time and cause for repentance. After all, he was not a real captain now. He had sold out of the army; and there arose a rumour that he had done something wrong and was obliged to sell out.
Mr. Ashton had loved Lucy better than all his children. He forgave the marriage for Lucy’s sake, and had them home on a visit, and presented her with a handsome sum. But he made a great mistake—I’ve heard the Squire say it often—in not settling it upon her. Bird spent it as soon as he well could; and he would have spent some more that came to Lucy when her father died, only that it was left in Robert Ashton’s hands to be paid to her quarterly. People called Bird a blackleg: said he was about the worst man that ever stepped. Robert had offered Lucy a home at Timberdale Court, but she would not leave her husband: she had married him, she said, for better or worse. If he came to be transported—and he was going on for it—the chances were that Lucy would follow him to Van Diemen’s Land.
“I say, there’s six o’clock!” exclaimed Mr. Coney, as the hour struck. “Jane, what have you done with Robert?”
“Not anything, papa. He said he should be here half-an-hour before dinner.”
“And it will soon be half-an-hour after it,” returned old Coney. “If he does not make haste, we shall sit down without him.”
The clock on the mantelpiece went ticking on, and struck half-past six. Dinner. The Squire led off the van with Mrs. Coney. Tod laid hold of Jane.
“I’ll take Robert’s place whilst I can, Jenny.”
The oak-room was a surprise. It looked beautiful. The dark walls were quite covered with holly and ivy, mixed with the blossoms of laurustinus and some bright flowers. Old Thomas (borrowed from us) and the maids stood by the sideboard, which glittered with silver. The Coneys had their stores as well as other people, and did things well when they did them at all. On the table was a large codfish, garnished with horse-radish and lemon. Our names were before our places, and we took them without bustle, Robert Ashton’s, next to Jane, being left vacant.
“For what–”
A faint shriek interrupted the Reverend Mr. Ashton, and the grace was interrupted. Lifting his head towards the quarter whence the shriek came, he saw his sister-in-law with a scared face.
“We are thirteen!” exclaimed Mrs. James Ashton. “I beg your pardon, Charles—I beg everybody’s pardon; but indeed we must not sit down thirteen to dinner on New Year’s Day. I would not for any money.”
“What nonsense, my dear!” cried her husband, rather crossly. “Robert will be here directly.”
It was of no use. The ladies took her part, saying they ought not to sit down. And there we all stood, uncertain what to do, the dinner hovering in mid-air like Mahomet’s coffin, and not to be eaten.
“There are two days in the year when it is not well to sit down thirteen: New Year’s Day and Christmas Day,” said Mrs. Todhetley, and the rest held with her.
“Are we all to go back to the drawing-room, and leave our dinner?” demanded old Coney, in wrath. “Where the plague is Robert? Look here: those that won’t sit down thirteen can go, and those that don’t mind it can stop.”
“Hear, hear!” cried the Squire.
But Jane Coney went gliding to her mother’s side. “I will wait for Robert in the drawing-room, mamma, and you can sit down twelve. Yes, please; it is best so. Indeed I could not eat anything if I stayed.”
“Shall we send you some dinner in, child?” asked Mr. Coney.
“No, thank you, papa. I should like best to take it with Robert when he comes.”
“All right,” said old Coney. “Johnny, you go over to that side, to make the table even. We’ll have the grace now, parson.”
And the parson said it.
It was a dinner that pleased the Squire’s heart. He had a mortal objection to what he called kickshaws, meaning the superfluous dishes you find at a modern entertainment. The Coneys never had kickshaws, only a plain, substantial dinner, the best of its kind.
“Coney, I never taste such oyster-sauce as yours, go where I will,” cried the Squire. “It can’t be matched.”
Old Coney winked, as much as to say he knew it. “The missis gives an eye to that, you see, Squire,” he answered, in a side whisper. “She had been in the kitchen till you came.”
The Squire took another ladleful. He went once or twice to every dish, and drank champagne with all of us. But still Robert Ashton did not come.
I slipped round to Mrs. Coney when the plum-pudding appeared, whispering that I would take a slice to Jane.
“So you shall, Johnny,” she said, giving me some on a plate, and putting a mince-pie beside it. “She will have no luck unless she eats a little of both pudding and pie on the first day of the year.”
Jane sat in a low elbow-chair before the fire, her head leaning on her hand, her hair a little tumbled. It was very pretty hair, dark chestnut, and her eyes were hazel. Robert Ashton was fair-haired and blue-eyed; Saxon all over, and very good-looking.
“I have brought you some pudding, Jane.”
“Oh, Johnny! why did you leave the table? I can’t eat it.”
“But Mrs. Coney says you are to; and some mince-pie also, or you’ll have no luck.”
As if in obedience she ate a little of the pudding, cut a quarter of the mince-pie with her fork, and ate that.
“There, Johnny, that’s quite enough for ‘luck.’ Go back now to your dinner; I dare say you’ve not had any pudding yourself.”
“I’ll stay with you, and finish this: as it is going begging.”
She neither said yes nor no. She was looking frightfully uneasy.
“Are you vexed that Robert Ashton’s not here, Jane?”
“I am not vexed, because I know he would have been here if he could. I think something has happened to him.”
I stared at her. “What! because he is a little late in coming? Why, Jane, you must be nervous.”
She kept looking into the fire, her eyes fixed. I sat on a stool on the other side of the hearth; the empty pudding-plate standing on the rug between us, where I had put it.
“Robert was sure to come for this dinner, Johnny, all being well, and to be in time.”
“Tell me what you fear, Jane—and why?”
“I think I will tell you,” she said, after a pause. “I should like to tell some one. I wish I had told Robert when he called this morning; but I was afraid he would laugh at me. You will laugh too.”
And Jane Coney told it. In a low, dread voice, her eyes staring into the fire as before, just as though they could see through the blaze into the future.
Early that morning she had had a dream; a disagreeable, ugly dream about Robert Ashton. She thought he was in some frightful peril, that she cried to him to avoid it, or it would stop their marriage. He seemed not to take the least notice of her, but to go right on to it, and in the alarm this brought her, she awoke. I listened in silence, saying nothing to the end; no, nor then.
“The dream was so intensely real, Johnny. It seemed to be to-day; this very day then dawning; and we both of us knew that it was; the one before our marriage. I woke up in a fever; and but that it was night and not day, should have had difficulty in persuading myself at first that we were not really enacting the scene—it was, as I say, so vividly real. And Robert went out to the peril, never heeding me.”
“What was the peril?”
“That’s what I can’t tell. A consciousness lay upon me that it was something very bad and frightful; but of its nature I saw nothing. I did not go to sleep again: it must have been about six o’clock, but the mornings are very dark, you know. I got up soon: what with this dinner-party and other things, there has been a great deal to do to-day, and I soon forgot