Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series

I.—MONTPELLIER-BY-SEA

“Let us go and give her a turn,” cried the Squire.

Tod laughed. “What, all of us?” said he.

“To be sure. All of us. Why not? We’ll start to-morrow.”

“Oh dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Todhetley, dismay in her mild tones. “Children and all?”

“Children and all; and take Hannah to see to them,” said the Squire. “You don’t count, Joe: you will be off elsewhere.”

“We could never be ready,” said the Mater, looking the image of perplexity. “To-morrow’s Friday. Besides, there would be no time to write to Mary.”

“Write to her!” cried the Squire, turning sharply on his heel as he paced the room in his nankeen morning-coat. “And who do you suppose is going to write to her? Why, it would cause her to make all sorts of preparation, put her to no end of trouble. A pretty conjurer you’d make! We will take her by surprise: that’s what we will do.”

“But if, when we got there, we should find her rooms are let, sir?” said I, the possibility striking me.

“Then we’ll go into others, Johnny. A spell at the seaside will be a change for us all.”

This conversation, and the Squire’s planning-out, arose through a letter we had just received from Mary Blair—poor Blair’s widow, if you have not forgotten him, who went to his end through that Gazette of Jerry’s. After a few ups and downs, trying at this thing for a living, trying at that, Mrs. Blair had now settled in a house at the seaside, and opened a day-school. She hoped to get on in it in time, she wrote, especially if she could be so fortunate as to let her drawing-room to visitors. The Squire, always impulsive and good-hearted, at once cried out that we would go and take it.

“It will be doing her a good turn, you see,” he ran on; “and when we leave I dare say she’ll find other people ready to go in. Let’s see”—picking up the letter to refer to the address—“No. 6, Seaboard Terrace, Montpellier-by-Sea. Whereabouts is Montpellier-by-Sea?”

“Never heard of it in my life,” cried Tod. “Don’t believe there is such a place.”

“Be quiet, Joe. I fancy it lies somewhere towards Saltwater.”

Tod flung back his head. “Saltwater! A nice common place that is!”

“Hold your tongue, sir. Johnny, fetch me the railway guide.”

Upon looking at the guide, it was found there; “Montpellier-by-Sea;” the last station before getting to Saltwater. As to Saltwater, it might be common, as Tod said; for it was crowded with all sorts of people, but it was lively and healthy.

Not on the next day, Friday, for it was impossible to get ready in such a heap of a hurry, but on the following Tuesday we started. Tod had left on the Saturday for Gloucestershire. His own mother’s relatives lived there, and they were always inviting him.

“Montpellier-by-Sea?” cried the railway clerk in a doubting tone as we were getting the tickets. “Let’s see? Where is that?”

Of course that set the Squire exploding. What right had clerks to pretend to issue tickets unless they knew their business? The clerk in question coolly ran his finger down the railway list he had turned to, and then gave us the tickets.

“It is a station not much frequented, you see,” he civilly observed. “Travellers mostly go on to Saltwater.”

But for the train being due, and our having to make a rush for the platform, the Squire would have waited to give the young man a piece of his mind. “Saltwater, indeed!” said he. “I wonder the fellow does not issue his edict as to where people shall go and where they shan’t go.”

We arrived in due time at our destination. It was written up as large as life on a white board, “Montpellier-by-Sea.” A small roadside station, open to the country around; no signs of sea or of houses to be seen; a broad rural district, apparently given over entirely to agriculture. On went the whistling train, leaving the group of us standing by our luggage on the platform. The Squire was staring about him doubtfully.

“Can you tell me where Seaboard Terrace is?”

“Seaboard Terrace?” repeated the station-master. “No, sir, I don’t know it. There’s no terrace of that name hereabouts. For that matter there are no terraces at all—no houses in fact.”

The Squire’s face was a picture. He saw that (save a solitary farm homestead or two) the country was bare of dwelling-places.

“This is Montpellier-by-Sea?” he questioned at last.

“Sure enough it is, sir. Munpler, it’s called down here.”

“Then Seaboard Terrace must be somewhere in it—somewhere about. What a strange thing!”

“Perhaps the gentlefolks want to go to Saltwater?” spoke up one of the two porters employed at the little station. “There’s lots of terraces there. Here, Jim!”—calling to his fellow—“come here a minute. He’ll know, sir; he comes from Saltwater.”

Jim approached, and settled the doubt at once. He knew Seaboard Terrace very well indeed; it was at Saltwater; just out at the eastern end of it.

Yes, it was at Saltwater. And there were we, more than two miles off it, on a broiling hot day, when walking was impracticable, with all our trunks about us, and no fly to be had, or other means of getting on. The Squire went into one of his passions, and demanded why people living at Saltwater should give their address as Montpellier-by-Sea.

He had hardly patience to listen to the station-master’s explanation—who acknowledged that we were not the first travelling party that had been deluded in like manner. Munpler (as he and the rest of the natives persisted in calling it) was an extensive, straggling rural parish, filled with farm lands; an arm of it extended as far as Saltwater, and the new buildings at that end of Saltwater had rechristened themselves Montpellier-by-Sea, deeming it more aristocratic than the common old name. Had the Squire been able to transport the new buildings, builders and all, he had surely done it on the spot.

Well, we got on to Saltwater in the evening by another train, and to No. 6, Seaboard Terrace. Mary Blair was just delighted.

“If I had but known you were coming, if you had only written to me, I would have explained that it was Saltwater Station you must get out at, not Montpellier,” she cried in deprecation.

“But, my dear, why on earth do you give in to a deception?” stormed the Squire. “Why call your place Montpellier when it’s Saltwater?”

“I do what other people do,” she sighed; “I was told it was Montpellier when I came here. Generally speaking, I have explained, when writing to friends, that it is really Saltwater, in spite of its fine name. I suppose I forgot it when writing to you—I had so much to say. The people really to blame are those who named it so.”

“And that’s true, and they ought to be shown up,” said the Squire.

Seaboard Terrace consisted of seven houses, built in front of the sea a little beyond the town. The parlours had bay windows; the drawing-rooms had balconies and verandahs. The two end houses, Nos. 1 and 7, were double houses, large and handsome, each of them being inhabited by a private family; the middle houses were smaller, most of them being let out in lodgings in the season. Mary Blair began talking that first evening as we sat together about the family who lived in the house next door to her, No. 7. Their name was Peahern, she said, and they had been so very, very kind to her since she took her house in March. Mr. Peahern had interested himself for her and got her several pupils; he was much respected at Saltwater. “Ah, he is a good man,” she added; “but–”

“I’ll call and thank him,” interrupted the Squire. “I am proud to shake hands with such a man as that.”

“You cannot,” she said; “he and his wife have gone abroad. A great misfortune has lately befallen them.”

“A great misfortune! What was it?”

I noticed a sort of cloud pass over Mary Blair’s face, a hesitation in her manner before she replied. Mrs. Todhetley was sitting by her on the sofa; the Squire was in the armchair opposite them, and I at the table, as I had sat at our tea-dinner.

“Mr. Peahern was in business once—a wholesale druggist, I believe; but he made a fortune, and retired some years ago,” began Mary. “Mrs. Peahern has bad health and is a little lame. She was very kind to me also—very good and kind indeed. They had one son—no other children; I think he was studying for the Bar; I am not sure; but he lived in London, and came down here occasionally. My young maid-servant, Susan, got acquainted with their servants, and she gathered from their gossip that he, Edmund Peahern, a very handsome young man, was in some way a trouble to his parents. He was down at Easter, and stayed three weeks; and in May he came down again. What happened I don’t know; I believe there was some scene with his father the day he arrived; anyway, Mr. Peahern was heard talking angrily to him; and that night he—he died.”

She had dropped her voice to a whisper. The Squire spoke.

“Died! Was it a natural death?”

“No. A jury decided that he was insane; and he was buried here in the churchyard. Such a heap of claims and debts came to light, it was said. Mr. Peahern left his lawyer to pay them all, and went abroad with his poor wife for change of scene. It has been a great grief to me. I feel so sorry for them.”

“Then, is the house shut up?”

“No. Two servants are left in it—the two housemaids. The cook, who had lived with them five and twenty years and was dreadfully affected at the calamity, went with her mistress. Nice, good-natured young women are these two that are left, running in most days to ask if they can do anything for me.”

“It is good to have such neighbours,” said the Squire. “And I hope you’ll get on, my dear. How came you to be at this place at all?”

“It was through Mr. Lockett,” she answered—the clergyman who had been so much with her husband before he died, and who had kept up a correspondence with her. Mr. Lockett’s brother was in practice as a doctor at Saltwater, and they thought she might perhaps do well if she came to it. So Mary’s friends had screwed a point or two to put her into the house, and gave her besides a ten-pound note to start with.

“I tell you what it is, young Joe: if you run and reve yourself into that scarlet heat, you shan’t come here with me again.”

“But I like to race with the donkeys,” replied young Joe. “I can run almost as fast as they, Johnny. I like to see the donkeys.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to ride a donkey, lad?”

He shook his head. “I have never had a ride but once,” he answered: “I’ve no sixpences for it. That once Matilda treated me. She brings me on the sands.”

“Who is Matilda?”

“Matilda at No. 7—Mr. Peahern’s.”

“Well, if you are a good boy, young Joe, and stay by me, you shall have a ride as soon as the donkeys come back.”

They were fine sands. I sat down on a bench with a book; little Joe strained his eyes to look after the donkeys in the distance, cantering off with some young shavers like himself on their backs, their nursemaids walking quickly after them. Poor little Joe!—he had the gentlest, meekest face in the world, with his thoughtful look and nice eyes—waited and watched in quiet patience. The sands were crowded with people this afternoon; organs were playing, dancing dolls exhibiting; and vessels with their white sails spread glided smoothly up and down on the sparkling sea.

“And will you really pay the sixpence?” asked the little fellow presently. “They won’t let me get on for less.”

“Really and truly, Joe. I’ll take you for a row in a boat some calm day, if mamma will allow you to go.”

Joe looked grave. “I don’t much like the water, please,” said he, timidly. “Alfred Dale went on it in a boat and fell in, and was nearly drowned. He comes to mamma’s school.”

“Then we’ll let the boats alone, Joe. There’s Punch! He is going to set himself up yonder: wouldn’t you like to run and see him?”

“But I might miss the donkeys,” answered Joe.

He stood by me quietly, gazing in the direction taken by the donkeys; evidently they were his primary attraction. The other child, Mary, who was a baby when her father died (poor Baked Pie, as we boys used to call him at Frost’s), was in Wales with Mrs. Blair’s people. They had taken the child for a few months, until she saw whether she should get along at Saltwater.

But we thought she would get along. Her school was a morning school for little boys of good parentage, all of whom paid liberal terms; and she would be able to let her best rooms for at least six months in the year.

“There’s Matilda! Oh, there’s Matilda!”

It was quite a loud shout for little Joe. Looking up, I saw him rush to a rather good-looking young woman, neatly dressed in a black-and-white print gown and small shawl of the same, with black ribbons crossed on her straw bonnet. Servants did not dress fine enough to set the Thames on fire in those days. Joe dragged her triumphantly up to me. She was one of the housemaids at No. 7.

“It’s Matilda,” he said; and the young woman curtsied. “And I am going to have a donkey-ride, Matilda; Mr. Johnny Ludlow’s going to give the sixpence for me!”

“I know you by sight, sir,” observed Matilda to me. “I have seen you go in and out of No. 6.”

She had a pale olive complexion, with magnificent, melancholy dark eyes. Many persons would have called her handsome. I took a sort of liking for the girl—if only for her kindness to poor little fatherless Joe. In manner she was particularly quiet, subdued, and patient.

“You had a sad misfortune at your house not long ago,” I observed to her, at a loss for something to say.

“Oh, sir, don’t talk of it, please!” she answered, catching her breath. “I seem to have had the shivers at times ever since. It was me that found him.”

Up cantered the donkeys; and presently away went Joe on the back of one, Matilda attending him. The ride was just over, and Joe beginning to enlarge on its delights to me, when another young woman, dressed precisely similar to Matilda, even to the zigzag white running pattern on the prim gown, and the black cotton gloves, was seen making her way towards us. She was nice-looking also, in a different way—fair, with blue eyes, and a laughing, arch face.

“Why, there’s Jane Cross!” exclaimed Matilda. “What in the world have you come out for, Jane? Have you left the house safe?”

“As if I should leave it unsafe!” lightly retorted the one they had called Jane Cross. “The back door’s locked, and here’s the key of the front”—showing a huge key. “Why shouldn’t I go out if you do, Matilda? The house is none so lively a one now, to stop in all alone.”

“And that’s true enough,” was Matilda’s quiet answer. “Little master Joe’s here; he has been having a donkey-ride.”

The two servants, fellow-housemaids, strolled off towards the sea, taking Joe with them. At the edge of the beach they encountered Hannah, who had just come on with our two children, Hugh and Lena. The maids sat down for a gossip, while the children took off their shoes and stockings to dabble in the gently rising tide.

And that was my introductory acquaintanceship with the servant-maids at No. 7. Unfortunately it did not end there.

Twilight was coming on. We had been out and about all day, had dined as usual at one o’clock (not to give unnecessary trouble), and had just finished tea in Mrs. Blair’s parlour. It was where we generally took tea, and supper also. The Squire liked to sit in the open bay window and watch the passers-by as long as ever a glimmer of daylight lasted; and he could not see them so well in the drawing-room above. I was at the other corner of the bay window. The Mater and Mary Blair were on their favourite seat, the sofa, at the end of the room, both knitting. In the room at the back, Mary held her morning school.

I sat facing towards the end house, No. 7. And I must here say that during the last two or three weeks I had met the housemaids several times on the sands, and so had become quite at home with each of them. Both appeared to be thoroughly well-conducted, estimable young women; but, of the two, I liked Jane Cross best; she was always so lively and pleasant-mannered. One day she told me why No. 7 generally called her by her two names—which I had thought rather odd. It appeared that when she entered her place two years before, the other housemaid was named Jane, so they took to call her by her full name, Jane Cross. That housemaid had left in about a twelvemonth, and Matilda had entered in her place. The servants were regarded as equals in the house, not one above the other, as is the case in many places. These details will probably be thought unnecessary and uncalled for, but you will soon see why I mention them. This was Monday. On the morrow we should have been three weeks at Saltwater, and the Squire did not yet talk of leaving. He was enjoying the free-and-easy life, and was as fond as a child of picking up shells on the sands and looking at Punch and the dancing dolls.

Well, we sat this evening in the bay window as usual, I facing No. 7. Thus sitting, I saw Matilda cross the strip of garden with a jug in her hand, and come out at the gate to fetch the beer for supper.

“There goes Jane Cross,” cried the Squire, as she passed the window. “Is it not, Johnny?”

“No, sir, it’s Matilda.” But the mistake was a very natural one, for the girls were about the same height and size, and were usually dressed alike, the same mourning having been supplied to both of them.

Ten minutes or so had elapsed when Matilda came back: she liked a gossip with the landlady of the Swan. Her pint jug was brimful of beer, and she shut the iron gate of No. 7 after her. Putting my head as far out at the window as it would go, to watch her indoors, for no earthly reason but that I had nothing else to do, I saw her try the front door, and then knock at it. This knock she repeated three times over at intervals, each knock being louder than the last.

“Are you shut out, Matilda?” I called out.

“Yes, sir, it seems like it,” she called back again, without turning her head. “Jane Cross must have gone to sleep.”

Had she been a footman with a carriage full of ladies in court trains behind him, she could not have given a louder or longer knock than she gave now. There was no bell to the front door at No. 7. But the knock remained unanswered and the door unopened.

“Matilda at No. 7 is locked out,” I said, laughing, bringing in my head and speaking to the parlour generally. “She has been to fetch the beer for supper, and can’t get in again.”

“The beer for supper?” repeated Mrs. Blair. “They generally go out at the back gate to fetch that, Johnny.”

“Anyhow, she took the front way to-night. I saw her come out.”

Another tremendous knock. The Squire put his good old nose round the window-post; two boys and a lady, passing by, halted a minute to look on. It was getting exciting, and I ran out. She was still at the door, which stood in the middle of the house, between the sitting-rooms on each side.

“So you have got the key of the street, Matilda!”

“I can’t make it out,” she said; “what Jane Cross can be about, or why the door should be closed at all. I left it on the latch.”

“Somebody has slipped in to make love to her. Your friend, the milkman, perhaps.”

Evidently Matilda did not like the allusion to the milkman. Catching a glimpse of her face by the street lamp, I saw it had turned white. The milkman was supposed to be paying court at No. 7, but to which of the two maids gossip did not decide. Mrs. Blair’s Susan, who knew them well, said it was Matilda.

“Why don’t you try the back way?” I asked, after more waiting.

“Because I know the outer door is locked, sir. Jane Cross locked it just now, and that’s why I came out this front way. I can try it, however.”

She went round to the road that ran by the side of the house, and tried the door in the garden wall. It was fastened, as she had said. Seizing the bell-handle, she gave a loud peal—another, and another.

“I say, it seems odd, though,” I cried, beginning to find it so. “Do you think she can have gone out?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. But—no; it’s not likely, Master Johnny. I left her laying the cloth for our supper.”

“Was she in the house alone?”

“We are always alone, sir; we don’t have visitors. Anyway, none have been with us this evening.”

I looked at the upper windows of the house. No light was to be seen in any of them, no sign of Jane Cross. The lower windows were hidden from view by the wall, which was high.

“I think she must have dropped asleep, Matilda, as you say. Suppose you come in through Mrs. Blair’s and get over the wall?”

I ran round to tell the news to our people. Matilda followed me slowly; I thought, reluctantly. Even in the dim twilight, as she stood at our gate in hesitation, I could see how white her face was.

“What are you afraid of?” I asked her, going out again to where she stood.

“I hardly know, Master Johnny. Jane Cross used to have fits. Perhaps she has been frightened into one now.”

“What should frighten her?”

The girl looked round in a scared manner before replying. Just then I found my jacket-sleeve wet. Her trembling hands had shaken a little of the ale upon it.

“If she—should have seen Mr. Edmund?” the girl brought out in a horrified whisper.

“Seen Mr. Edmund! Mr. Edmund who?—Mr. Edmund Peahern? Why, you don’t surely mean his ghost?”

Her face was growing whiter. I stared at her in surprise.

“We have always been afraid of seeing something, she and me, since last May; we haven’t liked the house at night-time. It has often been quite a scuffle which of us should fetch the beer, so as not to be the one left alone. Many a time I have stood right out at the back door while Jane Cross has gone for it.”

I began to think her an idiot. If Jane Cross was another, why, perhaps she had frightened herself into a fit. All the more reason that somebody should see after her.

“Come along, Matilda; don’t be foolish; we’ll both get over the wall.”

It was a calm, still summer evening, almost dark now. All the lot of us went out to the back garden, I whispering to them what the girl had said to me.

“Poor thing!” said Mrs. Todhetley, who had a sort of fellow-feeling for ghosts. “It has been very lonely for the young women; and if Jane Cross is subject to fits, she may be lying in one at this moment.”

The wall between the gardens was nothing like as high as the outer one. Susan brought out a chair, and Matilda could have got over easily. But when she reached the top, she stuck there.

“I can’t go on by myself; I dare not,” she said, turning her frightened face towards us. “If Mr. Edmund is there–”

“Don’t be a goose, girl!” interrupted the Squire, in doubt whether to laugh or scold. “Here, I’ll go with you. Get on down. Hold the chair tight for me, Johnny.”

We hoisted him over without damage. I leaped after him, and Susan, grinning with delight, came after me. She supposed that Jane Cross had slipped out somewhere during Matilda’s absence.

The door faced the garden, and the Squire and Susan were the first to enter. There seemed to be no light anywhere, and the Squire went gingerly picking his way. I turned round to look for Matilda, who had hung back, and found her with her hand on the trellis-work of the porch, and the beer splashing over in her fear.

“I say, look here, Matilda; you must be a regular goose, as the Squire says, to put yourself into this fright before you know whether there’s any cause for it. Susan says she has only stepped out somewhere.”

She put up her hand and touched my arm, her lips the colour of chalk.

“Only last night that ever was, Mr. Johnny, as we were going up the staircase to bed, we heard a sound in the room as we passed it. It was just like a groan. Ask Jane Cross, else, sir.”

“What room?”

“Mr. Edmund’s; where he did it. She has heard him to-night, or seen him, or something, and has fallen into a fit.”

The kitchen was on the right of the passage. Susan, knowing the ways of the house, soon lighted a candle. On a small round table was spread a white cloth, some bread and cheese, and two tumblers. A knife or two had seemingly been flung on it at random.