Johnny Ludlow, First Series

“How well you remember things!”

“I always did—things that make an impression on me,” he answered. “A quiet, thoughtful child does so. You were thoughtful yourself.”

True. Or I don’t suppose I could have written these papers. The light in the sky faded out as we sat in silence. John recurred to his dream.

“I thought I saw the Saviour,” he whispered. “I did indeed. Over the crystal river, and beyond the white figures and the harps, was a great light. There stood in it One different from the rest. He had a grand, noble countenance, exquisite in sweetness, and it was turned upon me with a loving smile of welcome. Johnny, I know it was Jesus. Oh, it will be good to be there!”

No doubt of it. Very good for him.

“The strange thing was, that I felt no fear. None. Just as securely as I seemed to lie in the arms of the angels, so did I seem secure in the happiness awaiting me. A great many of us fear death, Johnny; I see now that all fear will cease with this world, to those who die in Christ.”

A sudden burst of subdued sobbing broke the stillness of the room and startled us beyond everything. Lady Whitney had wakened up and was listening.

“Oh, John, my darling boy, don’t talk so!” she said, coming forward and laying her cheek upon his shoulder. “We can’t spare you; we can’t indeed.”

His eyes were full of tears: so were mine. He took his mother’s hand and stroked it.

“But it must be, mother dear?” he gently whispered. “God will temper the loss to you all.”

“Any of them but you, John! You were ever my best and dearest son.”

“It’s all for the best, mother: it must be. The others are not ready to go.”

“And don’t you care to leave us?” she said, breaking down again.

“I did care; very much; but lately I seem to have looked only to the time when we shall meet again. Mother, I do not think now I would live if the chance were offered me.”

“Well, it’s the first time I ever heard of young people wanting to die!” cried Lady Whitney.

“Mother, I think we must be very close on death before we want it,” he gently answered. “Don’t you see the mercy?—that when this world is passing from us, we are led insensibly to long for the next?”

She sat down in the chair that I had got up from, and drew it closer to him. A more simple-minded woman than Lady Whitney never lived. She sobbed gently. He kept her hand between his.

“It will be a great blow to me; I know that; and to your father. He feels it now more than he shows, John. You have been so good and obedient, you see; never naughty and giving us trouble like the rest.”

There was another silence. His quiet voice broke it.

“Mother, dear, the thought has crossed me lately, that it must be good to have one, whom we love very much, taken on to heaven. It must make it seem more like our final home; it must, I think, make us more desirous of getting there. ‘John’s gone on to it,’ you and papa will be thinking; ‘we shall see him again when the end comes.’ And it will cause you to look for the end, instead of turning away from it, as too many do. Don’t grieve, mother! Had it been God’s will, I should have lived. But it was not; and He is taking me to a better home. A little sooner, a little later; it cannot make much difference which, if we are only ready for it when it comes.”

The distant church bells, which always rang on a Friday night, broke upon the air. John asked to have the window opened. I threw it up, and we sat listening. The remembrance of that hour is upon me now, just as vividly as he remembered the moment when he first saw the old east window in the cathedral. The melody of the bells; the sweet scent of the mignonette in the garden; the fading sky: I close my eyes and realize it all.

The girls returned, bringing word that Mrs. Frost was very ill, but not much more so than usual. Directly afterwards we heard Sir John come home.

“They are afraid Barrington’s worse,” observed Helen; “and of course it is worrying Mrs. Frost. Mr. Carden has not been there to-day either, though he was expected: they hope he will be over the first thing in the morning.”

In they trooped, Sir John and the boys; all eagerly talking of the pleasant afternoon they had had, and what they had seen and done at Evesham. But the room, as they said later, seemed to have a strange hush upon it, and John’s face an altered look: and the eager voices died away again.

John was the one to read the chapter that night. He asked to do so; and chose the twenty-first of Revelation. His voice was low, but quite distinct and clear. Without pausing at the end, he went on to the next chapter, which concludes the Bible.

“Only think what it will be, Johnny!” he said to me later, following up our previous conversation. “All manner of precious stones! all sorts of glorious colours! Better even” (with a smile) “than the great east window.”

I don’t know whether it surprised me, or not, to find the house in commotion when I woke the next morning, and to hear that John Whitney was dying. A remarkable change had certainly taken place in him. He lay in bed; not insensible, but almost speechless.

Breakfast was scarcely over when Mr. Carden’s carriage drove in. He had been with Barrington, having started from Worcester at day-dawn. John knew him, and took his hand and smiled.

“What’s to be done for him?” questioned Sir John, pointing to his son.

Mr. Carden gave one meaning look at Sir John, and that was all. Nothing more of any kind could be done for John Whitney.

“Good-bye, Mr. Carden; good-bye,” said John, as the surgeon was leaving. “You have been very kind.”

“Good-bye, my boy.”

“It is so sudden; so soon, you know, Carden,” cried poor Sir John, as they walked downstairs together. “You ought to have warned me that it was coming.”

“I did not know it would be quite so soon as this,” was Mr. Carden’s answer—and I heard him say it.

John had visitors that day, and saw them. Some of the fellows from Frost’s, who came over when they heard how it was; Dr. Frost himself; and the clergyman. At dusk, when he had been lying quietly for some time, except for the restlessness that often ushers in death, he opened his eyes and began speaking in a whisper. Lady Whitney, thinking he wanted something, bent down her ear. But he was only repeating a verse from the Bible.

“And there shall be no night there: and they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”

Bill, who had his head on the bolster on the other side, broke into a hushed sob. It did not disturb the dying. They were John’s last words.

Quite a crowd went to his funeral. It took place on the following Thursday. Dr. Frost and Mr. Carden (and it’s not so often he wasted his time going to a funeral!) and Featherstone and the Squire amongst them. Poor Sir John sobbed over the grave, and did not mind who saw and heard him, while they cast the earth on the coffin.

“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.”

That the solemn promise was applicable to John Whitney, and that he had most assuredly entered on that glorious life, I knew as well then as I know now. The corruptible had put on incorruption, the mortal immortality.

Not much of a story, you will say. But I might have told a worse. And I hope, seeing we must all go out at the same gate, that we shall be as ready for it as he was.

Johnny Ludlow.THE END

1

A small plain bun sold in Worcester.

2

A superstition obtaining amongst some of the lower orders in France.

3

Written for the January number of The Argosy, 1872.

4

The old East window: not the new one.