Johnny Ludlow, Third Series
“She said the same to Susan this afternoon. Well, we must wait for more. Good-night, Mr. Duffham: I am sure you will do all you can.”
Of course Duffham meant to do all he could; and from that time he began to attend her regularly.
Jessy Page’s coming home, with, as Miss Susan had put it, the vagabond manner of it, was a nine days’ wonder. The neighbours went making calls at the Copse Farm, to talk about it and to see her. In the latter hope they failed. Jessy showed a great fear of seeing any one of them; would put her head under the bed-clothes and lie there shaking till the house was clear; and Duffham said she was not to be crossed.
Her sisters got to know no more of the past. Not a syllable. They questioned and cross-questioned her; but she only stuck to her text. It was the work that had been too much for her; the people she served were cruelly hard.
“I really think it must be so; that she has nothing else to tell,” remarked Abigail to Susan one morning, as they sat alone at breakfast, “But she must have been a downright simpleton to stay.”
“I can’t make her out,” returned Susan, hard of belief. “Why should she not say where it was, and who the people are? Here comes the letter-man.”
The letter-man—as he was called—was bringing a letter for Miss Page. Letters at the Copse Farm were rare, and she opened it with curiosity. It proved to be from Mrs. Allen of Aberystwith; and out of it dropped two cards, tied together with silver cord.
Mrs. Allen wrote to say that her distant relative, Marcus, was married. He had been married on Christmas-Eve to a Miss Mary Goldbeater, a great heiress, and they had sent her cards. Thinking the Miss Pages might like to see the cards (as they knew something of him) she had forwarded them.
Abigail took the cards up. “Mr. Marcus Allen. Mrs. Marcus Allen.” And on hers was the address: “Gipsy Villas, Montgomery Road, Brompton.” “I think he might have been polite enough to send us cards also,” observed Abigail.
Susan put the cards on the waiter when she went upstairs with her sister’s tea. Jessy, looking rather more feverish than usual in a morning, turned the cards about in her slender hands.
“I have heard of her, this Mary Goldbeater,” said Jessy, biting her parched lips. “They say she’s pretty, and—and very rich.”
“Where did you hear of her?” asked Susan.
“Oh, in—let me think. In the work-room.”
“Now what do you mean by that?” cried Miss Susan. “A work-room implies a dressmaker’s establishment, and you tell us you were a lady’s-maid.”
Jessy seemed unable to answer.
“I don’t believe you were at either the one place or the other. You are deceiving us, Jessy.”
“No,” gasped Jessy.
“Did you ever see Mr. Marcus Allen when you were in town?”
“Mr. Marcus Allen?” repeated Jessy after a pause, just as if she were unable to recall who Mr. Marcus Allen was.
“The Mr. Marcus Allen you knew at Aberystwith; he who came here afterwards,” went on Susan impatiently. “Are you losing your memory, Jessy?”
“No, I never saw the Marcus Allen I knew here—and there,” was Jessy’s answer, her face white and still as death.
“Why!—Did you know any other Marcus Allen, then?” questioned Susan, in surprise. For the words had seemed to imply it.
“No,” replied Jessy. “No.”
“She seems queerer than usual—I hope her mind’s not going,” thought Susan. “Did you ever go to see Madame Caron, Jessy, while you were in London?”
“Never. Why should I? I didn’t know Madame Caron.”
“When Marcus Allen wrote to excuse himself from visiting us in the summer, he said he would be sure to come later,” resumed Susan. “I wonder if he will keep his promise.”
“No—never,” answered Jessy.
“How do you know?”
“Oh—I don’t think it. He wouldn’t care to come. Especially now he’s married.”
“And you never saw him in town, Jessy? Never even met him by chance?”
“I’ve told you—No. Do you suppose I should be likely to call upon Marcus Allen? As to meeting him by chance, it is not often I went out, I can tell you.”
“Well, sit up and take your breakfast,” concluded Susan.
A thought had crossed Susan Page’s mind—whether this marriage of Marcus Allen’s on Christmas-Eve could have had anything to do with Jessy’s return and her miserable unhappiness. It was only a thought; and she drove it away again. As Abigail said, she had been inclined throughout to judge hardly of Jessy.
The winter snow lay on the ground still, when it became a question not of how many weeks Jessy would live, but of days. And then she confessed to a secret that pretty nearly changed the sober Miss Pages’ hair from black to grey. Jessy had turned Roman Catholic.
It came out through her persistent refusal to see the parson, Mr. Holland, a little man with shaky legs. He’d go trotting up to the Copse Farm once or twice a-week; all in vain. Miss Abigail would console him with a good hot jorum of sweet elder wine, and then he’d trot back again. One day Jessy, brought to bay, confessed that she was a Roman Catholic.
There was grand commotion. John Drench went about, his hands lifted in the frosty air; Abigail and Susan Page sat in the bedroom with (metaphorically speaking) ashes on their heads.
People have their prejudices. It was not so much that these ladies wished to cast reflection on good Catholics born and bred, as that Jessy should have abandoned her own religion, just as though it had been an insufficient faith. It was the slight on it that they could not bear.
“Miserable girl!” exclaimed Miss Susan, looking upon Jessy as a turncoat, and therefore next door to lost. And Jessy told, through her sobs, how it had come to pass.
Wandering about one evening in London when she was very unhappy, she entered a Catholic place of worship styled an “Oratory.”—The Miss Pages caught up the word as “oratorio,” and never called it anything else.—There a priest got into conversation with Jessy. He had a pleasant, kindly manner that won upon her and drew from her the fact that she was unhappy. Become a Catholic, he said to her; it would bring her back to happiness: and he asked her to go and see him again. She went again; again and again. And so, going and listening to him, she at length did turn, and was received by him into his church.
“Are you the happier for it?” sharply asked Miss Abigail.
“No,” answered Jessy with distressed eyes. “Only—only–”
“Only what, pray?”
“Well, they can absolve me from all sin.”
“Oh, you poor foolish misguided child!” cried Abigail in anguish; “you must take your sins to the Saviour: He can absolve you, and He alone. Do you want any third person to stand between you and Him?”
Jessy gave a sobbing sigh. “It’s best as it is, Abigail. Anyway, it is too late now.”
“Stop a bit,” cried sharp Miss Susan. “I should like to have one thing answered, Jessy. You have told us how hard you were kept to work: if that was so, pray how did you find leisure to be dancing abroad to Oratorios? Come?”
Jessy could not, or would not, answer.
“Can you explain that!” said Miss Susan, some sarcasm in her tone.
“I went out sometimes in an evening,” faltered Jessy. And more than that could not be drawn from her.
They did not tell Mr. Page: it would have distressed him too much. In a day or two Jessy asked to see a priest. Miss Abigail flatly refused, on account of the scandal. As if their minister was not good enough!
One afternoon I was standing by Jessy’s bed—for Miss Abigail had let me go up to see her. Mrs. Todhetley, that first day, had said she looked like a lily: she was more like one now. A faded lily that has had all its beauty washed out of it.
“Good-bye, Johnny Ludlow,” she said, opening her eyes, and putting out her feeble hand. “I shall not see you again.”
“I hope you will, Jessy. I’ll come over to-morrow.”
“Never again in this world.” And I had to lean over to catch the words, and my eyes were full.
“In the next world there’ll be no parting, Jessy. We shall see each other there.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You will be there, Johnny; I can’t tell whether I shall be. I turned Roman Catholic, you see; and Abigail won’t let a priest come. And so—I don’t know how it will be.”
The words struck upon me. The Miss Pages had kept the secret too closely for news of it to have come abroad. It seemed worse to me to hear it than to her to say it. But she had grown too weak to feel things strongly.
“Good-bye, Johnny.”
“Good-bye, Jessy dear,” I whispered. “Don’t fear: God will be sure to take you to heaven if you ask Him.”
Miss Abigail got it out of me—what she had said about the priest. In fact, I told. She was very cross.
“There; let it drop, Johnny Ludlow. John Drench is gone off in the gig to Coughton to bring one. All I hope and trust is, that they’ll not be back until the shades of night have fallen upon the earth! I shouldn’t like a priest to be seen coming into this door. Such a reproach on good Mr. Holland! I’m sure I trust it will never get about!”
We all have our prejudices, I repeat. And not a soul amongst us for miles round had found it necessary to change religions since the Reformation.
Evening was well on when John Drench brought him in. A mild-faced man, wearing a skull-cap under his broad-brimmed hat. He saw Jessy alone. Miss Page would not have made a third at the interview though they had bribed her to it—and of course they wouldn’t have had her. It was quite late when he came down. Miss Page stopped him as he was going out, after declining refreshment.
“I presume, sir, she has told you all about this past year—that has been so mysterious to us?”
“Yes; I think all,” replied the priest.
“Will you tell me the particulars?”
“I cannot do that,” he said. “They have been given to me under the seal of confession.”
“Only to me and to her sister Susan,” pleaded Abigail. “We will not even disclose it to our father. Sir, it would be a true kindness to us, and it can do her no harm. You do not know what our past doubts and distress have been.”
But the priest shook his head. He was very sorry to refuse, he said, but the tenets of his Church forbade his speaking. And Miss Page thought he was sorry, for he had a benevolent face.
“Best let the past lie,” he gently added. “Suffice it to know that she is happy now, poor child, and will die in peace.”
They buried her in the churchyard beside her mother. When the secret got about, some said it was not right—that she ought to have been taken elsewhere, to a graveyard devoted to the other faith. Which would just have put the finishing stroke on old Page—broken all that was left of his heart to break. The Squire said he didn’t suppose it mattered in the sight of God: or would make much difference at the Last Day.
And that ended the life of Jessy Page: and, in one sense, its episode of mystery. Nothing more was ever heard or known of where she had been or what she had done. Years have gone by since then; and William Page is lying beside her. Miss Page and Charley live on at the Copse Farm; Susan became Mrs. John Drench ages ago. Her husband, a man of substance now, was driving her into Alcester last Tuesday (market-day) in his four-wheeled chaise, two buxom daughters in the back seat. I nodded to them from Mr. Brandon’s window.
The mystery of Jessy Page (as we grew to call it) remained a mystery. It remains one to this day. What the secret was—if there was a secret—why she went in the way she did, and came back in what looked like shame and fear and trembling, a dying girl—has not been solved. It never will be in this world. Some old women put it all down to her having changed her religion and been afraid to tell: while Miss Abigail and Miss Susan have never got rid of a vague doubt, touching Marcus Allen. But it may be only their fancy; they admit that, and say to one another when talking of it privately, that it is not right to judge a man without cause. He keeps a carriage-and-pair now; and gives dinners, and has handsome daughters growing up; and is altogether quite up to the present style of expensive life in London.
And I never go into church on a Christmas morning—whether it may be decorated in our simple country fashion, or in accordance with your new “artistic” achievements—but I think of Jessy Page. Of her sweet face, her simplicity, and her want of guile: and of the poor wreck that came back, broken-hearted, to die.
CRABB RAVINE
I
“Yes! Halloa! What is it?”
To be wakened up short by a knocking, or some other noise, in the night, is enough to make you start up in bed, and stare round in confusion. The room was dark, barring the light that always glimmers in at the window on a summer’s night, and I listened and waited for more. Nothing came: it was all as silent as the grave.
We were staying at Crabb Cot. I had gone to bed at half-past nine, dead tired after a day’s fishing. The Squire and Tod were away: Mrs. Todhetley went over to the Coneys’ after tea, and did not seem in a hurry to come back. They fried one of the fish I had caught for my supper; and after that, there being no one to speak to, I went to bed.
It was a knocking that had wakened me out of my sleep: I was sure of that. And it sounded exactly as though it were at the window—which was very improbable. Calling out again to know who was there, and what was wanted—though not very loudly, for the children slept within earshot—and getting no answer, I lay down again, and was all but asleep when the noise came a second time.
It was at the dining-room window, right underneath mine. There could be no mistake about it. The ceilings of the old-fashioned house were low; the windows were very near each other, and mine was down at the top. I thought it time to jump out of bed, and take a look out.
Well, I was surprised! Instead of its being the middle of the night, it must be quite early still; for the lamp was yet alight in the dining-room. It was a cosy kind of room, with a bow window jutting on to the garden, of which the middle compartment opened to the ground, as French windows do. My window was a bow also, and close above the other. Throwing it up, I looked out.
There was not a soul to be seen. Yet the knocking could not have been from within, for the inside shutters were closed: they did not reach to the top panes, and the lamplight shone through them on the mulberry tree. As I leaned out, wondering, the crazy old clock at North Crabb Church began to tell the hour. I counted the strokes, one by one—ten of them. Only ten o’clock! And I thought I had been asleep half the night.
All in a moment I caught sight of some one moving slowly away. He was keeping in the shade; close to the shrubs that encircled the lawn, as if not caring to be seen. A short, thin man, in dark clothes and round black felt hat. Who he was, and what he wanted, was more than I could imagine. It could not be a robber. Robbers don’t come knocking at houses before people have gone to bed.
The small side-gate opened, and Mrs. Todhetley came in. Old Coney’s farm was only a stone’s-throw off, and she had run home alone. We people in the country think nothing of being abroad alone at night. The man emerged from the shade, and placed himself right in her path, on the gravel walk. They stood there together. I could see him better now: there was no moon, but the night was light; and it flashed into my mind that he was the same man I had seen Mrs. Todhetley with in the morning, as I went across the fields, with my rod and line. She was at the stile, about to descend into the Ravine, when he came up from it, and accosted her. He was a stranger; wearing a seedy, shabby black coat; and I had wondered what he wanted. They were still talking together when I got out of sight, for I turned to look.
Not long did they stand now. The gentleman went away; she came hastening on with her head down, a soft wool kerchief thrown over her cap. In all North Crabb, no one was so fearful of catching face-ache as Mrs. Todhetley.
“Who was it?” I called out, when she was under the window: which seemed to startle her considerably, for she gave a spring back, right on to the grass.
“Johnny! how you frightened me! What are you looking out at?”
“At that fellow who has just taken himself off. Who is he?”
“I do believe you have on nothing but your nightshirt! You’ll be sure to take cold. Shut the window down, and get into bed.”
Four times over, in all, had I to ask about the man before I got an answer. Now it was the nightshirt, now catching cold, now the open window and the damp air. She always wanted to be as tender with us as though we were chickens.
“The man that met me in the path?” she got to, at length. “He made some excuse for being here: was not sure whose house it was, I think he said: had turned in by mistake to the wrong one.”
“That’s all very fine; but, not being sure, he ought to mind his manners. He came rapping at the dining-room window like anything, and it woke me up. Had you been at home, sitting there, good mother, you might have been startled out of your seven senses.”
“So I should, Johnny. The Coneys would not let me come away: they had friends with them. Good-night, dear. Shut down that window.”
She went on to the side-door. I put down the window, opened it at the top, and let the white curtain drop before it. It was an hour or two before I got to sleep again, and I had the man and the knocking in my thoughts all the time.
“Don’t say anything about it in the house, Johnny,” Mrs. Todhetley said to me, in the morning. “It might alarm the children.” So I promised her I would not.
Tod came home at mid-day, not the Squire: and the first thing I did was to tell him. I wouldn’t have broken faith with the mother for the world; not even for Tod; but it never entered my mind that she wished me to keep it a close secret, excepting from those, servants or others, who might be likely to repeat it before Hugh and Lena. I cautioned Tod.
“Confound his impudence!” cried Tod. “Could he not be satisfied with disturbing the house at the door at night, but he must make for the window? I wish I had been at home.”
Crabb Ravine lay to the side of our house, beyond the wide field. It was a regular wilderness. The sharp descent began in that three-cornered grove, of which you’ve heard before, for it was where Daniel Ferrar hanged himself; and the wild, deep, mossy dell, about as wide as an ordinary road, went running along below, soft, green and damp. Towering banks, sloping backwards, rose on either side; a mass of verdure in summer; of briars, brown and tangled, in winter. Dwarf shrubs, tall trees, blackberry and nut bushes, sweet-briar and broom clustered there in wild profusion. Primroses and violets peeped up when spring came in; blue bells and cowslips, dog-roses, woodbine, and other sweet flowers, came later. Few people would descend except by the stile opposite our house and the proper zigzag path leading down the side bank, for a fall might have broken limbs, besides bringing one’s clothes to grief. No houses stood near it, except ours and old Coney’s; and the field bordering it just here on this side belonged to Squire Todhetley. If you went down the zigzag path, turned to the right, walked along the Ravine some way, and then up another zigzag on the opposite side, you soon came to Timberdale, a small place in itself, but our nearest post-town. The high-road to Timberdale, winding past our house from South Crabb, was twice the distance, so that people might sometimes be seen in the Ravine by day; but no one cared to go near it in the evening, as it had the reputation of being haunted. A mysterious light might sometimes be observed there at night, dodging about the banks, where it would be rather difficult for ordinary human beings to walk: some said it was a will-o’-the-wisp, and some said a ghost. It was difficult to get even a farm-servant to go the near way to Timberdale after dark.
One morning, when I was running through the Ravine with Tod in search of Tom Coney, we came slap against a man, who seemed to be sneaking there, for he turned short off, into the underwood, to hide himself. I knew him by his hat.
“Tod, that’s the man,” I whispered.
“What man, Johnny?”
“The one who came knocking at the window three nights ago.”
“Oh!” said Tod, carelessly. “He looks like a fellow who comes out with begging petitions.”
It might have been an hour after that. We had come up from the Ravine, on our side of it, not having seen or spoken to a soul, except Luke Mackintosh. Tod told me to stay and waylay Coney if he made his appearance, whilst he went again to the farm in search of him. Accordingly, I was sitting on the fence (put there to hinder the cattle and sheep from getting over the brink of the Ravine), throwing stones and whistling, when I saw Mrs. Todhetley cross the stile to go down the zigzag. She did not see me: the fence could hardly be gained for trees, and I was hidden.
Just because I had nothing to do, I watched her as she went; tall, thin, and light in figure, she could spin along nearly as quick as we. The zigzag path went in and out, sloping along the bank until it brought itself to the dell at a spot a good bit beyond me as I looked down, finishing there with a high, rough step. Mrs. Todhetley took it with a spring.
What next! In one moment the man with the black coat and hat had appeared from somewhere, and placed himself in front of her parasol. Before I could quit the place, and leap down after her, a conviction came over me that the meeting was not accidental: and I rubbed my eyes in wonder, and thought I must be dreaming.
The summer air was clear as crystal; not a bee’s hum just then disturbed its stillness. Detached words ascended from where they stood; and now and again a whole sentence. She kept looking each way as if afraid to be seen; and so did he, for that matter. The colloquy seemed to be about money. I caught the word two or three times; and Mrs. Todhetley said it was “impossible.” “I must, and I will have it,” came up distinctly from him in answer.
“What’s that, Johnny?”
The interruption came from Tod. All my attention absorbed in them, he stood at my elbow before I knew he was near. When I would have answered, he suddenly put his hand upon my mouth for silence. His face had a proud anger on it as he looked down.
Mrs. Todhetley seemed to be using entreaty to the man, for she clasped her hands in a piteous manner, and then turned to ascend the zigzag. He followed her, talking very fast. As to me, I was in a regular sea of marvel, understanding nothing. Our heads were hardly to be distinguished from the bushes, even if she had looked up.
“No,” she said, turning round upon him; and they were near us then, half way up the path, so that every word was audible. “You must not venture to come to the house, or near the house. I would not have Mr. Todhetley know of this for the world: for your sake as well as for his.”
“Todhetley’s not at home,” was the man’s answer: and Tod gave a growl as he heard it.
“If he is not, his son is,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “It would be all the same; or worse.”
“His son’s here,” roared out passionate Tod. “What the deuce is the meaning of this, sir?”
The man shot down the path like an arrow. Mrs. Todhetley—who had been walking on, seeming not to have caught the words, or to know whose the voice was, or where it came from—gazed round in all directions, her countenance curiously helpless. She ran up the rest of the zigzag, and went swiftly home across the field. Tod disentangled himself from the brambles, and drew a long breath.
“I think it’s time we went now, Johnny.” It was not often he spoke in that tone. He had always been at war tacitly with Mrs. Todhetley, and was not likely to favour her now. Generous though he was by nature, there could be no denying that he took up awful prejudices.
“It is something about money, Tod.”
“I don’t care what it is about—the fellow has no business to be prowling here, on my father’s grounds; and he shan’t be, without my knowing what it’s for. I’ll watch madam’s movements.”
“What do you think it can mean?”
“Mean! Why, that the individual is some poor relation of hers, come to drain as much of my father’s money out of her as he can. She is the one to blame. I wonder how she dare encourage him!”
“Perhaps she can’t help herself.”
“Not help herself? Don’t show yourself a fool, Johnny. An honest-minded, straightforward woman would appeal to my father in any annoyance of this sort, or to me, in his absence, and say ‘Here’s So-and-so come down upon us, asking for help, can we give it him?’—and there’s no doubt the Squire would give it him; he’s soft enough for anything.”