Johnny Ludlow, Third Series

“I say, mother,” cried he, “I don’t think this Latin will be of much good to me. I shan’t make any hand at it.”

“You will be like me then, Tom, for I’m sure I shall never make much of a hand at dressmaking,” spoke up Dolly. “Miss Pedley sees it too.”

“Be quiet, Dolly; don’t talk nonsense,” said Mrs. Grape. “Let Tom finish his tasks.”

Thus reprimanded, silence ensued again. It grew dusk; candles were lighted and the window was shut down, as the breeze blew them about; but the bright moonlight still streamed in. Presently Dolly left the room to give the kitten its supper. Suddenly, Tom shut up his books with a bang.

“Finished, Tom?”

“Yes, mother.”

He was putting them away when a knock came to the front-door. Tom opened it.

“Halloa, Bill!” said he.

“Halloa, Tom!” responded a boy’s voice. “I’ve come up to ask if you’ll go fishing with me to-morrow.”

“To-morrow!” echoed Tom in surprise. “Why, to-morrow’s Sunday!”

“Bother! I mean Monday. I’m going up to the Weir at Powick: there’s first-rate fishing there. Will you come, Tom?”

Mrs. Grape wondered who the boy was; she knew the voices of some of Tom’s schoolfellows, but did not recognize this one. Tom, standing on the low step outside, had partly closed the door behind him, and she could not see out; but she heard every word as plainly as though the speakers had been in the room.

“I should like to go, but I’m sure I could never get leave from school,” said Tom. “Why, the Midsummer examination comes on the end of next week; our masters just do keep us to it!”

“Stingy old misers! You might take French leave, Tom.”

“Mother would never let me do that,” returned Tom; and he probably made a sign to indicate that his mother was within hearing, as both voices dropped to a lower key; but Mrs. Grape still heard distinctly. “Are you going to take French leave yourself, Bill?” added young Grape. “How else shall you manage to get off?”

“Oh, Monday will be holiday with us; it’s a Saint’s Day. Look here, Tom; you may as well come. Fishing, up at Powick, is rare fun; and I’ve some prime bait.”

“I can’t,” pleaded Tom: “no good thinking about it. You must get one of your own fellows instead.”

“Suppose I must. Well, good-night.”

“Good-night, Bill.”

“I touched you last,” added the strange voice. There was a shout of laughter, the door flew back, Tom’s hand came in to snatch up his cap, which lay on a table near, and he went flying after the other boy.

They had entered upon the fascinating game of “Titch-touch-last.” Mrs. Grape got up, laid her finished cap upon the table, shook the odds and ends of threads from her black gown, and began to put her needles and cotton in the little work-box. While she was doing this, Dolly came in from the kitchen. She looked round the room.

“Why, where’s Tom, mother?”

“Some boy called to speak to him, and they are running about the road at Titch-touch-last. The cap looks nice, does it not, Dolly?”

“Oh, very,” assented Dolly. It was one she had netted for her mother; and the border was spread out in the shape of a fan—the fashion then—and trimmed with yellow gauze ribbon.

The voices of the boys were still heard, but at a distance. Dolly went to the door, and looked out.

“Yes, there the two are,” she cried. “What boy is it, mother?”

“I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Grape. “I did not see him, or recognize his voice. Tom called him ‘Bill.’”

She went also to the door as she spoke, and stood by her daughter on the low broad step. The voices were fainter now, for the lads, in their play, were drawing further off and nearer to the town. Mrs. Grape could see them dodging around each other, now on this side the road, now on that. It was a remarkably light night, the moon, in the cloudless sky, almost dazzlingly bright.

“They’ll make themselves very hot,” she remarked, as she and Dolly withdrew indoors. “What silly things boys are!”

Carrying her cap upstairs, Mrs. Grape then attended to two or three household matters. Half-an-hour had elapsed when she returned to the parlour. Tom had not come in. “How very thoughtless of him!” she cried; “he must know it is his bed-time.”

But neither she nor Dolly felt any uneasiness until the clock struck ten. A shade of it crept over Mrs. Grape then. What could have become of the boy?

Standing once more upon the door-step, they gazed up and down the road. A few stragglers were passing up from the town: more people would be out on a Saturday night than on any other.

“How dost thee this evening, friend Grape?” called out Rachel Deavor, now sitting with her niece at their open parlour window in the moonlight. Mrs. Grape turned to them, and told of Tom’s delinquency. Elizabeth Deavor, a merry girl, came out laughing, and linked her arm within Dolly’s.

“He has run away from thee to take a moonlight ramble,” she said jestingly. “Thee had been treating him to a scolding, maybe.”

“No, I had not,” replied Dolly. “I have such a pretty grey kitten, Elizabeth. One of the girls at Miss Pedley’s gave it to me.”

They stood on, talking in the warm summer night, Mrs. Grape at the window with the elder Quakeress, Dolly at the gate, with the younger, and the time went on. The retiring hour of the two ladies had long passed, but they did not like to leave Mrs. Grape to her uncertainty: she was growing more anxious with every minute. At length the clocks struck half-past eleven, and Mrs. Grape, to the general surprise, burst into tears.

“Nay, nay, now, do not give way,” said Rachel Deavor kindly. “Doubtless he has but gone to the other lad’s home, and is letting the time pass unthinkingly. Boys will be boys.”

“That unaccountable disappearance of my husband makes me more nervous than I should otherwise be,” spoke Mrs. Grape in apology. “It is just a year ago. Am I going to have a second edition of that, in the person of my son?”

“Hush thee now, thee art fanciful; thee should not anticipate evil. It is a pity but thee had recognized the boy who came for thy son; some of us might go to the lad’s house.”

“I wish I had,” sighed Mrs. Grape. “I meant to ask Tom who it was when he came in. Tom called him ‘Bill;’ that is all I know.”

“Here he comes!” exclaimed Dolly, who was now standing outside the gate with Elizabeth Deavor. “He is rushing round the corner, at full speed, mother.”

“Won’t I punish him!” cried Mrs. Grape, in her relieved feelings: and she too went to the gate.

Dolly’s hopeful eagerness had misled her. It was not Tom. But it was one of Tom’s schoolfellows, young Thorn, whom they all knew. He halted to explain that he had been to a boys’ party in the Bath Road, and expected to “catch it” at home for staying so late. Dolly interrupted him to speak of Tom.

“What an odd thing!” cried the lad. “Oh, he’ll come home presently, safe enough. Which of our fellows are named Bill, you ask, Miss Grape? Let’s see. There’s Bill Stroud; and Bill Hardwick—that is, William–”

“It was neither Stroud nor Hardwick; I should have known the voices of both,” interrupted Mrs. Grape. “This lad cannot, I think, be in your school at all, Thorn: he said his school was to have holiday on Monday because it would be a Saint’s Day.”

“Holiday, because it was a Saint’s Day!” echoed Thorn. “Oh then, he must have been one of the college boys. No other school goes in for holidays on the Saints’ Days but that. The boys have to attend service at college, morning and afternoon, so it’s not a complete holiday: they can get it easily, though, by asking leave.”

“I don’t think Tom knows any of the college boys,” debated Dolly.

“Yes, he does; our school knows some of them,” replied Thorn. “Good-night: I can’t stay. He is sure to turn up presently.”

But Tom Grape did not turn up. At midnight his mother put on her bonnet and shawl and started out to look for him in the now deserted streets of the town. Now and again she would inquire of some late wayfarer whether he had met a boy that night, or perhaps two boys, and described Tom’s appearance; but she could learn nothing. The most feasible idea she could call up, and the most hopeful, was that Tom had really gone home with the other lad and that something must have happened to keep him there; perhaps an accident. Dolly felt sure it must be so. Elizabeth Deavor, running in at breakfast-time next morning to ask for news, laughingly said Tom deserved to be shaken.

But when the morning hours passed and did not bring the truant or any tidings of him, this hope died away. The first thing to be done was to find out who the other boy was, and to question him. Perhaps he had also disappeared!

Getting from young Thorn the address of those of the college boys—three—who, as he chanced to know, bore the Christian name of William, Mrs. Grape went to make inquiries at their houses. She could learn nothing. Each of the three boys disclaimed all knowledge of the affair; their friends corroborating their assertion that they had not been out on the Saturday night. Four more of the King’s scholars were named William, they told her; two of them boarding in the house of the head-master, the Reverend Allen Wheeler.

To this gentleman’s residence, in the College Green, Mrs. Grape next proceeded. It was then evening. The head-master listened courteously to her tale, and became, in his awakened interest, as anxious as she was to find the right boy. Mrs. Grape said she should not know him, but should know his voice. Not one of the three boys, already seen, possessed the voice she had heard.

The two boarders were called into the room, as a mere matter of form; for the master was able to state positively that they were in bed at the hour in question. Neither of them had the voice of the boy who had called for Tom. It was a very clear voice, Mrs. Grape said; she should recognize it instantly.

“Let me see,” said the master, going over mentally the list of the forty King’s scholars: “how many more of you boys are named William, beyond those this lady has seen?”

The boys considered, and said there were two others; William Smith and William Singleton; both called familiarly “Bill” in the school. Each of these boys had a clear, pleasant voice, the master observed; but neither of them had applied for leave for Monday, nor had he heard of any projected fishing expedition to Powick.

To the house of the Singletons next went Mrs. Grape: but the boy’s voice there did not answer to the one she had heard. The Smith family she could not see; they had gone out for the evening: and she dragged herself home, utterly beaten down both in body and spirit.

Another night of anxiety was passed, and then Mrs. Grape returned to Mr. Smith’s and saw “Bill.” But Bill was hoarse as a raven; it was not at all the clear voice she had heard; though he looked desperately frightened at being questioned.

So there it was. Tom Grape was lost. Lost! and no clue remained as to the why and wherefore. He must have gone after his father, said the sympathizing townspeople, full of wonder; and a superstitious feeling crept over Mrs. Grape.

But ere the week was quite over, news came to the desolate home: not of Tom himself; not of the manner of his disappearance; only of the night it happened. On the Friday evening Mrs. Grape and Dolly were sitting together, when a big boy of sixteen appeared at their door, Master Fred Smith, lugging in his brother Bill.

“He is come to confess, ma’am,” said the elder. “He blurted it all out to me just now, too miserable to keep it in any longer, and I’ve brought him off to you.”

“Oh, tell me, tell me where he is!” implored Mrs. Grape from her fevered lips; as she rose and clasped the boy, Bill, by the arm.

“I don’t know where he is,” answered the boy in trembling earnestness. “I can’t think where; I wish I could. I know no more than the dead.”

“For what have you come here then?”

“To confess that it was I who was with him. You didn’t know my voice on the Monday because I had such a cold,” continued he, laying hold of a chair-back to steady his shaking hands. “I must have caught it playing with Tom that night; we got so hot, both of us. When I heard he had never been home since, couldn’t be found anywhere, I felt frightened to death and didn’t like to say it was me who had been with him.”

“Where did you leave him? Where did you miss him?” questioned the mother, her heart sinking with despair.

“We kept on playing at titch-touch-last; neither of us would give in, each wanted to have the last touch; and we got down past the Bath Road, and on up Sidbury near to the canal bridge. Tom gave me a touch; it was the last; and he rushed through the Commandery gates. I was getting tired then, and a thought came to me that instead of going after him I’d play him a trick and make off home; and I did so, tearing over the bridge as hard as I could tear. And that’s all the truth,” concluded the boy, bursting into tears, “and I never saw Tom again, and have no more to tell though the head-master hoists me for it to-morrow.”

“It is just what he said to me, Mrs. Grape,” put in the brother quietly, “and I am sure it is the truth.”

“Through the Commandery gates,” repeated Mrs. Grape, pressing her aching brow. “And you did not see him come out again?”

“No, ma’am, I made off as hard as I could go. While he was rushing down there—I heard his boots clattering on the flags—I rushed over the bridge homewards.”

The boy had told all he knew. Now that the confession was made, he would be too glad to add more had he been able. It left the mystery just as it was before; no better and no worse. There was no outlet to the Commandery, except these iron gates, and nothing within it that could have swallowed up Tom. It was a cul-de-sac, and he must have come out again by these self-same gates. Whither had he then gone?

It was proved that he did come out. When Mr. Bill Smith’s confession was made public, an assistant to a doctor in the town remembered to have seen Tom Grape, whom he knew by sight, as he was passing the Commandery about that same time to visit a patient in Wyld’s Lane. Tom came flying out of the gates, laughing, and looking up and down the street. “Where are you, Bill?” he called out. The young doctor, whose name was Seton, looked back at Tom, as he went on his way.

But the young man added something more, which nobody else had thought to speak of, and which afforded a small loop-hole of conjecture as to what poor Tom’s fate might have been. Just about that hour a small barge on the canal, after passing under Sidbury bridge, came in contact with another barge. Very little damage was done, but there was a great deal of shouting and confusion. As Mr. Seton walked over the bridge, not a second before he saw Tom, he heard the noise and saw people making for the spot. Had Tom Grape made for it? He could easily have reached it. And if so, had he, amidst the general pushing and confusion on the canal bank, fallen into the canal? It was hardly to be imagined that any accident of this kind could happen to him unseen; though it might be just possible, for the scene for some minutes was one of tumult; but nothing transpired to confirm it. The missing lad did not reappear, either dead or alive.

And so poor Tom Grape had passed out of life mysteriously as his father had done. Many months elapsed before his mother gave up her search for him; she was always thinking he would come home again, always hoping it. The loss affected her more than her husband’s had, for Tom vanished under her very eye, so to say; all the terror of it was palpably enacted before her, all the suspense had to be borne and lived through; whereas the other loss took place at a distance and she only grew to realize it by degrees; which of course softened the blow. And the time went on by years, but nothing was seen of Tom Grape.

That was disappearance the second.

Dolly left her place of business at the end of the three years for which she had been apprenticed, and set up for herself; a brass plate on her mothers door—“Miss Grape, Mantua-maker”—proclaiming the fact to the world. She was only twenty then, with as sweet a face, the Squire says, as Worcester, renowned though it is for its pretty faces, ever saw. She had never in her heart taken kindly to her business, so would not be likely to set the world on fire with her skill; but she had tried to do her best and would continue to do it. A little work began to come in now and then; a gown to be turned or a spencer to be made, though not so many of them as Dolly hoped for: but, as her mother said, Rome was not built in a day.

III

“Mother, I think I shall go to college this morning.”

So spoke Dolly at the breakfast-table one Sunday in July. The sun was shining in at the open window, the birds were singing.

“It’s my belief, Dolly, you would go off to college every Sunday of your life, if you had your way,” said Mrs. Grape.

Dolly laughed. “And so I would, mother.”

For the beautiful cathedral service had charms for Dolly. Islip Church was a very primitive church, the good old clergyman was toothless, the singing of the two psalms was led off by the clerk in a cracked bass voice; there was no organ. Accustomed to nothing better than this, the first time Dolly found herself at the cathedral, after their removal to Worcester, and the magnificent services burst upon her astonished senses, she thought she must have ascended to some celestial sphere. The fine edifice, the musical chanting of the prayers by the minor canons, the singing of the numerous choir, men and boys in their white surplices, the deep tones of the swelling organ, the array of white-robed prebendaries, the dignified and venerable bishop—Cornwall—in his wig and lawn sleeves, the state, the ceremony of the whole, and the glittering colours of the famed east window in the distance; all this laid hold of Dolly’s senses for ever. She and her mother attended St. Martin’s Church generally, but Dolly would now and then lure her mother to the cathedral. Latterly Mrs. Grape had been ailing and did not go anywhere.

“If you could but go to college to-day, mother!” went on Dolly.

“Why!”

“Mr. Benson preaches. I met Miss Stafford yesterday afternoon, and she told me Mr. Benson had come into residence. The Herald said so too.”

“Then you must go betimes if you would secure a seat,” remarked Mrs. Grape. “And mind you don’t get your new muslin skirt torn.”

So Dolly put on her new muslin, and her bonnet, and started.

When the Reverend Christopher Benson, Master of the Temple, became one of the prebendaries of Worcester, his fame as a preacher flew to all parts of the town. You should hear the Squire’s account of the crush in getting into the cathedral on the Sundays that he was in residence: four Sundays in the year; or five, as the case might be; all told. Members of other churches, Dissenters of different sects, Quakers, Roman Catholics, and people who never went anywhere at other times, scrupled not to run to hear Mr. Benson. For reading like unto his, or preaching like unto his, had rarely been heard in that cathedral or in any other. Though it might be only the Gospel that fell to his share in the communion service, the crowd listened, enraptured, to his sweet, melodious tones. The college doors were besieged before the hour for opening them; it was like going into a theatre.

Dolly, on this day, made one in the crowd at the cloister entrance; she was pushed here and there; and although she hurried well with the rest as soon as the doors were unlocked, every seat was taken when she reached the chancel. She found standing room opposite the pulpit, near King John’s tomb, and felt very hot in the crush.

“Is it always like this, here?”

The whispered words came from a voice at her side. Dolly turned, and saw a tall, fine-looking, well-dressed man about thirty, with a green silk umbrella in his hand.

“No,” she whispered back again. “Only for four or five Sundays, at this time of the year, when Mr. Benson preaches.”

“Indeed,” said the stranger. “His preaching ought to be something extraordinary to attract such a crowd as this.”

“And so it is,” breathed Dolly. “And his reading—oh, you never heard any reading like it.”

“Very eloquent, I suppose?”

“I don’t know whether it may be called eloquence,” debated Dolly, remembering that a chance preacher she once heard, who thumped the cushions with his hands and shook the air with his voice, was said to be eloquent. “Mr. Benson is the quietest preacher and reader I ever listened to.”

The stranger seemed to be a kind sort of man. During the stir made by the clergy, preceded by the six black-robed, bowing bedesmen, going up to the communion-table, he found an inch of room on a bench, and secured it for Dolly. She thanked him gratefully.

Mr. Benson’s sermon came to an end, the bishop gave the blessing from his throne, and the crowd poured out. Dolly, by way of a change, made her exit from the great north entrance. The brightness of the day had changed; a sharp shower was falling.

“Oh dear! My new muslin will be wet through!” thought Dolly. “This parasol’s of no use.”

“Will you allow me to offer you my umbrella—or permit me to hold it over you?” spoke the stranger, who must have followed her out. And Dolly hesitated and flushed, and did not know whether she ought to say yes or no.

He held the umbrella over Dolly, letting his own coat get wet. The shower ceased presently; but he walked on by her side to her mother’s door, and then departed with a bow fit for an emperor.

“What a polite man!” thought Dolly. “Quite a gentleman.” And she mentioned the occurrence to her mother; who seemed to-day more poorly than usual.

They sat at the open window in the afternoon, and Dolly read aloud the evening psalms. It was the fifth day of the month. As Dolly finished the last verse and closed the book, Mrs. Grape, after a moment’s silence, repeated the words:—

“The Lord shall give strength unto His people: the Lord shall give His people the blessing of peace.”

“What a beautiful promise that is, Dolly!” she said in hushed tones. “Peace! Ah, my dear, no one can know what that word means until they have been sorely tried. Peace everlasting!”

Mrs. Grape leaned back in her chair, gazing upwards. The sky was of a deep blue; a brilliant gold cloud, of peculiar shape, was moving slowly across it just overhead.

“One could almost fancy it to be God’s golden throne in the brighter land,” she murmured. “My child, do you know, the thought comes across me at times that it may not be long before I am there. And I am getting to long for it.”

“Don’t say that, mother,” cried the startled girl.

“Well, well, dear, I don’t want to frighten you. It is all as God pleases.”

“I shall send to ask Mr. Nash to come to see you to-morrow, mother. Do you feel worse?”

Mrs. Grape slightly shook her head. Presently she spoke.

“Is it not almost teatime, Dolly?—whoever is that?”

A gentleman, passing, with a red rose in his button-hole and silk umbrella in his hand, was taking off his hat to Dolly. Dolly’s face turned red as the rose as she returned the bow, and whispered to her mother that it was the polite stranger. He halted to express a hope that the young lady had not taken cold from the morning shower.

He turned out to be a Mr. Mapping, a traveller in the wine trade for some London house. But, when he was stating this to Mrs. Grape during the first visit paid her (for he contrived to make good his entrance to the house), he added in a careless, off-hand manner, that he was thankful to say he had good private means and was not dependent upon his occupation. He lingered on in Worcester, and became intimate with the Grapes.

Events thickened. Before the next month, August, came in, Mrs. Grape died. Dolly was stunned; but she would have felt the blow even more keenly than she did feel it had she not fallen over head and ears in love with Alick Mapping. About three hundred pounds, all her mother’s savings, came to Dolly; excepting that, and the furniture, she was unprovided for.

“You cannot live upon that: what’s a poor three hundred pounds?” spoke Mr. Mapping a day or two after the funeral, his tone full of tender compassion.

“How rich he must be himself!” thought poor Dolly.

“You will have to let me take care of you, child.”

“Oh dear!” murmured Dolly.

“We had better be married without delay. Once you are my wife–”

“Please don’t go on!” interposed Dolly in a burst of sobs. “My dear mother is hardly buried.”