadow next the fold-yard. He was making a bat-net with gauze and two sticks. Young Jacobson had shown us his the previous day, and a bat he had caught with it; and Tod thought he would catch bats too. But he did not seem to be making much hand at the net, and somehow managed to send the pointed end of the stick through a corner of it.
“I don’t think that gauze is strong enough, Tod.”
“I am afraid it is not, Johnny. Here, catch hold of it. I’ll go indoors, and see if they can’t find me some better. Hannah must have some.”
He flew off past the ricks, and leaped the little gate into the fold-yard—a tall, strong fellow, who might leap the Avon. In a few minutes I heard his voice again, and went to meet him. Tod was coming away from the house with Lena.
“Have you the gauze, Tod!”
“Not a bit of it; the old cat won’t look for any; says she hasn’t time. I’ll hinder her time a little. Come along, Lena.”
The “old cat” was Hannah. I told you she and he were often at daggers drawn. Hannah had a chronic complaint in the shape of ill-temper, and Tod called her names to her face. Upon going in to ask her for the gauze, he found her dressing Hugh and Lena to go out, and she just turned him out of the nursery, and told him not to bother her then with his gauze and his wants. Lena ran after Tod; she liked him better than all of us put together. She had on a blue silk frock, and a white straw hat with daisies round it; open-worked stockings were on her pretty little legs. By which we saw she was about to be taken out for show.
“What are you going to do with her, Tod?”
“I’m going to hide her,” answered Tod, in his decisive way. “Keep where you are, Johnny.”
Lena enjoyed the rebellion. In a minute or two Tod came back alone. He had left her between the ricks in the three-cornered field, and told her not to come out. Then he went off to the front of the house, and I stood inside the barn, talking to Mack, who was hammering away at the iron of the cart-wheel. Out came Hannah by-and-by. She had been dressing herself as well as Hugh.
“Miss Lena!”
No answer. Hannah called again, and then came up the fold-yard, looking about.
“Master Johnny, have you seen the child?”
“What child?” I was not going to spoil Tod’s sport by telling her.
“Miss Lena. She has got off somewhere, and my mistress is waiting for her in the basket-chaise.”
“I see her just now along of Master Joseph,” spoke up Mack, arresting his noisy hammer.
“See her where?” asked Hannah.
“Close here, a-going that way.”
He pointed to the palings and gate that divided the yard from the three-cornered field. Hannah ran there and stood looking over. The ricks were within a short stone’s throw, but Lena kept close. Hannah called out again, and threw her gaze over the empty field.
“The child’s not there. Where can she have got to, tiresome little thing?”
In the house, and about the house, and out of the house, as the old riddle says, went Hannah. It was jolly to see her. Mrs. Todhetley and Hugh were seated patiently in the basket-chaise before the hall-door, wondering what made Hannah so long. Tod, playing with the mild she-donkey’s ears, and laughing to himself, stood talking graciously to his step-mother. I went round. The Squire had gone riding into Evesham; Dwarf Giles, who made the nattiest little groom in the county, for all his five-and-thirty years, behind him.
“I can’t find Miss Lena,” cried Hannah, coming out.
“Not find Miss Lena!” echoed Mrs. Todhetley. “What do you mean, Hannah? Have you not dressed her?”
“I dressed her first, ma’am, before Master Hugh, and she went out of the nursery. I can’t think where she can have got to. I’ve searched everywhere.”
“But, Hannah, we must have her directly; I am late as it is.”
They were going over to the Court to a children’s early party at the Sterlings’. Mrs. Todhetley stepped out of the basket-chaise to help in the search.
“I had better fetch her, Tod,” I whispered.
He nodded yes. Tod never bore malice, and I suppose he thought Hannah had had enough of a hunt for that day. I ran through the fold-yard to the ricks, and called to Lena.
“You can come out now, little stupid.”
But no Lena answered. There were seven ricks in a group, and I went into all the openings between them. Lena was not there. It was rather odd, and I looked across the field and towards the lane and the coppice, shouting out sturdily.
“Mack, have you seen Miss Lena pass indoors?” I stayed to ask him, in going back.
No: Mack had not noticed her; and I went round to the front again, and whispered to Tod.
“What a muff you are, Johnny! She’s between the ricks fast enough. No danger that she’d come out when I told her to stay!”
“But she’s not there indeed, Tod. You go and look.”
Tod vaulted off, his long legs seeming to take flying leaps, like a deer’s, on his way to the ricks.
To make short of the story, Lena was gone. Lost. The house, the outdoor buildings, the gardens were searched for her, and she was not to be found. Mrs. Todhetley’s fears flew to the ponds at first; but it was impossible she could have come to grief in either of the two, as they were both in view of the barn-door where I and Mack had been. Tod avowed that he had put her amid the ricks to hide her; and it was not to be imagined she had gone away. The most feasible conjecture was, that she had run from between the ricks when Hannah called to her, and was hiding in the lane.
Tod was in a fever, loudly threatening Lena with unheard-of whippings, to cover his real concern. Hannah looked red, Mrs. Todhetley white. I was standing by him when the cook came up; a sharp woman, with red-brown eyes. We called her Molly.
“Mr. Joseph,” said she, “I have heard of gipsies stealing children.”
“Well?” returned Tod.
“There was one at the door a while agone—an insolent one, too. Perhaps Miss Lena——”
“Which way did she go?—which door was she at?” burst forth Tod.
“ ’Twas a man, sir. He came up to the kitchen-door, and steps inside as bold as brass, asking me to buy some wooden skewers he’d cut, and saying something about a sick child. When I told him to march, that we never encouraged tramps here, he wanted to answer me, and I just shut the door in his face. A regular gipsy, if ever I see one,” continued Molly; “his skin tawny and his wild hair jet-black. Maybe, in revenge, he have stole off the little miss.”
Tod took up the notion, and his face turned white. “Don’t say anything of this to Mrs. Todhetley,” he said to Molly. “We must just scour the country.”
But in departing from the kitchen-door, the gipsy man could not by any possibility have made his way to the rick-field without going through the fold-yard. And he had not done that. It was true that Lena might have run round and got into the gipsy’s way. Unfortunately, none of the men were about, except Mack and old Thomas. Tod sent these off in different directions; Mrs. Todhetley drove away in her pony-chaise to the lanes round, saying the child might have strayed there; Molly and the maids started elsewhere; and I and Tod went flying along a by-road that branched off in a straight line, as it were, from the kitchen-door. Nobody could keep up with Tod, he went so fast; and I was not tall and strong