When Ghost Meets Ghost Part 10

"Yes--whatever you wish."

"Lead your dog till you are outside the Park. If he is seen he may be shot. I could not bear that that dog should be shot." Something in the man's tone and manner has made it safe for the girl to overstep the boundaries of chance speech to an utter stranger.

He has no right--that he feels--to presume upon this semi-confidence of an impulsive girl, whoever she is. True, her beauty in that last glory of the sunset puts resolution to the test. But he _has_ no right, and there's an end on't! "I will tie Achilles up," he says. "I should not like him to be shot."

"Oh!--is he Achilles?"

"His mother was Thetis."

"Then, of course, he is Achilles." At this point the boundaries of strangers.h.i.+p seem insistent. After all, this man may be Tom or d.i.c.k or Harry. "You will excuse my speaking to you," says the young lady. "I had no one to send, and I saw you from the terrace. It was for the dog's sake."

In his chivalrous determination not to overdraw the blank cheque she has signed for him unawares, the stranger conceives that a few words of dry apology will meet the case, and leave him to go on his way. So, though powerfully ignoring the fact that that outcome will be an unwelcome one, he replies:--"I quite understand, and I am sincerely grateful for your caution." He gets at a dog-chain in the pocket of his waterproof overcoat, and at the click of it Achilles comes to be tied up. As he fastens the clasp to its collar, he adds:--"I should not have let him run loose like this, only that I am so sure of him. He is town-bred and a stranger to the chase. He can collect sheep, owing to his ancestry; but he never does it now, because he has been forbidden." While he speaks these last words he is examining something in the dog's leather collar. "It will hold, I think," says he. "A cut in the strap--it looks like." Then this oddly befallen colloquy ends and each gives the other a dry good-evening. The young lady's last sight of that acquaintance of five minutes shows him endeavouring to persuade the dog not to drag on his chain. For Achilles, for some dog-reason man will never know, is no sooner leashed than he makes restraint necessary by pulling against it with all his might.

"I hope that collar won't break," says the young lady as she goes back to dress for dinner. The sun's gleam is dead, and the black cloud-bank that hides it now is the rain that is coming soon. See!--it has begun already.

Old Mrs. Solmes at the Ranger's Lodge, a mile distant, said to her old husband:--"Thou'rt a bad ma-an, Stephen, to leave thy goon about lwoaded, and the vary yoong boy handy to any mischief. Can'st thou not bide till there coom time for the lwoadin' of it?"

Said old Stephen sharply, "Gwun, wench? There be no _gwun_. 'Tis a roifle! And as fower the little Seth, yander staaple where it hangs is well up beyond the reach of un. Let a' be, Granny!"

The old woman, in whom grandmotherhood had overweighted all other qualities, by reason of little Seth's numerous first cousins, made no reply, but looked uneasily at the rifle on the wall. Little Seth--her appropriated grandchild, both his parents being dead--was too small at present to do any great harm to anyone but himself; but the time might come. He was credited with having swallowed an inch-brad, without visible inconvenience; and there was a threatening appearance in his eye as of one who would very soon climb up everywhere, fall off everything, appropriate the forbidden, break the frangible, and, in short, behave as--according to his grandmother--his father had done before him.

His old grandfather, who had a combative though not unamiable disposition, took down the rifle as an act of self-a.s.sertion, and walked out into the twilight with it on his shoulder. It was simply a contradictious action, as there was no warranty for it in vert and venison. But he had to garnish his action with an appearance of plausibility, and nothing suggested itself. The only course open to him was to get away out of sight, with implication of a purpose vaguely involving fire-arms. A short turn in the oak-wood--as far, perhaps, as Drews Thurrock--would fortify his position, without committing him to details: he could make secrecy about them a point of discipline. He walked away over the gra.s.sland, a fine, upright old figure; in whose broad shoulders, seen from behind, an insight short of clairvoyance might have detected what is called _temper_--meaning a want of it. He vanished into the oak-wood, where the Druid's Stone attests the place of sacrifice, human or otherwise.

Some few minutes later the echoes of a rifle-shot, unmistakable alike for that of shot-gun or revolver, circled the belt of hills that looks on Ancester Towers, and died at Grantley Thorpe. Old Stephen, when he reappeared at the Lodge half an hour later, could explain his share in this with only a mixed satisfaction. For though his need of his rifle--whether real or not--had justified its readiness for use, he had failed as a marksman; the stray dog he fired at, after vanis.h.i.+ng in a copse for a few minutes, having scoured away in a long detour; as he judged, making for the Castle.

"And a rare good hap for thee, husband!" said the old woman when she heard this. "Whatever has gotten thy wits, ma'an, to win out and draa'

trigger on a pet tyke of some visitor lady at the Too'ers?"

"Will ye be tellun me this, and tellun me that, Keziah? I tell 'ee one thing, wench, it be no consarn o' mine whose dog be run loose in th'

Park. Be they the Queen's own, my orders say shoot un! Do'ant thee know next month be August?" Nevertheless, the old man was not altogether sorry that he had missed. He might have been called over the coals for killing a dog-visitor to the Towers. He chose to affect regret for discipline's sake, and alleged that the dog had escaped into the wood only because he had no second cartridge. This was absurd. In these days of quick-shooters it might have been otherwise. In those, the only abominations of the sort were Colonel Colt's revolvers; and _they_ were a great novelty, opening up a new era in murder.

The truth was that this view of the culprit's ident.i.ty had dawned on him as soon as he got a second view of the dog visibly making for the Castle--almost too far in any case for a shot at anything smaller than a doe--and he would probably have held his hand for both reasons even if a reload had been possible.

Lady Gwendolen, treasuring in her heart a tale of adventure--however trivial--to tell at the dinner-table in the evening, submitted herself to be prepared for that function. She seemed absent in mind; and Lutwyche her maid, observing this, skipped intermediate reasonings and straightway hoped that the cause of this absence of mind had come over with the Conqueror and had sixty thousand a year. Meanwhile she wanted to know which dress, my lady, this evening?--and got no answer. Her ladys.h.i.+p was listening to something at a distance; or, rather, having heard something at a distance, was listening for a repet.i.tion of it. "I wonder what that can have been?" said she. For fire-arms in July are torpid mostly, and this was a gunshot somewhere.

"They are firing at the b.u.t.ts at Stamford Norton, my lady," said Lutwyche; who always knew things, sometimes rightly--sometimes wrongly.

This time, the latter.

"Then the wind must have gone round. Besides, it would come again.

Listen!" Thus her ladys.h.i.+p, and both listened. But nothing came again.

Lady Gwendolen was as beautiful as usual that evening, but contrary to custom silent and _distraite_. She did not tell the story of the Man in the Park and his dog. She kept it to herself. She was unresponsive to the visible devotion of a Duke's eldest son, who came up to Lutwyche's standard in all particulars. She did not even rise to the enthusiasm of a very old family friend, the great surgeon Sir Coupland Merridew, about the view from his window across the Park, although each had seen the same sunset effect. She only said:--"Oh--have they put you in the Traveller's Room, Sir Coupland? Yes--the view is very fine!" and became absent again. She retired early, asking to be excused on the score of fatigue; not, however, seriously resenting her mother's pa.s.sing reference to a nursery rhyme about Sleepy-head, whose friends kept late hours, nor her "Why, child, you've had nothing to tire you!" She was asleep in time to avoid the sound of a dog whining, wailing, protesting vainly, with a great wrong on his soul, not to be told for want of language.

She woke with a start very early, to identify this disturbance with something she lost in a dream, past recovery, owing to this sudden awakening. She had her hand on the bell-rope at her bed's head, and had all but pulled it before she identified the blaze of light in her room as the exordium of the new day. The joy of the swallows at the dawn was musical in the ivy round her window, open through the warm night; and the turtle-doves had much to say, and were saying it, in the world of leaf.a.ge out beyond. But there was no joy in the persistent voice of that dog, and no surmise of its hearer explained it.

She found her feet, and shoes to put them in, before she was clear about her own intentions; then in all haste got herself into as much clothing as would cover the risks of meeting the few early risers possible at such an hour--it could but be some chance groom or that young gardener--and, opening her door with thief-like stealth, stole out through the stillness night had left behind, past the doors of sleepers who were losing the sweetest of the day. So she thought--so we all think--when some chance gives us precious hours that others are wasting in stupid sleep. But even _she_ would not have risen but for that plaintive intermittent wail and a growing construction of a cause for it--all fanciful perhaps--that her uneasy mind would still be at work upon. She _must_ find out the story of it. More sleep now was absurd.

Two bolts and a chain--not insuperable obstacles--and she was free of the side-garden. An early riser--the one she had foreseen, a young gardener she knew--with an empty basket to hold flowers for the still sleeping household to refresh the house with in an hour, and its bed-bound sluggards in two or three, was astir and touched a respectful cap with some inner misgiving that this unwonted vision was a ghost. But he showed a fine discipline, and called it "My lady" with presence of mind. Ghost or no, that was safe! "What _is_ that dog, Oliver?" said the vision.

The question made all clear. The answer was speculative. "Happen it might be his lords.h.i.+p's dog that came yesterday--feeling strange in a strange place belike?"

"No dog came yesterday. Lord c.u.mberworld hasn't a dog. I _must_ know.

Where is it?"

Oliver was not actor enough not to show that he was concealing wonderment at the young lady's vehemence. His eyes remained wide open in token thereof.

"In the stables, by the sound of it, my lady," was his answer.

His lady turned without a word, going straight for the stables; and he followed when, recollecting him, she looked back to say, "Yes--come!"

Grooms are early risers in a well-kept stable. There is always something to be done, involving pails, or straps, or cloths, or barrows, or brushes, even at five in the morning in July. When the young gardener, running on ahead, jangled at the side-gate yard-bell, more than one pair of feet was on the move within; and there was the cry of the dog, sure enough, almost articulate with keen distress about some unknown wrong.

"What _is_ the dog, Archibald?--what _is_ the dog?" The speaker was too anxious for the answer to frame her question squarely. But the old Scotch groom understood. "Wha can tell that?" says he. "He's just stra'ad away from his home, or lost the track of a new maister. They do, ye ken, even the collies on the hillsides. Will your ladys.h.i.+p see him?"

"Yes--yes! That is what I came for. Let me." A younger groom, awaiting this instruction, goes for the dog, whose clamour has increased tenfold, becoming almost frenzy when he sees his friend of the day before; for he is Achilles beyond a doubt. Achilles, mad with joy--or is it unendurable distress?--or both?

"Your leddys.h.i.+p will have seen him before, doubtless," says old Archibald. He does not say, but means:--"We are puzzled, but submissive, and look forward to enlightenment."

"Let him go--yes, _I_ know him!--don't hold him. Oh, Achilles, you darling dog--it _is_ you!... Yes--yes--let him go--he'll be all right.... Yes, dear, you _shall_ kiss me as much as you like." Thia was in response to a tremendous accolade, after which the dog crouched humbly at his idol's feet; whimpering a little still, beneath his breath, about something he could not say. She for her part caressed and soothed the frightened creature, asking the while for information about the manner of his appearance the night before.

It seemed that on the previous evening about eight o'clock he had been found in the Park just outside the door of the walled garden south of the Castle, as though he was seeking to follow someone who had pa.s.sed through. That at least was the impression of Margery, a kitchen-maid, whom inquiry showed to have been the source of the first person plural in the narrative of Tom Kettering, the young groom, who had come upon the dog crouched against this door; and, judging him to be in danger in the open Park, had brought him home to the stables for security.

How had the collie behaved when brought up to the stable? Well--he had been fair quiet--only that he was always for going out after any who were leaving, and always "wakeriff, panting, and watching like," till he, Tom Kettering, tied him up for the night. And then he started crying and kept on at it till they turned out, maybe half an hour since.

"He has not got his own collar," said the young lady suddenly. "Where is his own collar?"

"He had ne'er a one on his neck when I coom upon him," says Tom. "So we putten this one on for a makes.h.i.+ft."

"It's mair than leekly, my lady,"--thus old Archibald--"that he will have slipped from out his ain by reason of eempairfect workmans.h.i.+p of the clasp. Ye'll ken there's a many cheap collars sold...." The old boy is embarking on a lecture on collar-structure, which, however, he is not allowed to finish. The young lady interrupts.

"I saw his collar," says she, "and it was _not_ a collar like this"--that is, a metal one with a hasp--"it was a strap with a buckle, and his master said there was a cut in it. That was why it broke." Then, seeing the curiosity on the faces of her hearers, who would have thought it rather presumptuous to ask for an explanation, she volunteers a short one ending with:--"The question is now, how can we get him back to his master?" It never crossed her mind that any evil hap had come about.

After all, the dog's excitement and distress were no more than his separation from his owner and his strange surroundings might have brought about in any case. The whole thing was natural enough without a.s.suming disaster, especially as seen by the light of that cut in the strap. The dog was a town-bred dog, and once out of his master's sight, might get demoralised and all astray.

No active step for restoring Achilles to his owner seeming practicable, nothing was left but to await the action that gentleman was sure to adopt to make his loss known. Obviously the only course open to us now was to take good care of the wanderer, and keep an ear on the alert for news of his owner's ident.i.ty. All seemed to agree to this, except Achilles.

During the brief consultation the young lady had taken a seat on a clean truss of hay, partly from an impulse most of us share, to sit or lie on fresh hay whenever practicable; partly to promote communion with the dog, who crouched at her feet wors.h.i.+pping, not quite with the open-mouthed, loose-tongued joy one knows so well in a perfectly contented dog, but now and again half-uttering a stifled sound--a sound that might have ended in a wail. When, the point seeming established that no further step could be taken at present, Lady Gwendolen rose to depart, a sudden frenzy seized Achilles. There is nothing more pathetic than a dog's effort to communicate his meaning--clear to him as to a man--and his inability to do it for want of speech.

"You darling dog!" said Gwendolen. "What can it be he wants? Leave him alone and let us see.... No--don't touch his chain!" For Achilles, crouched one moment at her feet, the next leaping suddenly away, seemed like to go mad with distress.

The young groom Tom said something with bated breath, as not presuming to advise too loud. His mistress caught his meaning, if not his words.

"What!"--she spoke suddenly--"knows where he is--his master?" The thought struck a cold chill to her heart. It could only mean some mishap to the man of yesterday. What sort of mishap?

Some understanding seems to pa.s.s between the four men--Archibald, the two young grooms, and the gardener--something they will not speak of direct to her ladys.h.i.+p. "What?--what's that?" says she, impatient of their scrupulousness towards her sheltered inexperience of calamity.

"Tell me straight out!"