Johnny Ludlow, Third Series

“It can’t be Dick Foliott, you know,” said he. “There’s not anything against him; impossible that there should be.”

“I am glad you say so,” cried Tod, relieved. “It was only for Helen’s sake we gave a thought to it.”

“The name was the same, you see—Foliott,” I put in. “And that man is going to be married as well as this one.”

“True,” answered Bill, slowly. “Still I feel sure it is quite impossible that it can be Foliott. If—if you think I had better mention it, I will. I’ll mention it to himself.”

“I should,” said I eagerly, for somehow my doubts of the man were growing larger. “Better be on the safe side. You don’t know much about him, after all, Bill.”

“Not know much about him! What do you mean, Johnny? We know enough. He is Riverside’s nephew, a very respectable old Scotch peer, and he is Foliott the mill-owner’s nephew; and I’m sure he is to be respected, if it’s only for the money he has made. And Dick has a very fair income of his own, and settles ten thousand pounds upon Helen, and will come into a hundred thousand by-and-by, or more. What would you have?”

I could not say what I would have; but the uneasiness lay on my mind. Tod spoke.

“The men alluded to conduct, I expect, Bill; not to means. They spoke of that Foliott as an out-and-out scamp, and called the girl he was going to marry ‘Poor thing,’ in a piteous tone. You wouldn’t like that applied to Helen.”

“By Jove, no. Better be on the safe side, as Johnny says. We’ll say nothing to my father at present; but you and I, Tod, will quietly repeat to Foliott what you heard, and we’ll put it to him, as man to man, to tell us in all honour whether the words could have related to himself. Of course the idea is altogether absurd; we will tell him that, and beg his pardon.”

So that was resolved upon. And a great relief it was. To decide upon a course of action, in any unpleasant difficulty, takes away half its discomfort.

Captain Foliott had come to London but once since they met at Malvern. His stay was short; three days; and during those days he was so busy that Gloucester Place only saw him in the evenings. He had a great deal to do down in the North against his marriage, arranging his property preparatory to settling it on Helen, and seeing to other business matters. But the zeal he lacked in personal attention, he made up by letter. Helen had one every morning as regularly as the post came in.

He was expected in town on the morrow, Tuesday: indeed, Helen had thought he might perhaps have come to-day. Twelve o’clock on Wednesday, at Gloucester Place, was the hour fixed for signing the deeds of settlement: and by twelve o’clock on Thursday, the following day, all going well, he and Helen would be man and wife.

Amidst the letters waiting on the breakfast-table on Tuesday morning was one for Helen. Its red seal and crest told whence it came.

“Foliott always seals his letters to Helen,” announced Bill for our information. “And what ill news has that one inside it?” continued he to his sister. “You look as cross as two sticks, Nelly.”

“Just mind your own business,” said Helen.

“What time will Captain Foliott be here to-day, my dear?” questioned her mother.

“He will not be here at all to-day,” answered Helen, fractiously. “It’s too bad. He says it is impossible for him to get away by any train, in time to see us to-night; but he will be here the first thing in the morning. His mother is worse, and he is anxious about her. People always fall ill at the wrong time.”

“Is Mrs. Foliott coming up to the wedding?” I asked.

“No,” said Lady Whitney. “I of course invited her, and she accepted the invitation; but a week ago she wrote me word she was not well enough to come. And now, children, what shall we set about first? Oh dear! there is such a great deal to do and to think of to-day!”

But we had another arrival that day, if we had not Captain Foliott. That was Mary Seabright, who was to act as bridesmaid with Anna. Brides did not have a string of maids in those days, as some have in these. Leaving them to get through their multiplicity of work—which must be connected, Bill thought, with bonnets and wedding-cake—we went up with Sir John in a boat to Richmond.

That evening we all dined at Miss Deveen’s. It was to be one of the quietest of weddings; partly by Captain Foliott’s express wish, chiefly because they were not at home at the Hall. Miss Deveen and Miss Cattledon were to be the only guests besides ourselves and Mary Seabright, and a Major White who would go to the church with Foliott. Just twelve of us, all told.

“But where’s the bridegroom?” asked Miss Deveen, when we reached her house.

“He can’t get up until late to-night; perhaps not until to-morrow morning,” pouted Helen.

The dinner-table was a downright merry one, and we did not seem to miss Captain Foliott. Afterwards, when Sir John had made up his whist-table—with my lady, Miss Deveen, and the grey-haired curate, Mr. Lake, who had dropped in—we amused ourselves with music and games in the other room.

“What do you think of the bridegroom, Johnny Ludlow?” suddenly demanded Miss Cattledon, who had sat down by me. “I hear you saw him at Malvern.”

“Think of him! Oh, he—he is a very fine man; good-looking, and all that.”

“That I have seen for myself,” retorted Cattledon, pinching her hands round her thin waist. “When he was staying in London, two or three weeks ago, we spent an evening in Gloucester Place. Do you like him?”

She put the “like” so very pointedly, staring into my face at the time, that I was rather taken aback. I did not like Captain Foliott: but there was no particular necessity for telling her so.

“I like him—pretty well, Miss Cattledon.”

“Well, I do not, Johnny Ludlow. I fancy he has a temper; I’m sure he is not good-natured; and I—I don’t think he’ll make a very good husband.”

“That will be a pity. Helen is fond of him.”

Miss Cattledon coughed significantly. “Is she? Helen is fond of him in-so-far as that she is eager to be married—all girls are—and the match with Captain Foliott is an advantageous one. But if you think she cares for him in any other way, Johnny Ludlow, you are quite mistaken. Helen Whitney is no more in love with Captain Foliott than you are in love with me.”

At which I laughed.

“Very few girls marry for love,” she went on. “They fall in love, generally speaking, with the wrong person.”

“Then what do they marry for?”

“For the sake of being married. With the fear of old-maidism staring them in the face, they are ready, silly things, to snap at almost any offer they receive. Go up to Helen Whitney now, tell her she is destined to live in single blessedness, and she would be ready to fret herself into a fever. Every girl would not be, mind you: but there are girls and girls.”

Well, perhaps Miss Cattledon was not far wrong. I did not think as she did then, and laughed again in answer: but I have learned more of the world and its ways since.

In every corner of the house went Helen’s eyes when we got back to Gloucester Place, but they could not see Captain Foliott. She had been hoping against hope.

III

Wednesday. Young women, bringing in huge band-boxes, were perpetually ringing at the door, and by-and-by we were treated to a sight of the finery. Sufficient gowns and bonnets to set up a shop were spread out in Helen’s room. The wedding-dress lay on the bed: a glistening white silk, with a veil and wreath beside it. Near to it was the dress she would go away in to Dover, the first halting-place on their trip to Paris: a quiet shot-silk, Lady Whitney called it, blue one way, pink another. Shot, or not shot, it was uncommonly pretty. Straw bonnets were the mode in those days, and Helen’s, perched above her travelling-dress, had white ribbons on it and a white veil—which was the mode for brides also. I am sure Helen, in her vanity, thought more of the things than of the bridegroom.

But she thought of him also. Especially when the morning went on and did not bring him. Twelve o’clock struck, and Sir John Whitney’s solicitor, Mr. Hill, who had come up on purpose, was punctual to his appointment. Sir John had thought it right that his own solicitor should be present at the reading and signing of the settlements, to see that they were drawn up properly.

So there they sat in the back-parlour, which had been converted into a business room for the occasion, waiting for Captain Foliott and the deed with what patience they had. At one o’clock, when they came in to luncheon, Sir John was looking a little blue; and he remarked that Captain Foliott, however busy he might have been, should have stretched a point to get off in time. Appointments, especially important ones, ought to be kept.

For it was conclusively thought that the delay was caused by the captain’s having been unable to leave the previous day, and that he was travelling up now.

So Mr. Hill waited, and Sir John waited, and the rest of us waited, Helen especially; and thus the afternoon passed in waiting. Helen was more fidgety than a hen with one chick: darting to the window every instant, peeping down the staircase at the sound of every ring.

Dinner-time; and no appearance of Captain Foliott. After dinner; and still the same. Mary Seabright, a merry girl, told Helen that her lover was like the knight in the old ballad—he loved and he rode away. There was a good deal of laughing, and somebody called for the song, “The Mistletoe Bough.” Of course it was all in jest: as each minute passed, we expected the next would bring Captain Foliott.

Not until ten o’clock did Mr. Hill leave, with the understanding that he should return the next morning at the same hour. The servants were beginning to lay the breakfast-table in the dining-room, for a lot of sweet dishes had been brought in from the pastry-cook’s, and Lady Whitney thought they had better be put on the table at once. In the afternoon we had tied the cards together—“Mr. and Mrs. Richard Foliott”—with white satin ribbon, sealed them up in their envelopes with white wax, and directed them ready for the post on the morrow.

At twelve o’clock a move was made to go upstairs to bed; and until that hour we had still been expecting Captain Foliott.

“I feel positive some dreadful accident has happened,” whispered Helen to me as she said good-night, her usually bright colour faded to paleness. “If I thought it was carelessness that is causing the delay, as they are cruelly saying, I—I should never forgive him.”

“Wait a minute,” said Bill to me aside, touching Tod also. “Let them go on.”

“Are you not coming, William?” said Lady Whitney.

“In two minutes, mother.”

“I don’t like this,” began Bill, speaking to us both over our bed-candles, for the other lights were out. “I’ll be hanged if I think he means to turn up at all!”

“But why should he not?”

“Who is to know? Why has he not turned up already? I can tell you that it seems to me uncommonly strange. Half-a-dozen times to-night I had a great mind to call my father out and tell him about what you heard in the train, Tod. It is so extraordinary for a man, coming up to his wedding, not to appear: especially when he is bringing the settlements with him.”

Neither of us spoke. What, indeed, could we say to so unpleasant a topic? Bill went on again.

“If he were a man in business, as his uncle, old Foliott, is, I could readily understand that interests connected with it might detain him till the last moment. But he is not; he has not an earthly thing to do.”

“Perhaps his lawyers are in fault,” cried Tod. “If they are backward with the deeds of settlement–”

“The deeds were ready a week ago. Foliott said so in writing to my father.”

A silence ensued, rendering the street noises more audible. Suddenly there came a sound of a horse and cab dashing along, and it pulled up at our door. Foliott, of course.

Down we went, helter-skelter, out on the pavement. The servants, busy in the dining-room still, came running to the steps. A gentleman, getting out of the cab with a portmanteau, stared, first at us, then at the house.

“This is not right,” said he to the driver, after looking about him. “It’s next door but one.”

“This is the number you told me, sir.”

“Ah, yes. Made a mistake.”

But so sure did it seem to us that this late and hurried traveller must be, at least, some one connected with Captain Foliott, if not himself, that it was only when he and his luggage had disappeared within the next house but one, and the door was shut, and the cab gone away, that we realized the disappointment, and the vague feeling of discomfort it left behind. The servants went in. We strolled to the opposite side of the street, unconsciously hoping that luck might bring another cab with the right man in it.

“Look there!” whispered Bill, pointing upwards.

The room over the drawing-room was Lady Whitney’s; the room above that, the girls’. Leaning out at the window, gazing now up the street, now down, was Helen, her eyes restless, her face pale and woe-begone in the bright moonlight.

It was a sad night for Helen Whitney. She did not attempt to undress, as we knew later, but kept her post at that weary window. Every cab or carriage that rattled into view was watched by her with eager, feverish anxiety. But not one halted at the house, not one contained Captain Foliott. Helen Whitney will never forget that unhappy night of tumultuous feeling and its intolerable suspense.

But here was the wedding-morning come, and no bridegroom. The confectioners were rushing in with more dishes, and the dressmakers appearing to put the finishing touches to Helen. Lady Whitney was just off her head: doubtful whether to order all the paraphernalia away, or whether Captain Foliott might not come yet. In the midst of the confusion a little gentleman arrived at the house and asked for Sir John. Sir John and he had a long conference, shut in alone: and when they at length came out Sir John’s nose was a dark purple. The visitor was George Foliott, the mill-owner: returned since some days from the Cape.

And the tale he unfolded would have struck dismay to the nose of many a wiser man than was poor Sir John. The scamp spoken of in the train was Richard Foliott; and a nice scamp he turned out to be. Upon Mr. Foliott’s return to Milltown the prospective wedding had come to his ears, with all the villainy encompassing it; he had at once taken means to prevent Mr. Richard’s carrying it out, and had now come up to enlighten Sir John Whitney.

Richard Foliott had been a scamp at heart from his boyhood; but he had contrived to keep well before the world. Over and over again had Mr. Foliott paid his debts and set him on his legs again. Captain Foliott had told the Whitneys that he quitted the army by the wish of his friends: he quitted it because he dared not stay in. Before Mr. Foliott departed for the Cape he had thrown Richard off; had been obliged to do it. His fond foolish mother had reduced herself to poverty for him. The estate, once worth ten thousand pounds, which he had made a pretence of settling upon Helen, belonged to his mother, and was mortgaged about a dozen deep. He dared not go much abroad for fear of arrest, especially in London. This, and a great deal more, was disclosed by Mr. Foliott to Sir John; who sat and gasped, and rubbed his face, and wished his old friend Todhetley was at hand, and thanked God for Helen’s escape.

“He will never be any better,” affirmed Mr. Foliott, “be very sure of that. He is innately bad, and the pain he has inflicted upon me for years has made me old before my time. But—forgive me, Sir John, for saying so—I cannot think you exercised discretion in accepting him so easily for your daughter.”

“I had no suspicion, you see,” returned poor Sir John. “How could I have any? Being your nephew, and Lord Riverside’s nephew—”

“Riverside’s nephew he called himself, did he! The old man is ninety, as I dare say you know, and never stirs from his home in the extreme north of Scotland. Some twenty years ago, he fell in with the sister of Richard’s mother (she was a governess in a family up there), and married her; but she died within the year. That’s how he comes to be Lord Riverside’s ‘nephew.’ But they have never met in their lives.”

“Oh dear!” bemoaned Sir John. “What a villain! and what a blessed escape! He made a great point of Helen’s bit of money, three thousand pounds, not being tied up before the marriage. I suppose he wanted to get it into his own hands.”

“Of course he did.”

“And to pay his debts with it; as far as it would go.”

“Pay his debts with it!” exclaimed Mr. Foliott. “Why, my good sir, it would take thirty thousand to pay them. He would just have squandered it away in Paris, at his gaming-tables, and what not; and then have asked you to keep him. Miss Whitney is well quit of him: and I’m thankful I came back in time to save her.”

Great news to disclose to Helen! Deeply mortifying to have ordered a wedding-breakfast and wedding things in general when there was no wedding to be celebrated! The tears were running down Lady Whitney’s homely cheeks, as Miss Deveen drove up.

Mr. Foliott asked to see Helen. All he said to her we never knew—but there’s no doubt he was as kind as a father.

“He is a wicked, despicable man,” sobbed Helen.

“He is all that, and more,” assented Mr. Foliott. “You may be thankful your whole life long for having escaped him. And, my dear, if it will at all help you to bear the smart, I may tell you that you are not the first young lady by two or three he has served, or tried to serve, in precisely the same way. And to one of them he behaved more wickedly than I care to repeat to you.”

“But,” ruefully answered poor Helen, quietly sobbing, “I don’t suppose it came so near with any of them as the very morning.”

And that was the end of Helen Whitney’s wedding.

HELEN’S CURATE

I

A summons from Mr. Brandon meant a summons. And I don’t think I should have dared to disobey one any more than I should those other summonses issued by the law courts. He was my guardian, and he let me know it.

But I was hardly pleased that the mandate should have come for me just this one particular day. We were at Crabb Cot: Helen, Anna, and William Whitney had come to it for a week’s visit; and I did not care to lose a day with them. It had to be lost, however. Mr. Brandon had ordered me to be with him as early as possible in the morning: so that I must be off betimes to catch the first train.

It was a cold bleak day towards the end of February: sleet falling now and then, the east wind blowing like mad, and cutting me in two as I stood at the hall-door. Nobody else was down yet, and I had swallowed my breakfast standing.

Shutting the door after me, and making a rush down the walk between the evergreens for the gate, I ran against Lee, the Timberdale postman, who was coming in, with the letters, on his shaky legs. His face, shaded by its grey locks, straggling and scanty, had a queer kind of fear upon it.

“Mr. Johnny, I’m thankful to meet you; I was thinking what luck it would be if I could,” said he, trembling. “Perhaps you will stand my friend, sir. Look here.”

Of the two letters he handed to me, one was addressed to Mrs. Todhetley; the other to Helen Whitney. And this last had its envelope pretty nearly burnt off. The letter inside could be opened by anybody, and some of the scorched writing lay exposed.

“If the young lady would only forgive me—and hush it up, Mr. Johnny!” he pleaded, his poor worn face taking a piteous hue. “The Miss Whitneys are both very nice and kind young ladies; and perhaps she will.”

“How was it done, Lee?”

“Well, sir, I was lighting my pipe. It is a smart journey here, all the way from Timberdale—and I had to take the long round to-day instead of the Ravine, because there was a newspaper for the Stone House. The east wind was blowing right through me, Mr. Johnny; and I thought if I had a bit of a smoke I might get along better. A spark must have fallen on the letter while I was lighting my pipe, and I did not see it till the letter was aflame in my hand. If—if you could but stand my friend, sir, and—and perhaps give the letter to the young lady yourself, so that the Squire does not see it—and ask her to forgive me.”

One could only pity him, poor worn man. Lee had had pecks of trouble, and it had told upon him, making him old before his time. Now and then, when it was a bad winter’s morning, and the Squire caught sight of him, he would tell him to go into the kitchen and get a cup of hot coffee. Taking the two letters from him to do what I could, I carried them indoors.

Putting Helen’s with its tindered cover into an envelope, I wrote a line in pencil, and slipped it in also.

“Dear Helen,

“Poor old Lee has had a mishap and burnt your letter in lighting his pipe. He wants you to forgive it and not to tell the Squire. No real damage is done, so please be kind.

“J. L.”

Directing this to her, I sent it to her room by Hannah, and made a final start for the train.

And this was what happened afterwards.

Hannah took the letter to Helen, who was in the last stage of dressing, just putting the finishing touches to her hair. Staring at the state her letter was in, she read the few words I had written, and then went into a passion at what Lee had done. Helen Whitney was as good-hearted a girl as ever lived, but hot and hasty in temper, saying anything that came uppermost when put out. She, by the help of time, had got over the smart left by the summary collapse of her marriage, and had ceased to abuse Mr. Richard Foliott. All that was now a thing of the past. And, not having had a spark of love for him, he was the more easily forgotten.

“The wicked old sinner!” she burst out: and with emphasis so startling, that Anna, reading by the window, dropped her Prayer-book.

“Helen! What is the matter?”

“That’s the matter,” flashed Helen, showing the half-burnt envelope and scorched letter, and flinging on the table the piece of paper I had slipped inside. Anna took the letter up and read it.

“Poor old man! It was only an accident, Helen; and, I suppose, as Johnny says, no real damage is done. You must not say anything about it.”

“Must I not!” was Helen’s tart retort.

“Who is the letter from?”

“Never you mind.”

“But is it from home?”

“It is from Mr. Leafchild, if you must know.”

“Oh,” said Anna shortly. For that a flirtation, or something of the kind, had been going on between Helen and the curate, Leafchild, and that it would not be likely to find favour at Whitney Hall, she was quite aware of.

“Mr. Leafchild writes about the school,” added Helen, after reading the letter; perhaps tendering the information as an apology for its having come at all. “Those two impudent girls, Kate and Judith Dill, have been setting Miss Barn at defiance, and creating no end of insubordination.”

With the last word, she was leaving the room; the letter in her pocket, the burnt envelope in her hand. Anna stopped her.

“You are not going to show that, are you, Helen? Please don’t.”

“Mr. Todhetley ought to see it—and call Lee to account for his carelessness. Why, he might have altogether burnt the letter!”

“Yes; of course it was careless. But I dare say it will be a lesson to him. He is very poor and old, Helen. Pray don’t tell the Squire; he might make so much commotion over it, and then you would be sorry. Johnny asks you not.”

Helen knitted her brow, but put the envelope into her pocket with the letter: not conceding with at all a good grace, and went down nodding her head in semi-defiance. The cream of the sting lay no doubt in the fact that the letter was Mr. Leafchild’s, and that other eyes than her own might have seen it.

She did not say anything at the breakfast-table, though Anna sat upon thorns lest she should: Helen was so apt to speak upon impulse. The Squire talked of riding out; Whitney said he would go with him: Tod seemed undecided what he should do. Mrs. Todhetley read to them the contents of her letter—which was from Mary Blair.

“I shall go for a walk,” announced Helen, when the rest had dispersed. “Come and get your things on, Anna.”

“But I don’t care to go out,” said Anna. “It is a very disagreeable day. And I meant to help Mrs. Todhetley with the frock she is making for Lena.”