Johnny Ludlow, First Series

“Oh, Johnny, I wish I knew!” she said, clasping her hands. “I wish I could satisfy myself which way right lies. If I were to speak, it might be put down to a wrong motive. I try to see whether that thought is not a selfish one, whether I ought to let it deter me. But then—that’s not the worst.”

“That sounds like a riddle, Anna.”

“I wish I had some good, judicious person who would hear all and judge for me,” she said, rather dreamily. “If you were older, Johnny, I think I would tell you.”

“I am as old as you are, at any rate.”

“That’s just it. We are neither of us old enough nor experienced enough to trust to our own judgment.”

“There’s your mother, Anna.”

“I know.”

“What you mean is, that Sir John and Lady Whitney ought to have their eyes opened to what’s going on, that they may put an end to Miss Chalk’s intimacy here, if they deem the danger warrants it?”

“That’s near enough, Johnny. And I don’t see my way sufficiently clearly to do it.”

“Put the case to Helen.”

“She would only laugh in my face. Hush! here comes some one.”

It was Sophie Chalk. She looked rather sharply at us both, and said she could not find Helen anywhere.

And the days were to go on in outward smoothness and private discomfort, Miss Sophie exercising her fascinations on the whole of us.

But for having promised that lame child to call again in Torriana Square, I should not have cared to go. It was afternoon this time. The servant showed me upstairs, and said her mistress was for the moment engaged. Mabel Smith sat in the same seat in her black frock; some books lay on a small table drawn before her.

“I thought you had forgotten to come.”

“Did you? I should be sure not to forget it.”

“I am so tired of my lessons,” she said, irritably, sweeping the books away with her long thin fingers. “I always am when they teach me. Mrs. Smith has kept me at them for two hours; she has gone down now to engage a new servant.”

“I get frightfully tired of my lessons sometimes.”

“Ah, but not as I do; you can run about: and learning, you know, will never be of use to me. I want you to tell me something. Is Sophonisba Chalk going to stay at Lady Whitney’s?”

“I don’t know. They will not be so very long in town.”

“But I mean is she to be governess there, and go into the country with them?”

“No, I think not.”

“She wants to. If she does, papa says he shall have some nice young lady to sit with me and teach me. Oh, I do hope she will go with them, and then the house would be rid of her. I say she will: it is too good a chance for her to let slip. Mrs. Smith says she won’t: she told Mr. Everty so last night. He wouldn’t believe her, and was very cross over it.”

“Cross over it?”

“He said Sophonisba ought not to have gone there at all without consulting him, and that she had not been home once since, and only written him one rubbishing note that had nothing in it; and he asked Mrs. Smith whether she thought that was right.”

A light flashed over me. “Is Miss Chalk going to marry Mr. Everty?”

“I suppose that’s what it will come to,” answered the curious child. “She has promised to; but promises with her don’t go for much when it suits her to break them. Sophonisba put me on my honour not to tell; but now that Mr. Everty has spoken to Mrs. Smith and papa, it is different. I saw it a long while ago; before she went to the Diffords’. I have nothing to do but to sit and watch and think, you see, Johnny Ludlow; and I perceive things quicker than other people.”

“But—why do you fancy Miss Chalk may break her promise to Mr. Everty?”

“If she meant to keep it, why should she be scheming to go away as the Whitneys’ governess? I know what it is: Sophonisba does not think Mr. Everty good enough for her, but she would like to keep him waiting on, for fear of not getting anybody better.”

Anything so shrewd as Mabel Smith’s manner in saying this, was never seen. I don’t think she was naturally ill-natured, poor thing; but she evidently thought she was being wronged amongst them, and it made her spitefully resentful.

“Mr. Everty had better let her go. It is not I that would marry a wife who dyed her hair.”

“Is Miss Chalk’s dyed? I thought it might be the gold dust.”

“Have you any eyes?” retorted Mabel. “When she was down in the country with you her hair was brown; it’s a kind of yellow now. Oh, she knows how to set herself off, I can tell you. Do you happen to remember who was reigning in England when the massacre of St. Bartholomew took place in France?”

The change of subject was sudden. I told her it was Queen Elizabeth.

“Queen Elizabeth, was it? I’ll write it down. Mrs. Smith says I shall have no dessert to-day, if I don’t tell her. She puts those questions only to vex me. As if it mattered to anybody. Oh, here’s papa!”

A little man came in with a bald head and pleasant face. He said he was glad to see me and shook hands. She put out her arms, and he came and kissed her: her eyes followed him everywhere; her cheeks had a sudden colour: it was easy to see that he was her one great joy in life. And the bright colour made her poor thin face look almost charming.

“I can’t stay a minute, Trottie; going out in a hurry. I think I left my gloves up here.”

“So you did, papa. There was a tiny hole in the thumb and I mended it for you.”

“That’s my little attentive daughter! Good-bye. Mr. Ludlow, if you will stay to dinner we shall be happy.”

Mrs. Smith came in as he left the room. She was rather a plain likeness of Miss Chalk, not much older. But her face had a straightforward, open look, and I liked her. She made much of me and said how kind she had thought it of Mrs. Todhetley to be at the trouble of making a fichu for her, a stranger. She hoped—she did hope, she added rather anxiously, that Sophie had not asked her to do it. And it struck me that Mrs. Smith had not quite the implicit confidence in Miss Sophie’s sayings and doings that she might have had.

It was five o’clock when I got away. At the door of the office in the side street stood a gentleman—the same I had seen pass me the other day. I looked at him, and he at me.

“Is it Roger Monk?”

A startled look came over his face. He evidently did not remember me. I said who I was.

“Dear me! How you have grown! Do walk in.” And he spoke to me in the tones an equal would speak, not as a servant.

As he was leading the way into a sort of parlour, we passed a clerk at a desk, and a man talking to him.

“Here’s Mr. Everty; he will tell you,” said the clerk, indicating Monk. “He is asking about those samples of pale brandy, sir: whether they are to go.”

“Yes, of course; you ought to have taken them before this, Wilson,” was Roger Monk’s answer. And so I saw that he was Mr. Everty.

“I have resumed my true name, Everty,” he said to me in low tones. “The former trouble, that sent me away a wanderer, is over. Many men, I believe, are forced into such episodes in life.”

“You are with Mr. Smith?”

“These two years past. I came to him as head-clerk; I now have a commission on sales, and make a most excellent thing of it. I don’t think the business could get on without me now.”

“Is it true that you are to marry Miss Chalk?” I asked, speaking on a sudden impulse.

“Quite true; if she does not throw me over,” he answered, and I wondered at his candour. “I suppose you have heard of it indoors?”

“Yes. I wish you all success.”—And didn’t I wish it in my inmost heart!

“Thank you. I can give her a good home now. Perhaps you will not talk about that old time if you can help it, Mr. Ludlow. You used to be good-natured, I remember. It was a dark page in my then reckless life; I am doing what I can to redeem it.”

I dare say he was; and I told him he need not fear. But I did not like his eyes yet, for they had the same kind of shifty look that Roger Monk’s used to have. He might get on none the worse in business; for, as the Squire says, it is a shifty world.

Sophie Chalk engaged to Mr. Everty, and he Roger Monk! Well, it was a complication. I went back to Miss Deveen’s without, so to say, seeing daylight.

XV.

THE GAME FINISHED

The clang of the distant church bell was ringing out for the daily morning service, and Miss Cattledon was picking her way across the road to attend to it, her thin white legs displayed, and a waterproof cloak on. It had rained in the night, but the clouds were breaking, promising a fine day. I stood at the window, watching the legs and the pools of water; Miss Deveen sat at the table behind, answering a letter that had come to her by the morning post.

“Have you ever thought mine a peculiar name, Johnny?” she suddenly asked.

“No,” I said, turning to answer her. “I think it a pretty one.”

“It was originally French: De Vigne: but like many other things has been corrupted with time, and made into what it is. Is that ten o’clock striking?”

Yes: and the bell was ceasing. Miss Cattledon would be late. It was a regular penalty to her, I knew, to go out so early, and quite a new whim, begun in the middle of Lent. She talked a little in her vinegar way of the world’s wickedness in not spending some of its working hours inside a church, listening to that delightful curate with the mild voice, whose hair had turned prematurely grey. Miss Deveen, knowing it was meant for her, laughed pleasantly, and said if the many years’ prayers from her chamber had not been heard as well as though she had gone into a church to offer them up, she should be in a poor condition now. I went with Miss Cattledon one Monday morning out of politeness. There were nine-and-twenty in the pews, for I counted them: eight-and-twenty being single ladies (to judge by the look), some young, some as old as Cattledon. The grey-haired curate was assisted by a young deacon, who had a black beard and a lisp and his hair parted down the middle. It was very edifying, especially the ten-minutes’ gossip with the two clergymen coming out, when we all congregated in the aisle by the door.

“My great-grandfather was a grand old proprietor in France, Johnny; a baron,” continued Miss Deveen. “I don’t think I have much of the French nature left in me.”

“I suppose you speak French well, Miss Deveen?”

“Not a word of it, Johnny. They pretended to teach it me when I was a child, but I’m afraid I was unusually stupid. Why, who can this be?”

She alluded to a ring at the visitors’ bell. One of the servants came in and said that the gentleman who had called once or twice before had come again.

Miss Deveen looked up, first at the servant, then at me. She seemed to be considering.

“I will see him in two or three minutes, George”—and the man shut the door.

“Johnny,” she said, “I have taken you partly into my confidence in this affair of the lost studs; I think I will tell you a little more. After I sent for Lettice Lane here—and my impression, as I told you, was very strongly in favour of her innocence—it occurred to me that I ought to see if anything could be done to prove it; or at least to set the matter at rest, one way or the other, instead of leaving it to time and chance. The question was, how could I do it? I did not like to apply to the police, lest more should be made of it than I wished. One day a friend of mine, to whom I was relating the circumstances, solved the difficulty. He said he would send to me some one with whom he was well acquainted, a Mr. Bond, who had once been connected with the detective police, and who had got his dismissal through an affair he was thought to have mismanaged. It sounded rather formidable to my ears, ‘once connected with the detective police;’ but I consented, and Mr. Bond came. He has had the thing in hand since last February.”

“And what has he found out?”

“Nothing, Johnny. Unless he has come to tell me now that he has—for it is he who is waiting. I think it may be so, as he has called so early. First of all, he was following up the matter down in Worcestershire, because the notion he entertained was, that the studs must have been taken by one of the Whitneys’ servants. He stayed in the neighbourhood, pursuing his inquiries as to their characters and habits, and visiting all the pawnbrokers’ shops that he thought were at available distances from the Hall.”

“Did he think it was Lettice Lane?”

“He said he did not: but he took care (as I happen to know) to worm out all he could of Lettice’s antecedents while he was inquiring about the rest. I had the girl in this room at his first visit, not alarming her, simply saying that I was relating the history of the studs’ disappearance to this friend who had called, and desired her to describe her share in it to make the story complete. Lettice suspected nothing; she told the tale simply and naturally, without fear: and from that very moment, Johnny, I have felt certain in my own mind the girl is as innocent as I am. Mr. Bond ‘thought she might be,’ but he would not go beyond that; for women, he said, were crafty, and knew how to make one think black was white.”

“Miss Deveen, suppose, after all, it should turn out to have been Lettice?” I asked. “Should you proceed against her?”

“I shall not proceed against any one, Johnny; and I shall hush the matter up if I can,” she answered, ringing for Mr. Bond to be shown in.

I was curious to see him also; ideas floating through my brain of cocked-hats and blue uniform and Richard Mayne. Mr. Bond turned out to be a very inoffensive-looking individual indeed; a little man, wearing steel spectacles, in a black frock-coat and grey trousers.

“When I last saw you, madam,” he began, after he was seated, and Miss Deveen had told him he might speak before me, “I mentioned that I had abandoned my search in the country, and intended to prosecute my inquiries in London.”

“You did, Mr. Bond.”

“That the theft lay amongst Sir John Whitney’s female servants, I have thought likely all along,” continued Mr. Bond. “If the thief felt afraid to dispose of the emeralds after taking them—and I could find no trace of them in the country—the probability was that she would keep them secreted about her, and get rid of them as soon as she came to London, if she were one of the maids brought up by Lady Whitney. There were two I thought in particular might have done it; one was the lady’s maid; the other, the upper-housemaid, who had been ill the night of their disappearance. All kinds of ruses are played off in the pursuit of plunder, as we have cause to learn every day; and it struck me the housemaid might have feigned illness, the better to cover her actions and throw suspicion off herself. I am bound to say I could not learn anything against either of these two young women; but their business took them about the rooms at Whitney Hall; and an open jewel-case is a great temptation.”

“It is,” assented Miss Deveen. “That carelessness lay at my door, and therefore I determined never to prosecute in this case; never, in fact, to bring the offender to open shame of any sort in regard to it.”

“And that has helped to increase the difficulty,” remarked Mr. Bond. “Could the women have been searched and their private places at Whitney Hall turned out, we might or might not have found the emeralds; but–”

“I wouldn’t have had it done for the Lord Chancellor, sir,” interrupted Miss Deveen, hotly. “One was searched, and that was quite enough for me, for I believe her to be innocent. If you can get at the right person quietly, for my own satisfaction, well and good. My instructions went so far, but no farther.”

Mr. Bond took off his spectacles for a minute, and put them on again. “I understood this perfectly when I took the business in hand,” he said quietly. “Well, madam, to go on. Lady Whitney brought her servants to London, and I came up also. Last night I gleaned a little light on the matter.”

He paused, and put his hand into his pocket. I looked, and Miss Deveen looked.

“Should you know the studs again?” he asked her.

“You may as well ask me if I should know my own face in the glass, Mr. Bond. Of course I should.”

Mr. Bond opened a pill-box: three green studs lay in it on white cotton. He held it out to Miss Deveen.

“Are these they?”

“No, certainly not,” replied Miss Deveen, speaking like one in disappointment. “Those are not to be compared with mine, sir.”

Mr. Bond put the lid on the box, and returned it to his pocket. Out came another box, long and thin.

“These are my studs,” quickly exclaimed Miss Deveen, before she had given more than a glance. “You can look yourself for the private marks I told you about, Mr. Bond.”

Three brilliant emeralds, that seemed to light up the room, connected together by a fine chain of gold. At either end, the chain was finished off by a small square plate of thin gold, on one of which was an engraved crest, on the other Miss Deveen’s initials. In shape the emeralds looked like buttons more than studs.

“I never knew they were linked together, Miss Deveen,” I exclaimed in surprise.

“Did you not, Johnny?”

Never. I had always pictured them as three loose studs. Mr. Bond, who no doubt had the marks by heart before he brought them up, began shutting them into the box as he had the others.

“Anticipating from the first that the studs would most probably be found at a pawnbroker’s, if found at all, I ventured to speak to you then of a difficulty that might attend the finding,” said he to Miss Deveen. “Unless a thing can be legally proved to have been stolen, a pawnbroker cannot be forced to give it up. And I am under an engagement to return these studs to the pawnbroker, whence I have brought them, in the course of the morning.”

“You may do so,” said Miss Deveen. “I dare say he and I can come to an amicable arrangement in regard to giving them up later. My object has been to discover who stole them, not to bring trouble or loss upon pawnbrokers. How did you discover them, Mr. Bond?”

“In a rather singular manner. Last evening, in making my way to Regent Street to a place I had to go to on business, I saw a young woman turn out of a pawnbroker’s shop. The shutters were put up, but the doors were open. Her face struck me as being familiar; and I remembered her as Lady Whitney’s housemaid—the one who had been ill in bed, or pretended to be, the night the studs were lost. Ah, ah, I thought, some discovery may be looming up here. I have some acquaintance with the proprietor of the shop; a very respectable man, who has become rich by dint of hard, honest work, and is a jeweller now as well as a pawnbroker. My own business could wait, and I went in and found him busy with accounts in his private room. He thought at first I had only called in to see him in passing. I gave him no particulars; but said I fancied a person in whom I was professionally interested, had just been leaving some emerald studs in his shop.”

“What is the pawnbroker’s name?” interrupted Miss Deveen.

“James. He went to inquire, and came back, saying that his assistant denied it. There was only one assistant in the shop: the other had left for the night. This assistant said that no one had been in during the last half-hour, excepting a young woman, a cousin of his wife’s; who did not come to pledge anything, but simply to say how-d’ye-do, and to ask where they were living now, that she might call and see the wife. Mr. James added that the man said she occupied a good situation in the family of Sir John and Lady Whitney, and was not likely to require to pledge anything. Plausible enough, this, you see, Miss Deveen; but the coincidence was singular. I then told James that I had been in search for these two months of some emerald studs lost out of Sir John Whitney’s house. He stared a little at this, paused a moment in thought, and then asked whether they were of unusual value and very beautiful. Just so, I said, and minutely described them. Mr. James, without another word, went away and brought the studs in. Your studs, Miss Deveen.”

“And how did he come by them?”

“He won’t tell me much about it—except that they took in the goods some weeks ago in the ordinary course of business. The fact is he is vexed: for he has really been careful and has managed to avoid these unpleasant episodes, to which all pawnbrokers are liable. It was with difficulty I could get him to let me bring them up here: and that only on condition that they should be in his hands again before the clock struck twelve.”

“You shall keep faith with him. But now, Mr. Bond, what is your opinion of all this?”

“My opinion is that that same young woman stole the studs: and that she contrived to get them conveyed to London to this assistant, her relative, who no doubt advanced money upon them. I cannot see my way to any other conclusion under the circumstances,” continued Mr. Bond, firmly. “But for James’s turning crusty, I might have learned more.”

“I will go to him myself,” said Miss Deveen, with sudden resolution. “When he finds that my intention is to hold his pocket harmless and make no disturbance in any way, he will not be crusty with me. But this matter must be cleared up if it be possible to clear it.”

Miss Deveen was not one to be slow of action, once a resolve was taken. Mr. Bond made no attempt to oppose her: on the contrary, he seemed to think it might be well that she should go. She sent George out for a cab, in preference to taking her carriage, and said I might accompany her. We were off long before Miss Cattledon’s conference with the curates within the church was over.

The shop was in a rather obscure street, not far from Regent Street. I inquired for Mr. James at the private door, and he came out to the cab. Miss Deveen said she had called to speak to him on particular business, and he took us upstairs to a handsomely furnished room. He was a well-dressed, portly, good-looking man, with a pleasant face and easy manners. Miss Deveen, bidding him sit down near her, explained the affair in a few words, and asked him to help her to elucidate it. He responded frankly at once, and said he would willingly give all the aid in his power.

“Singular to say, I took these studs in myself,” he observed. “I never do these things now, but my foreman had a holiday that day to attend a funeral, and I was in the shop. They were pledged on the 27th of January: since Mr. Bond left this morning I have referred to my books.”

The 27th of January. It was on the night of the 23rd that the studs disappeared. Then the thief had not lost much time! I said so.

“Stay a minute, Johnny,” cried Miss Deveen: “you young ones sum up things too quickly for me. Let me trace past events. The studs, as you say, were lost on the 23rd; the loss was discovered on the 24th, and Lettice Lane was discharged; on the 25th those of us staying at Whitney Hall began to talk of leaving; and on the 26th you two went home after seeing Miss Chalk off by rail to London.”

“And Mrs. Hughes also. They went up together.”

“Who is Mrs. Hughes?” asked Miss Deveen.

“Don’t you remember?—that young married lady who came to the dance with the Featherstons. She lives somewhere in London.”

Miss Deveen considered a little. “I don’t remember any Mrs. Hughes, Johnny.”

“But, dear Miss Deveen, you must remember her,” I persisted. “She was very young-looking, as little as Sophie Chalk; Harry Whitney, dancing with her, trod off the tail of her thin pink dress. I heard old Featherston telling you about Mrs. Hughes, saying it was a sad history. Her husband lost his money after they were married, and had been obliged to take a small situation.”

Recollection flashed upon Miss Deveen. “Yes, I remember now. A pale, lady-like little woman with a sad face. But let us go back to business. You all left on the 26th; I and Miss Cattledon on the 27th. Now, while the visitors were at the Hall, I don’t think the upper-housemaid could have had time to send off the studs by rail. Still less could she have come up herself to pledge them.”

Miss Deveen’s head was running on Mr. Bond’s theory.

“It was no housemaid that pledged the studs,” spoke Mr. James.

“I was about to say, Mr. James, that if you took them in yourself over the counter, they could not have been sent up to your assistant.”

“All the people about me are trustworthy, I can assure you, ma’am,” he interrupted. “They would not lend themselves to such a thing. It was a lady who pledged those studs.”

“A lady?”