Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

“But, my dear, he always goes in command.”

“Of course. But in the dream the point was especially presented to my mind—that he was going out in command. He came to me the morning of the day he was to sail, looking very patient, pale, and sorrowful. It seemed that he and I had had some dispute, causing estrangement, the previous night: it was over then, and I, for one, repented of the coldness.”

“Well, Alice?” broke in Tod: for she had stopped, and was gazing out straight before her.

“I wish I could show to you how real all this was,” she resumed. “It was more as though I were wide awake, and enacting it. I never had so vivid a dream before; never in all my life.”

“But why don’t you go on?”

“Somebody had been murdered: some man. I don’t know who it was—or where, or how. Jack was suspected. Jack! But it seemed that it could not be brought home to him. We were in a strange town; at least, it was strange to me, though it seemed that I had stayed in it once before, many years ago. Jack was standing before me all this while, you understand, in his sadness and sorrow. It was not he who had told me what had happened. I seemed to have known it already. Everybody knew it, everybody spoke of it, and we were in cruel distress. Suddenly I remembered that when I was in the town the previous time, the man who was murdered had had a bitter quarrel with another man, a gentleman: and a sort of revelation came over me that this gentleman had been the murderer. I went privately to some one who had authority in the ship, and said so; I think her owner. He laughed at me—did I know how high this gentleman was, he asked; the first magnate in the town. That he had done it I felt sure; surer than if I had seen it done; but no one would listen to me—and in the trouble I awoke.”

“That’s not much to be troubled at,” cried the Squire.

“The trouble was terrible; you could not feel such in real life. But I have not told all. Presently I got to sleep again, and found myself in the same dream. I was going through the streets of the town in an open carriage, the ship’s owner with me–”

“Was the ship the Rose of Delhi?”

“I don’t know. The owner, sitting with me in the carriage, was not either of the owners of the Rose of Delhi, whom I know well; this was a stranger. We were going over a bridge. Walking towards us on the pavement, I saw two gentlemen arm-in-arm: one an officer in a dusky old red uniform and cocked-hat; the other an evil-looking man who wore a long brown coat. He walked along with his eyes on the ground. I knew him by intuition—that it was the man who had had the quarrel years before, and who had done the murder now. ‘There’s the gentleman you would have accused,’ said my companion before I could speak, pointing to this man: ‘he stands higher in position than anybody else in the town.’ They walked on in their security, and we drove on in our pain. I ought to say in my pain, for I alone felt it. Oh, I cannot tell you what it was—this terrible pain; not felt so much, it seemed, because my husband could not be cleared, as for his sadness and sorrow. Nothing like it, I say, can ever be felt on earth.”

“And what else, Alice?”

“That is all,” she sighed. “I awoke for good then. But the pain and the fear remain with me.”

“Perhaps, child, you are not very well?—been eating green gooseberries, or some such trash. Nothing’s more likely to give one bad dreams than unripe fruit.”

“Why should the dream have left this impression of evil upon me—this weight of fear?” cried Alice, never so much as hearing the pater’s irreverent suggestion. “If it meant nothing, if it were not come as a warning, it would pass from my mind as other dreams pass.”

Not knowing what to say to this, the Squire said nothing. He and Tod both saw how useless it would be; no argument could shake her faith in the dream, and the impression it had left.

The Squire, more easily swayed than a child, yet suspecting nothing of the news that was on its way to Timberdale, quitted the Rectory and went home shaking his head. Alice’s solemn manner had told upon him. “I can’t make much out of the dream, Joe,” he remarked, as they walked back through the Ravine; “but I don’t say dreams are always to be ridiculed, since we read of dreams sent as warnings in the Bible. Anyhow, I hope Jack will make a good voyage. He has got home safe and sound from other voyages: why should he not from this one?”

Before that day was over, they saw Alice again. She walked over to Crabb Cot in the evening with her little girl—a sprightly child with Jack’s own honest and kindly eyes. Alice put a sealed paper into the Squire’s hand.

“I know you will think me silly,” she said to him, in a low tone: “perhaps gone a little out of my senses; but, as I told you this morning, nothing has ever impressed me so greatly and so unpleasantly as this dream. I cannot get it out of my mind for a moment; every hour, as it goes by, only serves to render it clearer. I have written it down here, every particular, more minutely than I related it to you this morning, and I have sealed it up, you see; and I am come to ask you to keep it. Should my husband ever be accused, it may serve to–”

“Now, child, don’t you talk nonsense,” interrupted the pater. “Accused of what?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did. I hope you will pardon me, Mr. Todhetley,” she went on, in deprecation; “but indeed there lies upon me a dread—an apprehension that startles me. I dare say I express myself badly; but it is there. And, do you know, Jack has lately experienced the same sensation; he told me so on Sunday. He said it was like an instinct of coming evil.”

“Then that accounts for it,” cried the Squire, considerably relieved, and wondering how Jack could be so silly, if she was. “If your husband told you that, Alice, of course the first thing you’d do would be to go and dream of it.”

“Perhaps so. What he said made no impression on me; he laughed as he said it: I don’t suppose it made much on him. Please keep the paper.”

The Squire carried the paper upstairs and locked it up in the little old walnut bureau in his bedroom. He told Alice where he had put it. And she, declining any refreshment, left again with little Polly for Timberdale Rectory.

“Has Herbert come to?” asked Tod laughingly, as he went to open the gate for her.

“Oh dear, no,” answered Alice. “He never will, if you mean as to hearing me tell the dream.”

They had a hot argument after she left: Mrs. Todhetley maintaining that some dreams were to be regarded as sacred things; while Tod ridiculed them with all his might, asserting that there never had been, and never could be anything in them to affect sensible people. The Squire, now taking one side, now veering to the other, remained in a state of vacillation, something like Mahomet’s coffin hovering between earth and heaven.

And, you will now readily understand that when the following morning, Wednesday, Colonel Letsom brought the Squire the news of Pym’s death, calling it murder, and that Jack was suspected, and the ship had gone out without him, this dream of Alice Tanerton’s took a new and not at all an agreeable prominence. Even Tod, sceptical Tod, allowed that it was “queer.”

On this same morning, Wednesday, Alice received a letter from her husband. He spoke of the mishap to the ship, said that she had put back, and had again gone out; he himself being detained in London on business, but he expected to be off in a day or two and join her at some place down channel. But not a word did he say of the cause of his detention, or of the death of Edward Pym. She heard it from others.

With this confirmation, as it seemed, of her dream, Alice took it up more warmly. She went over to the old lawyer at Islip, John Paul, recounted the dream to him, and asked what she was to do. Naturally, old Paul told her “nothing:” and he must have laughed in his sleeve as he said it.

The good ship, Rose of Delhi, finally went away with all her sails set for the East; but John Tanerton went not with her.

The inquest on the unfortunate young man, Pym, was put off from time to time, and prolonged and procrastinated. Captain Tanerton had to wait its pleasure; the ship could not.

The case presented difficulties, and the jury could not see their way to come to a verdict. Matters looked rather black against Captain Tanerton; that was not denied; but not sufficiently black, it would seem, for the law to lay hold of him. At any rate, the law did not. Perhaps the persistent advocacy of Sir Dace Fontaine went some way with the jury. Sir Dace gave it as his strong opinion that his misguided nephew, being the worse for drink, had fallen of himself, probably with his head on the iron fender, and that Captain Tanerton’s denial was a strictly true one. The end finally arrived at was—that there was not sufficient evidence to show how the death was caused.

At the close of the investigation Jack went down to Timberdale. Not the open-hearted, ready-handed Jack of the old days, but a subdued, saddened man who seemed to have a care upon him. The foolish speech he had thoughtlessly made to Mr. Freeman preceded him: and Herbert Tanerton—always looking on the darkest side of everything and everybody, considered it a proof that Jack had done the deed.

Timberdale (including Crabb) held opposite opinions; half of it taking Captain Tanerton’s side, half the contrary one. As to the Squire, he was more helpless than an old sheep. He had always liked Jack, had believed in him as in one of us: but, you see, when one gets into trouble, faith is apt to waver. A blow, argued the pater in private, is so easily given in the heat of passion.

“A pretty kettle of fish this is,” croaked Herbert to Jack, on his brother’s arrival.

“Yes, it is,” sighed Jack.

“The ship’s gone without you, I hear.”

“She had to go. Ships cannot be delayed to await the convenience of one man: you must know that, Herbert.”

“How came you to do it, John?”

“To do what?” asked Jack. “To stay? It was no fault of mine. I was one of the chief witnesses, and the coroner would not release me.”

“You know what I mean. Not that. How came you to do it, I ask?”

“To do what?” repeated Jack.

“Kill Pym.”

Jack’s face took a terrible shade of pain as he looked at his brother. “I should have thought, Herbert, that you, of all people, might have judged me better than that.”

“I don’t mean to say you did it deliberately; that you meant to do it,” returned the Rector in his coldest manner. “But that was a very awkward threat of yours—that if the brokers persisted in sending Pym out with you, there’d be murder committed. Very incautious!”

“You can’t mean what you say; you cannot surely reflect on what you would imply—that I spoke those words with intention!” flashed Jack.

“You did speak them—and they were verified,” contended Herbert. Just the same thing, you see, that Mr. Freeman had said to Jack in London. Poor Jack!

“How did you hear that I had said anything of the kind?”

“Somebody wrote it to Timberdale,” answered the parson, crustily. There could be no question that the affair had crossed him more than anything that had ever happened in this world. “I think it was Coralie Fontaine.”

“I am deeply sorry I ever spoke them, Herbert—as things have turned out.”

“No doubt you are. The tongue’s an evil and dangerous member. Let us drop the subject: the less it is recurred to now, the better.”

Captain Tanerton saw how it was—that all the world suspected him, beginning with his brother.

And he certainly did not do as much to combat the feeling as he might have done. This was noticed. He did not assert his innocence strenuously and earnestly. He said he was not guilty, it’s true, but he said it too quietly. A man accused of so terrible a crime would move heaven and earth to prove the charge false—if false it were. Jack denied his guilt, but denied it in a very tame fashion. And this had its effect upon his upholders.

There could be no mistaking that some inward trouble tormented him. His warm, genial manners had given place to thoughtfulness and care. Was Jack guilty?—his best friends acknowledged the doubt now, in the depths of their heart. Herbert Tanerton was worrying himself into a chronic fever: chiefly because disgrace was reflected on his immaculate self, Jack being his brother. Squire Todhetley, meeting Jack one day in Robert Ashton’s cornfield, took Jack’s hands in his, and whispered that if Jack did strike the blow unwittingly, he knew it was all the fault of that unhappy, cross-grained Pym. In short, the only person who retained full belief in Jack was his wife. Jack had surely done it, said Timberdale under the rose, but done it unintentionally.

Alice related her dream to Jack. Not being given to belief in dreams, Jack thought little of it. Nothing, in fact. It was no big, evil-faced man who harmed Pym, he answered, shaking his head; and he seemed to speak as one who knew.

Timberdale was no longer a pleasant resting-place for John Tanerton, and he quitted it for Liverpool, with Alice and their little girl. Aunt Dean received him coolly and distantly. The misfortune had put her out frightfully: with Jack’s income threatened, there would be less for herself to prey upon. She told him to his face that if he wanted to correct Pym, he might have waited till they got out to sea: blows were not thought much of on board ship.

The next day Jack paid a visit to the owners, and resigned his command. For, he was still attached ostensibly to the Rose of Delhi, though another master had temporarily superseded him.

“Why do you do this?” asked Mr. Charles Freeman. “We can put you into another ship, one going on a shorter voyage, and when your own comes home you can take her again.”

“No,” said Jack. “Many thanks, though, for your confidence in me. All the world seems to believe me guilty. If I were guilty I am not fit to command a ship’s crew.”

“But you were not guilty?”

More emphatically than Jack had yet spoken upon the affair, he spoke now: and his truthful, candid eyes went straight into those of his questioner.

“I was not. Before Heaven, I say it.”

Charles Freeman heaved a sigh of relief. He liked Jack, and the matter had somewhat troubled him.

“Then, Captain Tanerton—I fully believe you—why not reconsider your determination, and remain on active service? The Shamrock is going to Madras; sails in a day or two; and you shall have her. She’ll be home again before the Rose of Delhi. For your own sake I think you should do this—to still rancorous tongues.”

Jack sighed. “I can’t feel free to go,” he said. “This suspicion has troubled me more than you can imagine. I must get some employment on shore.”

“You should stand up before the world and assert your innocence in this same emphatic manner,” returned the owner. “Why have you not done it?”

Jack’s voice took a tone of evasion at once. “I have not cared to do it.”

Charles Freeman looked at him. A sudden thought flashed into his mind.

“Are you screening some one, Captain Tanerton?”

“How can you ask such a question?” rejoined Jack. But the deep and sudden flush that rose with the words, gave fresh food for speculation to Mr. Freeman. He dropped his voice.

“Surely it was not Sir Dace Fontaine who—who killed him? The uncle and nephew were not on good terms.”

Jack’s face and voice brightened again—he could answer this with his whole heart. “No, no,” he impressively said, “it was not Sir Dace Fontaine. You may at least rely upon that.”

When I at length got back to Crabb, the Fontaines were there. After the inquest, they had gone again to Brighton. Poor Verena looked like a ghost, I thought, when I saw her on the Sunday in their pew at church.

“It has been a dreadful thing,” I said to her, as we walked on together after service; “but I am sorry to see you look so ill.”

“A dreadful thing!—ay, it has, Johnny Ludlow,” was her answer, spoken in a wail. “I expect it will kill some of us.”

Sir Dace looked ill too. His furtive eyes had glanced hither and thither during the service, like a man who has a scare upon him; but they seemed ever to come back to Verena.

Not another word was said by either of us until we were near the barn. Then Verena spoke.

“Where is John Tanerton?”

“In Liverpool, I hear.”

“Poor fellow!”

Her tone was as piteous as her words, as her looks. All the bloom had gone from her pretty face; its lips were white, dry, and trembling. In Coralie there was no change; her smiles were pleasant as ever, her manners as easy. The calamity had evidently passed lightly over her; as I expect most things in life did pass.

Saying good-morning at the turning, Sir Dace and Verena branched off to Maythorn Bank. Coralie lingered yet, talking with Mr. Todhetley.

“My dear, how ill your father is looking!” exclaimed the Squire.

“He does look ill,” answered Coralie. “He has never been quite the same since that night in London. He said one day that he could not get the sight of Pym out of his mind—as he saw him lying on the floor in Ship Street.”

“It must have been a sad sight.”

“Papa is also, I think, anxious about Verena,” added Coralie. “She has taken the matter to heart in quite an unnecessary manner; just, I’m sure, as if she intended to die over it. That must vex papa: I see him glancing at her every minute in the day. Oh, I assure you I am the only cheerful one of the family now,” concluded Coralie, lightly, as she ran away to catch the others.

That was the last we saw of them that year. On the morrow we left for Dyke Manor.

In the course of the autumn John Tanerton ran up to Timberdale from Liverpool. It had come to his knowledge that the Ash Farm, belonging to Robert Ashton, was to let—Grace had chanced to mention it incidentally when writing to Alice—and poor Jack thought if he could only take it his fortune was made. He was an excellent, practical farmer, and knew he could make it answer. But it would take two or three thousand pounds to stock the Ash Farm, and Jack had not as many available shillings. He asked his brother to lend him the money.

“I always knew you were deficient in common sense,” was the Rector’s sarcastic rejoiner to the request. “Three thousand pounds! What next?”

“It would be quite safe, Herbert: you know how energetic I am. And I will pay you good interest.”

“No doubt you will—when I lend it you. You have a cheek!”

“But–”

“That will do; don’t waste breath,” interrupted Herbert, cutting him short. And he positively refused the request—refused to listen to another word.

Strolling past Maythorn Bank that same afternoon, very much down in looks and spirits, Jack saw Sir Dace Fontaine. He was leaning over his little gate, looking just as miserable as Jack. For Sir Dace to look out of sorts was nothing unusual; for Jack it was. Sir Dace asked what was amiss: and Jack—candid, free-spoken, open-natured Jack—told of his disappointment in regard to the Ash Farm: his brother not feeling inclined to advance him the necessary money to take it—three thousand pounds.

“I wonder you do not return to the sea, Captain Tanerton,” cried Sir Dace.

“I do not care to return to it,” was Jack’s answer.

“Why?”

“I shall never go to sea again, Sir Dace,” he said in his candour.

“Never go to sea again!”

“No. At any rate, not until I am cleared. While this dark cloud of suspicion lies upon me I am not fit to take the command of others. Some windy night insubordinate men might throw the charge in my teeth.”

“You are wrong,” said Sir Dace, his countenance taking an angry turn. “You know, I presume, your own innocence—and you should act as if you knew it.”

He turned back up the path without another word, entered his house, and shut the door. Jack walked slowly on. Presently he heard footsteps behind him, looked round, and saw Verena Fontaine. They had not met since the time of Pym’s death, and Jack thought he had never seen such a change in any one. Her bright colour was gone, her cheeks were wasted—a kind of dumb despair sat in her once laughing blue eyes. All Jack’s pity—and he had his share of it—went out to her.

“I heard a little of what you said to papa at the garden-gate, Captain Tanerton—not much of it. I was in the arbour. Why is it that you will not yet go to sea again? What is it you wait for?”

“I am waiting until I can stand clear in the eyes of men,” answered Jack, candid as usual, but somewhat agitated, as if the topic were a sore one. “No man with a suspicion attaching to him should presume to hold authority over other men.”

“I understand you,” murmured Verena. “If you stood as free from suspicion with all the world as you are in my heart, and—and”—she paused from emotion—“and I think in my father’s also, you would have no cause to hesitate.”

Jack took a questioning glance at her; at the sad, eager eyes that were lifted beseechingly to his. “It is kind of you to say so much,” he answered. “It struck me at the time of the occurrence that you could not, did not, believe me guilty.”

Verena shivered. As if his steady gaze were too much for her, she turned her own aside towards the blue sky.

“Good-bye,” she said faintly, putting out her hand. “I only wanted to say this—to let you know that I believe in your innocence.”

“Thank you,” said Jack, meeting her hand. “It is gratifying to hear that you do me justice.”

He walked quietly away. She stood still to watch him. And of all the distressed, sad, aching countenances ever seen in this world, few could have matched that of Miss Verena Fontaine.

V

Spring sunshine, bright and warm to-day, lay on Timberdale. Herbert Tanerton, looking sick and ill, sat on a bench on the front lawn, holding an argument with his wife, shielded from outside gazers by the clump of laurel-trees. We used to say the Rector’s illnesses were all fancy and temper; but it seemed to be rather more than that now. Worse tempered he was than ever; Jack’s misfortunes and Jack’s conduct annoyed him. During the past winter Jack had taken some employment at the Liverpool Docks, in connection with the Messrs. Freeman’s ships. Goodness knew of what description it was, Herbert would say, turning up his nose.

A day or two ago Jack made his appearance again at the Rectory; had swooped down upon it without warning or ceremony, just as he had in the autumn. Herbert did not approve of that. He approved still less of the object which had brought Jack at all. Jack was tired of the Liverpool Docks; the work he had to do was not congenial to him; and he had now come to Timberdale to ask Robert Ashton to make him his bailiff. Not being able to take a farm on his own account, Jack thought the next best thing would be to take the management of one. Robert Ashton would be parting with his bailiff at Midsummer, and Jack would like to drop into the post. Anything much less congenial to the Rector’s notions, Jack could hardly have pitched upon.

“I can see what it is—Jack is going to be a thorn in my side for ever,” the Rector was remarking to his wife, who sat near him, doing some useful work. “He never had any idea of the fitness of things. A bailiff, now!—a servant!”

“I wish you would let him take a farm, Herbert—lend him the money to stock one.”

“I know you do; you have said so before.”

Grace sighed. But when she had it on her conscience to say a thing she said it.

“Herbert, you know—you know I have never thought it fair that we should enjoy all the income we do; and–”

“What do you mean by ‘fair’?” interrupted Herbert. “I only enjoy my own.”

“Legally it is yours. Rightly, a large portion of it ought to be Jack’s. It does not do us any good, Herbert, this superfluous income; you only put it by. It does not in the slightest degree add to our enjoyment of life.”

“Do be quiet, Grace—unless you can talk sense. Jack will get no money from me. He ought to be at sea. What right had he to give it up? The Rose of Delhi is expected back now: let him take her again.”

“You know why he will not, Herbert. And he must do something for a living. I wish you would not object to his engaging himself to Robert Ashton. If–”

“Why don’t you wish anything else that’s lowering and degrading? You are as devoid of common sense as he!” retorted the parson, walking away in a fume.

Matters were in this state when we got back to Crabb Cot; to stop at it for a longer or a shorter period as fate and the painters at Dyke Manor would allow. Jack urging Robert Ashton to promise him the bailiffs post—vacant the next Midsummer; Herbert strenuously objecting to it; and Robert Ashton in a state of dilemma between the two. He would have liked well enough to engage John Tanerton: but he did not like to defy the Rector. When the Squire heard this later, his opinion vacillated, according to custom: now leaning to Herbert’s side, now to Jack’s. And the Fontaines, we found, were in all the bustle of house-moving. Their own house, Oxlip Grange, being at length ready for them, they were quitting Maythorn Bank.