Well, we sat this evening in the bay window as usual, I facing No. 7. Thus sitting, I saw Matilda cross the strip of garden with a jug in her hand, and come out at the gate to fetch the beer for supper.
“There goes Jane Cross,” cried the Squire, as she passed the window. “Is it not, Johnny?”
“No, sir, it’s Matilda.” But the mistake was a very natural one, for the girls were about the same height and size, and were usually dressed alike, the same mourning having been supplied to both of them.
Ten minutes or so had elapsed when Matilda came back: she liked a gossip with the landlady of the Swan. Her pint jug was brimful of beer, and she shut the iron gate of No. 7 after her. Putting my head as far out at the window as it would go, to watch her indoors, for no earthly reason but that I had nothing else to do, I saw her try the front door, and then knock at it. This knock she repeated three times over at intervals, each knock being louder than the last.
“Are you shut out, Matilda?” I called out.
“Yes, sir, it seems like it,” she called back again, without turning her head. “Jane Cross must have gone to sleep.”
Had she been a footman with a carriage full of ladies in court trains behind him, she could not have given a louder or longer knock than she gave now. There was no bell to the front door at No. 7. But the knock remained unanswered and the door unopened.
“Matilda at No. 7 is locked out,” I said, laughing, bringing in my head and speaking to the parlour generally. “She has been to fetch the beer for supper, and can’t get in again.”
“The beer for supper?” repeated Mrs. Blair. “They generally go out at the back gate to fetch that, Johnny.”
“Anyhow, she took the front way to-night. I saw her come out.”
Another tremendous knock. The Squire put his good old nose round the window-post; two boys and a lady, passing by, halted a minute to look on. It was getting exciting, and I ran out. She was still at the door, which stood in the middle of the house, between the sitting-rooms on each side.
“So you have got the key of the street, Matilda!”
“I can’t make it out,” she said; “what Jane Cross can be about, or why the door should be closed at all. I left it on the latch.”
“Somebody has slipped in to make love to her. Your friend, the milkman, perhaps.”
Evidently Matilda did not like the allusion to the milkman. Catching a glimpse of her face by the street lamp, I saw it had turned white. The milkman was supposed to be paying court at No. 7, but to which of the two maids gossip did not decide. Mrs. Blair’s Susan, who knew them well, said it was Matilda.
“Why don’t you try the back way?” I asked, after more waiting.
“Because I know the outer door is locked, sir. Jane Cross locked it just now, and that’s why I came out this front way. I can try it, however.”
She went round to the road that ran by the side of the house, and tried the door in the garden wall. It was fastened, as she had said. Seizing the bell-handle, she gave a loud peal—another, and another.
“I say, it seems odd, though,” I cried, beginning to find it so. “Do you think she can have gone out?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. But—no; it’s not likely, Master Johnny. I left her laying the cloth for our supper.”
“Was she in the house alone?”
“We are always alone, sir; we don’t have visitors. Anyway, none have been with us this evening.”
I looked at the upper windows of the house. No light was to be seen in any of them, no sign of Jane Cross. The lower windows were hidden from view by the wall, which was high.
“I think she must have dropped asleep, Matilda, as you say. Suppose you come in through Mrs. Blair’s and get over the wall?”
I ran round to tell the news to our people. Matilda followed me slowly; I thought, reluctantly. Even in the dim twilight, as she stood at our gate in hesitation, I could see how white her face was.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked her, going out again to where she stood.
“I hardly know, Master Johnny. Jane Cross used to have fits. Perhaps she has been frightened into one now.”
“What should frighten her?”
The girl looked round in a scared manner before replying. Just then I found my jacket-sleeve wet. Her trembling hands had shaken a little of the ale upon it.
“If she—should have seen Mr. Edmund?” the girl brought out in a horrified whisper.
“Seen Mr. Edmund! Mr. Edmund who?—Mr. Edmund Peahern? Why, you don’t surely mean his ghost?”
Her face was growing whiter. I stared at her in surprise.
“We have always been afraid of seeing something, she and me, since last May; we haven’t liked the house at night-time. It has often been quite a scuffle which of us should fetch the beer, so as not to be the one left alone. Many a time I have stood right out at the back door while Jane Cross has gone for it.”
I began to think her an idiot. If Jane Cross was another, why, perhaps she had frightened herself into a fit. All the more reason that somebody should see after her.
“Come along, Matilda; don’t be foolish; we’ll both get over the wall.”
It was a calm, still summer evening, almost dark now. All the lot of us went out to the back garden, I whispering to them what the girl had said to me.
“Poor thing!” said Mrs. Todhetley, who had a sort of fellow-feeling for ghosts. “It has been very lonely for the young women; and if Jane Cross is subject to fits, she may be lying in one at this moment.”
The wall between the gardens was nothing like as high as the outer one. Susan brought out a chair, and Matilda could have got over easily. But when she reached the top, she stuck there.
“I can’t go on by myself; I dare not,” she said, turning her frightened face towards us. “If Mr. Edmund is there–”
“Don’t be a goose, girl!” interrupted the Squire, in doubt whether to laugh or scold. “Here, I’ll go with you. Get on down. Hold the chair tight for me, Johnny.”
We hoisted him over without damage. I leaped after him, and Susan, grinning with delight, came after me. She supposed that Jane Cross had slipped out somewhere during Matilda’s absence.
The door faced the garden, and the Squire and Susan were the first to enter. There seemed to be no light anywhere, and the Squire went gingerly picking his way. I turned round to look for Matilda, who had hung back, and found her with her hand on the trellis-work of the porch, and the beer splashing over in her fear.
“I say, look here, Matilda; you must be a regular goose, as the Squire says, to put yourself into this fright before you know whether there’s any cause for it. Susan says she has only stepped out somewhere.”
She