The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(231)
“We shall frighten Maria to death if she sees us so near her haunt,” said Mrs. Brown as she led the way downstairs. “This way, if you please, ma’am, the kitchen-garden leads straight into the orchard.”
Twilight was deepening rapidly into night now. Bird notes had ceased, the whirr of insects, the croaking of a distant frog were the only sounds that broke the evening stillness.
As Mrs. Brown swung back the gate that divided the kitchen-garden from the orchard, the gaunt, black figure of Maria Lisle was seen approaching in an opposite direction.
“Well, really, I don’t see why she should expect to have the orchard all to herself every evening,” said Mrs. Brown, with a little toss of her head. “Mind the gooseberry bushes, ma’am, they do catch at your clothes so. My word! what a fine show of fruit the Vicar has this year! I never saw pear trees more laden!”
They were now in the “bit of orchard” to be seen from the cottage windows. As they rounded the corner of the path in which the old summer-house stood, Maria Lisle turned its corner at the farther end, and suddenly found herself almost face to face with them. If her eyes and not been so persistently fastened on the ground, she would have noted the approach of the intruders as quickly as they had noted hers. Now, as she saw them for the first time, she gave a sudden start, paused for a moment irresolutely, and then turned sharply and walked rapidly away in an opposite direction.
“Maria, Maria!” called Mrs. Brown, “don’t run away; we sha’n’t stay here for more than a minute or so.”
Her words met with no response. The woman did not so much as turn her head.
Loveday stood at the entrance of the old summer-house. It was considerably out of repair, and most probably was never entered by anyone save Maria Lisle, its unswept, undusted condition suggesting colonies of spiders and other creeping things within.
Loveday braved them all and took her seat on the bench that ran round the little place in a semi-circle.
“Do try and overtake the girl, and tell her we shall be gone in a minute,” she said, addressing Mrs. Brown. “I will wait here meanwhile. I am so sorry to have frightened her away in that fashion.”
Mrs. Brown, under protest, and with a little grumble at the ridiculousness of “people who couldn’t look other people in the face,” set off in pursuit of Maria.
It was getting dim inside the summer-house now. There was, however, sufficient light to enable Loveday to discover a small packet of books lying in a corner of the bench on which she sat.
One by one she took them in her hand and closely scrutinized them. The first was a much read and pencil-marked Bible; the others were respectively, a “congregational hymn-book,” a book in a paper cover, on which was printed a flaming picture of a red and yellow angel, pouring blood and fire from out a big black bottle, and entitled “The End of the Age,” and a smaller book, also in a paper cover, on which was depicted a huge black horse, snorting fire and brimstone into ochre-coloured clouds. This book was entitled “The Year Book of the Saints,” and was simply a ruled diary with sensational mottoes for every day in the year. In parts, this diary was filled in with large and very untidy handwriting.
In these books seemed to lie the explanation of Maria Lisle’s love of evening solitude and the lonely old summer-house.
Mrs. Brown pursued Maria to the servants’ entrance to the house, but could not overtake her, the girl making good her retreat there.