The Jewelled Snuff Box

SNOW WAS falling steadily, relentlessly, over the fast darkening landscape; whirling before a keen wind to descend on the stark black branches of the trees and hedges, clothing them in unexpected foliage. The winding road appeared as smooth as a carpet, but the sweating horses, plunging in the soft white mass up to their fetlocks, found the treacherous ruts that lay beneath. In these from time to time they stumbled, recovering themselves and straining onwards, the veins in their necks standing out like thick strands of rope as they pulled the great black coach behind them.

The outside passengers on the London stage shivered, turning up their coat collars and drawing their rugs more closely about them. They looked like grotesque snowmen fashioned by children at play. The coachman, a burly individual in a many-caped driving coat, turned his red, weatherbeaten face towards the guard.

“We can’t keep going in this much longer, not nohow,” he opined, in a deep voice which carried above the moaning of the wind.

The guard assented, tucking his yard of tin under his arm, the better to slap his hands against his sides in a vain effort to warm them. He thought regretfully of the glass of hot toddy which he might have been enjoying in the tap-room of the Red Lion at that moment, had the coach been running to schedule.

The inside passengers peered anxiously through the windows in the fast gathering dusk. In a little while, it would be dark, and even this diversion would be denied them.

“Reckon it’ll keep this up all night,” said the man in the buff coat and kersey small clothes. He had the look of a countryman, perhaps a farmer in a prosperous way of business, and the other passengers were prepared to accept his opinion on the weather. One or two of them tut-tutted, and wondered how long it would take to reach Dartford, which was the next stage.

“We’ve a good eight miles to go yet,” he reminded them, pessimistically. “And this is a powerful bad road, even in daylight and fair weather.”

The young couple seated next to him, and who appeared to be related to him in some way, exchanged glances. Under cover of the basket which the girl carried, their hands met. They had not long been married, and as far as they were concerned, it was no matter if it snowed all night. They had no complaint to make as long as the concealing darkness permitted them to exchange tendernesses in comparative privacy.

The girl glanced half contemptuously, half pityingly at the young lady in the opposite corner. Three and twenty if she was a day, and a quiet little dowd of a woman with her shabby grey pelisse and plain bonnet with never so much as a bright ribbon trimming. An old maid, thought Matilda, glancing at the ungloved left hand; and likely to remain so. If a girl was not married at one and twenty, she had best give up all hope: Matilda herself was just eighteen. She would be a governess, that one, very like; there was an air of downtrodden Quality that went with the breed. She had never known what it was like to lie close and snug to a man, thought Matilda, edging closer to her husband, to feel the swift rise of passion as his lips took yours, to glory in his strength, and your weakness. At this point in her reflections, she forgot about the young woman in the corner, and became immersed in her own emotions.

Miss Jane Spencer had noticed the glance, and having her fair share of perception, had interpreted it correctly. The young country wife in the opposite seat was pitying her for an old maid. Pity was something she had never sought, refusing herself even the indulgence of her own; yet for a moment, she could not help seeing herself through the girl’s eyes, and acknowledging ruefully that hers was not an enviable state.

She found herself wondering what kind of life the others were leading, those who had once been with her at Miss Leasowe’s Select Young Ladies’ Seminary. Certainly not anything like this, she thought with a wry smile; not jolting along in poorly-sprung stage coaches from one depressing post to another. No, most likely they would by now have had their fill of balls, pretty clothes and elegant company, and be settling down in some comfortable establishment with nothing more arduous expected of them but to sustain the part of a good wife and mother.

Her eyes wavered from Matilda’s round healthy face, and fixed themselves absently on the snow drifting past the window, filling the ledges and spattering the glass. Of course, it would have been different if her father had lived. Her life would then have followed more closely the pattern of those others. Strange, she thought, that at one period of our lives we should be so close, young ladies of Quality sharing the same dormitory, the same hopes and fears: and then, only a few short years later, to be as far apart in every particular as were the titled lady and her children’s governess.

But it was not for this that she missed her father, not for the ease and comfort he could have brought her, and which now she lacked. Her heart cried out for the affection which, had bound the two of them closely together against the vagaries of life, for the sense of having someone who belonged. A picture of him rose suddenly in her mind, clear-cut as though he stood before her in the flesh; his head thrown back in laughter, the keen, hawk-like features bright with the zest of living. Her throat constricted, and tears came into the candid grey eyes.

She blinked them angrily away, inwardly giving herself a shake. He had lived his life gloriously, courageously, wringing a laugh from all his trials, never ceasing to hope, in his own phrase, that presently he would come about. What right, then, had she to betray his memory by indulging in melancholy?

She was awakened from her reverie by the slakening pace of the coach. It came to a standstill, and the travellers eyed each other anxiously. The bluff countryman let down the window, admitting a flurry of snow. He shook himself like a dog, and bawled out “Is aught amiss, driver?”

The guard’s red face appeared at the open window.

“We’ll have to trouble you to get out and walk up the ’ill, ladies and gennelmen; the beasts bain’t equal to it. Mr. Beaver there —” he indicated the front of the coach with a jerk of his thumb — “says we can’t go much farther in this. There’s an inn of sorts at the top o’ the rise, and we be thinking it may be best to seek shelter there for the night, and go on in the mornin’.”

There was an outcry at this.

“Me darter’s meeting me at Dartford,” whined a wizened old woman in a rusty black cloak, who sat beside Jane Spencer. “She’ll be rare put about if I bain’t there.”

“Can’t be ’elped, Ma,” returned the guard, putting a strong hand under her arm to assist her to alight. “Darters or no darters, we don’t go no farther till daybreak — if so be as we can manage to get through then.”

The farmer had jumped down after the old woman, and took a long, searching look at the sky.

“Full of it,” was his comment. “But it don’t generally lie long this time o’year — thaw might set in tomorrow.”

The coachman was of a less optimistic turn of mind; the two argued the point while the outside passengers climbed down from their perch, and, after exchanging a few sentences with the disputants, set off at a smart pace up the hill. Matilda and her husband followed the farmer from the coach, and now stood huddled together, waiting until their relative should be pleased to make a move. This he did at last, going up to the old woman and asking if he might carry her basket for her. As it was nearly as big as herself, she relinquished it thankfully; and he fell into step beside her, chattering away in his cheerful country burr. Matilda and her husband, who appeared to have as much idea of what they were about as two sleep-walkers, linked arms and followed in their relative’s wake.

Jane Spencer had been the last to alight from the coach, and was now left to walk alone. The chill wind cut through her thin pelisse like a knife, and she drew close in to the hedge in the vain hope of finding more shelter. She had to pick her way with care, for here was a ditch partly submerged in snow, and an incautious step might plunge her into it. After a few yards, she decided wryly that perhaps it would make little difference, after all; the snow reached almost to the top of her half-boots, and already a damp, clammy ring had formed between boot and stocking. She glanced after the men of the party, envying them the boots which reached to the top of their calves, and their warm topcoats. True, it was not the mode for ladies to go warmly clad; but Jane Spencer’s garments were, by reason of age, even lighter than fashion demanded.

She shivered, head bent against the driving snow, eyes straining to make out the line of the ditch as she trudged onwards. Her progress was not rapid; the snow clung like lead weights to her feet. The distance between herself and the others increased.

She had reached a point about halfway up the hill, when suddenly she halted in her tracks, her blood chilling from other cause than the weather. An icy inward chill this, seizing her heart in an iron grip and momentarily robbing her of the power of movement. She stood as one turned to stone, her hand coming up to her mouth in an instinctive gesture of terror.

A little way ahead of her, sprawled in the ditch and half covered by snow, lay what appeared from this distance to be a body.

Almost she cried out, but an inherent dislike of making a scene prevented her. It was that eerie time of day when familiar objects take on an unfamiliar look. Perhaps she told herself, in an effort to be rational, this might prove to be only a discarded scarecrow. How humiliating to have summoned the others if it should be so! She must first approach more closely, and make quite sure what the object really was.

Such a decision was easy to make, but not so simple to put into effect. Reluctance held back every nerve in her body. By a supreme effort of will, she at last forced herself onwards, her dragging feet carrying her inexorably towards the ominous bundle in the ditch. She drew level, and timorously stooped over it, her eyes straining through the fading light. With difficulty she made out a huddle of dark garments, and then, clearly outlined against the snow, an outflung human hand.

Involuntarily, she let out a little scream.

The others turned at the sound, and the men came running towards her.

“What’s amiss?” shouted the farmer.

For answer she pointed with a shaking finger to the crumpled body in the ditch. For a moment, speech had deserted her.

“Good God, it’s a corpse!” gasped the farmer. “Hey, there, stop the coachman, some of you, and bring a lantern!”

Two of the outside passengers ran to do his bidding. The farmer and the other men stooped over the body, and lifted it into the road.

“What’s toward?” panted the guard, running towards them with a lantern in his hand. At sight of the burden the two men were carrying, he let out an exclamation.

“Just set that down ’ere,” directed the farmer, “and we’ll see if the poor devil’s got any life left in ’im. Young lady found ’un in the ditch,” he explained tersely.

The guard obeyed, and by the flickering light of the lantern Jane saw a pale, dark-browed face with an ugly bruise over one temple. The farmer bent over the body, and made a brief examination. He straightened up.

“He lives,” he said. “Looks as if he’s been set upon and robbed, by the state of his clothes. He don’t seem to be wounded, though. We’d best carry ’im to the coach. You take ’is head, Jem —” this to his son, who had arrived with the others, leaving Matilda and the old woman standing some distance off in the middle of the road. “Steady now, lad; don’t want to go jolting the poor fellow about more’n we can help.”

Between them they heaved the body up and bore it, not without some difficulty, to the waiting coach. The guard seized the lantern, and was about to follow them; but as he did so, Jane caught sight of something glinting in the ditch.

“Stay just a moment,” she commanded. The man brought his light over to the spot where she was standing, and she stooped to put out her hand to the object she had espied. Her groping fingers closed round something square and hard. She seized it and raised it to the light, brushing the loose snow away from its surface.

It was a jewelled snuff box.

The guard whistled.

“Gold and precious stones,” he said, peering closely at the box. “Worth any amount, I’ll be bound. Reckon it must ’ave fallen into the ditch when the poor chap was set upon, and that’s how the thief came to miss it. Queer place, though, for footpads or highwaymen, with the inn just at the top of the rise — still, no telling where you’ll be falling foul o’ them gentry. You’d best have a care of it, ma’am; I should put it out of sight.”

Jane assented, tucking the box into her reticule, and together she and the guard followed the rest of the party.

They had not far to go before they came to the small inn of which the coachman had spoken. It was an old building with a thatched roof and latticed windows; over the low entrance door swung an unpretentious, snow-covered sign ‘The Three Tuns’. Obviously this was no posting house, but a wayside inn catering only for the casual traveller. Nevertheless, a warm red light shone from the curtained window of the coffee-room, and the weary travellers heaved a sigh of relief at the prospect of a meal and a cheerful fire to sit by.

The landlord of the inn was a typical Boniface, round of face and form, but his wife was altogether another matter, and it was soon plain to see who ruled the affairs of The Three Tuns. Under her disapproving eye, the passengers from the stage coach crowded into the coffee-room, drawn to the fireside as moths to a candle flame. The coachman and the guard lingered in the hall to explain their predicament.

Other books

Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe by Shelley Coriell

Hot for Teacher by Dominique Adair

Hesparia's Tears by Imogene Nix

The Sorcerer's Bane by B. V. Larson

Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker

Five Women by Rona Jaffe

The Vanishing Thief by Kate Parker

L.A. Cinderella by Amanda Berry

The Last Thing He Needs by J.H. Knight

Gene of Isis by Traci Harding