Chapter I

It was autumn weather, and we had just arrived at Crabb Cot. When you have been away from a familiar place, whether it may be only for days, or whether it may be for weeks or months or years, you are eager on returning to it to learn what has transpired during your absence, concerning friends or enemies, the parish or the public.

Bob Letsom ran in that first evening, and we had him to ourselves; the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley were still in the dining-room. I asked after Coralie Fontaine.

"Oh, Coralie's all right," said he.

"Do the old ladies go on at her still?" cried Tod.

Bob laughed. "I think they've stopped that, finding it hopeless."

When Sir Dace Fontaine died, now eighteen months ago, the two girls, Coralie and Verena, were left alone. Verena shortly went back to the West Indies to marry George Bazalgette, Coralie remained at Oxlip Grange. Upon that, all the old ladies in the place, as Tod had ungallantly put it, beginning with Bob's mother, set on to lecture her: telling her she must not continue to live alone, she must take a companion of mature age. Why must she not live alone, Coralie returned: she had old Ozias to protect her from robbers, and her maid-servants to see to her clothes and her comforts. Because it was not proper, said the old ladies. Coralie laughed at that, and told them not to be afraid; she could take care of herself. And apparently she did. She had learnt to be independent in America; could not be brought to understand English stiffness and English pride: and she would go off to London and elsewhere for a week or two at a time, just as though she had been sixty years of age.

"I have an idea she will not be Coralie Fontaine much longer," continued Letsom.

"Who will she be, then?"

"Coralie Rymer."

"You can't mean that she is going to take up with Ben!"

"Well, I fancy so. Some of us thought they were making up to one another before Sir Dace died--when Ben was attending him. Don't you recollect how much old Fontaine liked Ben?--he'd have had him by his side always. Ben's getting on like a house on fire; has unusual skill in surgery and is wonderful at operations: he performed a very critical one upon old Massock this summer, and the man is about again as sturdy and impudent as ever."

"Does Ben live down here entirely?"

"He goes up to London between whiles--in pursuit of his studies and the degrees he means to take. He is there now. Oh, he'll get on. You'll see."

"Well, what else, Letsom?" cried Tod. "You have told us no news about anybody yet."

"Because there's none to tell."

"How do those two old dames get on--the Dennets?"

"Oh, they are gone off to some baths in Germany for a twelvemonth, with suppressed gout, and their house is let to a mysterious tenant."

"Mysterious in what way?"

"Well, nobody sees her, and she keeps the doors bolted and barred. The Dennets left it all in Mrs. Cramp's hands, being intimate with her, for they started in a hurry, and she put it into a new agent's hands at Worcester, and he put an advertisement in the papers. Some lady answered it, a stranger; she agreed to all conditions by letter, took possession of the house, and has shut herself up as if something uncanny were inside it. Mrs. Cramp does not like it at all; and queer rumours are beginning to go about."

"What's her name?"

"Nobody knows."

The house spoken of was North Villa, where Jacob Chandler used to live. When the Chandlers went down in the world it was taken on lease by the Miss Dennets, two steady middle-aged sisters.

The first visit we paid the following morning was to Oxlip Grange, to see Coralie. Meeting the Squire on the way he said he would go with us. North Villa lies not far from us, soon after you turn into the Islip Road, and the Grange is about a quarter-of-a-mile farther on. I took a good stare at the villa in passing. Two of the upstairs windows were open, but the mysterious tenant was not to be seen.

Old Ozias was in the Grange garden, helping the gardener; it was how he professed to fill up his time; and the door was opened by a tall, smart maid, with curled hair and pink bows in her cap. Where had I seen her? Why, at the lodgings in the Marylebone Road in London! She was Maria, who had been housemaid there during the enacting of that tragedy.

Coralie Fontaine sat in her pretty parlour, one opening from the large drawing-room, flirting a paper hand-screen between her face and the fire, which she would have, as Sir Dace used to, whether it might be cold weather or hot. Small and pale, her black hair smooth and silky, her dark eyes meeting ours honestly, her chin pointed, her pretty teeth white, she was not a whit changed. Her morning dress was white, with scarlet ribbons, and she was downright glad to see us. The Squire inquired after Verena.

"She is quite well," replied Coralie. "At least, she would be but for grumbling."

"What has she to grumble about, my dear?"

"Nothing," said Coralie.

"Then why does she do it? Dear me! Is her husband not kind to her?"

Coralie laughed at the notion. "He is too kind, Mr. Todhetley. Kindness to people is George Bazalgette's weakness, especially to Verena. Her grievance lies in George's sister, Magnolia Bazalgette."

"What a splendacious name!" interrupted Tod. "Magnolia!"

"She was named after the estate, Magnolia Range, a very beautiful place and one of the finest properties on the island," said Coralie. "Magnolia lives with George, it was always her home, you see; and Verena does not take kindly to her. She complains that Magnolia domineers over the household and over herself. It is just one of Verena's silly fancies; she always wants to be first and foremost; and I have written her one or two sharp letters."

"Coralie," I said here, "is not the girl, who showed us in, Maria?--she who used to live in those lodgings in London?"

Coralie nodded. "The last time I was staying in London, Maria came to me, saying she had left her place and was in want of one. I engaged her at once. I like the girl."

"She is an uncommonly smart girl in the way of curls and caps," remarked Tod.

"I like smart people about me," laughed Coralie.

Who should come in then but Mrs. Cramp. _She_ was smart. A flounced gown of shiny material, green in one light, red in another, and a purple bonnet with white strings. She was Stephen Cramp's widow, formerly Mary Ann Chandler; her speech was honest and homely, and her comely face wore a look of perplexity.

"I don't much like the look of things down yonder," she began, nodding her head in the direction of North Villa and as she sat down her flounces went up, displaying her white cotton stockings and low, tied shoes. "I have been calling there again, and I can't get in."

"Nobody can get in," said Coralie.

"They have put a chain on the door, and they answer people through it. No chain was ever there before, as long as I have known the house. I paid no attention to the things people were saying," continued Mrs. Cramp; "but I did not much like something I heard last night. I'll see the lady, I said to myself this morning, and down to the house I went, walked up the garden, and----"

"But what is it that people have been saying, Mrs. Cramp?" struck in the Squire. "These boys have heard something or other."

"What's said is, that there's something queer about the lady," replied Mrs. Cramp. "I can't make it out myself, Squire. Some people say she's pig-faced."

"_Pig-faced!_"

"Well, they do. Last night I heard she was black. And, putting two and two together, as one can't help doing in such a case, I don't like that report at all."

The Squire stared--and began thinking. He believed he knew what Mrs. Cramp meant.

"Well, I went there, and rang," she resumed. "And they opened the door a couple of inches and talked to me over the chain: some sour-faced woman-servant of middle age. I told her I had come to see my tenant--her mistress; she answered that her mistress could not be seen, and shut the door in my face."

Mrs. Cramp untied her white satin bonnet-strings, tilted back her bonnet, caught up the painted fan, fellow to the one Coralie was handling, and fanned herself while she talked.

"As long as it was said the lady was pig-faced and hid herself from people's eyes accordingly, I thought little of it, you understand, Squire; but if she is black, that's a different matter. It sets one fearing that some scandal may come of it. The Miss Dennets would drop down in a fit on the spot if they heard _that_ person had got into their house."

Coralie laughed.

"Ah, my dear, you careless young people make jokes of things that would fret us old ones to fiddle-strings," reproved Mrs. Cramp. "The four Indians may be with her, you know, and most likely are, concealed in cupboards. You don't know what such desperate characters might do--break into your house here some dark night and kill you in your bed. It is not a pleasant thing, is it, Squire?"

"That it's not, if it be as you put it," assented he, growing hot.

"Look here, Mrs. Cramp," interposed Tod. "If the lady has never been seen, how can it be known she is black, or pig-faced?"

"I've never treated the pig-faced report as anything but rubbish," answered Mrs. Cramp; "but I'll tell you, Mr. Joseph, how it has come out that she's black. I heard from Susan Dennet yesterday morning, and she asked whether any letters were lying at home for her or Mary. So I sent my servant Peggy last evening to inquire--a stupid thing of a girl she is, comes from over beyond Bromyard. Peggy went to the kitchen-door--and they have a chain there as well as to the other--and was told that no letters had come for the Miss Dennets. It was growing dark, and Peggy, who had never been on the premises before, mistook the path, and turned into one that took her to the latticed arbour. Many a time have I sat there in poor Jacob's days, with the Malvern Hills in the distance."

"So have I, Mary Ann," added the Squire, calling her unconsciously by her Christian name, his thoughts back in the time when they were boy and girl together.

"Peggy found her mistake then, and was turning back, when there stood in her path a black woman, who must have followed her down: black face, black hands, all black. What's more, she was wrapped round in yellow; a _shroud_, Peggy declares, but the girl was quite beyond herself with fright, and could not be expected to know shrouds from cloaks in the twilight. The woman stood stock still, never speaking, only staring; and Peggy tore back in her terror, and fell into the arms of a railway-porter, just then bringing a parcel from the station. 'Goodness help us!' she shrieked out, 'there's a blackamore in the path yonder:' and the girl came home more dead than alive. That is how I've learnt the mysterious lady is black," summed up Mrs. Cramp; "and knowing what we do know, I don't like it."

Neither did the Squire. And Mrs. Cramp departed in a flutter. We all liked her, in spite of her white stockings and shoes.

* * * * *

Some few months before this, a party of strangers appeared one morning at Worcester, and took handsome lodgings there. Four fashionable-looking gentlemen, with dark skins and darker hair; natives, apparently, of some remote quarter of the globe, say Asia or Africa, whose inhabitants are of a fine copper colour; and one lady, understood to be their sister, who was darker than they were--almost quite black. Two rather elderly and very respectable English servants, man and wife, were in their train. They lived well, these people, regardless of cost: had sumptuous dishes on their table, choice fruits, hot-house flowers. They made no acquaintance whatever in the town, rarely went abroad on foot, but took an airing most days in a large old rumbling open barouche, supplied by the livery stables. Worcester, not less alive to curiosity than is any other city, grew to be all excitement over these people, watched their movements with admiration, and called them "The Indians." The lady was seen in the barouche but once, enveloped in a voluminous yellow mantle, the hood of which was drawn over her face. It transpired that she was not in good health, and one evening, when she had a fainting-fit, a doctor was called in to her. His report to the town the next day was that she was really a coloured woman, very much darker than her brothers, with the manners and culture of a lady, but strikingly reserved. After a sojourn of about two months, the party, servants and all, quitted their lodgings, giving the landlady only an hour's notice, to spend, as they gave out, a week at Malvern. They paid their bill in full, asked permission to leave two or three of their heaviest trunks with her, and departed.

But they did not go to Malvern. It was not discovered where they did go. Nothing more was seen of them; nothing certain heard. The trunks they had left proved to be empty; some accounts owing in the town came in to be paid. All this looked curious. By-and-by a frightful rumour arose--that these people had been mixed up in some dreadful crime: one report said forgery, another murder. It was affirmed that Scotland Yard had been looking for them for months, and that they had disguised themselves as Indians (to quote the word Worcester used) to avert detection. But some observant individuals maintained that they were Indians (to use the word again), that no disguise or making-up could have converted their faces to what they were. Nothing more had as yet been heard of them, saving that a sum of money, enough to cover the small amount of debts left behind, was transmitted to the landlady anonymously. Excitement had not yet absolutely died away in the town. It was popularly supposed that the Indians were lying concealed in some safe hiding-place, perhaps not far distant.

And now, having disclosed this strange episode, the fame of which had gone about the county, you will be able to understand Mrs. Cramp's consternation. It appeared to be only too probable that the hiding-place was North Villa: of the lady in the yellow mantle, at any rate, whether her four brothers were with her or not.