The Cottage in the Chine

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 299, 16 December 1911, Page 19

The Cottage in the Chine

■BY HEADON HXTJU CHAPTER Xn. MISSING. In the enclosure of the summit of the clilf stood John Budge, casting a critical eye over one of the huge motor-lorries nhicli had been loaded during the night w ith what looked like blocks of marble. Since the fa.ll of one of these blocks into tli C roadway, additional care had been taken in the process of loading, and no lorry was allowed to leave till the uiana <rer was assured that there was no chance of the accident being repeated. "Ye?, von can take Tier out, Wilson,'' said Budge at last to the driver, wno was already seated with his hand on the steering-wheel. But the man hesitated, naif turning to the mate who sat beside him. "Before vc start, sir, there is something that I wish to report t-o you," said the latter. "Even if you laugh at me," ho added nervously. "Come, spit it out." said Budge roughly. "I was in Number Four shaft, getting this consignment ready," said the man, •whose name was Cooper, "when I could Imve sworn I heard a woman scream. Twould have been about one o'c!nc ; just before I had finished the job and knocked off." "Bah! You must have been dreaming; I'll take my oath there was no woman in the quarry. Couldn't hav<H been," growled the manager. "That's what I thought mvsrlf nt t v ~ time," Cooper admitted. "Yet the sounl, though it was faint and muffled-like, seemed to be a woman's voice, and not far away, either." "If it was a woman she must have been down on the beach or in a boat, and the noise reached you through the seaward adit in the cliff," said Budge. "More likely it was a gull screeching. They holler at night sometimes, when there's weather coming. Anyway it couldn't 'iave been in the quarry. Off Ton go!"

The manager watched the vehicle through the gates of the enclosure, and when it had dwindled into thn distance alone: the track over the downs he shut and looked tho cute behind him. Tt was a plnrious summer mornin;?. the sun shininc in a cloudless sW. and the blue sen nhrmrrerinir under the kisses of a gentle breeze. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was nearlv seven o'clock. "I reckon Martha's kettle will soon be on the boil," Tie muttered. "Blessed if I don't no down and Bponge on the good soul for a cup of tea.'' Mr Budge, though arrived at middle age, was a bachelor, and since big instalment as manaerer of the quArrv, bad lived in the enclosure, ruling with a rod of iron the other inmates of that strange encampment. But prior to the revival of the marble industry, he had been head gamekeeper at the Abbey, a position which his father had held in, the service of the present Lord Purbeck's two predecessors in the title. Devotion to "the family'* was ingrained in John Budge's stern, secretive nature, and it was repaid by the whole-hearted confidence of his employer. Running this sentiment very close, if not keeping pace with it, was a devotion of another kind—the steadfast adoration of a shy man for Martha Calloway. They had been boy and girl together in the hamlet behind the Abbey, and though he had been beaten as a suitor, without much effort on his part, by his more showy rival, Charles Calloway, eventually head gardener at the Abbey, he had never wavered in his old allegiance. And now the reopening of the abandoned quarry had brought him into closer contact with the comely widow who had almost been his sweetheart and might have been his wife if he had been a little more enterprising at the critical period. His new employment had entailed his leaving the keeper's cottage in the woods two miles inland for the encampment in the enclosure on the downs behind Martha's little house in the chine. Opportunities for meeting, at first by chance, and later ts a matter of course, had been frequent. The early morning cup of tea, at the koUr when Martha's kettle might be expected to be<on the boil, had come to be an institution taken advantage of at least fouV times a week by the lonely manager if the business of the quarry permitted, a further bond of union being that both Martha Calloway and her daughter Bessie were in the secret of the mysterious enterprise which the ostensible operations at the quarry veiled. Tho head gardeners widow was as devoted to the interests or "the family" as John Budge himself, andi Bessie would have gone through fire and water for Lady Madge, so Lord Purbeck had deemed it wiser to forestall any discoveries which their near residence to Devil's Gap would probably enable them to make, bytelling them the exact truth. So it waß no new thing for Mr Budge to descend by the short cut over the shoulder of the downs, and make his way through the climbing vegetable garden to the back door of the widow's cottage. •As he struck downwards along the littlensed path, ho nnt<?d with satisfaction a blue coil of smoke rising from the kitchen chimney far below, and he knew that he would not have long to wait for the desired refreshment. Martha and Bessie J»ere both early risers and methodical in the division of their household duties, the elder woman busying herself with the preparation of the lodgers' meals, While the younger attended to the front Of the house. According to precedent, ho would find Martha in the kitchen, and Bessie would be dusting and sweepWg in one of tho sitting-rooms. Ho had entered the garden by a gap In the stone wall that served instead of a gate, nod he was passing the clump of elder ouahes that hid the ruined outiouse, when he first perceived that matters were, not being governed by ordinary rules this morning. Mrs Calloway was standing at the back door, shading her eyes with her hand and calling "Bessie!" P9 she. gszod up the hill side. Directly fine recognised the quarry manager, She came, hurriedly to meet him. "Good morning. John." she said. "Have ' you seen Bessie? There now! Where j «an the child have gat to? I thought she was laying the breakfast things in Mr Mapletou's room, but when I went to take her a cup of tea, she was not in his room, nor yet in Mr Yeldham's." 'Terhaps she's overslept herself and isn't up yet," suggested Budge. "Oh, yes, she is," waß the worried answer. "On my way downstairs I looked into her room —to call her if she shouldn't be awake —but she wasn't there."

,r Hat! her bed been slept in?" asked the matter-of-fact manager. "God bless ir;y soul, whatever is in your mind, John?" said the now thoroughly frightened woman. "I only looked in, without particularly noticing—except that she wasn't in her room. We Went upstairs together last night, and •he shut the door after bidding me goodnight. Whera Bhould she sleep if not in her own bed! Let's go and Bee."

They hastened to the cottage, and Budge waited in the kitchen while Mrs Calloway went upstairs to investigate. In less than a minute she was down again, white as a sheet and trembling. "The bed hasn't been slept in," she blurted Out "Oh, John, whatever has happened ?" The frenried question was one which John Budge could not answer. He was frightened, too. For he remembered the only half-believed tale of bis subordinate, Cooper, about a woman's scream about an hour after midnight. But that story would! have to keep for the presentj Reticent by nature, he was the last man in the world to further alarm his old flame with an unproved rumour, till they had probed deeper into a mystery which, after all, might be no mystery at all. And in his mind a theory was slowly forming, which, if it turned out to be correct, though equally horrible from a mother's point of view, would leave the Hcream ns mythical as to his judgment it had seemed at first. "Look here. Martha, there's no use in giving way," he Said kindly. "We will gfit to the bottom of this, but we mustn't ?>e afraid to look it square in the face. Bessie is a good true girl—none better. But human nature is human nature, and you've got two gents lodging here. Is that the meaning of it, think you?" Before Mrs Calloway could utter the indlignant reply that flew to her lips, the two anxious friends in the kitchen heard footsteps descending the stairs, and a carelessly whistled tune from a popular musical comedy. The door of one ofthe sitting-rooms was shut, and the whistling continued, but fainter.

"There's the answer to your cruel hint," said Martha. "That's Mr Mapleton, and you see he hasn't run away with my innocent lamb. A 6 for Master Hector—Mr Yeldham, I mean—he went away to London yesterday. He left in the afternoon, and Bessie was with me all the evening. If that isn't enough to convince you, let me tell you that hector Yeldham is as honourable a gentleman as breathes. I've known him since he was a boy, and I'd trust him with twenty daughters if I had them." John Budge hung his head under the lash of the angry mother's rebuke. To tell truth, he was somewhat perplexed, and his dawning suspicion was shaken by finding that Mapleton was in the house and had just come downstairs in apparent ignorance of any trouble. For, in spite of the rough handling he had received from him, he bore Hector no ill-will, and shared to the full Martha's good opinion of him. Mr Smyly Mapleton had been the real inspiration of the idea that had begun to work in his brain. He had disliked Mrs Calloway's permanent lodger from bis first appearance in the neighbourhood, and, though his suspicions of the professed fossil-hunter as a possible spy had been allayed by the latter' failure to fall into the trap he had set for him, he had not got over his original prejudice. This natural antipathy had made him very observant of Mr. Mapleton, and he had often seen him looking at Bessie in a way he did not like. He had, in fact, a, shrewd suspicion of the truth—that the alleged scientist habitually annoyed the girl, but that she suffered in Bilence from a desire not to worry her mother, "I wasn't thinking of Yeldham," he said, penitently. "And that fellow being in there whistling puts him out of court, so vou may get me down as a fool, Martha. I reckon we have stumbled on i mare's nest, and that Bessie is about nmewhere not far off. Mushrooming on the downs, maybe. I saw some prime 3tools as I came along." He did not really think that mushrooms accounted for the girl's absence. He did not know what to think, but he was clutching at straws in order to allay his old sweetheart's alarm. As a matter of fact, his mind was working slowly but surely back to the scream heard by Cooper, and he did not for a moment associate that with Mapleton. From the sturdy standpoint of the stalwart manager, the London-bred lodger with the stooping Bhoulders and the narrow chest did not suggest himself in connection with deeds of violence. Rather wag John Budge wondering whether Bessie, possibly afflicted with sleeplessness, bad got up and wandered down into the cove, where she had met with an accident. That wonld account for the scream. She might have clambered into the old jetty end fallen from it among the rocks of the shore. Still reluctant to frighten Martha with his gloomy forebodingß tili he had proved their truth, he was trying to devise an excuse for going to search the cove, when the whistling suddenly ceased, the sitting-room door was opened, and Mr. Smyly Mapleton's voice rang out in gentle remonstrance: "I hear you talking there, Mrs. Calloway, but what about poor me? My room hasn't been tidied, and there are no signs that I am ever to have that early breakfast we spoke of last night." In her distress Martha could not collect her wits to answer promptly, and a moment later Mr. Mapleton stood in the doorway ot the kitchen, smiling with what passed with him for benevolence, and fingering the ends of his voluminous moustache.

"Ah, gooG-mormng, Mr. Budge," he said lightly. "I am sorry to spoil a pleasant tete-a-tete, but I want to Jje over the hills and far away in a long day's hunt for specimens of your wonderful petrifactions. Touching that breakfast, Mrs. Calloway, any little scraps—" And then, pulling himself up short, ho added: "There is nothing wrong, I hope?" "\Ve don't know yet, sir,'' Martha replied. "But it looks ugly. Bessie cannot bo found, and she did not use her bed last night." "Good heavens! And do you suspect —I moan, have you come to any conclusion as to the cause of her absence?" "No. sir—nothing with any sense to it. Mr. Budge inn'.'? a suggestion, but proved to be all foolishness." Mr. Mapleton favoured the quarry manager with a glance of inquiry, as if half expecting to be enlightened as to the despised theory. But the glance was returned with a stolid stare, which, if it meant anything, certainly did not mean an intention to impart the idea which had incurred the scorn of Martha Calloway. She, in turn, was scanning her lodger's face with eager intentness in her desperation, hoping against hope, that this gentleman of education might show himself more helpful than her rustic admirer had. And it presently appeared that Mr. Smyly Mapleton had an idea to put forward, though it was with great diffidence, and not till he had sought inspiration for quite a while from the tips of his moustache. His manipulation of ' that appendage with lithe, nervous fin- ! gers seemed to have a curious fascination for John .Budge, who never took his eyes ofT him. j "I do not, of course, know much about your daughter, except that she has waited upon me most attentively," he said at last. "I refer to her likes and dislikes, . to her friends and acquaintances. You will know better than I can, if there is [any friend at a distance to whom she

may have gone M the result of a sudden decision. Girl* have strange impulses sometimes."

Martha Calloway stared blankly at the speaker. As an adviser he was likely to prove as great a failure as John Budge. "But there's no such friend," she protested. "And if there was, Bessie isn't the sort to go off without warning in the middle of the night, and drive me half erased with anxiety." "Ah, well, of course you are the best judge of all that," Mr. Mitplcton rejoined in the tone of a man who desired to be sympathetic but was getting a little bored by a trouble which was no concern of his, and, at the same time, was interfering with his personal comfort. "As to my little bit of breakfast?" he added tentatively. "I am sorry to be a nuisance at such a time." "You shall have it directly, sir," Martha forced herself to say in spite of the doubt and fears that were gnawing at her motherly heart. The man was not to be blamed for claiming to be fed, and he had done it quite kindly. Mr. Mapleton turned and left the kitchen, followed by the ruminative eyes of John Budge. He had not been out of sight ten seconds, and the two cronies had not yet exchanged a word, when he popped his head in again. "At the risk of being thought impertinent, but only with a desire to assist, one little thing occurs to me," said he. "If Miss Calloway had been called away on a iournev, which she had perhaps no time to discuss, she would have taken some outdoor garments with her, and not merely the things she was wearing when she retired to her room last night." Having delivered himself of the hint, Mr. Mapleton retreated to await his breakfast. It was John Budga who broke the silence that ensued. "Better take his tip," he said quietly. "Run up again and look round your girl's room. See if anything in the way of clothes is gone. There, don't scowl at me as if I was slandering her. There's reason to what I say." Something in Budge's stolid face prevailed over her inclination to miscall him for a fool, and Martha Calloway mounted again to her daughter's bedroom at the back of the house. A minute later a loud cry jummoned the faithful John to her aid. He took the stairs three at a time, and found her kneeling in front of the chest of drawers, the bottom drawer having been pulled open. A hat-box. with the lid off and empty, lay at her side. "Her best coat and skirt are gone." she cried. "And so is her Sunday hat. Oh. John, what has happened to my child?" (To be continued next ■Wednesday.)