Johnny Ludlow, First Series. Mrs. Henry Wood
you seen her?”
“Not her. But look there. That must be the man Molly spoke of.”
Tod crashed through the hedge as if it had been so many cobwebs, and accosted the gipsy. I followed more carefully, but got my face scratched.
“Were you up at the great house, begging, a short time ago?” demanded Tod, in an awful passion.
The man turned round on Tod with a brazen face. I say brazen, because he did it so independently; but it was not an insolent face in itself; rather a sad one, and very sickly.
“What’s that you ask me, master?”
“I ask whether it was you who were at the Manor-house just now, begging?” fiercely repeated Tod.
“I was at a big house offering wares for sale, if you mean that, sir. I wasn’t begging.”
“Call it what you please,” said Tod, growing white again. “What have you done with the little girl?”
For, you see, Tod had caught up the impression that the gipsy had stolen Lena, and he spoke in accordance with it.
“I’ve seen no little girl, master.”
“You have,” and Tod gave his foot a stamp. “What have you done with her?”
The man’s only answer was to turn round and walk off, muttering to himself. Tod pursued him, calling him a thief and other names; but nothing more satisfactory could he get out of him.
“He can’t have taken her, Tod. If he had, she’d be with him now. He couldn’t eat her, you know.”
“He may have given her to a confederate.”
“What to do? What do gipsies steal children for?”
Tod stopped in a passion, lifting his hand. “If you torment me with these frivolous questions, Johnny, I’ll strike you. How do I know what’s done with stolen children? Sold, perhaps. I’d give a hundred pounds out of my pocket at this minute if I knew where those gipsies were encamped.”
We suddenly lost the fellow. Tod had been keeping him in sight in the distance. Whether he disappeared up a gum-tree, or into a rabbit-hole, Tod couldn’t tell; but gone he was.
Up this lane, down that one; over this moor, across that common; so raced Tod and I. And the afternoon wore away, and we had changed our direction a dozen times: which possibly was not wise.
The sun was getting low as we passed Ragley gates, for we had finally got into the Alcester road. Tod was going to do what we ought to have done at first: report the loss at Alcester. Some one came riding along on a stumpy pony. It proved to be Gruff Blossom, groom to the Jacobsons. They called him “Gruff” because of his temper. He did touch his hat to us, which was as much as you could say, and spurred the stumpy animal on. But Tod made a sign to him, and he was obliged to stop and listen.
“The gipsies stole off little Miss Lena!” cried old Blossom, coming out of his gruffness. “That’s a rum go! Ten to one if you find her for a year to come.”
“But, Blossom, what do they do with the children they steal?” I asked, in a sort of agony.
“They cuts their hair off and dyes their skins brown, and then takes ’em out to fairs a ballad-singing,” answered Blossom.
“But why need they do it, when they have children of their own?”
“Ah, well, that’s a question I couldn’t answer,” said old Blossom. “Maybe their’n arn’t pretty children—Miss Lena, she is pretty.”
“Have you heard of any gipsies being encamped about here?” Tod demanded of him.
“Not lately, Mr. Joseph. Five or six months ago, there was a lot ’camped on the Markis’s ground. They warn’t there long.”
“Can’t you ride about, Blossom, and see after the child?” asked Tod, putting something into his hand.
Old Blossom pocketed it, and went off with a nod. He was riding about, as we knew afterwards, for hours. Tod made straight for the police-station at Alcester, and told his tale. Not a soul was there but Jenkins, one of the men.
“I haven’t seen no suspicious characters about,” said Jenkins, who seemed to be eating something. He was a big man, with short black hair combed on his forehead, and he had a habit of turning his face upwards, as if looking after his nose—a square ornament, that stood up straight.
“She is between four and five years old; a very pretty child, with blue eyes and a good deal of curling auburn hair,” said Tod, who was growing feverish.
Jenkins wrote it down—“Name, Todhetley. What Christian name?”
“Adalena, called ‘Lena.’ ”
“Recollect the dress, sir?”
“Pale blue silk; straw hat with wreath of daisies round it; open-worked white stockings, and thin black shoes; white drawers,” recounted Tod, as if he had prepared the list by heart coming along.
“That’s bad, that dress is,” said Jenkins, putting down the pen.
“Why is it bad?”
“ ‘Cause the things is tempting. Quite half the children that gets stole is stole for what they’ve got upon their backs. Tramps and that sort will run a risk for a blue silk that they’d not run for a brown holland pinafore. Auburn curls, too,” added Jenkins, shaking his head; “that’s a temptation also. I’ve knowed children sent back home with bare heads afore now. Any ornaments, sir?”
“She was safe to have on her little gold neck-chain and cross. They are very small, Jenkins—not worth much.”
Jenkins lifted his nose—not in disdain, it was a habit he had. “Not worth much to you, sir, who could buy such any day, but an uncommon bait to professional child-stealers. Were the cross a coral, or any stone of that sort?”
“It was a small gold cross, and the chain was thin. They could only be seen when her cloak was off. Oh, I forgot the cloak; it was white: llama, I think they call it. She was going to a child’s party.”
Some more questions and answers, most of which Jenkins took down. Handbills were to be printed and posted, and a reward offered on the morrow, if she was not previously found. Then we came away; there was nothing more to do at the station.
“Wouldn’t it have been better, Tod, had Jenkins gone out seeking her and telling of the loss abroad, instead of waiting to write all that down?”
“Johnny, if we don’t find her to night, I shall go mad,” was all he answered.
He went back down Alcester Street at a rushing pace—not a run but a quick walk.
“Where are you going now?” I asked.
“I’m going up hill and down dale until I find that gipsies’ encampment. You can go on home, Johnny, if you are tired.”
I had not felt tired until we were in the police-station. Excitement keeps off fatigue. But I was not going to give in, and said I should stay with him.
“All right, Johnny.”
Before we were clear of Alcester, Budd the land-agent came up. He was turning out of the public-house at the corner. It was dusk then. Tod laid hold of him.
“Budd, you are always about, in all kinds of nooks and by-lanes: can you tell me of any encampment of gipsies between here and the Manor-house?”
The agent’s business took him abroad a great deal, you know, into the rural districts around.
“Gipsies’ encampment?” repeated Budd, giving both of us a stare. “There’s none that I know of. In the spring, a lot of them had the impudence to squat down on the Marquis’s——”