Recollections of Rosings (35 page)

Catherine's distress, on hearing Mrs Giles's words, came close to panic.

    The clock showed it was a few minutes after half past four; Lilian and Sally had left the house to accompany Caroline to the railway station, which was situated some miles away, at approximately ten o'clock that morning. Caroline's train had been due to leave for the north of England by midday; by any reckoning, they should have been home an hour or more ago.

    They had been gone over six hours. She could not imagine—indeed, if she could, it might have been much worse—but she could not reasonably imagine what could have happened to the two girls.

    Mrs Giles hastened to explain. Mr Adams, she said, had arrived at four o'clock, and only then had Mrs Giles, who had earlier retired to her room, been alerted to the fact that Lilian and Sally had not yet returned. She had immediately despatched young Tom Higgs, the gardener's boy, to the village to discover whether the hired vehicle, in which they had set out, was back from the journey. The carter, a Mr Sparks, was well known to them. They were still waiting for Tom to return when Catherine and Mr Burnett had appeared at the door.

     "What could possibly be keeping them?" asked Catherine for the fifth or sixth time. "I am so afraid; Mrs Giles, are you sure there has been no message of delays on the railway or an accident on the roads?"

    "No, ma'am, we have heard nothing, which is why I sent Tom to find out if the vehicle was back," she replied. Mrs Giles had been with the family for almost all of Lilian's life and Sally was her niece; her anguish was palpable.

    Mr Adams, equally distressed but with very little idea of what to do, was fretting too and it took all of Frank Burnett's powers of persuasion to keep him from racing off down the road on his horse.

    "What good would it do for you to go off alone? How far shall you ride?" he asked, urging his friend to wait until more was known and then they would devise a plan to look for the missing girls.

    When Tom Higgs finally arrived at the gate, half a dozen voices shouted questions at him, none of which he could answer. All he could tell them was the stable was empty where the horse was usually tethered, the vehicle was not in its place in the barn, and the carter Mr Sparks was nowhere to be seen.

    Catherine went pale with fear as dreadful memories from the past assailed her.

    "Good God, that must mean there has been an accident," she cried and turning to Frank Burnett, appealed for his advice. "Please, Mr Burnett, tell me, what should we do?"

    In fact, Frank Burnett had already determined that he would go immediately with Mr Adams to Rosings and, having commandeered a carriage and driver, would travel the route which the vehicle bearing Lilian and her maid Sally would have taken, returning from the railway station to Rosings Park.

    With great gentleness, he spoke first to Catherine.

    "Mrs Harrison, pray do not make yourself ill with worry. It may well be a simple problem: a horse may have thrown a shoe or they may have damaged a wheel or an axle, which has required repair and so delayed them; it may well be nothing more than that, else we would have had news by now, from the county police or a passerby."

    He urged Mrs Giles to attend closely upon her mistress, assuring them both that he would find the missing girls and bring them home.

    "I am certain we shall find them safe and sound," he said, assuming for her sake a degree of confidence he did not altogether feel.

    Catherine, wishing with all her heart that he was right, insisted that they take her manservant, George, with them.

    "Let him ride with you. He could help, if help is needed, or bring us back a message, if necessary; please take him with you," she pleaded and they agreed.

    It was still light and they set off, hoping to be on the road within the hour.

    No sooner had they gone than Catherine went upstairs and, in the privacy of her room, wept. As the tears she had held back flowed, she was riven with illogical but understandable feelings of guilt, because she had not been home. The day that had brought her such promise of happiness had not concluded as auspiciously as it had begun.

    "Had I been here, instead of in the rose garden at Rosings, I might have become aware much earlier of the lateness of the hour and I would have caused a search party to be sent out," she cried, yet now she was all too conscious of her own helplessness.

    Immensely grateful for the presence of both Mr Adams and Mr Burnett, she knew that with no father or brother to go out in search of her, Lilian's safety depended upon these two men. With what gratitude did she think of Frank Burnett, seeing him offer himself without a moment's hesitation to undertake what she herself was quite powerless to do.

    While poor dear John Adams had seemed bereft and despondent, Mr Burnett's determination and sound judgment would no doubt be a source of comfort to him as it had been to her, she mused.

    Mrs Giles came upstairs with a tray of food, urging her mistress to partake of some refreshment. It could be a long and anxious night and she would need to be strong. Plagued by recollections of the accident at Maidenhead on the road to Bath, which had taken the life of her youngest sister, Amelia-Jane, Catherine could not easily be persuaded to hope that everything would turn out well. As the hours passed she would wait, longing for some word of them, yet dreading the arrival of a messenger bearing bad news.

    Meanwhile, Frank Burnett, acting with expedition, making all the arrangements necessary and not losing a moment, had left with Mr Adams for Rosings. Sensitive to the tender feelings of both Catherine and his friend John Adams, he had tried to allay their fears with reassuring words, yet he had his own apprehensions.

    They had set out from Rosings, Messrs Adams and Burnett in the carriage, while the manservant George and a stable hand from Rosings rode with them. While it was still light on the open road, he was aware that as they passed through the woods and night fell, it would soon be much darker.

    The coachman, a man familiar with the roads they were to travel, had insisted that at least one of the men should carry a pistol in case they encountered any of the villains who were seen from time to time and occasionally apprehended on country roads, especially at night.

    Frank Burnett, though he thoroughly disliked carrying arms, had agreed. The safety of the ladies may well depend upon it. The stretch of road from the boundary of Rosings Park to the railway station at Redhill was a good one and not generally known to be frequented by footpads and thieves, but one could never be too careful. On one side of the road lay well-wooded country and on the other open pasture and farmland.

    As they travelled, they passed not a single other vehicle going in the opposite direction towards either Rosings or the village of Hunsford, a circumstance that puzzled them greatly. Since it was not a private road, it was generally well used, especially in Summer, when there was a fair amount of traffic in the area. Yet, for the first seven or eight miles, they saw no sign of anyone.

    Further on, there were signs that it had rained rather heavily and as it grew darker, visibility was limited. Though Mr Adams and Frank Burnett leaned out and strained their eyes, fixing their gaze upon the road ahead, it was the manservant riding alongside and a little to the fore of the carriage, who first caught sight of debris beside a culvert. Not much further up the road, a wrecked vehicle lay overturned in the ditch.

    In the late evening light, it was difficult to make it out, but George recognised it as the vehicle from the village, the one in which Lilian and Sally had set out with Mrs Fitzwilliam that morning.

    Calling out to the coachman to pull up, George immediately dismounted and somewhat warily approached the wreckage. No sooner did the carriage come to a standstill, the gentlemen leapt out and joined George, who by now had ascertained there was no one either in the wrecked vehicle, nor did there appear to be anyone lurking with evil intent in the vicinity.

    But, there their relief ended. For while there was now no doubt that there had been an accident of some sort—there was no trace of the driver Mr Sparks, nor of his passengers. There were some traces left by the horse.

    "It would seem, sir," said George, "that the horse has bolted for some reason—you can tell from the drag marks of the wheels up this way into the ditch."

    It was quite clear the animal had pulled away from the road in alarm and probably pitched the vehicle into the ditch as it fled.

    John Adams was pale and very agitated.

    "My God, Frank, what has happened to Lilian? How on earth shall we find her? Where do we start to look?" he asked in a trembling voice that betrayed both his youth and his deep affection for her.

    Frank Burnett was determined not to let him subside into panic. Adopting a tone calculated to bolster his friend's hopes, he replied, "Well, clearly there has been an accident, but equally clearly, it would seem to me that no one has been badly injured or killed, else there would have been a guard placed over this spot, the police or the county authorities would surely have been alerted, and they would have set off for Hunsford, being the nearest town. We have met no one going in the direction of Rosings Park or Hunsford, so I think we can hope that the driver and his passengers are alive, even though they may have suffered some injuries in the accident."

    John Adams was not convinced. "We cannot be certain of that!" he cried and Mr Burnett replied, "No indeed, we cannot, but we can hope and when hope is all there is to be had, my friend, we must cling to it, must we not?"

    Meanwhile, George and the stable hand had begun to comb the ground around the vehicle and the ditch in which it lay and had found a canvas bag, which George recognised as one Sally had been carrying that morning, and a man's boot, probably the carter's. Further along, they found bits of the harness and reins, which the horse had shed as it bolted.

    Finding nothing else and certainly no blood at the scene, they were about to reenter their carriage and proceed to the village up ahead, where they could make enquiries, when two men appeared pushing a farm cart, laden with empty baskets. They were the first people they had seen that night. Seeing the horses and the carriage, one of the men stopped and peered at them. The other appeared to be too drunk to be aware of his surroundings and sat down in the dirt beside the road.

    Approaching them, George, pointing to the wrecked vehicle, asked if they had seen anything of the people who had been in the accident. Was there a farmhouse or a cottage nearby, where they may be sheltering? he asked.

    The younger, more sober of the two spoke, though not very clearly, and Frank Burnett could not comprehend a word of his rather rough and slurry dialect. He gave thanks that he had heeded Catherine's advice and brought George along. He was from the area and seemed well able to understand the man.

    He returned to report that the man had claimed to know nothing of the accident—he had passed that way in the morning on his way to market and was only just returning home. But he had directed them to the house of a farmer, which was situated in the lee of a hill, over to the west. They looked in the direction in which he had pointed and could just make out signs of smoke rising from its chimneys, above the trees that crowned the hill.

    "He says the farmer is a Mr Barnaby, sir, whose land lies to the west of the road, which runs past his estate; if anything had happened here, on his property, he would surely be the one to know."

    Greatly relieved to have a clue at last, Mr Burnett and Mr Adams set off with George to walk across the paddock and over the long low hill, to locate the farmhouse and Mr Barnaby, leaving the stable boy with the carriage. They had no certainty of finding anyone, but at least it was a start. They kept a look out for any other pieces of evidence, signs that Lilian and Sally may have come this way, but found none.

    The house was still some distance away and it had started to rain again. Neither John Adams nor Frank Burnett had much protection from the weather, apart from their hats and overcoats. Turning up their collars, they hurried on, until they reached a rough gravel and dirt road, which, when followed, led directly to a large country house, before which stood a carriage drawn by two horses.

    As they approached, a man came around the back of the house; he was, they assumed, the driver of the same vehicle and seeing them, he called out to ask who they were.

    John Adams rushed forward eagerly.

    "Pardon me, sir, are you Mr Barnaby?" he asked in a voice so desperate the man hastily took a step back, as if in alarm. Holding up a lantern to get a look at his face, he replied, "No indeed, sir, I am not. Mr Barnaby is my master. But who might you be, sir?"

    "My name is Adams. We are come from the Rosings estate and are looking for two young ladies who were travelling in a vehicle that was involved in an accident on the road about a mile from here. Have you seen or heard anything of them? Has there been any news—?"

    The man interrupted him, "Well, sir, if that be the case, I think you had best see my master Mr Barnaby right away…"

    "Does he know of the accident?" asked Mr Burnett, who had joined them.