Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

Coralie Fontaine heard it from Mary Ann Letsom. In Mary Ann’s indignation at the report, she spoke it out to Coralie; and Coralie, laughing at the absurdity of the thing, repeated it to Sir Dace. How he received it, or what he said about it, did not transpire.

A stagnant kind of atmosphere seemed to hang over us just then, like the heavy, unnatural calm that precedes the storm. Sir Dace got weaker day by day, more of a shadow; Herbert Tanerton and his brother were still at variance, so far as Jack’s future was concerned; and Mr. Chandler seemed to have taken up his abode in London for good.

“Does he never mean to come back?” demanded Alice one day of the Squire: and her lips and cheeks were red with fever as she asked it. The truth was, that some cause of Paul and Chandler’s then on at Westminster was prolonging itself out—even when it did begin—unconscionably.

One morning I met Ben Rymer as he was leaving Oxlip Grange. Coralie Fontaine had walked with him to the gate, talking earnestly, their two heads together. Ben shook hands with her and came out, looking as grave as a judge.

“How is Sir Dace?” I asked him. “Getting on?”

“Getting off,” responded Ben. “For that’s what it will be now; and not long first, unless he mends.”

“Is he worse?”

“He is nearly as bad as he can be, to be alive. And yesterday, he must needs go careering off to Islip by himself to transact some business with Paul the lawyer! He was no more fit for it than—than this is,” concluded Ben, giving a flick to his silk umbrella as he marched off. Ben went in for silk umbrellas now: in the old days a cotton one would have been too good for him.

“I am so sorry to hear Sir Dace is no better,” I said to Coralie Fontaine, who had waited at the gate to speak to me.

Coralie shook her head. Some deep feeling sat in her generally passive face: the tears stood in her eyes.

“Thank you, Johnny Ludlow. It is very sad. I feel sure Mr. Rymer has given up all hope, though he does not say so to me. Verena looks nearly as ill as papa. I wish we had never come to Europe!”

“Sir Dace exerts himself too greatly, Mr. Rymer says.”

“Yes; and worries himself also. As if his affairs needed as much as a thought!—I am sure they must be just as straight and smooth as yonder green plain. He had to see Mr. Paul yesterday about some alteration in his will, and went to Islip, instead of sending for Paul here. I thought he would have died when he got home. Papa has a strange restlessness upon him. Good-bye, Johnny. I’d ask you to come in but that things are all so miserable.”

It was late in the evening, getting towards bedtime. Mrs. Todhetley had gone upstairs with the face-ache, Tod was over at old Coney’s, and I and the Squire were sitting alone, when Thomas surprised us by showing in Tom Chandler. We did not know he was back from London.

“Yes, I got back this evening,” said he, as he sat down near the lamp, and spread some papers out on the table. “I am in a bit of a dilemma, Mr. Todhetley; and I am come here at this late hour to put it before you.”

Chandler’s voice had dropped to a mysterious whisper; his eyes were glancing at the door to make sure it was shut. The Squire pushed up his spectacles and drew his chair nearer. I sat on the opposite side, wondering what was coming.

“That suspicion of Alice Tanerton’s—that Sir Dace killed Pym,” went on Chandler, his left hand resting on the papers, his eyes on the Squire’s. “I think it was a true one.”

“A what?” cried the pater.

“A true one. That Sir Dace did kill him.”

“Goodness bless me!” gasped the Squire, his good old face taking a lighter tint. “What on earth do you mean, man?”

“Well, I mean just that,” answered Chandler. “And I feel myself to be, in consequence, in an uncommonly awkward position. One can’t well accuse Sir Dace, a man close upon the grave; and Paul’s relative in addition. And yet, Captain Tanerton must be cleared.”

“I can’t make top or tail of what you mean, Tom Chandler!” cried the Squire, blinking like a bewildered owl. “Don’t you think you are dreaming?”

“Wish I was,” said Tom, “so far as this business goes. Look here. I’ll begin at the beginning and go through the story. You’ll understand it then.”

“It’s more than I do now. Or Johnny, either. Look at him!”

“When Mrs. John Tanerton brought to us that accusation of Sir Dace, on the strength of her dream,” began Chandler, after glancing at me, “I thought she must have turned a little crazy. It was a singular dream; there’s no denying that; and the exact resemblance to Sir Dace Fontaine of the man she saw in it, was still more singular: so much so, that I could not help being impressed by it. Another thing that strongly impressed me, was Captain Tanerton’s testimony: from the moment I heard it and weighed his manner in giving it, I felt sure of his innocence. Revolving these matters in my own mind, I resolved to go to Sir Dace and get him to give me his version of the affair; not in the least endorsing in my own mind her suspicion of him, or hinting at it to him, you understand; simply to get more evidence. I went to Sir Dace, heard what he had to say, and brought away with me a most unpleasant doubt.”

“That he was guilty?”

“That he might be. His manner was so confused, himself so agitated when I first spoke. His hands trembled, his lips grew white, He strove to turn it off, saying I had startled him, but I felt a very queer doubt arising in my mind. His narrative had to be drawn from him; it was anything but clear, and full of contradictions. ‘Why do you come to me about this?’ he asked: ‘have you heard anything?’ ‘I only come to ask you for information,’ was my answer: ‘Mrs. John Tanerton wants the matter looked into. If her husband is not guilty, he ought to be cleared in the face of the world.’ ‘Nobody thinks he was guilty,’ retorted Sir Dace in a shrill tone of annoyance. ‘Nobody was guilty: Pym must have fallen and injured himself.’ I came away from the interview, as I tell you, with my doubts very unpleasantly stirred,” resumed Chandler; “and it caused me to be more earnest in looking after odds and ends of evidence in London than I otherwise might have been.”

“Did you pick up any?”

“Ay, I did. I turned the people at the Marylebone lodgings inside out, so to say; I found out a Mrs. Ball, where Verena Fontaine had hidden herself; and I quite haunted Dame Richenough’s in Ship Street, Tower Hill. There I met with Mark Ferrar. A piece of good fortune, for he told me something that–”

“What was it?” gasped the Squire, eagerly.

“Why this—and a most important piece of evidence it is. That night, not many minutes before the fatal accident must have occurred, Ferrar saw Sir Dace Fontaine in Ship Street, watching Pym’s room. He was standing in an entry on the opposite side of the street, gazing across at Pym’s. This, you perceive, disproves one fact testified to—that Sir Dace spent that evening shut up in his library at home. Instead of that he was absolutely down on the spot.”

The Squire rubbed his face like a helpless man. “Why could not Ferrar have said so at the time?” he asked.

“Ferrar attached no importance to it; he thought Sir Dace was but looking over to see whether his daughter was at Pym’s. But Ferrar had no opportunity of giving testimony: he sailed away the next morning in the ship. Nothing could exceed his astonishment when I told him in London that Captain Tanerton lay under the suspicion. He has taken Crabb on his way to Worcester to support this testimony if needful, and to impart it privately to Tanerton.”

“Well, it all seems a hopeless puzzle to me,” returned the pater. “Why on earth did not Jack speak out more freely, and say he was not guilty?”

“I don’t know. The fact, that Sir Dace did go out that night,” continued Chandler, “was confirmed by one of the maids in the Marylebone Road—Maria; a smart girl with curled hair. She says Sir Dace had not been many minutes in the library that night, to which he went straight from the dinner-table in a passion, when she saw him leave it again, catch up his hat with a jerk as he passed through the hall, and go out at the front-door. It was just after Ozias had been to ask him whether he would take some coffee, and got sent away with a flea in his ear. Whether or not Sir Dace came in during the evening, Maria does not know; he may, or may not, have done so, but she did see him come home in a cab at ten o’clock, or soon after it. She was gossipping with the maids at a house some few doors off, when a cab stopped near to them, Sir Dace got out of it, paid the man, and walked on to his own door. Maria supposed the driver had made a mistake in the number. So you see there can be no doubt that Sir Dace was out that night.”

“He was certainly in soon after ten,” I remarked. “Verena came home about that time, and she saw him downstairs.”

“Don’t you bring her name up, Johnny,” corrected the Squire. “That young woman led to all the mischief. Running away, as she did—and sending us off to that wax-work show in search of her! Fine figures they cut, some of those dumb things!”

“I found also,” resumed Chandler, turning over his papers, on which he had looked from time to time, “that Sir Dace met with one or two slight personal mishaps that night. He sprained his wrist, accounting for it the next morning by saying he had slipped in getting into bed; and he lost a little piece out of his shirt-front.”

“Out of his shirt front!”

“Just here,” and Chandler touched the middle button of his shirt. “The button-hole and a portion of the linen round it had been torn away. Nothing would have been known of that but for the laundress. She brought the shirt back before putting it into water, lest it should be said she had done it in the washing. Maria remembered this, and told me. A remarkably intelligent girl, that.”

“Did Maria—I remember the girl—suspect anything?” asked the Squire.

“Nothing whatever. She does not now; I accounted otherwise for my inquiries. Altogether, what with these facts I have told you, and a few minor items, and Ferrar’s evidence, I can draw but one conclusion—that Sir Dace Fontaine killed Pym.”

“I never heard such a strange thing!” cried the pater. “And what’s to be done?”

“That’s the question,” said Chandler. “What is to be done?” And he left us with the doubt.

Well, it turned out to be quite true; but I have not space here to go more into detail. Sir Dace Fontaine was guilty, and the dream was a true dream.

“Did you suspect him?” the Squire asked privately of Jack, who was taken into counsel the next day.

“No, I never suspected Sir Dace,” Jack answered. “I suspected some one else—Verena.”

“No!”

“I did. About half-past eight o’clock that night, Ferrar had seen a young lady—or somebody dressed as one—watching Pym’s house from the opposite entry: just where, it now appears, he later saw Sir Dace. Ferrar thought it was Verena Fontaine. A little later, in fact just after the calamity must have occurred, Alfred Saxby also saw a young lady running from the direction of the house, whom he also took to be Verena. Ferrar and I came to the same conclusion—I don’t know about Saxby—that Verena must have been present when it happened. I thought that, angry at the state Pym was in, she might have given him a push in her vexation, perhaps inadvertently, and that he fell. Who knew?”

“But Verena was elsewhere that evening, you know; at a concert.”

“I knew she said so; but I did not believe it. Of course I know now that both Ferrar and Saxby were mistaken; that it was somebody else they saw, who bore, one must imagine, some general resemblance to her.”

“Well, I think you might have known better,” cried the Squire.

“Yes, I suppose I ought to. But, before the inquest had terminated, I chanced to be alone with Verena; and her manner—nay, her words, two or three she said—seemed to imply her guilt, and also a consciousness that I must be aware of it. I had no doubt at all from that hour.”

“And is it for that reason, consideration for her, that you have partially allowed suspicion to rest upon yourself?” pursued the Squire, hotly.

“Of course. How could I be the means of throwing it upon a defenceless girl?”

“Well, John Tanerton, you are a chivalrous goose!”

“Verena must have known the truth all along.”

“That’s not probable,” contended the Squire. “And Chandler wants to know what is to be done.”

“Nothing all all, that I can see,” answered Jack. “Sir Dace is not in a condition to have trouble thrown upon him.”

Good Jack! generous Jack! There are not many such self-denying spirits in the world.

And what would have been done is beyond guessing, had Sir Dace not solved the difficulty himself. Solved it by dying.

But I must first tell of a little matter that happened. Although we had heard what we had, one could not treat the man cavalierly, and the Squire—just as good at heart as Jack—went up to make inquiries at Oxlip Grange, as usual. One day he and Colonel Letsom strolled up together, and were asked to walk in. Sir Dace wished to see them.

“If ever you saw a living skeleton, it’s what he is,” cried the Squire to us when he came home. “It is in the nature of the disease, I believe, that he should be. Dress him up in his shroud, and you’d take him for nothing but bones.”

Sir Dace was in the easy-chair by his bedroom fire, Coralie sitting with him. By his side stood a round table with papers and letters upon it.

“I am glad you have chanced to call,” he said to them, as he sent Coralie away. “I wanted my signature witnessed by some one in influential authority. You are both county magistrates.”

“The signature to your will,” cried the Squire, falling to that conclusion.

“Not my will,” answered Sir Dace. “That is settled.”

He turned to the table, his long, emaciated, trembling fingers singling out a document that lay upon it. “This is a declaration,” he said, “which I have written out myself, being of sound mind, you perceive, and which I wish to sign in your presence. I testify that every word written in it is truth; I, a dying man, swear that it is so, before God.”

His shaky hands scrawled his signature, Dace Fontaine; and the Squire and Colonel Letsom added theirs to it. Sir Dace then sealed up the paper, and made them each affix his seal also. He then tottered to a cabinet standing by the bed’s head, and locked it up in it.

“You will know where to find it when I am gone,” he said. “I wish some one of you to read it aloud, after the funeral, to those assembled here. When my will shall have been read, then read this.”

On the third day after this, at evening, Sir Dace Fontaine died. We heard no more about anything until the day of the funeral, which took place on the following Monday. Sir Dace left a list of those he wished invited to it, and they went. Sir Robert Tenby, Mr. Brandon, Colonel Letsom and his eldest son; the parsons of Timberdale, Crabb, and Islip; the three doctors who had attended him; old Paul and Tom Chandler; Captain Tanerton, and ourselves.

He was buried at Islip, by his own directions. And when we got back to the Grange, after leaving him in the cold churchyard, Mr. Paul read out the will. Coralie and Verena sat in the room in their deep mourning. Coralie’s eyes were dry, but Verena sobbed incessantly.

Apart from a few legacies, one of which was to his servant Ozias, his property was left to his two daughters, in equal shares. The chief legacy, a large one, was left to John Tanerton—three thousand pounds. You should have seen Jack’s face of astonishment as he heard it. Herbert looked as if he could not believe his ears. And Verena glanced across at Jack with a happy flush.

“Papa charged me, just before he died, to say that a sealed paper of his would be found in his private cabinet, which was to be read out now,” spoke Coralie, in the pause which ensued, as old Paul’s voice ceased. “He said Colonel Letsom and Mr. Todhetley would know where to find it,” she added; breaking down with a sob.

The paper was fetched, and old Paul was requested to read it. So he broke the seals.

You may have guessed what it was: a declaration of his guilt—if guilt it could be called. In a straightforward manner he stated the particulars of that past night: and the following is a summary of them.

Sir Dace went out again that night after dinner, not in secret, or with any idea of secrecy; it simply chanced, he supposed, that no one saw him go. He was too uneasy about Verena to rest; he fully believed her to be with Pym; and he went down to Ship Street. Before entering the street he dismissed the cab, and proceeded cautiously to reconnoitre, believing that if he were seen, Pym would be capable of concealing Verena. After looking about till he was tired, he took up his station opposite Pym’s lodgings—which seemed to be empty—and stayed, watching, until close upon nine o’clock, when he saw Pym enter them. Before he had time to go across, the landlady began to close the shutters; while she was doing it, Captain Tanerton came up, and went in. Captain Tanerton came out in a minute or two, and walked quickly back up the street: he, Sir Dace, would have gone after him to ask him whether Verena was indoors with Pym, or not, but the captain’s steps were too fleet for him. Sir Dace then crossed over, opened the street-door, and entered Pym’s parlour. A short, sharp quarrel ensued. Pym was in liquor, and—consequently—insolent. In the heat of passion Sir Dace—he was a strong man then—seized Pym’s arm, and shook him. Pym flew at him in return like a tiger, twisted his wrist round, and tore his shirt. Sir Dace was furious then; he struck him a powerful blow on the head—behind the ear no doubt, as the surgeons testified afterwards—and Pym fell. Leaving him there, Sir Dace quitted the house quietly, never glancing at the thought that the blow could be fatal. But, when seated in a cab on the way home, the idea suddenly occurred to him—what if he had killed Pym? The conviction, though he knew not why, or wherefore, that he had killed him, took hold of him, and he went into his house, a terrified man. The rest was known, the manuscript went on to say. He allowed people to remain in the belief that he had not been out-of-doors that night: though how bitterly he repented not having declared the truth at the time, none could know, save God. He now, a dying man, about to appear before that God, who had been full of mercy to him, declared that this was the whole truth, and he further declared that he had no intention whatever of injuring Pym; all he thought was, to knock him down for his insolence. He hoped the world would forgive him, though he had never forgiven himself; and he prayed his daughters to forgive him, especially Verena. He would counsel her to return to the West Indies, and marry George Bazalgette.

That ended the declaration: and an astounding surprise it must have been to most of the eager listeners. But not one ventured to make any comment on it, good or bad. The legacy to John Tanerton was understood now. Verena crossed the room as we were filing out, and put her two hands into his.

“I have had a dreadful fear upon me that it was papa,” she whispered to him, the tears running down her cheeks. “Nay, worse than a fear: a conviction. I think you have had the same, Captain Tanerton, and that you have generously done your best to screen him; and I thank you with my whole heart.”

“But, indeed,” began Jack—and pulled himself up, short.

“Let me tell you all,” said Verena. “I saw papa come in that night: I mean to our lodgings in the Marylebone Road, so I knew he had been out. It was just past ten o’clock: Ozias saw him too—but he is silent and faithful. I did not want papa to see me; fate, I suppose, made me back into that little room, papa’s library, until he should have gone upstairs. He did not go up; he came into the room: and I hid myself behind the window curtain. I cannot describe to you how strange papa looked; dreadful; and he groaned and flung up his arms as one does in despair. It frightened me so much that I said nothing to anybody. Still I had not the key to it: I thought it must be about me: and the torn shirt—for I saw that, and saw him button his coat over it—I supposed he had, himself, done accidentally. I drew one of the glass doors softly open, got out that way, and up to the drawing-room. Then you came in with the news of Edward’s death. At first, for a day or so, I thought as others did—that suspicion lay on you. But, gradually, all these facts impressed themselves on my mind in their startling reality; and I felt, I saw, it could have been no other than he—my poor father. Oh, Captain Tanerton, forgive him! Forgive me!”

“There’s nothing to forgive; I am sorry it has come out now,” whispered Jack, deeming it wise to leave it at that, and he stooped and gave her the kiss of peace.

So this was the end of it. Of the affair which had so unpleasantly puzzled the world, and tried Jack.

Jack, loyal, honest-hearted Jack, shook hands with everybody, giving a double shake to Herbert’s, and went forthwith down to Liverpool.

“I will take the Rose of Delhi again, now,” he said to the Freemans. “For this next voyage, at any rate.”

“And for many a one after it, we hope, Captain Tanerton,” was their warm answer. And Jack and his bright face went direct from the office to New Brighton, to tell Aunt Dean.

And what became of the Miss Fontaines, you would like to ask? Well, I have not time at present to tell you about Coralie; I don’t know when I shall have. But, if you’ll believe me, Verena took her father’s advice, sailed back over the seas, and married George Bazalgette.

A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE

What I am about to tell of took place during the last year of John Whitney’s life, now many years ago. We could never account for it, or understand it: but it occurred (at least, so far as our experience of it went) just as I relate it.

It was not the custom for schools to give a long holiday at Easter then: one week at most. Dr. Frost allowed us from the Thursday in Passion week, to the following Thursday; and many of the boys spent it at school.

Easter was late that year, and the weather lovely. On the Wednesday in Easter week, the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley drove over to spend the day at Whitney Hall, Tod and I being with them. Sir John and Lady Whitney were beginning to be anxious about John’s health—their eldest son. He had been ailing since the previous Christmas, and he seemed to grow thinner and weaker. It was so perceptible when he got home from school this Easter, that Sir John put himself into a flurry (he was just like the Squire in that and in many another way), and sent an express to Worcester for Henry Carden, asking him to bring Dr. Hastings with him. They came. John wanted care, they said, and they could not discover any specific disease at present. As to his returning to school, they both thought that question might be left with the boy himself. John told them he should prefer to go back, and laughed a little at this fuss being made over him: he should soon be all right, he said; people were apt to lose strength more or less in the spring. He was sixteen then, a slender, upright boy, with a delicate, thoughtful face, dreamy, grey-blue eyes and brown hair, and he was ever gentle, sweet-tempered, and considerate. Sir John related to the Squire what the doctors had said, avowing that he could not “make much out of it.”

In the afternoon, when we were out-of-doors on the lawn in the hot sunshine, listening to the birds singing and the cuckoo calling, Featherston came in, the local doctor, who saw John nearly every day. He was a tall, grey, hard-worked man, with a face of care. After talking a few moments with John and his mother, he turned to the rest of us on the grass. The Squire and Sir John were sitting on a garden bench, some wine and lemonade on a little table between them. Featherston shook hands.

“Will you take some?” asked Sir John.

“I don’t mind a glass of lemonade with a dash of sherry in it,” answered Featherston, lifting his hat to rub his brow. “I have been walking beyond Goose Brook and back, and upon my word it is as hot as midsummer.”

“Ay, it is,” assented Sir John. “Help yourself, doctor.”

He filled a tumbler with what he wanted, brought it over to the opposite bench, and sat down by Mrs. Todhetley. John and his mother were at the other end of it; I sat on the arm. The rest of them, with Helen and Anna, had gone strolling away; to the North Pole, for all we knew.