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Updated: May 31, 2025
Above the head of my spruce white bed hung a scroll, bearing a damnatory quotation from Scripture in emblazoned letters of red and black. The dismal presence of Miss Meadowcroft had passed over my bedroom, and had blighted it. My spirits sank as I looked round me. Supper-time was still an event in the future.
Naomi Colebrook is meat for your master!" John Jago's temper began to give way at last. He approached defiantly a step or two nearer to Silas Meadowcroft. "Who is my master?" he asked. "Ambrose will show you, if you go to him," answered the other. "Naomi is his sweetheart, not mine. Keep out of his way, if you want to keep a whole skin on your bones."
She took up the knife once more, and went on cleaning it as industriously as ever. "I mustn't tell you," she resumed, with her head down over the knife. "I have promised not to tell anybody. That's the truth. Forget all about it, sir, as soon as you can. Hush! here's the spy who saw us last night on the walk and who told Silas!" Dreary Miss Meadowcroft opened the kitchen door.
On occasions of this sort and they happened frequently Naomi struck in resolutely at the right moment, and turned the talk to some harmless topic. Every time she took a prominent part in this way in keeping the peace, melancholy Miss Meadowcroft looked slowly round at her in stern and silent disparagement of her interference.
The footsteps stopped, and the voices became recognizable. I had passed the night with my window open; I was able, without exciting notice from below, to look out. The persons beneath me were Silas Meadowcroft, John Jago, and three strangers, whose dress and appearance indicated plainly enough that they were laborers on the farm.
"We will follow you directly, Miss Meadowcroft," said Naomi. "I have no desire to intrude on your secrets Miss Colebrook." With that acrid answer, our priestess took herself and her Prayer-book out of the kitchen. I joined Naomi, entering the room by the garden door. She met me eagerly. "I am not quite easy about something," she said. "Did you tell me that you left Ambrose and Silas together?"
Plague is no trifle. Well, wait a minute; I'll see what the ladies say about it. How far off is your village?" He pointed with his hand, somewhat vaguely, to the hillside. "Two hours' walk," he answered, with the mountaineer's habit of reckoning distance by time, which extends, under the like circumstances, the whole world over. I went back to the tents, and consulted Hilda and Lady Meadowcroft.
"But Lady Meadowcroft is not at all well," he answered, looking piteous; "and she can't endure the ship's doctor. Such a common man, you know! His loud voice disturbs her. You MUST have noticed that my wife is a lady of exceptionally delicate nervous organisation." He hesitated, beamed on me, and played his trump card. "She dislikes being attended by owt but a GENTLEMAN."
So, after a few dusty weeks of wear and tear on the Indian railways, we met him once more in the recesses of Nepaul, where he was busy constructing a light local line for the reigning Maharajah. If Lady Meadowcroft had been bored at Allahabad and Ajmere, she was immensely more bored in a rough bungalow among the trackless depths of the Himalayan valleys.
Who was to tell Naomi of this last and saddest of all the calamities which had fallen on her? Knowing how I loved her in secret, I felt an invincible reluctance to be the person who revealed Ambrose Meadowcroft's degradation to his betrothed wife. Had any other member of the family told her what had happened? The lawyer was able to answer me; Miss Meadowcroft had told her.
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