The way the Squire lashed up Bob and Blister when driving home—for, liking Sam hitherto, he was just as much put out as old Jacobson—and the duet they kept together in abuse of his misdeeds, was edifying to hear. Tod laughed; I did not. The gig was given over this return journey to the two grooms.
“I do not believe Sam took the box, sir,” I said to old Jacobson, interrupting a fiery oration.
He turned round to stare at me. “What do you say, Johnny Ludlow? You do not believe he took the box?”
“Well, to me it seems quite plain that he did not take it. I’ve hardly ever felt more sure of anything.”
“Plain!” struck in the Squire. “How is it plain, Johnny? What grounds do you go upon?”
“I judge by his looks and his tones, sir, when denying it. They are to be trusted.”
They did not know whether to laugh or scoff at me. It was Johnny’s way, said the Squire; always fancying he could read the riddles in a man’s face and voice. But they’d have thrown up their two best market-going hats with glee to be able to think it true.
V.
Samson Reginald Dene was relieved of the charge, as it was declared “not proven;” all the same, Samson Reginald Dene was ruined. Worcester said so. During the following week, which was Passion Week, its citizens talked more of him than of their prayers.
Granted that Maria Parslet’s testimony had been honestly genuine, a theory cropped up to counteract it. Lawyer Standup had been bold enough to start it at the Saturday’s examination: a hundred tongues were repeating it now. Sam Dene, as may be remembered, was present at the finding of the box on Tuesday; he had come up the passage and touched the golden guineas in it with the tips of his fingers; those fingers might have deftly extracted one of the coins. No wonder he could show it to Maria when he went home to tea! Captain Cockermuth admitted that in counting the guineas subsequently he had thought he counted sixty; but, as he knew there were (or ought to be) that number in the box, probably the assumption misled him, causing him to reckon them as sixty when in fact there were only fifty-nine. Which was a bit of logic.
Still, popular opinion was divided. If part of the town judged Sam to be guilty, part believed him to be innocent. A good deal might be said on both sides. To a young man who does not know how to pay his debts from lack of means, and debts that he is afraid of, too, sixty golden guineas may be a great temptation; and people did not shut their eyes to that. It transpired also that Mr. Jacobson, his own uncle, his best friend, had altogether cast Sam off and told him he might now go to the dogs his own way.
Sam resented it all bitterly, and defied the world. Far from giving in or showing any sense of shame, he walked about with an air, his head up, and that brazen guinea dangling in front of him. He actually had the face to appear at college on Good Friday (the congregation looking askance at him), and sat out the cold service of the day: no singing, no organ, and the little chorister-boys in black surplices instead of white ones.
But the crowning act of boldness was to come. Before Easter week had lapsed into the past, Sam Dene had taken two rooms in a conspicuous part of the town and set-up in practice. A big brass plate on the outer door displayed his name: “Mr. Dene, Attorney-at-law.” Sam’s friends extolled his courage; Sam’s enemies were amazed at his impudence. Captain Cockermuth prophesied that the ceiling of that office would come tumbling down on its crafty occupant’s head: it was his gold that was paying for it.
The Cockermuths, like the town, were divided in opinion. Mr. Cockermuth could not believe Sam guilty, although the mystery as to where the box could be puzzled him as few things had ever puzzled him in this life. He would fain have taken Sam back again, had it been a right thing to do. What the captain thought need not be enlarged upon. While Miss Betty felt uncertain; veering now to this belief, now to that, and much distressed either way.
There is one friend in this world that hardly ever deserts us—and that is a mother. Mrs. Dene, a pretty little woman yet, had come flying to Worcester, ready to fight everybody in it on her son’s behalf. Sam of course made his own tale good to her; whether it was a true one or not he alone knew, but not an angel from heaven could have stirred her faith in it. She declared that, to her positive knowledge, the old uncle had given Sam the guinea.
It was understood to be Mrs. Dene who advanced the money to Sam to set up with; it was certainly Mrs. Dene who bought a shutting-up bed (at old Ward’s), and a gridiron, and a tea-pot, and a three-legged table, and a chair or two, all for the back-room of the little office, that Sam might go into housekeeping on his own account, and live upon sixpence a-day, so to say, until business came in. To look at Sam’s hopeful face, he meant to do it, and to live down the scandal.
Looking at the thing impartially, one might perhaps see that Sam was not swayed by impudence in setting-up, so much as by obligation. For what else lay open to him?—no firm would engage him as clerk with that doubt sticking to his coat-tails. He paid some of his debts, and undertook to pay the rest before the year was out. A whisper arose that it was Mrs. Dene who managed this. Sam’s adversaries knew better; the funds came out of the ebony box: that, as Charles Cockermuth demonstrated, was as sure as heaven.
But now there occurred one thing that I, Johnny Ludlow, could not understand, and never shall: why Worcester should have turned its back, like an angry drake, upon Maria Parslet. The school, where she was resident teacher, wrote her a cool, polite note, to say she need not trouble herself to return after the Easter recess. That example was followed. Pious individuals looked upon her as a possible story-teller, in danger of going to the bad in Sam’s defence, nearly as much as Sam had gone.
It was just a craze. Even Charles Cockermuth said there was no sense in blaming Maria: of course Sam had deceived her (when pretending to show the guinea as his own), just as he deceived other people. Next the town called her “bold” for standing up in the face and eyes of the Guildhall to give her evidence. But how could Maria help that? It was not her own choice: she’d rather have locked herself up in the cellar. Lawyer Chance had burst in upon her that Saturday morning (not ten minutes after we left the house), giving nobody warning, and carried her off imperatively, never saying “Will you, or Won’t you.” It was not his way.
Placid Miss Betty was indignant when the injustice came to her ears. What did people mean by it? she wanted to know. She sent for Maria to spend the next Sunday in Foregate Street, and marched with her arm-in-arm to church (St. Nicholas’), morning and evening.
As the days and the weeks passed, commotion gave place to a calm; Sam and his delinquencies were let alone. One cannot be on the grumble for ever. Sam’s lines were pretty hard; practice held itself aloof from him; and if he did not live upon the sixpence a-day, he looked at every halfpenny that he had to spend beyond it. His face grew thin, his blue eyes wistful, but he smiled hopefully.
“You keep up young Dene’s acquaintance, I perceive,” remarked Lawyer Chance to his son one evening as they were finishing dinner, for he had met the two young men together that day.
“Yes: why shouldn’t I?” returned Austin.
“Think that charge was a mistaken one, I suppose?”
“Well I do, father. He has affirmed it to me in terms so unmistakable that I can but believe him. Besides, I don’t think Dene, as I have always said, is the sort of fellow to turn rogue: I don’t, indeed.”
“Does he get any practice?”
“Very little, I’m afraid.”
Mr. Chance was a man with a conscience. On the whole, he felt inclined to think Sam had not helped himself to the guineas, but he was by no means sure of it: like Miss Betty Cockermuth, his opinion veered, now on this side, now on that, like a haunted weathercock. If Sam was not guilty, why, then, Fate had dealt hardly with the young fellow—and what would the end be? These thoughts were running through the lawyer’s mind as he talked to his son and sat playing with his bunch of seals, which hung down by a short, thick gold chain, in the old-fashioned manner.
“I should like to say a word to him if he’d come to me,” he suddenly cried. “You might go and bring him, Austin.”
“What—this evening?” exclaimed Austin.
“Ay; why not? One time’s as good as another.”
Austin Chance started off promptly for the new office, and found his friend presiding over his own tea-tray in the little back-room; the loaf and butter on the table, and a red herring on the gridiron.
“Hadn’t time to get any dinner to-day; too busy,” was Sam’s apology, given briefly with a flush of the face. “Mr. Chance wants me? Well, I’ll come. What is it for?”
“Don’t know,” replied Austin. And away they went.
The lawyer was standing at the window, his hands in the pockets of his pepper-and-salt trousers, tinkling the shillings and sixpences there. Austin supposed he was not wanted, and shut them in.
“I have been thinking of your case a good bit lately, Sam Dene,” began Mr. Chance, giving Sam a seat and sitting down himself; “and I should like to feel, if I can, more at a certainty about it, one way or the other.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Sam. And you must please to note that manners in those days had not degenerated to what they are in these. Young men, whether gentle or simple, addressed their elders with respect; young women also. “Yes, sir,” replied Sam. “But what do you mean about wishing to feel more at a certainty?”
“When I defended you before the magistrates, I did my best to convince them that you were not guilty: you had assured me you were not: and they discharged you. I believe my arguments and my pleadings went some way with them.”
“I have no doubt of it, sir, and I thanked you at the time with all my heart,” said Sam warmly. “Some of my enemies were bitter enough against me.”
“But you should not speak in that way—calling people your enemies!” reproved the lawyer. “People were only at enmity with you on the score of the offence. Look here, Sam Dene—did you commit it, or did you not?”
Sam stared. Mr. Chance had dropped his voice to a solemn key, his head was pushed forward, gravity sat on his face.
“No, sir. No.”
The short answer did not satisfy the lawyer. “Did you filch that box of guineas out of Cockermuth’s room; or were you, and are you, as you assert, wholly innocent?” he resumed. “Tell me the truth as before Heaven. Whatever it be, I will shield you still.”
Sam rose. “On my sacred word, sir, and before Heaven, I have told nothing but the truth. I did not take or touch the box of guineas. I do not know what became of it.”
Mr. Chance regarded Sam in silence. He had known young men, when under a cloud, prevaricate in a most extraordinary and unblushing manner: to look at them and listen to them, one might have said they were fit to be canonized. But he thought truth lay with Sam now.
“Sit down, sit down, Dene,” he said. “I am glad to believe you. Where the deuce could the box have got to? It could not take flight through the ceiling up to the clouds, or down to the earth through the floor. Whose hands took it?”
“The box went in one of two ways,” returned Sam. “If the captain did not fetch it out unconsciously, and lose it in the street, why, somebody must have entered the parlour after I left it and carried off the box. Perhaps the individual who looked into the room when I was sitting there.”
“A pity but you had noticed who that was.”
“Yes, it is. Look here, Mr. Chance; a thought has more than once struck me—if that person did not come back and take the box, why has he not come forward openly and honestly to avow it was himself who looked in?”
The lawyer gave his head a dissenting shake. “It is a ticklish thing to be mixed up in, he may think, one that he had best keep out of—though he may be innocent as the day. How are you getting on?” he asked, passing abruptly from the subject.
“Oh, middling,” replied Sam. “As well, perhaps, as I could expect to get on at first, with all the prejudice abroad against me.”
“Earning bread-and-cheese?”
“Not quite—yet.”
“Well, see here, Dene—and this is what I chiefly sent for you to say, if you could assure me on your conscience you deserved it—I may be able to put some little business in your hands. Petty matters are brought to us that we hardly care to waste time upon: I’ll send them to you in future. I dare say you’ll be able to rub on by dint of patience. Rome was not built in a day, you know.”
“Thank you, sir; I thank you very truly,” breathed Sam. “Mr. Cockermuth sent me a small matter the other day. If I can make a bare living of it at present, that’s all I ask. Fame and fortune are not rained down upon black sheep.”
Which was so true a remark as to need no contradiction.
May was nearing its close then, and the summer evenings were long and lovely. As Sam went forth from the interview, he thought he would take a walk by the river, instead of turning in to his solitary rooms. Since entering upon them he had been as steady as old Time: the accusation and its attendant shame seemed to have converted him from a heedless, youthful man into a wise old sage of age and care. Passing down Broad Street towards the bridge, he turned to the left and sauntered along beside the Severn. The water glittered in the light of the setting sun; barges, some of them bearing men and women and children, passed smoothly up and down on it; the opposite fields, towards St. John’s, were green as an emerald: all things seemed to wear an aspect of brightness.
All on a sudden things grew brighter—and Sam’s pulses gave a leap. He had passed the grand old red-stoned wall that enclosed the Bishop’s palace, and was close upon the gates leading up to the Green, when a young lady turned out of them and came towards him with a light, quick step. It was Maria Parslet, in a pretty summer muslin, a straw hat shading her blushing face. For it did blush furiously at sight of Sam.
“Mr. Dene!”
“Maria!”
She began to say, hurriedly, that her mother had sent her with a message to the dressmaker on the Parade, and she had taken that way, as being the shortest—as if in apology for having met Sam.
He turned with her, and they paced slowly along side by side, the colour on Maria’s cheeks coming and going with every word he spoke and every look he gave her—which seemed altogether senseless and unreasonable. Sam told her of his conversation with Austin Chance’s father, and his promise to put a few things in his way.
“Once let me be making two hundred a-year, Maria, and then——”
“Then what?” questioned Maria innocently.
“Then I should ask you to come to me, and we’d risk it together.”
“Risk what?” stammered Maria, turning her head right round to watch a barge that was being towed by.
“Risk our luck. Two hundred a-year is not so bad to begin upon. I should take the floor above as well as the ground-floor I rent now, and we should get along. Any way, I hope to try it.”
“Oh, Mr. Dene!”
“Now don’t ‘Mr. Dene’ me, young lady, if you please. Why, Maria, what else can we do? A mean, malicious set of dogs and cats have turned their backs upon us both; the least we should do is to see if we can’t do without them. I know you’d rather come to me than stay in Edgar Street.”
Maria held her tongue, as to whether she would or not. “Mamma is negotiating to get me a situation at Cheltenham,” she said.
“You will not go to Cheltenham, or anywhere else, if I get any luck,” he replied dictatorially. “Life would look very blue to me now without you, Maria. And many a man and wife, rolling in riches at the end, have rubbed on with less than two hundred a-year at the beginning. I wouldn’t say, mind, but we might risk it on a hundred and fifty. My rent is low, you see.”
“Ye—es,” stammered Maria “But—I wish that mystery of the guineas could be cleared up!”
Sam stood still, turned, and faced her. “Why do you say that? You are not suspecting that I took them?”
“Oh dear, NO,” returned Maria, losing her breath. “I know you did not take them: could not. I was only thinking of your practice: so much more would come in.”
“Cockermuth has sent me a small matter or two. I think I shall get on,” repeated Sam.
They were at their journey’s end by that time, at the dressmaker’s door. “Good-evening,” said Maria, timidly holding out her hand.
Sam Dene took it and clasped it. “Good-bye, my darling. I am going home to my bread-and-cheese supper, and I wish you were there to eat it with me!”
Maria sighed. She wondered whether that wonderful state of things would ever come to pass. Perhaps no; perhaps yes. Meanwhile no living soul knew aught of these treasonable aspirations; they were a secret between her and Sam. Mr. and Mrs. Parslet suspected nothing.
Time went on. Lawyer Chance was as good as his word, and put a few small matters of business into the hands of Sam Dene. Mr. Cockermuth did the same. The town came down upon him for it; though it let Chance alone, who was not the sort of man to be dictated to. “Well,” said Cockermuth in answer, “I don’t believe the lad is guilty; never have believed it. Had he been of a dishonest turn, he could have helped himself before, for a good deal of my cash passed at times through his hands. And, given that he was innocent, he has been hardly dealt by.”
Sam Dene was grateful for these stray windfalls, and returned his best thanks to the lawyers for them. But they did not amount to much in the aggregate; and a gloomy vision began to present itself to his apprehension of being forced to give up the struggle, and wandering out in the world to seek a better fortune. The summer assizes drew near. Sam had no grand cause to come on at them, or small one either; but it was impossible not to give a thought now and again to what his fate might have been, had he stood committed to take his trial at them. The popular voice said that was only what he merited.
VI.
The assizes were held, and passed. One hot day, when July was nearing its meridian, word was brought to Miss Cockermuth—who was charitable—that a poor sick woman whom she befriended, was worse than usual, so she put on her bonnet and cloak to pay her a visit. The bonnet was a huge Leghorn, which shaded her face well from the sun, its trimming of straw colour; and the cloak was of thin black “taffeta,” edged with narrow lace. It was a long walk on a hot afternoon, for the sick woman lived but just on this side Henwick. Miss Betty had got as far as the bridge, and was about to cross it when Sam Dene, coming over it at a strapping pace, ran against her.
“Miss Betty!” he cried. “I beg your pardon.”
Miss Betty brought her bonnet from under the shade of her large grass-green parasol. “Dear me, is it you, Sam Dene?” she said. “Were you walking for a wager?”
Sam laughed a little. “I was hastening back to my office, Miss Betty. I have no clerk, you know, and a client might come in.”
Miss Betty gave her head a twist, something between a nod and a shake; she noticed the doubtful tone in the “might.” “Very hot, isn’t it?” said she. “I’m going up to see that poor Hester Knowles; she’s uncommon bad, I hear.”
“You’ll have a warm walk.”
“Ay. Are you pretty well, Sam? You look thin.”
“Do I? Oh, that’s nothing but the heat of the weather. I am quite well, thank you. Good-afternoon, Miss Betty.”
She shook his hand heartily. One of Sam’s worst enemies, who might have run in a curricle with Charles Cockermuth, as to an out-and-out belief in his guilt, was passing at the moment, and saw it.
Miss Betty crossed the bridge, turned off into Turkey, for it was through those classical regions that her nearest and coolest way lay, and so onwards to the sick woman’s room. There she found the blazing July sun streaming in at the wide window, which had no blind, no shelter whatever from it. Miss Betty had had enough of the sun out-of-doors, without having it in. Done up with the walk and the heat, she sat down on the first chair, and felt ready to swoon right off.
“Dear me, Hester, this is bad for you!” she gasped.
“Did you mean the sun, ma’am?” asked the sick woman, who was sitting full in it, wrapped in a blanket or two. “It is a little hot just now, but I don’t grumble at it; I’m so cold mostly. As soon as the sun goes off the window, I shall begin to shiver.”
“Well-a-day!” responded Miss Betty, wishing she could be cool enough to shiver. “But if you feel it cold now, Hester, what will you do when the autumn winds come on?”
“Ah, ma’am, please do not talk of it! I just can’t tell what I shall do. That window don’t fit tight, and the way the wind pours in through it upon me as I sit here at evening, or lie in my little bed there, passes belief. I’m coughing always then.”
“You should have some good thick curtains put up,” said Miss Betty, gazing at the bare window, which had a pot of musk on its sill. “Woollen ones.”
The sick woman smiled sadly. She was very poor now, though it had not always been so; she might as well have hoped to buy the sun itself as woollen curtains—or cotton curtains either. Miss Betty knew that.
“I’ll think about it, Hester, and see if I’ve any old ones that I could let you have. I’m not sure; but I’ll look,” repeated she—and began to empty her capacious dimity pockets of a few items of good things she had brought.
By-and-by, when she was a little cooler, and had talked with Hester, Miss Betty set off home again, her mind running upon the half-promised curtains. “They are properly shabby,” thought she, as she went along, “but they’ll serve to keep the sun and the wind off her.”
She was thinking of those warm green curtains that she had picked the braid from that past disastrous morning—as the reader heard of, and all the town as well. Nothing had been done with them since.
Getting home, Miss Betty turned into the parlour. Susan—who had not yet found leisure to fix any time for her wedding—found her mistress fanning her hot face, her bonnet untied and tilted back.
“I’ve been to see that poor Hester Knowles, Susan,” began Miss Betty.
“Law, ma’am!” interposed Susan. “What a walk for you this scorching afternoon! All up that wide New Road!”
“You may well say that, girl: but I went Turkey away. She’s very ill, poor thing; and that’s a frightfully staring window of hers, the sun on it like a blazing fire, and not as much as a rag for a blind; and the window don’t fit, she says, and in cold weather the biting wind comes in and shivers her up. I think I might give her those shabby old curtains, Susan—that were up in Mr. Philip’s room, you know, before we got the new chintz ones in.”
“So you might, ma’am,” said Susan, who was not a bad-hearted girl, excepting to the baker’s man. “They can’t go up at any of our windows as they be; and if you had ’em dyed, I don’t know as they’d answer much, being so shabby.”
“I put them—let me see—into the spare ottoman, didn’t I? Yes, that was it. And there I suppose they must be lying still.”
“Sure enough, Miss Betty,” said Susan. “I’ve not touched ’em.”
“Nor I,” said Miss Betty. “With all the trouble that got into our house at that time, I couldn’t give my mind to seeing after the old things, and I’ve not thought about them since. Come upstairs with me now, Susan; we’ll see what sort of a state they are in.”
They went up; and Miss Betty took off her bonnet and cloak and put her cap on. The spare ottoman, soft, and red, and ancient, used as a receptacle for odds and ends that were not wanted, stood in a spacious linen-closet on the first-floor landing. It was built out over the back-door, and had a skylight above. Susan threw back the lid of the ottoman, and Miss Betty stood by. The faded old brown curtains, green once, lay in a heap at one end, just as Miss Betty had hastily flung them in that past day in March, when on her way to look at the chintzes.
“They’re in a fine rabble, seemingly,” observed Susan, pausing to regard the curtains.
“Dear me!” cried Miss Betty, conscience-stricken, for she was a careful housewife, “I let them drop in any way, I remember. I did mean to have them well shaken out-of-doors and properly folded, but that bother drove it all out of my head. Take them out, girl.”
Susan put her strong arms underneath the heap and lifted it out with a fling. Something heavy flew out of the curtains, and dropped on the boarded floor with a crash. Letting fall the curtains, Susan gave a wild shriek of terror and Miss Betty gave a wilder, for the floor was suddenly covered with shining gold coins. Mr. Cockermuth, passing across the passage below at the moment, heard the cries, wondered whether the house was on fire, and came hastening up.
“Oh,” said he coolly, taking in the aspect of affairs. “So the thief was you, Betty, after all!”
He picked up the ebony box, and bent his head to look at the guineas. Miss Betty sank down on a three-legged stool—brought in for Philip’s children—and grew as white as death.
Yes, it was the missing box of guineas, come to light in the same extraordinary and unexpected manner that it had come before, without having been (as may be said) truly lost. When Miss Betty gathered her curtains off the dining-room table that March morning, a cumbersome and weighty heap, she had unwittingly gathered up the box with them. No wonder Sam Dene had not seen the box on the table after Miss Betty’s departure! It was a grievous misfortune, though, that he failed to take notice it was not there.
She had no idea she was not speaking truth in saying she saw the box on the table as she left the room. Having seen the box there all the morning she thought it was there still, and that she saw it, being quite unconscious that it was in her arms. Susan, too, had noticed the box on the table when she opened the door to call her mistress, and believed she was correct in saying she saw it there to the last: the real fact being that she had not observed it was gone. So there the box with its golden freight had lain undisturbed, hidden in the folds of the curtains. But for Hester Knowles’s defective window, it might have stayed there still, who can say how long?
Susan, no less scared than her mistress, stood back against the closet wall for safety, out of reach of those diabolical coins; Miss Betty, groaning and half-fainting on the three-legged stool, sat pushing back her cap and her front. The lawyer picked up the guineas and counted them as he laid them flat in the box. Sixty of them: not one missing. So Sam’s guinea was his own! He had not, as Worcester whispered, trumped up the story with Maria Parslet.
“John,” gasped poor Miss Betty, beside herself with remorse and terror, “John, what will become of me now? Will anything be done?”
“How ‘done’?” asked he.
“Will they bring me to trial—or anything of that—in poor Sam’s place?”
“Well, I don’t know,” answered her brother grimly; “perhaps not this time. But I’d have you take more care in future, Betty, than to hide away gold in old curtains.”
Locking the box securely within his iron safe, Mr. Cockermuth put on his hat and went down to the town hall, where the magistrates, after dispensing their wisdom, were about to disperse for the day. He told them of the wonderful recovery of the box of guineas, of how it had been lost, and that Sam Dene was wholly innocent. Their worships were of course charmed to hear it, Mr. Whitewicker observing that they had only judged Sam by appearances, and that appearances had been sufficient (in theory) to hang him.
From the town hall, Mr. Cockermuth turned off to Sam’s office. Sam was making a great show of business, surrounded by a tableful of imposing parchments, but with never a client to the fore. His old master grasped his hand.
“Well, Sam, my boy,” he said, “the tables have turned for you. That box of guineas is found.”
Sam never spoke an answering word. His lips parted with expectation: his breath seemed to be a little short.
“Betty had got it all the time. She managed somehow to pick it up off the table with those wretched old curtains she had there, all unconsciously, of course, and it has lain hidden with the curtains upstairs in a lumber-box ever since. Betty will never forgive herself. She’ll have a fit of the jaundice over this.”
Sam drew a long breath. “You will let the public know, sir?”
“Ay, Sam, without loss of an hour. I’ve begun with the magistrates—and a fine sensation the news made amidst ’em, I can tell you; and now I’m going round to the newspapers; and I shall go over to Elm Farm the first thing to-morrow. The town took up the cause against you, Sam: take care it does not eat you now in its repentance. Look here, you’ll have to come round to Betty, or she’ll moan her heart out: you won’t bear malice, Sam?”
“No, that I won’t,” said Sam warmly. “Miss Betty did not bear it to me. She has been as kind as can be all along.”
The town did want to eat Sam. It is the custom of the true Briton to go to extremes. Being unable to shake Sam’s hands quite off, the city would fain have chaired him round the streets with honours, as it used to chair its newly returned members.
Captain Cockermuth, sent for post haste, came to Worcester all contrition, beseeching Sam to forgive him fifty times a-day, and wanting to press the box of guineas upon him as a peace-offering. Sam would not take it: he laughingly told the captain that the box did not seem to carry luck with it.
And then Sam’s troubles were over. And no objection was made by his people (as it otherwise might have been) to his marrying Maria Parslet, by way of recompense. “God never fails to bring good out of evil, my dear,” said old Mrs. Jacobson to Maria, the first time they had her on a visit at Elm Farm. As to Sam, he had short time for Elm Farm, or anything else in the shape of recreation. Practice was flowing in quickly: litigants arguing, one with another, that a young man, lying for months under an imputation of theft, and then coming out of it with flying colours, must needs be a clever lawyer.
“But, Johnny,” Sam said to me, when talking of the past, “there’s one thing I would alter if I made the laws. No person, so long as he is only suspected of crime, should have his name proclaimed publicly. I am not speaking of murder, you understand, or charges of that grave nature; but of such a case as mine. My name appeared in full, in all the local newspapers, Samson Reginald Dene, coupled with theft, and of course it got a mark upon it. It is an awful blight upon a man when he is innocent, one that he may never quite live down. Suspicions must arise, I know that, of the innocent as well as the guilty, and they must undergo preliminary examinations in public and submit to legal inquiries: but time enough to proclaim who the man is when evidence strengthens against him, and he is committed for trial; until then let his name be suppressed. At least that is my opinion.”
And it is mine as well as Sam’s.
OUR FIRST TERM AT OXFORD.
I.
It was Friday night at the Oxford terminus, and all the world scrambling for cabs. Sir John and the Squire, nearly lifted off their legs, and too much taken aback to fight for themselves, stood against the wall, thinking the community had gone suddenly mad. Bill Whitney and Tod, tall, strong young fellows, able to hold their own anywhere, secured a cab at length, and we and our luggage got in and on it.
“To the Mitre.”
“If this is a specimen of Oxford manners, the sooner the lads are at home the better,” growled the Squire. Sir John Whitney was settling his spectacles on his nose—nearly lost off it in the scuffle.
“Snepp told me it was a regular shindy at the terminus the first day of term, with all the students coming back,” said Bill Whitney.
There had been no end of discussion as to our college career. Sir John Whitney said William must go to Oxford, as he had been at Oxford himself; whereas Brandon stood out against Oxford for me; would not hear of it. He preferred Cambridge he said: and to Cambridge Johnny Ludlow should go: and he, as my guardian, had full power over me. The Squire cared not which university was chosen; but Tod went in for Oxford with all his strong will: he said the boating was best there. The result was that Mr. Brandon gave way, and we were entered at Christchurch.
Mr. Brandon had me at his house for two days beforehand, giving me counsel. He had one of his bad colds just then and kept his room, and his voice was never more squeaky. The last evening, I sat up there with him while he sipped his broth. The fire was large enough to roast us, and he had three flannel night-caps on. It was that night that he talked to me most. He believed with all his heart, he said, that the temptations to young men were greater at Oxford than at Cambridge; that, of the two, the more reckless set of men were there: and that was one of the reasons why he had objected to Oxford for me. And then he proceeded to put the temptations pretty strongly before me, and did not mince things, warning me that it would require all the mental and moral strength I possessed to resist them, and steer clear of a course of sin and shame. He then suddenly opened the Bible, which was on the table at his elbow, and read out a line or two from the thirtieth chapter of Deuteronomy.
“‘See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.’”
“That’s what I have been striving to set before you, Johnny Ludlow. Read that chapter, the whole of it, often; treasure its precepts in your heart; and may God give you grace to keep them!”
He shook hands with me in silence. I took up my candle and waited a moment, for I thought he was going to speak again.
“Will you try to keep them, lad?”
“I will try, sir.”
We were fortunate in getting good rooms at Christchurch. Tod’s and mine were close together; Bill Whitney’s on the floor above. Our sitting-room was pleasant; it had an old cracked piano in it, which turned out to be passably fair when it had been tinkered and tuned. The windows looked out on the trees of the Broad Walk and to the meadows beyond; but trees are bare in winter, and the month was January. I had never stayed at Oxford before: and I saw that I should like it, with its fine, grand old colleges. The day after we got there, Saturday, we wrote our names in the dean’s book, and saw our tutor. The rest of the day was spent in seeing about battels and getting into the new ways. Very new to us. A civil young fellow, who waited on us as scout, was useful; they called him “Charley” in the college. Tod pulled a long face at some of the rules, and did not like the prospect of unlimited work.
“I’ll go in for the boating and fishing and driving, Johnny; and you can go in for the books.”
“All right, Tod.” I knew what he meant. It was not that he did not intend to take a fair amount of work: but to exist without a good share of out-of-door life also, would have been hard lines for Tod.
The Sunday services were beautiful. The first Sunday of term was a high day, and the cathedral was filled. Orders of admission to the public were not necessary that day, and a general congregation mixed with the students. Sir John and the Squire were staying at the Mitre until Monday. After service we went to promenade in the Broad Walk—and it seemed that everybody else went.
“Look there!” cried the Squire, “at this tall clergyman coming along. I am sure he is one of the canons of Worcester.”
It was Mr. Fortescue—Honourable and Reverend. He halted for a minute to exchange greetings with Sir John Whitney, whom he knew, and then passed on his way.
“There’s some pretty girls about, too,” resumed the Squire, gazing around. “Not that I’d advise you boys to look much at them. Wonder if they often walk here?”
Before a week had gone by, we were quite at home; had shaken down into our new life as passengers shake down in their places in an omnibus; and made lots of friends. Some I liked; some I did not like. There was one fellow always coming in—a tall dark man with crisp hair; his name Richardson. He had plenty of money and kept dogs and horses, and seemed to go in for every kind of fast life the place afforded. Of work he did none; and report ran that he was being watched by the proctor, with whom he was generally in hot water. Altogether he was not in good odour: and he had a way of mocking at religion as though he were an atheist.
“I heard a bit about Richardson just now,” cried Whitney, one morning that he had brought his commons in to breakfast with us—and the fields outside were white with snow. “Mayhew says he’s a scamp.”
“Don’t think he’s much else, myself,” said Tod. “I say, just taste this butter! It’s shockingly strong. Wonder what it is made of?”
“Mayhew says he’s a liar as well as a villain. There’s no speaking after him. Last term a miserable affair occurred in the town; the authorities could not trace it home to Richardson though they suspected he was the black sheep. Lots of fellows knew he was: but he denied it out-and-out. I think we had better not have much to do with him.”
“He entertains jolly well,” said Tod. “Johnny, you’ve boiled these eggs too hard. And his funds seem to spring from some perpetual gold mine——”
The door opened, and two bull-dogs burst in, leaping and howling. Richardson—they were his—followed, with little Ford; the latter a quiet, inoffensive man, who stuck to his work.
“Be quiet, you two devils!” cried Richardson, kicking his dogs. “Lie down, will you? I say, I’ve a wine-coach on to-night in my rooms, after Hall. Shall be glad to see you all at it.”
Considering the conversation he had broken in upon, none of us had a very ready answer at hand.
“I have heaps of letters to answer to-night, and must do it,” said Whitney. “Thank you all the same.”
Richardson might have read coolness in the tone; I don’t know; but he turned the back of his chair on Bill to face Tod.
“You have not letters to write, I suppose, Todhetley?”
“Not I. I leave letters to Ludlow.”
“You’ll come, then?”
“Can’t,” said Tod candidly. “Don’t mean to go in for wine-parties.”
“Oh,” said Richardson. “You’ll tell another tale when you’ve been here a bit longer. Will you be still, you brutes?”
“Hope I shan’t,” said Tod. “Wine plays the very mischief with work. Should never get any done if I went in for it.”
“Do you intend to go up for honours?” went on Richardson.
“’Twould be a signal failure if I did. I leave all that to Ludlow—as I said by the letters. See to the dogs, Richardson.”
The animals had struck up a fight. Richardson secured the one and sent the other out with a kick. Our scout was coming in, and the dog flew at him. No damage; but a great row.
“Charley,” cried Tod, “this butter’s not fit to eat.”
“Is it not, sir? What’s the matter with it?”
“The matter with it?—everything’s the matter with it.”
“Is that your scout?” asked Richardson, when the man had gone again, holding his dog between his knees as he sat.
“Yes,” said Tod. “And your dogs all but made mincemeat of him. You should teach them better manners.”
“Serve him right if they had. His name’s Tasson.”
“Tasson, is it? We call him Charley here.”
“I know. He’s a queer one.”
“How is he queer?”
“He’s pious.”
“He’s what?”
“Pious,” repeated Richardson, twisting his mouth. “A saint; a cant; a sneak.”
“Good gracious!” cried Bill Whitney.
“You think I’m jesting! Ask Ford here. Tell it, Ford.”
“Oh, it’s true,” said Ford: “true that he goes in for piety. Last term there was a freshman here named Carstairs. He was young; rather soft; no experience, you know, and he began to go the pace. One night this Charley, his scout, fell on his knees, and besought him with tears not to go to the bad; to pull up in time and remember what the end must be; and—and so on.”
“What did Carstairs do?”
“Do! why turned him out,” put in Richardson. “Carstairs, by the way, has taken his name off the books, or had to take it off.”
“Charley is civil and obliging to us,” said Whitney. “Never presumes.”
How much of the tale was gospel we knew not; but for my own part, I liked Charley. There was something about him quite different from scouts and servants in general—and by the way, I don’t think Charley was a scout, only a scout’s help—but in appearance and diction and manner he was really superior. A slim, slight young fellow of twenty, with straight fine light hair and blue eyes, and a round spot of scarlet on his thin cheeks.
“I say, Charley, they say you are pious,” began Bill Whitney that same day after lecture, when the man was bringing in the bread-and-cheese from the buttery.
He coloured to the roots of his light hair, and did not answer. Bill never minded what he said to any one.
“You were scout to Mr. Carstairs. Did you take his morals under your special protection?”
“Be quiet, Whitney,” said Tod in an undertone.
“And constitute yourself his guardian-angel-in-ordinary? Didn’t you go down on your knees to him with tears and sobs, and beseech him not to go to the bad?” went on Bill.
“There’s not a word of truth in it, sir. One evening when Mr. Carstairs was lying on his sofa, tired and ill—for he was beginning to lead a life that had no rest in it, hardly, day or night, a folded slip of paper was brought in from Mr. Richardson, and Mr. Carstairs bade me read it to him. It was to remind him of some appointment for the night. Mr. Carstairs was silent for a minute, and then burst out with a kind of sharp cry, painful to hear. ‘By Heaven, if this goes on, they’ll ruin me, body and soul! I’ve a great mind not to go.’ I did speak then, sir; I told him he was ill, and had better stay at home; and I said that it was easy enough for him to pull up then, but that when one got too far on the down-hill path it was more difficult.”
“Was that all?” cried Whitney.
“Every word, sir. I should not have spoken at all but that I had known Mr. Carstairs before we came here. Mr. Richardson made a great deal of it, and gave it quite a different colouring.”
“Did Mr. Carstairs turn you away for that?” I asked of Charley; when he came back for the things, and the other two had gone out.
“Three or four days after it happened, sir, Mr. Carstairs stopped my waiting on him again. I think it was through Mr. Richardson. Mr. Carstairs had refused to go out with him the evening it occurred.”
“You knew Mr. Carstairs before he came to Oxford. Where was it?”
“It was——” he hesitated, and then went on. “It was at the school he was at in London, sir. I was a junior master there.”
Letting a plate fall—for I was helping to pack them, wanting the table—I stared at the fellow. “A master there and——” and a servant here, I all but said, but I stopped the words.
“Only one of the outer masters, attending daily,” he went on quietly. “I taught writing and arithmetic, and English to the juniors.”
“But how comes it that you are here in this post, Charley?”
“I had reasons for wishing to come to live at Oxford, sir.”
“But why not have sought out something better than this?”
“I did seek, sir. But nothing of the kind was to be had, and this place offered. There’s many a one, sir, falls into the wrong post in life, and can never afterwards get into the right one.”
“But—do you—like this?”
“Like it, sir; no! But I make a living at it. One thing I shall be always grateful to Mr. Carstairs for: that he did not mention where he had known me. I should not like it to be talked of in the college, especially by Mr. Richardson.”
He disappeared with his tray as he spoke. It sounded quite mysterious. But I took the hint, and said nothing.
The matter passed. Charley did not put on any mentorship to us, and the more we saw of him the more we liked him. But an impression gradually dawned upon us that he was not strong enough for his place. Carrying a heavy tray upstairs would set him panting like an old man, and he could not run far or fast.
One day I was hard at work, Tod and Whitney being off somewhere, driving tandem, when a queer, ugly-sounding cough kept annoying me from outside: but whether it came from dog or man I could not tell. Opening the door at last, there sat Charley on the stairs, his head resting against the wall, and his cheeks brighter than a red leaf in autumn.
“What, is it you, Charley? Where did you pick up that cough?”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said he, starting up. “I thought your rooms were empty.”
“Come in till the fit’s over. You are in a regular draught there. Come along,” for he hesitated—“I want to shut the door.”
He came in, coughing finely, and I gave him the chair by the fire. It was nothing, he said, and would soon be gone. He had caught it a day or two back in the bleak east wind: the college was draughty, and he had to be on the run out-of-doors in all sorts of weather.
“Well, you know, Charley, putting east winds and draughts aside, you don’t seem to be quite up to your work here in point of strength.”
“I was up to it, sir, when I took it. It’s a failing in some of our family, sir, to have weak lungs. I shall be all right again, soon.”
The coughing was over, and he got up to go away, evidently not liking to intrude. There was a degree of sensitiveness about him that, of itself, might have shown he was superior to his position.
“Take a good jorum of treacle-posset, Charley, at bed-time.”
******
Spring weather came in with February. The biting cold and snow of January disappeared, and genial sunshine warmed the earth again. The first Sunday in this same February month, from my place at morning service, looking out on the townsfolk who had come in with orders, I saw a lady, very little and pretty, staring fixedly at me from afar. The face—where had I seen her face? It seemed familiar, but I could not tell how or where I had known it. A small slight face of almost an ivory white, and wide-open light blue eyes that had plenty of confidence in them.
Sophie Chalk! I should have recognized her at the first moment but for the different mode in which her hair was dressed. Wonderful hair! A vast amount of it, and made the most of. She wore it its natural colour to-day, brown, and the red tinge on it shone like burnished gold. She knew me; that was certain; and I could not help watching her. Her eyes went roving away presently, possibly in search of Tod. I stole a glance at him; but he did not appear to see her. What brought her to Oxford?
We got out of church. I took care to hold my tongue. Tod had cared for Sophie Chalk—there could be little doubt of it—as one never cares for anybody again in life: and it might be just as well—in spite of the exposé of mademoiselle’s false ways and misdoings—that they did not meet. Syrens are syrens all the world over.
The day went on to a bright moonlight night. Tod and I, out for a stroll, were standing within the shade of the fine old Magdalen Tower, talking to a fellow of Trinity, when there came up a lady of delicate presence, the flowers in her bonnet exhaling a faint odour of perfume.
“I think I am not mistaken—I am sure—yes, I am sure it is Mr. Ludlow. And—surely that cannot be Mr. Todhetley?”
Tod wheeled round at the soft, false voice. The daintily gloved hand was held out to him; the fair, false face was bent close: and his own face turned red and white with emotion. I saw it even in the shade of the moonlight. Had she been strolling about to look for us? Most likely. A few moments more, and we were all three walking onwards together.
“Only fancy my position!” she gaily said. “Here am I, all forlorn, set down alone in this great town, and must take care of myself as I best can. The formidable gowns and caps frighten me.”
“The gowns and caps will do you no harm—Miss Chalk,” cried Tod—and he only just saved himself from saying “Sophie.”
“Do you think not,” she returned, touching the sleeve of her velvet jacket, as if to brush off a fly. “But I beg you will accord me my due style and title, Mr. Todhetley, and honour me accordingly. I am no longer Miss Chalk. I am Mrs. Everty.”
So she had married Mr. Everty after all! She minced along between us in her silk gown, her hands in her ermine muff that looked made for a doll. At the private door of a shop in High Street she halted, rang the bell, and threw the door open.
“You will walk up and take a cup of tea with me. Nay, but you must—or I shall think you want to hold yourselves above poor little me, now you are grand Oxford men.”
She went along the passage and up the stairs: there seemed no resource but to follow. In the sitting-room, which was very well furnished and looked out upon the street, a fire burned brightly; and a lamp and tea-things stood on the table.
“Where have you been?—keeping me waiting for my tea in this way! You never think of any one but yourself: never.”
The querulous complaint, and thin, shrill voice came from a small dark girl who sat at the window, peering out into the lighted street. I had not forgotten the sharp-featured sallow face and the deep-set eyes. It was Mabel Smith, the poor little lame and deformed girl I had seen in Torriana Square. She really did not look much older or bigger, and she spoke as abruptly as ever.
“I remember you, Johnny Ludlow.”
Mrs. Everty made the tea. Her dress, white one way, green the other, gleamed like silver in the lamplight. It had a quantity of white lace upon it: light green ribbons were twisted in her hair. “I should think it would be better to have those curtains drawn, Mabel. Your tea’s ready: if you will come to it.”
“But I choose to have the curtains open and I’ll take my tea here,” answered Mabel. “You may be going out again for hours, and what company should I have but the street? I don’t like to be shut up in a strange room: I might see ghosts. Johnny Ludlow, that’s a little coffee-table by the wall: if you’ll put it here it will hold my cup and saucer.”
I put it near her with her tea and plate of bread-and-butter.
“Won’t you sit by me? I am very lonely. Those other two can talk to one another.”
So I carried my cup and sat down by Mabel. The “other two,” as Mabel put it, were talking and laughing. Tod was taking a lesson in tea-making from her, and she called him awkward.
“Are you living here?” I asked of Mabel under cover of the noise.
“Living here! no,” she replied in her old abrupt fashion. “Do you think papa would let me be living over a shop in Oxford? My grandmamma lives near the town, and she invited me down on a visit to her. There was no one to bring me, and she said she would”—indicating Sophie—“and we came yesterday. Well, would you believe it? Grandmamma had meant next Saturday, and she could not take us in, having visitors already. I wanted to go back home; but she said she liked the look of Oxford, and she took these rooms for a week. Two guineas without fires and other extras: I call it dear. How came she to find you out, Johnny?”
“We met just now. She tells us she is Mrs. Everty now.”
“Oh yes, they are married. And a nice bargain Mr. Everty has in her! Her dresses must cost twenty pounds apiece. Some of them thirty pounds! Look at the lace on that one. Mrs. Smith, papa’s wife, gives her a good talking-to sometimes, telling her Mr. Everty’s income won’t stand it. I should think it would not!—though I fancy he has a small share in papa’s business now.”
“Do they live in London?”
“Oh yes, they live in London. Close to us, too! In one of the small houses in Torriana Street. She wanted to take a large house in the square like ours, but Mr. Everty was too wise.”
Talking to this girl, my thoughts back in the past, I wondered whether Sophie’s people had heard of the abstraction of Miss Deveen’s emeralds. But it was not likely. To look at her now: watching her fascinating ease, listening to her innocent reminiscences of the time we had all spent together at Lady Whitney’s, I might have supposed she had taken a dose of the waters of Lethe, and that Sophie Chalk had always been guileless as a child; an angel without wings.
“She has lost none of her impudence, Tod,” I said as we went home. “In the old days, you know, we used to say she’d fascinate the hair off our heads, give her the chance. She’d wile off both ears as well now. A good thing she’s married!”
Tod broke into a whistle, and went striding on.
Before the week was out, Sophie Chalk—we generally called her by the old name—had become intimate with some of the men of different colleges. Mabel Smith went to her grandmother’s, and Sophie had nothing to do but exhibit her charms in the Oxford streets and entertain her friends. The time went on. Hardly an evening passed but Tod was there; Bill Whitney went sometimes; I rarely. Sophie did not fascinate me, whatever she might do by others. Sophie treated her guests to wine and spirits, and to unlimited packs of cards. Bill Whitney said one night in a joking way that he was not sure but she might be indicted for keeping a private gaming-house. Richardson was one of her frequent evening visitors, and she would let him take his bull-dogs to make a morning call. There would be betting over the cards in the evenings, and she did not attempt to object. Sophie would not play herself; she dispersed her fascinations amidst the company while they played, and sang songs at the piano—one of the best pianos to be found in Oxford. There set in a kind of furore for pretty Mrs. Everty; the men who had the entrée there went wild over her charms, and vied with each other in making her costly presents. Sophie broke into raptures of delight over each with the seeming simplicity of a child, and swept all into her capacious net.
I think it was receiving those presents that was keeping her in Oxford; or helping to keep her. Some of them were valuable. Very valuable indeed was a set of diamonds, brooch and ear-rings, that soft young calf, Gaiton, brought her; but what few brains the viscount had were clean dazzled away by Sophie’s attractions: and Richardson gave her a bejewelled fan that must have cost a small fortune. If Sophie Chalk did spend her husband’s money, she was augmenting her stock of precious stones—and she had not lost her passion for them.
One morning my breakfast was brought in by a strange fellow, gloomy and grim. Tod had gone to breakfast with Mayhew.
“Where’s Charley?” I asked.
“Sick,” was the short answer.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Down with a cold, or something.”
And we had this surly servant for ever so long to come: and I’m sorry to say got so accustomed to seeing his face as to forget sick Charley.
II.
“Will you go up the river for a row, Johnny?”
“I don’t mind if I do.”
The questioner was Bill Whitney; who had come in to look for Tod. I had nothing particular on hand that afternoon, and the skies were blue and the sun golden. So we went down to the river together.
“Where has Tod got to?” he asked.
“Goodness knows. I’ve not seen him since lecture this morning.”
We rowed up to Godstowe. Bill disappeared with some friend of his from Merton’s, who had watched us put in. I strolled about. Every one knows the dark pool of water there. On the bench under the foliage, so thick in summer, but bare yet in this early season, warm and sunny though it was, sat a man wrapped in a great-coat, whom I took at first to be a skeleton with painted cheeks. But one does not care to stare at skeletons, knowing they’d help their looks if they could; and I was passing him with my face turned the other way.
“Good-afternoon, sir.”
I turned at the hollow words—hollow in sound as though they came out of a drum. It was Charley: the red paint on his thin cheeks was nothing but natural hectic, and the blue of his eyes shone painfully bright.
“Why, what’s the matter, Charley?”
“A fly-man, who had to drive here and back, brought me with him for a mouthful of fresh air, it being so warm and bright. It is the first time I have been able to get out, sir.”
“You are poorly, Charley.” I had all but said “dying.” But one can only be complimentary to a poor fellow in that condition.
“Very ill I have been, sir; but I’m better. At one time I never thought I should get up again. It’s this beautiful warm weather coming in so early that has restored me.”
“I don’t know about restored? You don’t look great things yet.”
“You should have seen me a short while ago, sir! I’m getting on.”
Lying by his side, on a piece of paper, was a thick slice, doubled, of bread-and-butter, that he must have brought with him. He broke a piece off, and ate it.
“You look hungry, Charley.”
“That’s the worst of it, sir; I’m always hungry,” he answered, and his tone from its eagerness was quite painful to hear, and his eyes grew moist, and the hectic spread on his cheeks. “It is the nature of the complaint, I’m told: and poor mother was the same. I could be eating and drinking every hour, sir, and hardly be satisfied.”
“Come along to the inn, and have some tea.”
“No, sir; no, thank you,” he said, shrinking back. “I answered your remark thoughtlessly, sir, for it’s the truth; not with any notion that it would make you ask me to take anything. And I’ve got some bread-and-butter here.”
Going indoors, I told them to serve him a good tea, with a big dish of bacon and eggs, or some relishing thing of that sort. Whitney came in and heard me.
“You be hanged, Johnny! We are not going in for all that, here!”
“It’s not for us, Bill; it’s for that poor old scout, Charley. He’s as surely dying as that you and I are talking. Come and look at him: you never saw such an object. I don’t believe he gets enough to eat.”
Whitney came, and did nothing but stare. Charley went indoors with a good deal of pressing, and we saw him sit down to the feast. Whitney stayed; I went out-of-doors again.
I remembered a similar case. It was that of a young woman who used to make Lena’s frocks. She fell into a decline. Her appetite was wonderful. Anything good and substantial to eat and drink, she was always craving for: and it all seemed to do her no good. Charley Tasson’s sickness must be of the same nature. She died: and he——
I was struck dumb! Seated on the bench under the trees, my thoughts back in that past time, there came two figures over the rustic bridge. A lady and gentleman, arm-in-arm: she in a hat and blue feather and dainty lace parasol; and he with bent head and words softened to a whisper. Tod!—and Sophie Chalk!
“Good gracious! There’s Johnny Ludlow!”
She loosed his arm as she spoke, and came sailing up to me, her gold bracelets jingling as she gave her hand. I don’t believe there are ten women in England who could get themselves up as effectively as did Sophie Chalk. Tod looked black as thunder.
“What the devil brings you here, Johnny?”
“I rowed up with Whitney.”
A pause. “Who else is here?”
“Forbes of Merton: Whitney has been about with him. And I suppose a few others. We noticed a skiff or two waiting. Perhaps one was yours.”
I spoke indifferently, determined he should not know I was put out. Seeing him there—I was going to say on the sly—with that beguiling syren, who was to foretell what pitfalls she might charm him into? He took Madame Sophie on his arm again to continue their promenade, and I lost sight of them.
I did not like it. It was not satisfactory. He had rowed her up—or perhaps driven her up—and was marching about with her tête-à-tête under the sweet spring sunshine. No great harm in itself this pastime: but he might grow too fond of it. That she had reacquired all her strong influence over Tod’s heart was clear as the stars on a frosty night. Whitney called out to me that it was time to think of going back. I got into the boat with him, saying nothing.
Charley told me where he lived—“Up Stagg’s Entry”—for I said I would call to see him. Just for a day or two there seemed to be no time; but I got there one evening when Tod had gone to the syren’s. It was a dark, dusky place, this Stagg’s Entry, and, I think, is done away with now, with several houses crowded into it. Asking for Charles Tasson, of a tidy, motherly woman on the stairs, she went before me, and threw open a door.
“Here’s a gentleman to see you, Mr. Charley.”
He was lying in a bed at the end of the room near the fire, under the lean-to roof. If I had been shocked at seeing him in the open air, in the glad sunshine, I was doubly so now in the dim light of the tallow candle. He rose in bed.
“It’s very kind of you to come here, sir! I’m sure I didn’t expect you to remember it.”
“Are you worse, Charley?”
“I caught a fresh cold, sir, that day at Godstowe. And I’m as weak as a rat too—hardly able to creep out of bed. Nanny, bring a chair for this gentleman.”
One of the handiest little girls I ever saw, with the same shining blue eyes that he had, and plump, pretty cheeks, laid hold of a chair. I took it from her and sat down.
“Is this your sister, Charley?”
“Yes, sir. There’s only us two left together. We were eight of us once. Three went abroad, and one is in London, and two dead.”
“What doctor sees you?”
“One comes in now and then, sir. My illness is not much in a doctor’s way. There’s nothing he could do: nothing for me but to wait patiently for summer weather.”
“What have you had to eat to-day?”
“He had two eggs for his dinner: I boiled them,” said little Nanny. “And Mrs. Cann brought us in six herrings, and I cooked one for tea; and he’ll have some ale and bread-and-butter for supper.”