Johnny Ludlow, First Series

Surprise at our appearance must have caused her change of language. Clement-Pell gave one look at us and turned his face to the window, hoping to escape unrecognized. Mr. Brandon ordered me to the English church in the Upper Town, saying I should not be very late for that, and told Mathilde he did not want her.

“I shall make the little promenade and meet my bon-ami,” observed Mathilde, independently, as I proceeded to do as I was bid. And what took place between the two we left can only be related at second hand.

“Now, Mr. Pell, will you spare me your attention?” began Mr. Brandon.

Clement-Pell turned, and took off his cloak and cap, seeing that it would be worse than useless to attempt to keep up the farce. With the red wig on his head and the red hair on his face, no unobservant man would then have recognized him for the great ex-financier.

Mr. Brandon was cold, uncompromising, but civil; Clement-Pell at first subdued and humble. Taking courage after a bit, he became slightly restive, somewhat inclined to be insolent.

“It is a piece of assurance for you to come here at all, sir; tracking me over my very threshold, as if you were a detective officer. What is the meaning of it? I don’t owe you money.”

“I have told you the meaning,” replied Mr. Brandon—feeling that his voice had never been more squeaky, but showing no sign of wrath. “The affair is not mine at all, but Squire Todhetley’s, I was down on the port when you landed—went to look for you, in fact; the Squire did not happen to be in the way, so I followed you up in his place.”

“With what object?”

“Why, dear me, Mr. Pell, you are not deaf. I mentioned the object; the Squire wants his two hundred pounds refunded. A very clever trick, your getting it from him!”

Clement-Pell drew in his lips; his face had no more colour in it than chalk. He sat with his back to the wall, his hands restlessly playing with his steel watch-chain. What had come of the thick gold one he used to wear? Mr. Brandon had a chair near the table, and faced him.

“Perhaps you would like me to refund to you all my creditors’ money wholesale, as well as Mr. Todhetley’s?” retorted Clement-Pell, mockingly.

“I have nothing to do with them, Mr. Pell. Neither, I imagine, does Mr. Todhetley intend to make their business his. Let each man mind his own course, and stand or fall by it. If you choose to assure me you don’t owe a fraction to any one else in the world, I shall not tell you that you do. I am speaking now for my friend, Squire Todhetley: I would a great deal rather he were here to deal with you himself; but action has accidentally been forced upon me.”

“I know that I owe a good deal of money; or, rather, that a good many people have lost money through me,” returned Clement-Pell, after a pause. “It’s my misfortune; not my fault.”

Mr. Brandon gave a dry cough. “As to its not being your fault, Mr. Pell, the less said about that the better. It was in your power to pull up in time, I conclude, when you first saw things were going wrong.”

Clement-Pell lifted his hand to his forehead, as if he felt a pain there. “You don’t know; you don’t know,” he said irritably,—a great deal of impatience in his tone.

“No, I’m thankful that I don’t,” said Mr. Brandon, taking out his tin box, and coolly eating a lozenge. “I am very subject to heartburn, Mr. Pell. If ever you get it try magnesia lozenges. An upset, such as this affair of yours has been, would drive a man of my nerves into a lunatic asylum.”

“It may do the same by me before I have done with it,” returned Clement Pell. And Mr. Brandon thought he meant what he said.

“Any way, it is rumoured that some of those who are ruined will be there before long, Mr. Pell. You might, perhaps, feel a qualm of conscience if you saw the misery it has entailed.”

“And do you think I don’t feel it?” returned Mr. Pell, catching his breath. “You are mistaken, if you suppose I do not.”

“About Squire Todhetley’s two hundred pounds, sir?” resumed old Brandon, swallowing the last of the lozenge. “Is it convenient to you to give it me?”

“No, it is not,” was the decided answer. And he seemed to be turning restive again.

“But I will thank you to do so, Mr. Pell.”

“I cannot do so.”

“And not to make excuses over it. They will only waste time.”

“I have not got the money; I cannot give it.”

Upon that they set on again, hammer and tongs. Mr. Brandon insisting upon the money; Pell vowing that he had it not, and could not and would not give so much as a ten-pound note of it. Old Brandon never lost his temper, never raised his voice, but he said a thing or two that must have stung Pell’s pride. At the end of twenty minutes, he was no nearer the money than before. Pell’s patience gave signs of wearing out: Mr. Brandon could have gone quietly on till bed-time.

“You must be aware that this is not a simple debt, Mr. Pell. It is—in fact—something worse. For your own sake, it may be well to refund it.”

“Once more I say I cannot.”

“Am I to understand that is as much as to say you will not?”

“If you like to take it so. It is most painful to me, Mr. Brandon, to have to meet you in this spirit, but you force it on me. The case is this: I am not able to refund the debt to Squire Todhetley, and he has no power to enforce his claim to it.”

“I don’t know that.”

“I do though. It is best to be plain, as we have come to this, Mr. Brandon; and then perhaps you will bring the interview to an end, and leave me in peace. You have no power over me in this country; none whatever. Before you can obtain that, there are certain forms and ceremonies to be gone through in a legal court; you must make over the–”

“Squire Todhetley’s is not a case of debt,” interrupted old Brandon. “If it were, he would have no right in honour to come here and seek payment over the heads of the other creditors.”

“It is a case of debt, and nothing else. As debt only could you touch me upon it here—and not then until you have proved it and got judgment upon it in England. Say, if you will, that I have committed murder or forged bank-notes—you could not touch me here unless the French government gave me up at the demand of the English government. Get all the police in the town to this room if you will, Mr. Brandon, and they would only laugh at you. They have no power over me. I have committed no offence against this country.”

“Look here,” said old Brandon, nodding his head. “I know a bit about French law; perhaps as much as you: knew it years ago. What you say is true enough; an Englishman, whether debtor or criminal, in his own land, cannot be touched here, unless certain forms and ceremonies, as you express it, are first gone through. But you have rendered yourself amenable to French law on another point, Clement-Pell; I could consign you to the police this moment, if I chose, and they would have to take you.”

Clement-Pell quite laughed at what he thought the useless boast. But he might have known old Brandon better. “What is my crime, sir?”

“You have come here and are staying here under a false name—Brown. That is a crime in the eyes of the French law; and one that the police, if they get to know of it, are obliged to take cognizance of.”

“No!” exclaimed Clement-Pell, his face changing a little.

“Yes,” said Mr. Brandon. “Were I to give you up for it to-day, they would put you on board the first boat leaving for your own country. Once on the opposite shore, you may judge whether Squire Todhetley would let you escape again.”

It was all true. Mr. Pell saw that it was so. His fingers nervously trembled; his pale face wore a piteous aspect.

“You need not be afraid of me: I am not likely to do it,” said Mr. Brandon: “I do not think the Squire would. But you see now what lies within his power. Therefore I would recommend you to come to terms with him.”

Clement-Pell rubbed his brow with his handkerchief. He was driven into a corner.

“I have told you truth, Mr. Brandon, in saying that I am not able to repay the two hundred pounds. I am not. Will he take half of it?”

“I cannot tell. I have no authority for saying that he will.”

“Then I suppose he must come up here. As it has come to this, I had better see him. If he will accept one hundred pounds, and undertake not to molest me further, I will hand it over to him. It will leave me almost without means: but you have got me in a hole. Stay a moment—a thought strikes me. Are there any more of my creditors in the town at your back, Mr. Brandon?”

“Not that I am aware of. I have seen none.”

“On your honour?”

Mr. Brandon opened his little eyes, and took a stare at Pell. “My word is the same as my honour, sir. Always has been and always will be.”

“I beg your pardon. A man, driven to my position, naturally fears an enemy at every corner. And—if my enemies were to find me out here, they might be too much for me.”

“Of course they would be,” assented Mr. Brandon, by way of comfort.

“Will you go for Squire Todhetley? What is done, must be done to-day, for I shall be away by the first train in the morning.”

Shrewd old Brandon considered the matter before speaking. “By the time I get back here with the Squire you may have already taken your departure, Mr. Pell.”

“No, on my honour. How should I be able to do it? No train leaves the town before six to-night: the water is low in the harbour and no boat could get out. As it has come to this, I will see Squire Todhetley: and the sooner the better.”

“I will trust you,” said Mr. Brandon.

“Time was when I was deemed more worthy of trust: perhaps was more worthy of it,”—and tears involuntarily rose to his eyes. “Mr. Brandon, believe me—no man has suffered by this as I have suffered. Do you think I did it for pleasure?—or to afford myself wicked gratification! No. I would have forfeited nearly all my remaining life to prevent the smash. My affairs got into their awful state by degrees; and I had not the power to retrieve them. God alone knows what the penalty has been to me—and what it will be to my life’s end.”

“Ay. I can picture it pretty tolerably, Mr. Pell.”

“No one can picture it,” he returned, with emotion. “Look at my ruined family—the position of my sons and daughters. Not one of them can hold up their heads in the world again without the consciousness that they may be pointed at as the children of Clement-Pell the swindler. What is to be their future?—how are they to get along? You must have heard many a word of abuse applied to me lately, Mr. Brandon: but there are few men on this earth more in need of compassion than I—if misery and suffering can bring the need. When morning breaks, I wish the day was done; when night comes, I toss and turn and wonder how I shall live through it.”

“I am sorry for you,” said Mr. Brandon, moved to pity, for he saw how the man needed it. “Were I you, I would go back home and face my debts. Face the trouble, and in time you may be able to live it down.”

Clement-Pell shook his head hopelessly. Had it been debt alone, he might never have come away.

The sequel to all this had yet to come. Perhaps some of you may guess it. Mr. Brandon pounced upon the Squire as he was coming out of church in the Rue du Temple, and took him back in another coach. Arrived at the house, they found the door fast. Mathilde appeared presently, arm-in-arm with her sweetheart—a young man in white boots with ear-rings in his ears. “Was M. Brown of depart,” she repeated, in answer to the Squire’s impulsive question: but no, certainly he was not. And she gave them the following information.

When she returned after midday, she found M. Brown all impatience, waiting for her to show him the way to the house of Monsieur Bourgeois, that he might claim Madame’s letter. When they reached the shop, it had only the fille de boutique in it. Monsieur the patron was out making a promenade, the fille de boutique said he might be home possibly for the shutting up at two o’clock.

Upon that, M. Brown decided to make a little promenade himself until two o’clock; and Mathilde, she made a further promenade on her own account: and had now come up, before two, to get the door open. Such was her explanation. If the gentlemans would be at the pains of sitting down in the salon, without doubt M. Brown would not long retard.

They sat down. The clock struck two. They sat on, and the clock struck three. Not until then did any thought arise that Clement-Pell might not keep faith with them. Mathilde’s freely expressed opinion was that M. Brown, being strange to the town, had lost himself. She ran to the grocer’s shop again, and found it shut up: evidently no one was there.

Four o’clock, five o’clock; and no Mr. Brown. They gave him up then; it seemed quite certain that he had given them the slip. Starving with hunger, exploding with anger, the Squire took his wrathful way back to the hotel: Mr. Brandon was calm and sucked his magnesia lozenges. Clement-Pell was a rogue to the last.

There came to Mr. Brandon the following morning, through the Boulogne post-office, a note; on which he had to pay five sous. It was from Clement-Pell, written in pencil. He said that when he made the agreement with Mr. Brandon never a thought crossed him of not keeping faith: but that while he was waiting about for the return of the grocer who held his wife’s letter, he saw an Englishman come off the ramparts—a creditor who knew him well and would be sure to deliver him up, were it in his power, if he caught sight of him. It struck him, Clement-Pell, with a panic: he considered that he had only one course left open to him—and that was to get away from the place at once and in the quietest manner he was able. There was a message to Mr. Todhetley to the effect that he would send him the hundred pounds later if he could. Throughout the whole letter ran a vein of despairing sadness, according with what he had said to Mr. Brandon; and the Squire’s heart was touched.

“After all, Brandon, the fellow is to be pitied. It’s a frightful position: enough to make a man lose heart for good and all. I’m not sure that I should have taken the hundred pounds from him.”

“That’s more than probable,” returned old Brandon, drily. “It remains a question, though, in my mind, whether he did see the creditor and did ’take a panic:’ or whether both are not invented to cover his precipitate departure with the hundred pounds.”

How he got away from the town we never knew. The probability was, that he had walked to the first station after Boulogne on the Paris railroad, and there taken the evening train. And whether he had presented himself again at Monsieur Bourgeois’s shop, that excellent tradesman, who did not return home until ten on Sunday night, was unable to say. Any way, M. Bourgeois held the letter yet in safety. So the chances are, that Mr. and Mrs. Pell are still dodging about the earth in search of each other, after the fashion of the Wandering Jew.

And that’s a true account of our visit to Boulogne after Clement-Pell. Mr. Brandon calls it to this hour a wild-goose chase: certainly it turned out a fruitless one. But we had a good passage back again, the sea as calm as a mill-pond.

XXVI.

AT WHITNEY HALL

It has often been in my mind to tell of John Whitney’s death. You will say it is too sad and serious for a paper. But it is well to have serious thoughts brought before us at certain seasons. This is one of them: seeing that it’s the beginning of a new year, and that every year takes us nearer to another life whether we are old or whether we are young.3

Some of them thought his illness might never have come on but for an accident that happened. It is quite a mistake. The accident had nothing to do with the later illness. Sir John and Lady Whitney could tell you so as well as I. John was always one of those sensitive, thoughtful, religious boys that somehow don’t seem so fit for earth as heaven.

“Now mind, you boys,” cried Sir John to us at breakfast. “There’s just a thin coating of ice on the lake and ponds, but it won’t bear. Don’t any of you venture on it.”

“We will not, sir,” replied John, who was the most obedient son living.

There’s not much to be done in the way of out-door sports when snow lies on the ground. Crowding round the children’s play-room window later, all the lot of us, we looked out on a white landscape. Snow lodged on the trees, hid the grass in the fields, covered the hills in the distance.

“It’s an awful sell,” cried Bill Whitney and Tod nearly in a breath. “No hunting, no shooting, and no nothing. The ponds won’t bear; snowballing’s common. One might as well lie in bed.”

“And what sort of a ‘sell’ do you suppose it is for the poor men who are thrown out of work?” asked Sir John, who had come in, reading a newspaper, and was airing his back at the fire. “Their work and wages are stopped, and they can’t earn bread for their children. You boys are dreadfully to be pitied, you are!”

He tilted his steel spectacles up on his good old red nose, and nodded to us. Harry, the pert one of the family, answered.

“Well, papa, and it is a settler for us boys to have our fun spoiled. As to the working-men—oh, they are used to it.”

Sir John stared at him for a full minute. “If I thought you said that from your heart, Mr. Harry, I’d order you from my presence. No son of mine shall get into the habit of making unfeeling speeches, even in jest.”

Sir John meant it. We saw that Harry’s words had really vexed him. John broke the silence.

“Papa, if I should live to be ever in your place,” he said, in his quiet voice, that somehow always had a tone of thoughtfulness in it, even when at play with the rest of us at old Frost’s, “I shall make a point of paying my labourers’ wages in full this wintry time, just the same as though they worked. It is not their fault that they are idle.”

Sir John started at him now. “What d’ye mean by ‘if you live,’ lad?”

John considered. The words had slipped from him without any special thought at all. People use such figures of speech. It was odd though, when we came to remember it a long while afterwards, that he should have said it just that one day.

“I recollect a frost that lasted fourteen weeks, boys,” said Sir John. “That was in 1814. They held a fair on the Thames, we heard, and roasted an ox whole on it. Get a frost to last all that time, and you’d soon tire of paying wages for nothing, John.”

“But, father, what else could I do—or ought I to do? I could not let them starve—or break up their poor homes by going into the workhouse. I should fear that some time, in return, God might break up mine.”

Sir John smiled. John was so very earnest always when he took up a serious matter. Letting the question drop, Sir John lowered his spectacles, and went out with his newspaper. Presently we saw him going round to the farm-yard in his great-coat and beaver gaiters. John sat down near the fire and took up a book he was fond of—“Sintram.”

This was Old Christmas Day. Tod and I had come over to Whitney Hall for a week, and two days of it were already gone. We liked being there, and the time seemed to fly. Tod and Bill still stood staring and grumbling at the snow, wishing the frost would get worse, or go. Harry went out whistling; Helen sat down with a yawn.

“Anna, there’s a skein of blue silk in that workbag behind you. Get it out and hold it for me to wind.”

Anna, who was more like John in disposition than any of them, always good and gentle, got the silk; and they began to wind it. In the midst of it, Harry burst in with a terrific shout, dressed up as a bear, and trying to upset every one. In the confusion Anna dropped the silk on the carpet, and Helen boxed her ears.

John looked up from his book. “You should not do that, Helen.”

“What does she drop the silk for, then—careless thing!” retorted Helen, who was quick in temper. “Once soil that light shade of blue, and it can’t be used. You mind yourself John.”

John looked at them both. At Helen, taking up the silk from the floor; at Anna, who was struggling to keep down her tears under the infliction, because Tod was present. She wouldn’t have minded me. John said no more. He had a very nice face without much colour in it; dark hair, and large grey-blue eyes that seemed to be always looking out for something they did not see. He was sixteen then, upright and slender. All the world liked John Whitney.

Later on in the day we were running races in the broad walk, that was so shady in summer. The whole of us. The high laurel hedges on either side had kept the snow from drifting, and it hardly lay there at all. We gave the girls a third of the run, and they generally beat us. After an hour of this, tired and hot, we gave in, and dispersed different ways. John and I went towards the lake to see whether the ice was getting thicker, talking of school and school interests as we went along. Old Frost’s grounds were in view, which naturally put us in mind of the past: and especially of the great event of the half year—the sad fate of Archie Hearn.

“Poor little Hearn!” he exclaimed. “I did feel his death, and no mistake. That is, I felt for his mother. I think, Johnny, if I could have had the chance offered me, I would have died myself to let him live.”

“That’s easier said than done—if it came to the offer, Whitney.”

“Well, yes it is. She had no one but him, you see. And to think of her coming into the school that time and saying she forgave the fellow—whoever it was. I’ve often wondered whether Barrington had cause to feel it.”

“She is just like her face, Whitney—good. I’ve hardly ever seen a face I like as much as Mrs. Hearn’s.”

John Whitney laughed a little. They all did at my likes and dislikes of faces. “I was reading a book the other day, Johnny– See that poor little robin!” he broke off. “It looks starved, and it must have its nest somewhere. I have some biscuit in my pocket.”

It came into my head, as he dived into his pocket and scattered the crumbs, that he had brought the supply out for these stray birds. But if I write for ever I could not make you understand the thoughtfulness of John Whitney.

“Hark, Johnny! What’s that?”

Cries, screams, sobs. We were near the end of the walk then and rushed out. Anna met us in a dreadful state of agitation. Charley was in the lake! Whitney caught the truth before I did, and was off like a shot.

The nurse, Willis, was dancing frantically about at the water’s edge; the children roared. Willis said Master Charles had slipped on to the ice “surrepstitiously” when her back was turned, and had gone souse in. John Whitney had already plunged in after his little brother; his coat, jacket, and waistcoat were lying on the bank. William Whitney and Tod, hearing the noise, came rushing up.

“Mamma sent me to tell nurse they had been out long enough, and were to come in,” sobbed Anna, shaking like a leaf. “While I was giving her the message, Charley fell in. Oh, what will be done?”

That was just like Anna. Helen would have been cool as a cucumber. Done? Why, John had already saved him. The ice, not much thicker than a shilling, and breaking whenever touched, hardly impeded him at all. Bill and Tod knelt down and lent hands, and they were landed like a couple of drowned rats, Charley howling with all his might. John, always thoughtful, wrapped his great-coat round the lad, and the other two went off with him to the house.

John caught a cold. Not very much of one. He was hot, you see, when he plunged in; and he had only his jacket to put on over his wet clothes to walk home in. Not much of a cold, I say; but he never seemed to be quite the same after that day: and when all was over they would date his illness back from it. Old Featherstone physicked him; and the days passed on.

“I can’t think why John should be so feverish,” Lady Whitney would remark. His hands would be hot, and his cheeks scarlet, and he did not eat. Featherstone failed to alter the state of things; so one day Sir John took him into Worcester to Mr. Carden.

Mr. Carden did not seem to think much of it—as we heard over at Dyke Manor. There was nothing wrong with the lungs or any other vital part. He changed the medicine that Featherstone had been giving, and said he saw no present reason why John should not go back to school. Sir John, standing by in his old spectacles, listening and looking, caught up the words “at present” and asked Mr. Carden whether he had any particular meaning in saying it. But Mr. Carden would not say. Sending his pleasant blue eyes straight into Sir John’s, he assured him that he did not anticipate mischief, or see reason to fear it. He thought, he hoped, that, once John was back with his studies and his companions, he would recover tone and be as well as ever.