Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series

So it began; and I wish I could recollect how it went on, but I can’t; only a line here and there. I think it was set to the tune of Weber’s Last Waltz, but I’m not sure. There came a line, “My lingering look from thine will sever only with an aching heart;” there came another bit towards the end: “But fail not to remember me.”

Nothing in themselves, you will say, these lines; their charm lay in the singing. To listen to their mournful pathos brought with it a strange intensity of pain. Valentine sang them as very few can sing. That his heart was aching, aching with a bitterness which can never be pictured except by those who have felt it; that Jane’s heart was aching as she listened, was all too evident. You could feel the anguish of their souls. It was in truth a ballad singularly applicable to the time and place.

The song ceased; the music died away. Jane moved from the piano with a sob that could no longer be suppressed. Valentine sat still and motionless. As to me, I made a quiet glide of it into the other room, just as Mrs. Cramp and Mrs. Jacob Chandler were coming in for some tea. Julietta seized me on one side and Fanny Letsom on the other; they were going in for forfeits.

Valentine Chandler left the piano and went out, looking for Jane. Not seeing her, he followed on down the garden path, treading on its dry, dead leaves. The wind, sighing and moaning, played amidst the branches of the trees, nearly bare now; every other minute the moon was obscured by the flying clouds. Warm though the night was, and grand in its aspect, signs might be detected of the approaching winter.

Jane Preen was standing near the old garden arbour, from which could be seen by daylight the long chain of the Malvern Hills. Valentine drew Jane within, and seated her by his side.

“Our last meeting; our last parting, Jane!” he whispered from the depth of his full heart.

“Will it be for ever?” she wailed.

He took time to answer. “I would willingly say No; I would promise it to you, Jane, but that I doubt myself. I know that it lies with me; and I know that if God will help me, I may be able to——”

He broke down. He could not go on. Jane bent her head towards him. Drawing it to his shoulder, he continued:

“I have not been able to pull up here, despite the resolutions I have made from time to time. I was one of a fast set of men at Islip, and—somehow—they were stronger than I was. In Canada it may be different. I promise you, my darling, that I will strive to make it so. Do you think this is no lesson to me?”

“If not——”

“If not, we may never see each other again in this world.”

“Oh, Valentine!”

“Only in Heaven. The mistakes we make here may be righted there.”

“And will it be nothing to you, never to see me again here?—no sorrow or pain?”

“No sorrow or pain!” Valentine echoed the words out of the very depths of woe. Even then the pain within him was almost greater than he could bear.

They sat on in silence, with their aching hearts. Words fail in an hour of anguish such as this. An hour that comes perhaps but once in a lifetime; to some of us, never. Jane’s face lay nestled against his shoulder; her hand was in his clasp. Val’s tears were falling; he was weak yet from his recent illness; Jane’s despair was beyond tears.

We were in the height and swing of forfeits when Valentine and Jane came in. They could not remain in the arbour all night, you see, romantic and lovely though it might be to sit in the moonlight. Jane said she must be going home; her mother had charged her not to be late.

When she came down with her things on, I, remembering what she had asked me, took my hat and waited for her in the hall. But Valentine came out with her.

“Thank you all the same, Johnny,” she said to me. And I went back to the forfeits.

They went off together, Jane’s arm within his—their last walk, perhaps, in this world. But it seemed that they could not talk any more than they did in the garden, and went along for the most part in silence. Just before turning into Brook Lane they met Tom Chandler—he who was doing so much for Valentine in this emigration matter. He had come from Islip to spend a last hour with his cousin.

“Go on, Tom; you’ll find them all at home,” said Valentine. “I shall not be very long after you.”

Upon coming to the Inlets, Jane clung closer to Valentine’s arm. It was here that she had seen her unfortunate brother Oliver standing, after his death. Valentine hastily passed his arm round her to impart a sense of protection.

At the gate they parted, taking their farewell hand-shake, their last kiss. “God help you, my dear!” breathed Valentine. “And if—if we never meet again, believe that no other will ever love you as I have loved.”

He turned back on the road he had come, and Jane went in to her desolate home.

II

“Aunt Mary Ann, I’ve come back, and brought a visitor with me!”

Mrs. Mary Ann Cramp, superintending the preserving of a pan of morella cherries over the fire in her spacious kitchen, turned round in surprise. I was perched on the arm of the old oak chair, watching the process. I had gone to the farm with a message from Crabb Cot, and Mrs. Cramp, ignoring ceremony, called me into the kitchen.

Standing at the door, with the above announcement, was Julietta Chandler. She had been away on a fortnight’s visit.

“Now where on earth did you spring from, Juliet?” asked Mrs. Cramp. “I did not expect you to-day. A visitor? Who is it?”

“Cherry Dawson, Aunt Mary Ann; and I didn’t think it mattered about letting you know,” returned Juliet. They had given up the longer name, Julietta. “You can see her if you look through the window; she is getting out of the fly at the gate. Cherry Dawson is the nicest and jolliest girl in the world, and you’ll all be in love with her—including you, Johnny Ludlow.”

Sure enough, there she was, springing from the fly which had brought them from Crabb station. A light, airy figure in a fresh brown-holland dress and flapping Leghorn hat. The kitchen window was open, and we could hear her voice all that way off, laughing loudly at something and chattering to the driver. She was very fair, with pretty white teeth, and a pink colour on her saucy face.

Mrs. Cramp left Sally to the cherries, went to the hall door and opened it herself, calling the other maid, Joan, to come down. The visitor flew in with a run and a sparkling laugh, and at once kissed Mrs. Cramp on both cheeks, without saying with your leave or by your leave. I think she would not have minded kissing me, for she came dancing up and shook my hand.

“It’s Johnny Ludlow, Cherry,” said Juliet.

“Oh, how delightful!” cried Miss Cherry.

She was really very unsophisticated; or—very much the other way. One cannot quite tell at a first moment. But, let her be which she might, there was one thing about her that took the eyes by storm. It was her hair.

Whether her rapid movements had unfastened it, or whether she wore it so, I knew not, but it fell on her shoulders like a shower of gold. Her small face seemed to be set in an amber aureole. I had never before seen hair so absolutely resembling the colour of pure gold. As she ran back to Mrs. Cramp from me, it glittered in the sunlight. The shower of gold in which Jupiter went courting Danaë could hardly have been more seductive than this.

“I know you don’t mind my coming uninvited, you dear Mrs. Cramp!” she exclaimed joyously. “I did so want to make your acquaintance. And Clementina was growing such a cross-patch. It’s not Tim’s fault if he can’t come back yet. Is it now?”

“I do not know anything about it,” answered Mrs. Cramp, apparently not quite sure what to make of her.

With this additional company I thought it well to come away, and wished them good morning. At the gate stood the fly still, the horse resting.

“Like to take a lift, Mr. Johnny, as far as your place?” asked the man civilly. “I am just starting back.”

“No, thank you, Lease,” I answered. “I am going across to Duck Brook.”

“Curious young party that, ain’t it, sir?” said Lease, pointing the whip over his shoulder towards the house. “She went and asked me if Mrs. Cramp warn’t an old Image, born in the year One, and didn’t she get her gowns out of Noah’s Ark? And while I was staring at her saying that, she went off into shouts of laughter enough to frighten the horse. Did you see her hair, sir?”

I nodded.

“For my part, I don’t favour that bright yaller for hair, Mr. Johnny. I never knew but one woman have such, and she was more deceitful than a she-fox.”

Lease touched his hat and drove off. He was cousin in a remote degree to poor Maria Lease, and to Lease the pointsman who had caused the accident to the train at Crabb junction and died of the trouble. At that moment, Fred Scott came up; a short, dark young fellow, with fierce black whiskers, good-natured and rather soft. He was fond of playing billiards at the Bell at Islip; had been doing it for some years now.

“I say, Ludlow, has that fly come with Juliet Chandler? Is she back again?”

“Just come. She has brought some one with her: a girl with golden hair.”

“Oh, bother her!” returned Fred. “But it has been as dull as ditchwater without Juliet.”

He dashed in at Mrs. Cramp’s gate and up the winding path. I turned into the Islip Road, and crossed it to take Brook Lane. The leaves were beginning to put on the tints of autumn; the grain was nearly all gathered.

Time the healer! As Mrs. Todhetley says, it may well be called so. Heaven in mercy sends it to the sick and heavy-laden with healing on its wings. Nearly three years had slipped by since the departure for Canada of Valentine Chandler; four years since the tragic death of Oliver Preen.

There are few changes to record. Things and people were for the most part going on as they had done. It was reported that Valentine had turned over a new leaf from the hour he landed over yonder, becoming thoroughly staid and steady. Early in the summer of this year his mother had shut up her cottage at North Crabb to go to Guernsey, on the invitation of a sister from whom she had expectations. Upon this, Julietta, who lived with her mother, went on a long visit to Mrs. Cramp.

Clementina had married. Her husband was a Mr. Timothy Dawson, junior partner in a wholesale firm of general merchants in Birmingham; they had also a house in New York. Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Dawson lived in a white villa at Edgbaston, and went in for style and fashion. At least she did, which might go without telling. The family in which her sister Georgiana was governess occupied another white villa hard by.

Close upon Juliet’s thus taking up her residence with her aunt, finding perhaps the farm rather dull, she struck up a flirtation with Fred Scott, or he with her. They were everlastingly together, mooning about Mrs. Cramp’s grounds, or sauntering up and down the Islip Road. Juliet gave out that they were engaged. No one believed it. At present Fred had nothing to marry upon: his mother, just about as soft as himself, supplied him with as much pocket-money as he asked for, and there his funds ended.

Juliet had now returned from a week or two’s visit she had been paying Clementina, bringing with her, uninvited, the young lady with the golden hair. That hair seemed to be before my eyes as a picture as I walked along. She was Timothy Dawson’s young half-sister. Both the girls had grown tired of staying with Clementina, who worried herself and everyone about her just now because her husband was detained longer than he had anticipated in New York, whither he had gone on business.

Mr. Frederick Scott had said “Bother” in contempt when he first heard of the visitor with the golden hair. He did not say it long. Miss Cherry Dawson cast a spell upon him. He had never met such a rattling, laughing girl in all his born days, which was how he phrased it; had never seen such bewildering hair. Cherry fascinated him. Forgetting his allegiance to Juliet, faithless swain that he was, he went right over to the enemy. Miss Cherry, nothing loth, accepted his homage openly, and enjoyed the raging jealousy of Juliet.

In the midst of this, Juliet received a telegram from Edgbaston. Her sister Clementina was taken suddenly ill and wanted her. She must take the first train.

“Of course you are coming with me, Cherry!” said Juliet.

“Of course I am not,” laughed Cherry. “I’m very happy here—if dear Mrs. Cramp will let me stay with her. You’ll be back again in a day or two.”

Not seeing any polite way of sending her away in the face of this, Mrs. Cramp let her stay on. Juliet was away a week—and a nice time the other one and Fred had of it, improving the shining hours with soft speeches and love-making. When Juliet got back again, she felt ready to turn herself into a female Bluebeard, and cut off Cherry’s golden head.

Close upon that Mrs. Cramp held her harvest-home. “You may as well come early, and we’ll have tea on the lawn,” she said, when inviting us.

It was a fine afternoon, warm as summer, though September was drawing to its close. Many of the old friends you have heard of were there. Mary MacEveril and her cousin Dick, who seemed to be carrying on a little with one another, as Tod called it; the Letsoms, boys and girls; Emma Chandler, who looked younger than ever, though she could boast of two babies: and others. Jane Preen was there, the weary look which her mild and pretty face had gained latterly very plainly to be seen. We roamed at will about the grounds, and had tea under the large weeping elm tree. Altogether the gathering brought forcibly to mind that other gathering; that of the picnic, four summers ago, when we had sung songs in light-hearted glee, and poor Oliver Preen must have been ready to die of mortal pain.

The element of interest to-day lay in Miss Cherry Dawson. In her undisguised assumption of ownership in Fred Scott, and in Juliet Chandler’s rampant jealousy of the pair. You should have seen the girl flitting about like a fairy, in her white muslin frock, the golden shower of curls falling around her like nothing but threads of transparent amber. Fred was evidently very far gone. Juliet wore white also.

Whether things would have come that evening to the startling pass they did but for an unfortunate remark made in thoughtless fun, not in malice, I cannot tell. It gave a sting to Juliet that she could not bear. A ridiculous pastime was going on. Some of them were holding hands in a circle and dancing round to the “House that Jack Built,” each one reciting a sentence in turn. If you forgot your sentence, you paid a forfeit. The one falling to Juliet Chandler was “This the maiden all forlorn.” “Why, that’s exactly what you are, Juliet!” cried Tom Coney, impulsively, and a laugh went round. Juliet said nothing, but I saw her face change to the hue of death. The golden hair of the other damsel was gleaming just then within view amidst the trees, accompanied by the black head and black whiskers of Mr. Fred Scott.

“That young man must have a rare time of it between the two,” whispered Tod to me. “As good as the ass between the bundles of hay.”

At dusk began the fun of the harvest-home. Mrs. Cramp’s labourers and their wives sat in the large kitchen at an abundant board. Hot beef, mutton and hams crowded it, with vegetables; and of fruit pies and tarts there was a goodly show. Some of us helped to wait on them, and that was the best fun of all.

They had all taken as much as they could possibly eat, and were in the full flow of cider and beer and delight; a young man in a clean white smock-frock was sheepishly indulging the table with a song: “Young Roger of the Valley,” and I was laughing till I had to hold my sides; when Mrs. Cramp touched me on the back. She sat with the Miss Dennets in the little parlour off the kitchen, in full view of the company. I sat on the door-sill between them.

“Johnny,” she whispered, “I don’t see Juliet and Cherry Dawson. Have they been in at all?”

I did not remember to have seen them; or Fred Scott either.

“Just go out and look for the two girls, will you, Johnny. It’s too late for them to be out, though it is a warm night. Tell them I say they are to come in at once,” said Mrs. Cramp.

Not half a stone’s throw from the house I found them—quarrelling. Their noisy voices guided me. A brilliant moon lighted up the scene. The young ladies were taunting one another; Juliet in frantic passion; Cherry in sarcastic mockery. Fred Scott, after trying in vain to throw oil upon the troubled waters, had given it up as hopeless, and stood leaning against a tree in silent patience.

“It’s quite true,” Cherry was saying tauntingly when I got up. “We are engaged. We shall be married shortly. Come!”

“You are not,” raved Juliet, her voice trembling with the intense rage she was in. “He was engaged to me before you came here; he is engaged to me still.”

Cherry laughed out in mockery. “Dear me! old maids do deceive themselves so!”

Very hard, that, and Juliet winced. She was five or six years older than the fairy. How Fred relished the bringing home to him of his sins, I leave you to judge.

“I say, can’t you have done with this, you silly girls?” he cried out meekly.

“In a short time you’ll have our wedding-cards,” went on Cherry. “It’s all arranged. He’s only waiting for me to decide whether it shall take place here or at Gretna Green.”

Juliet dashed round to face Fred Scott. “If this be true; if you do behave in this false way to me, I’ll not survive it,” she said, hardly able to bring the words out in her storm of passion. “Do you hear me? I’ll not live to see it, I say; and my ghost shall haunt her for her whole life after.”

“Come now, easy, Juliet,” pleaded Fred uncomfortably. “It’s all nonsense, you know.”

“I think it is; I think she is saying this to aggravate me,” assented Juliet, subsiding to a sort of calmness. “If not, take you warning, Cherry Dawson, for I’ll keep my word. My apparition shall haunt you for ever and ever.”

“It had better begin to-night, then, for you’ll soon find out that it’s as true as gospel,” retorted Cherry.

Managing at last to get in a word, I delivered Mrs. Cramp’s message: they were to come in instantly. Fred obeyed it with immense relief and ran in before me. The two girls would follow, I concluded, when their jarring had spent itself. The last glimpse I had of them, they were stretching out their faces at each other like a couple of storks. Juliet’s straw hat had fallen from her head and was hanging by its strings round her neck.

“Oh, they’re coming,” spoke up Fred, in answer to Mrs. Cramp. “It’s very nice out there; the moon’s bright as day.”

And presently I heard the laugh of Cherry Dawson amidst us. Her golden hair, her scarlet cheeks and her blue eyes were all sparkling together.

III

It was the next morning. We were at breakfast, answering Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley’s questions about the harvest home, when old Thomas came in, all sad and scared, to tell some news. Juliet Chandler was dead: she had destroyed herself.

Of course the Squire at once attacked Thomas for saying it. But a sick feeling of conviction arose within me that it was true. One of the servants, out of doors on an errand, had heard it from a man in the road. The Squire sat rubbing his face, which had turned hot.

Leaving the breakfast table, I started for Mrs. Cramp’s. Miss Susan Dennet was standing at her gate, her white handkerchief thrown over her head, her pale face limp with fright.

“Johnny,” she called to me, “have you heard? Do you think it can be true?”

“Well, I hope not, Miss Susan. I am now going there to see. What I’m thinking of is this—if it is not true, how can such a report have arisen?”

Tod caught me up, and we found the farm in distress and commotion. It was all true; and poor Mrs. Cramp was almost dumb with dismay. These were the particulars: The previous evening, Juliet did not appear at the late supper, laid in the dining-room for the guests; at least, no one remembered to have seen her. Later, when the guests had left, and Mrs. Cramp was in the kitchen busy with her maids, Cherry Dawson looked in, bed-candle in hand, to say good-night. “I suppose Juliet is going up with you,” remarked Mrs. Cramp. “Oh, Juliet went up ages ago,” said Cherry, in answer.

The night passed quietly. Early in the morning one of the farm men went to the eel-pond to put in a net, and saw some clothes lying on the brink. Rushing indoors, he brought out Sally. She knew the things at once. There lay the white dress and the pink ribbons which Juliet had worn the night before; the straw hat, and a small fleecy handkerchief which she had tied round her neck at sundown. Pinned to the sash and the dress was a piece of paper on which was written in ink, in a large hand—Juliet’s hand:

“I said I would do it; and I will haunt her for evermore.”

Of course she had taken these things off and left them on the bank, with the memorandum pinned to them, to make known that she had flung herself into the pond.

“I can scarcely believe it; it seems so incredible,” sighed poor Mrs. Cramp, to the Squire, who had come bustling in. “Juliet, as I should have thought, was one of the very last girls to do such a thing.”

The next to appear upon the scene, puffing and panting with agitation, was Fred Scott. He asked which of the two girls it was, having heard only a garbled account; and now learned that it was Juliet. As to Cherry Dawson, she was shut up in her bedroom in shrieking hysterics. Men were preparing to drag the pond in search of——well, what was lying there.

The pond was at the end of the garden, near the fence that divided it from the three-acre field. Nothing had been disturbed. The white frock and pink ribbons were lying with the paper pinned to them; the hat was close by. A yard off was the white woollen handkerchief; and near it I saw the faded bunch of mignonette which Juliet had worn in her waistband. It looked as if she had flung the things off in desperation.

Standing later in the large parlour, listening to comments and opinions, one question troubled me—Ought I to tell what I knew of the quarrel? It might look like treachery towards Scott and the girl upstairs; but, should that poor dead Juliet——

The doubt was suddenly solved for me.

“What I want to get at is this,” urged the Squire: “did anything happen to drive her to this? One doesn’t throw oneself into an eel-pond for nothing in one’s sober senses.”

“Miss Juliet and Miss Dawson had a quarrel out o’ doors last night,” struck in Joan, for the two servants were assisting at the conference. “Sally heard ’em.”

“What’s that?” cried Mrs. Cramp. “Speak up.”

“Well, it’s true, ma’am,” said Sally, coming forward. “I went out to shake a tray-cloth, and heard voices at a distance, all in a rage like; so I just stepped on a bit to see what it meant. The two young lasses was snarling at one another like anything. Miss Juliet was——”

“What were they quarrelling about?” interrupted the Squire.

“Well, sir, it seemed to be about Mr. Scott—which of ’em had him for a sweetheart, and which of ’em hadn’t. Mr. Johnny Ludlow ran up as I came in: perhaps he heard more than I did.”

After that, there was nothing for it but to let the past scene come out; and Mrs. Cramp had the pleasure of being enlightened as to the rivalry which had been going on under her roof and the ill-feeling which had arisen out of it. Fred Scott, to do him justice, spoke up like a man, not denying the flirtation he had carried on, first with Juliet, next with Cherry, but he declared most positively that it had never been serious on any side.

The Squire wheeled round. “Just say what you mean by that, Mr. Frederick. What do you call serious?”

“I never said a word to either of them which could suggest serious intentions, sir. I never hinted at such a thing as getting married.”

“Now look here, young man,” cried Mrs. Cramp, taking her handkerchief from her troubled face, “what right had you to do that? By what right did you play upon those young girls with your silly speeches and your flirting ways, if you meant nothing?—nothing to either of them?”

“I am sorry for it now, ma’am,” said Scott, eating humble pie; “I wouldn’t have done it for the world had I foreseen this. It was just a bit of flirting and nothing else. And neither of them ever thought it was anything else; they knew better; only they became snappish with one another.”

“Did not think you meant marrying?” cried the Squire sarcastically, fixing Scott with his spectacles.

“Just so, sir. Why, how could I mean it?” went on Scott in his simple way. “I’ve no money, while my mother lives, to set up a wife or a house; she wouldn’t let me. I joked and laughed with the two girls, and they joked and laughed back again. I don’t care what they may have said between themselves—they knew there was nothing in it.”

Scott was right, so far. All the world, including the Chandlers and poor Juliet, knew that Scott was no more likely to marry than the man in the moon.

“And you could stand by quietly last night when they were having, it seems, this bitter quarrel, and not stop it?” exclaimed Mrs. Cramp.

“They would not listen to me,” returned Scott. “I went between them; spoke to one, spoke to the other; told them what they were quarrelling about was utter nonsense—and the more I said, the more they wrangled. Johnny Ludlow saw how it was; he came up at the end of it.”

Cherry Dawson was sent for downstairs, and came in between Sally and Joan, limp and tearful and shaking with fright. Mrs. Cramp questioned her.

“It was all done in fun,” she said with a sob. “Juliet and I teased one another. It was as much her fault as mine. Fred Scott needn’t talk. I’m sure I don’t want him. I’ve somebody waiting for me at Edgbaston, if I choose. Scott may go to York!”

“Suppose you mind your manners, young woman: you’ve done enough mischief in my house without forgetting them,” reproved Mrs. Cramp. “I want to know when you last saw Juliet.”

“We came in together after the quarrel. She ran up to her room; I joined the rest of you. As she did not come down to supper, I thought she had gone to bed. O-o-o-o-o!” shivered Cherry; “and she says she’ll haunt me! I shall never dare to be alone in the dark again.”

Mr. Fred Scott took his departure, glad no doubt to do so, carrying with him a hint from Mrs. Cramp that for the present his visits must cease, unless he should be required to give evidence at the inquest. As he went out, Mr. Paul and Tom Chandler came in together. Tom, strong in plain common-sense, could not at all understand it.

“Passion must have overbalanced her reason and driven her mad,” he said aside to me. “The taunts of that Dawson girl did it, I reckon.”

“Blighted love,” said I.

“Moonshine,” answered Tom Chandler. “Juliet, poor girl, had gone in for too many flirtations to care much for Scott. As to that golden-haired one, her life is passed in nothing else: getting out of one love affair into another, month in, month out. Her brother Tim once told her so in my presence. No, Johnny, it is a terrible calamity, but I shall never understand how she came to do it as long as I live.”

I was not sure that I should. Juliet was very practical: not one of your moaning, sighing, die-away sort of girls who lose their brains for love, like crazy Jane. It was a dreadful thing, whatever might have been the cause, and we were all sorry for Mrs. Cramp. Nothing had stirred us like this since the death of Oliver Preen.

Georgiana Chandler came flying over from Birmingham in a state of excitement. Cherry Dawson had gone then, or Georgie might have shaken her to pieces. When put up, Georgie had a temper of her own. Cherry had disappeared into the wilds of Devonshire, where her home was, and where she most devoutly hoped Juliet’s ghost would not find its way.

“It is an awful thing to have taken place in your house, Aunt Mary Ann. And why unhappy, ill-fated Juliet should have—but I can’t talk of it,” broke off Georgie.

“I know that I am ashamed of its having happened here, Georgiana,” assented Mrs. Cramp. “I am not alluding to the sad termination, but to that parcel of nonsense, the sweethearting.”

“Clementina is more heartless than an owl over it,” continued Georgie, making her remarks. “She says it serves Juliet right for her flirting folly, and she hopes Cherry will be haunted till her yellow curls turn grey.”

The more they dragged, the less chance there seemed of finding Juliet. Nothing came up but eels. It was known that the eel-pond had a hole or two in it which no drags could penetrate. Gloom settled down upon us all. Mrs. Cramp’s healthy cheeks lost some of their redness. One day, calling at Crabb Cot, she privately told us that the trouble would lie upon her for ever. The best word Tod gave to it was—that he would go a day’s march with peas in his shoes to see a certain lady hanging by her golden hair on a sour apple tree.

It was a bleak October evening. Jane Preen, in her old shawl and garden hat, was hurrying to Dame Sym’s on an errand for her mother. The cold wind sighed and moaned in the trees, clouds flitted across the face of the crescent moon. It scarcely lighted up the little old church beyond the Triangle, and the graves in the churchyard beneath, Oliver’s amidst them. Jane shivered, and ran into Mrs. Sym’s.

Carrying back her parcel, she turned in at the garden gate and stood leaning over it for a few moments. Tears were coursing down her cheeks. Life for a long time had seemed very hard to Jane; no hope anywhere.

The sound of quick footsteps broke upon her ear, and a gentleman came into view. She rather wondered who it was; whether anyone was coming to call on her father.

“Jane! Jane!”

With a faint cry, she fell into the arms opened to receive her—those of Valentine Chandler. He went away, a ne’er-do-well, three years ago, shattered in health, shaken in spirit; he had returned a healthy, hearty man, all his parts about him.

Yes, Valentine had turned over a new leaf from the moment he touched the Canadian shores. He had put his shoulder to the wheel in earnest, had persevered and prospered. And now he had a profitable farm of his own, and a pretty house upon it, all in readiness for Jane.

“We have heard from time to time that you were doing well,” she said, with a sob of joy. “Oh, Valentine, how good it is! To have done it all yourself!”

“Not altogether myself, Jane,” he answered. “I did my best, and God sent His blessing upon it.”

Jane no longer felt the night cold, the wind bleak, or remembered that her mother was waiting for the parcel. They paced the old wilderness of a garden, arm locked within arm. There was something in the windy night to put them in mind of that other night: the night of their parting, when Valentine had sung his song of farewell, and bade her remember him though rolling ocean placed its bounds between them. They had been faithful to one another.

Seated on the bench, under the walnut tree, the very spot on which poor Oliver had sat after that rush home from his fatal visit to Mr. Paul’s office at Islip, Jane ventured to say a word about Juliet, and, to her surprise, found that Valentine knew nothing.

“I have not heard any news yet, Jane,” he said. “I came straight to you from the station. Presently I shall go back to astonish Aunt Mary Ann. Why? What about Juliet?”

Jane enlightened him by degrees, giving him one particular after another. Valentine listening in silence to the end.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Don’t believe it!” exclaimed Jane.

“Not a syllable of it.”

“But what do you mean? What don’t you believe?”

“That Juliet threw herself into the pond. My dear, she is not the kind of girl to do it; she’d no more do such a thing than I should.”

“Oh, Val! It is true the drags brought up nothing but eels; but——”

“Of course they didn’t. There’s nothing but eels there to bring up.”

“Then where can Juliet be?—what is the mystery?” dissented Jane. “What became of her?”

“That I don’t know. Rely upon it, Janey, she is not there. She’d never jump into that cold pond. How long ago is this?”

“Nearly a month. Three weeks last Thursday.”

“Ah,” said Valentine. “Well, I’ll see if I can get to the bottom of it.”

Showing himself indoors to Mr. and Mrs. Preen for a few minutes, Valentine then made his way to Mrs. Cramp’s, where he would stay. He knew his mother was away, and her house shut up. Mrs. Cramp, recovering from her surprise, told him he was welcome as the sun in harvest. She had been more grieved when Valentine went wrong than the world suspected.

Seated over the fire, in her comfortable parlour, after supper, Valentine told her his plans. He had come over for one month; could not leave his farm longer; just to shake hands with them all, and to take Jane Preen back with him. That discussed, Mrs. Cramp entered gingerly upon the sad news about Juliet—not having thought well to deluge him with it the moment he came in. Valentine refused to believe it—as he had refused with Jane.

“Bless the boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Cramp, staring. “What on earth makes him say such a thing?”

“Because I am sure of it, Aunt Mary Ann. Fancy strong-minded Juliet throwing herself into an eel pond! She is gadding about somewhere, deep already, I daresay, in another flirtation.”

Mrs. Cramp, waiting to collect her scattered senses, shook her head plaintively. “My dear,” she said, “I don’t pretend to know the fashion of things in the outlandish world in which you live, but over here it couldn’t be. Once a girl has been drowned in a pond—whether eel, duck, or carp pond, what matters it?—she can’t come to life again and go about flirting.”

To us all Valentine was, as Mrs. Cramp had phrased it, more welcome than the sun in harvest, and was made much of. When a young fellow has been going to the bad, and has the resolution to pull up and to persevere, he should be honoured, cried the Squire—and we did our best to honour Val. For a week or two there was nothing but visiting everywhere. He was then going to Guernsey to see his mother, when she wrote to stop him, saying she was coming back to Crabb for his wedding.

And while Valentine was reading his mother’s letter at the tea-table—for the Channel Islands letters always came in by the second post—Mrs. Cramp was opening one directed to her. Suddenly Valentine heard a gurgle—and next a moan. Looking up, he saw his aunt gasping for breath, her face an indescribable mixture of emotions.

“Why, Aunt Mary Ann,” he cried; “are you ill?”

“If I’m not ill, I might be,” retorted Mrs. Cramp. “Here’s a letter from that wretched girl—that Juliet! She’s not dead after all. She has been in Guernsey all this time.”

Valentine paused a moment to take in the truth of the announcement, and then burst into laughter deep and long. Mrs. Cramp handed him the letter.

And so, there it was—Julietta was in the land of the living and had never been out of it. And we had gone through our fright and pain unnecessarily, and the poor eels had been disturbed for nothing.

They were married at the little church at Duck Brook; no ceremony, hardly anyone invited to it. Mr. Preen gave Jane away. Tom Chandler and Emma were there, and Mrs. Jacob Chandler and Mrs. Cramp. Jane asked me to go—to see the last of her, she said. She wore a plain silk dress of a greyish colour, and a white straw bonnet with a bit of orange blossom—which she took off before they started on their journey. For they went off at once to Liverpool—and would sail the next day for their new home.

And Valentine is always steady and prospering, and Jane says Canada is better than England and she wouldn’t come back for the world.

And Juliet is married and lives in Guernsey, and drives about with her old husband in his handsome carriage and pair. But Mrs. Cramp has not forgiven her yet.

THE SILENT CHIMES

I.—PUTTING THEM UP

I

The events of this history did not occur within my own recollection, and I can only relate them at second-hand—from the Squire and others. They are curious enough; especially as regard the three parsons—one following upon another—in their connection with the Monk family, causing no end of talk in Church Leet parish, as well as in other parishes within earshot.

About three miles’ distance from Church Dykely, going northwards across country, was the rural parish of Church Leet. It contained a few farmhouses and some labourers’ cottages. The church, built of grey stone, stood in its large graveyard; the parsonage, a commodious house, was close by; both of them were covered with time-worn ivy. Nearly half a mile off, on a gentle eminence, rose the handsome mansion called Leet Hall, the abode of the Monk family. Nearly the whole of the parish—land, houses, church and all—belonged to them. At the time I am about to tell of they were the property of one man—Godfrey Monk.

The late owner of the place (except for one short twelvemonth) was old James Monk, Godfrey’s father. Old James had three sons and one daughter—Emma—his wife dying early. The eldest son (mostly styled “young James”) was about as wild a blade as ever figured in story; the second son, Raymond, was an invalid; the third, Godfrey, a reckless lad, ran away to sea when he was fourteen.

If the Monks were celebrated for one estimable quality more than another, it was temper: a cross-grained, imperious, obstinate temper. “Run away to sea, has he?” cried old James when he heard the news; “very well, at sea he shall stop.” And at sea Godfrey did stop, not disliking the life, and perhaps not finding any other open to him. He worked his way up in the merchant service by degrees, until he became commander and was called Captain Monk.

The years went on. Young James died, and the other two sons grew to be middle-aged men. Old James, the father, found by signs and tokens that his own time was approaching; and he was the next to go. Save for a slender income bequeathed to Godfrey and to his daughter, the whole of the property was left to Raymond, and to Godfrey after him if Raymond had no son. The entail had been cut off in the past generation; for which act the reasons do not concern us.

So Raymond, ailing greatly always, entered into possession of his inheritance. He lived about a twelvemonth afterwards, and then died: died unmarried. Therefore Godfrey came into all.

People were curious, the Squire says, as to what sort of man Godfrey would turn out to be; for he had not troubled home much since he ran away. He was a widower; that much was known; his wife having been a native of Trinidad, in the West Indies.

A handsome man, with fair, curling hair (what was left of it); proud blue eyes; well-formed features with a chronic flush upon them, for he liked his glass, and took it; a commanding, imperious manner, and a temper uncompromising as the grave. Such was Captain Godfrey Monk; now in his forty-fifth year. Upon his arrival at Leet Hall after landing, with his children and one or two dusky attendants in their train, he was received by his sister Emma, Mrs. Carradyne. Major Carradyne had died fighting in India, and his wife, at the request of her brother Raymond, came then to live at Leet Hall. Not of necessity, for Mrs. Carradyne was well off and could have made her home where she pleased, but Raymond had liked to have her. Godfrey also expressed his pleasure that she should remain; she could act as mother to his children.

Godfrey’s children were three: Katherine, aged seventeen; Hubert, aged ten; and Eliza, aged eight. The girls had their father’s handsome features, but in their skin there ran a dusky tinge, hinting of other than pure Saxon blood; and they were every whit as haughtily self-willed as he was. The boy, Hubert, was extremely pretty, his face fair, his complexion delicately beautiful, his auburn hair bright, his manner winning; but he liked to exercise his own will, and appeared to have generally done it.

A day or two, and Mrs. Carradyne sat down aghast. “I never saw children so troublesome and self-willed in all my life, Godfrey,” she said to her brother. “Have they ever been controlled at all?”

“Had their own way pretty much, I expect,” answered the Captain. “I was not often at home, you know, and there’s nobody else they’d obey.”

“Well, Godfrey, if I am to remain here, you will have to help me manage them.”

“That’s as may be, Emma. When I deem it necessary to speak, I speak; otherwise I don’t interfere. And you must not get into the habit of appealing to me, recollect.”

Captain Monk’s conversation was sometimes interspersed with sundry light words, not at all orthodox, and not necessarily delivered in anger. In those past days swearing was regarded as a gentleman’s accomplishment; a sailor, it was believed, could not at all get along without it. Manners change. The present age prides itself upon its politeness: but what of its sincerity?

Mrs. Carradyne, mild and gentle, commenced her task of striving to tame her brother’s rebellious children. She might as well have let it alone. The girls laughed at her one minute and set her at defiance the next. Hubert, who had good feeling, was more obedient; he did not openly defy her. At times, when her task pressed heavily upon her spirits, Mrs. Carradyne felt tempted to run away from Leet Hall, as Godfrey had run from it in the days gone by. Her own two children were frightened at their cousins, and she speedily sent both to school, lest they should catch their bad manners. Henry was ten, the age of Hubert; Lucy was between five and six.

Just before the death of Raymond Monk, the living of Church Leet became vacant, and the last act of his life was to present it to a worthy young clergyman named George West. This caused intense dissatisfaction to Godfrey. He had heard of the late incumbent’s death, and when he arrived home and found the living filled up he proclaimed his anger loudly, lavishing abuse upon poor dead Raymond for his precipitancy. He had wanted to bestow it upon a friend of his, a Colonial chaplain, and had promised it to him. It was a checkmate there was no help for now, for Mr. West could not be turned out again; but Captain Monk was not accustomed to be checkmated, and resented it accordingly. He took up, for no other reason, a most inveterate dislike to George West, and showed it practically.

In every step the Vicar took, at every turn and thought, he found himself opposed by Captain Monk. Had he a suggestion to make for the welfare of the parish, his patron ridiculed it; did he venture to propose some wise measure at a vestry meeting, the Captain put him and his measure down. Not civilly either, but with a stinging contempt, semi-covert though it was, that made its impression on the farmers around. The Reverend George West was a man of humility, given to much self-disparagement, so he bore all in silence and hoped for better times.

The time went on; three years of it; Captain Monk had fully settled down in his ancestral home, and the neighbours had learnt what a domineering, self-willed man he was. But he had his virtues. He was kind in a general way, generous where it pleased him to be, inordinately attached to his children, and hospitable to a fault.

On the last day of every year, as the years came round, Captain Monk, following his late father’s custom, gave a grand dinner to his tenants; and a very good custom it would have been, but that he and they got rather too jolly. The parson was always invited—and went; and sometimes a few of Captain Monk’s personal friends were added.

Christmas came round this year as usual, and the invitations to the dinner went out. One came to Squire Todhetley, a youngish man then, and one to my father, William Ludlow, who was younger than the Squire. It was a green Christmas; the weather so warm and genial that the hearty farmers, flocking to Leet Hall, declared they saw signs of buds sprouting in the hedges, whilst the large fire in the Captain’s dining-room was quite oppressive.

Looking from the window of the parsonage sitting-room in the twilight, while drawing on his gloves, preparatory to setting forth, stood Mr. West. His wife was bending over an easy-chair, in which their only child, little Alice, lay back, covered up. Her breathing was quick, her skin parched with fever. The wife looked sickly herself.

“Well, I suppose it is time to go,” observed Mr. West, slowly. “I shall be late if I don’t.”

“I rather wonder you go at all, George,” returned his wife. “Year after year, when you come back from this dinner, you invariably say you will not go to another.”

“I know it, Mary. I dislike the drinking that goes on—and the free conversation—and the objectionable songs; I feel out of place in it all.”

“And the Captain’s contemptuous treatment of yourself, you might add.”

“Yes, that is another unwelcome item in the evening’s programme.”

“Then, George, why do you go?”

“Well, I think you know why. I do not like to refuse the invitation; it would only increase Captain Monk’s animosity and widen still further the breach between us. As patron he holds so much in his power. Besides that, my presence at the table does act, I believe, as a mild restraint on some of them, keeping the drinking and the language somewhat within bounds. Yes, I suppose my duty lies in going. But I shall not stay late, Mary,” added the parson, bending to look at the suffering child; “and if you see any real necessity for the doctor to be called in to-night, I will go for him.”

“Dood-bye, pa-pa,” lisped the little four-year-old maiden.

He kissed the little hot face, said adieu to his wife and went out, hoping that the child would recover without the doctor; for the living of Church Leet was but a poor one, though the parsonage house was so handsome. It was a hundred-and-sixty pounds a year, for which sum the tithes had been compounded, and Mr. West had not much money to spare for superfluities—especially as he had to substantially help his mother.

The twilight had deepened almost to night, and the lights in the mansion seemed to smile a cheerful welcome as he approached it. The pillared entrance, ascended to by broad steps, stood in the middle, and a raised terrace of stone ran along before the windows on either side. It was quite true that every year, at the conclusion of these feasts, the Vicar resolved never to attend another; but he was essentially a man of peace, striving ever to lay oil upon troubled waters, after the example left by his Master.

Dinner. The board was full. Captain Monk presided, genial to-day; genial even to the parson. Squire Todhetley faced the Captain at the foot; Mr. West sat at the Squire’s right hand, between him and Farmer Threpp, a quiet man and supposed to be a very substantial one. All went on pleasantly; but when the elaborate dinner gave place to dessert and wine-drinking, the company became rather noisy.

“I think it’s about time you left us,” cried the Squire by-and-by to young Hubert, who sat next him on the other side: and over and over again Mr. Todhetley has repeated to us in later years the very words that passed.

“By George, yes!” put in a bluff and hearty fox-hunter, the master of the hounds, bending forward to look at the lad, for he was in a line with him, and breaking short off an anecdote he was regaling the company with. “I forgot you were there, Master Hubert. Quite time you went to bed.”

“I daresay!” laughed the boy. “Please let me alone, all of you. I don’t want attention drawn to me.”

But the slight commotion had attracted Captain Monk’s notice. He saw his son.

“What’s that?—Hubert! What brings you there now, you young pirate? I ordered you to go out with the cloth.”

“I am not doing any harm, papa,” said the boy, turning his fair and beautiful face towards his father.

Captain Monk pointed his stern finger at the door; a mandate which Hubert dared not disobey, and he went out.

The company sat on, an interminable period of time it seemed to the Vicar. He glanced stealthily at his watch. Eleven o’clock.

“Thinking of going, Parson?” said Mr. Threpp. “I’ll go with you. My head’s not one of the strongest, and I’ve had about as much as I ought to carry.”

They rose quietly, not to disturb the table; intending to steal away, if possible, without being observed. Unluckily, Captain Monk chanced to be looking that way.

“Halloa! who’s turning sneak?—Not you, surely, Parson!—” in a meaningly contemptuous tone. “And you, Threpp, of all men! Sit down again, both of you, if you don’t want to quarrel with me. Odds fish! has my dining-room got sharks in it, that you’d run away? Winter, just lock the door, will you; you are close to it, and pass up the key to me.”

Mr. Winter, a jovial old man and the largest tenant on the estate, rose to do the Captain’s behest, and sent up the key.

“Nobody quits my room,” said the host, as he took it, “until we have seen the old year out and the new one in. What else do you come for—eh, gentlemen?”

The revelry went on. The decanters circulated more quickly, the glasses clinked, the songs became louder, the Captain’s sea stories broader. Mr. West perforce made the best of the situation, certain words of Holy Writ running through his memory:

“Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright!”

Well, more than well, for Captain Monk, that he had not looked upon the red wine that night!

In the midst of all this, the hall clock began to strike twelve. The Captain rose, after filling his glass to the brim.

“Bumpers round, gentlemen. On your legs. Ready? Hooray! Here’s to the shade of the year that’s gone, and may it have buried all our cares with it! And here’s good luck to the one setting in. A happy New Year to you all; and may we never know a moment in it worse than the present? Three-times-three—and drain your glasses.”

“But we have had the toast too soon!” called out one of the farmers, making the discovery close after the cheers had subsided. “It wants some minutes yet to midnight, Captain.”

Captain Monk snatched out his watch—worn in those days in what was called the fob-pocket—its chain and bunch of seals at the end hanging down.

“By Jupiter!” he exclaimed. “Hang that butler of mine! He knew the hall clock was too fast, and I told him to put it back. If his memory serves him no better than this, he may ship himself off to a fresh berth.—Hark! Listen!”

It was the church clock striking twelve. The sound reached the dining-room room very clearly, the wind setting that way. “Another bumper,” cried the Captain, and his guests drank it.

“This day twelvemonth I was at a feast in Derbyshire; the bells of a neighbouring church rang in the year with pleasant melody; chimes they were,” remarked a guest, who was a partial stranger. “Your church has no bells, I suppose?”

“It has one; an old ting-tang that calls us to service on a Sunday,” said Mr. Winter.

“I like to hear those midnight chimes, for my part. I like to hear them chime in the new year,” went on the stranger.

“Chimes!” cried out Captain Monk, who was getting very considerably elated, “why should we not have chimes? Mr. West, why don’t we have chimes?”

“Our church does not possess any, sir—as this gentleman has just remarked,” was Mr. West’s answer.

“Egad, but that parson of ours is going to set us all ablaze with his wit!” jerked out the Captain ironically. “I asked, sir, why we should not get a set of chimes; I did not say we had got them. Is there any just cause or impediment why we should not, Mr. Vicar?”

“Only the expense,” replied the Vicar, in a conciliatory tone.

“Oh, bother expense! That’s what you are always wanting to groan over. Mr. Churchwarden Threpp, we will call a vestry meeting and make a rate.”

“The parish could not bear it, Captain Monk,” remonstrated the clergyman. “You know what dissatisfaction was caused by the last extra rate put on, and how low an ebb things are at just now.”

“When I will a thing, I do it,” retorted the Captain, with a meaning word or two. “We’ll send out the rate and we’ll get the chimes.”

“It will, I fear, lie in my duty to protest against it,” spoke the uneasy parson.

“It may lie in your duty to be a wet blanket, but you won’t protest me out of my will. Gentlemen, we will all meet here again this time twelvemonth, when the chimes shall ring-in the new year for you.—— Here, Dutton, you can unlock the door now,” concluded the Captain, handing the key to the other churchwarden. “Our parson is upon thorns to be away from us.”

Not the parson only, but several others availed themselves of the opportunity to escape.

II

It perhaps did not surprise the parish to find that its owner and master, Captain Monk, intended to persist in his resolution of embellishing the church-tower with a set of chiming-bells. They knew him too well to hope anything less. Why! two years ago, at the same annual feast, some remarks or other at table put it into his head to declare he would stop up the public path by the Rill; and his obstinate will carried it out, regardless of the inconvenience it caused.

A vestry meeting was called, and the rate (to obtain funds for the bells) was at length passed. Two or three voices were feebly lifted in opposition; Mr. West alone had courage to speak out; but the Captain put him down with his strong hand. It may be asked why Captain Monk did not provide the funds himself for this whim. But he would never touch his own pocket for the benefit of the parish if he could help it: and it was thought that his antagonism to the parson was the deterring motive.

To impose the rate was one thing, to collect it quite another. Some of the poorer ratepayers protested with tears in their eyes that they could not pay. Superfluous rates (really not necessary ones) were perpetually being inflicted upon them, they urged, and were bringing them, together with a succession of recent bad seasons, to the verge of ruin. They carried their remonstrances to their Vicar, and he in turn carried them to Captain Monk.

It only widened the breach. The more persistently, though gently, Mr. West pleaded the cause of his parishioners, asking the Captain to be considerate to them for humanity’s sake, the greater grew the other’s obstinacy in holding to his own will. To be thus opposed roused all the devil within him—it was his own expression; and he grew to hate Mr. West with an exceeding bitter hatred.

The chimes were ordered—to play one tune only. Mr. West asked, when the thing was absolutely inevitable, that at least some sweet and sacred melody, acceptable to church-going ears, might be chosen; but Captain Monk fixed on a sea-song that was a favourite of his own—“The Bay of Biscay.” At the end of every hour, when the clock had struck, the Bay of Biscay was to burst forth to charm the parish.

The work was put in hand at once, Captain Monk finding the necessary funds, to be repaid by the proceeds of the rate. Other expenses were involved, such as the strengthening of the belfry. The rate was not collected quickly. It was, I say, one of those times of scarcity that people used to talk so much of years ago; and when the parish beadle, who was the parish collector, went round with the tax-paper in his hand, the poorer of the cottagers could not respond to it. Some of them had not paid the last levy, and Captain Monk threatened harsh measures. Altogether, what with one thing or another, Church Leet that year was kept in a state of ferment. But the work went on.

One windy day in September, Mr. West sat in his study writing a sermon, when a jarring crash rang out from the church close by. He leaped from his chair. The unusual noise had startled him; and it struck on every chord of vexation he possessed. He knew that workmen were busy in the tower, but this was the first essay of the chimes. The bells had clashed in some way one upon the other; not giving out The Bay of Biscay or any other melody, but a very discordant jangle indeed. It was the first and the last time that poor George West heard their sound.

He put the blotting-paper upon his sermon; he was in no mind to continue it then; took up his hat and went out. His wife spoke to him from the open window.

“Are you going out now, George? Tea is all but ready.”

Turning back on the path, he passed into the sitting-room. A cup of tea might soothe his nerves. The tea-tray stood on the table, and Mrs. West, caddy in hand, was putting the tea into the tea-pot. Little Alice sat gravely by.

“Did you hear dat noise up in the church, papa?” she asked.

“Yes, I heard it, dear,” sighed the Vicar.

“A fine clashing!” cried Mrs. West. “I have heard something else this afternoon, George, worse than that: Bean’s furniture is being taken away.”

“What?” cried the Vicar.

“It’s true. Sarah went out on an errand and passed the cottage. The chairs and tables were being put outside the door by two men, she says: brokers, I conclude.”

Mr. West made short work of his tea and started for the scene. Thomas Bean was a very small farmer indeed, renting about thirty acres. What with the heavy rates, as he said, and other outgoings and bad seasons, and ill-luck altogether, he had been behind in his payments this long while; and now the ill-luck seemed to have come to a climax. Bean and his wife were old; their children were scattered abroad.

“Oh, sir,” cried the old lady when she saw the Vicar, the tears raining from her eyes, “it cannot be right that this oppression should fall upon us! We had just managed—Heaven knows how, for I’m sure I don’t—to pay the Midsummer rent; and now they’ve come upon us for the rates, and have took away things worth ten times the sum.”

“For the rates!” mechanically spoke the Vicar.

She supposed it was a question. “Yes, sir; two of ’em we had in the house. One was for putting up the chimes; and the other—well, I can’t just remember what the other was. The beadle, old Crow, comes in, sir, this afternoon. ‘Where be the master?’ says he. ‘Gone over to t’other side of Church Dykely,’ says I. ‘Well,’ says he, upon that, ‘you be going to have some visitors presently, and it’s a pity he’s out.’ ‘Visitors, for what, Crow?’ says I. ‘Oh, you’ll see,’ says he; ‘and then perhaps you’ll wish you’d bestirred yourselves to pay your just dues. Captain Monk’s patience have been running on for a goodish while, and at last it have run clean out.’ Well, sir——”

She had to make a pause; unable to control her grief.

“Well, sir,” she went on presently, “Crow’s back was hardly turned, when up came two men, wheeling a truck. I saw ’em afar off, by the ricks yonder. One came in; t’other stayed outside with the truck. He asked me whether I was ready with the money for the taxes; and I told him I was not ready, and had but a couple of shillings in the house. ‘Then I must take the value of it in kind,’ says he. And without another word, he beckons in the outside man to help him. Our middle table, a mahogany, they seized; and the handsome oak chest, which had been our pride; and the master’s arm-chair—— But, there! I can’t go on.”

Mr. West felt nearly as sorrowful as she, and far more angry. In his heart he believed that Captain Monk had done this oppressive thing in revenge. A great deal of ill-feeling had existed in the parish touching the rate made for the chimes; and the Captain assumed that the few who had not yet paid it would not pay—not that they could not.

Quitting the cottage in an impulse of anger, he walked swiftly to Leet Hall. It lay in his duty, as he fully deemed, to avow fearlessly to Captain Monk what he thought of this act of oppression, and to protest against it. The beams of the setting sun, sinking below the horizon in the still autumn evening, fell across the stubbled fields from which the corn had not long been reaped; all around seemed to speak of peace.

To accommodate two gentlemen who had come from Worcester that day to Leet Hall on business, and wished to quit it again before dark, the dinner had been served earlier than usual. The guests had left, but Captain Monk was seated still over his wine in the dining-room when Mr. West was shown in. In crossing the hall to it, he met Mrs. Carradyne, who shook hands with him cordially.

Captain Monk looked surprised. “Why, this is an unexpected pleasure—a visit from you, Mr. Vicar,” he cried, in mocking jest. “Hope you have come to your senses! Sit down. Will you take port or sherry?”

“Captain Monk,” returned the Vicar, gravely, as he took the chair the servant had placed, “I am obliged for your courtesy, but I did not intrude upon you this evening to drink wine. I have seen a very sad sight, and I am come hoping to induce you to repair it.”

“Seen what?” cried the Captain, who, it is well to mention, had been taking his wine very freely, even for him. “A flaming sword in the sky?”

“Your tenants, poor Thomas Bean and his wife, are being turned out of house and home, or almost equivalent to it. Some of their furniture has been seized this afternoon to satisfy the demand for these disputed taxes.”

“Who disputes the taxes?”

“The tax imposed for the chimes was always a disputed tax; and——”

“Tush!” interrupted the Captain; “Bean owes other things as well as taxes.”

“It was the last feather, sir, which broke the camel’s back.”

“The last feather will not be taken off, whether it breaks backs or leaves them whole,” retorted the Captain, draining his glass of port and filling it again. “Take you note of that, Mr. Parson.”

“Others are in the same condition as the Beans—quite unable to pay these rates. I pray you, Captain Monk—I am here to pray you—not to proceed in the same manner against them. I would also pray you, sir, to redeem this act of oppression by causing their goods to be returned to these two poor, honest, hard-working people.”