Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

“Why, who can be coming here now—with such a ring as that?” she exclaimed.

“Perhaps it is Harriet’s sister!” cried the little girl, in her sharp, quick way. “Do you think it is, Harriet?”

“She’s free enough for it,” returned Harriet, in a vexed tone. “I told her she might come yesterday, Miss Tottams, my lady permitting it, but I did not tell her she might come to-day.”

I glanced at Roger. His knife and fork shook in his hands; his face wore the hue of the grave. I was little less agitated than he.

Another respite. It was only a parcel from the railway-station, which had been delayed in the delivery. And the dinner went on.

And the evening went on too, as the past one went on—undisturbed. Later, when some of us were playing at snap-dragon in the little breakfast-room, Harriet came in to march Miss Tottams off to bed.

“Your sister did not come after all, did she, Harriet?” said Mary.

“No, Miss Mary. She’s gone back to London,” continued Harriet, after a pause. “Not enough life for her, I dare say, down here.”

Roger glanced round. He did not dare ask whether Harriet knew she was gone back, or only supposed it.

Mary laughed. “Fond of life, is she?”

“She always was, Miss Mary. She is married to a gentleman. At least, that is her account of him: he is a medical man, she says. But it may be he is only a medical man’s assistant.”

“Did she go back yesterday, or to-day?” I inquired, carelessly. “She would have a cold journey.”

“Yesterday, if she’s gone at all, sir,” replied Harriet: “she’d hardly travel on Christmas-Day. If not, she’ll be here to-morrow.”

Roger groaned—and turned it off with a desperate cough, as though the raisins burnt his throat.

The next day came, Wednesday, again clear, cold, and bright. At breakfast George and Mary agreed to walk to Brighton. “You will come too,” said George, looking at us.

I said nothing. Roger shook his head. Of all places in the known world he’d not have ventured into Brighton, and run the risk of meeting her, perambulating its streets.

“No!—why, it will be a glorious walk,” remonstrated George.

“Don’t care for it this morning,” shortly answered Roger. “I’m sure Johnny doesn’t.”

Mr. Brandon came, if I may so put it, to the rescue. “I shall take a walk myself, and you two may go with me,” said he to us. “I should like to see what the country looks like yonder”—pointing to the unknown regions beyond the little church. And as this was just in the opposite direction to Brighton, Roger made no objection, and we set off soon after breakfast. The sky overhead was blue and clear, the snow on the ground dazzlingly white.

The regions beyond the church were the same as these: a long-stretched-out moor of flat dreariness. Mr. Brandon walked on. “We shall come to something or other in time,” said he. Walking with him meant walking when he was in the mood for it.

A mile or two onwards, more or less, a small settlement loomed into view, with a pound and a set of rusty stocks, and an old-fashioned inn, its swinging sign, The Rising Sun, as splendid as that other sign nearer Prior’s Glebe: and it really appeared to us as if all the inhabitants had turned out to congregate round the inn-door.

“What’s to do, I wonder?” cried Mr. Brandon: “seems to be some excitement going on.” When near enough he inquired whether anything was amiss, and the whole throng answered together.

A woman had been found that morning frozen to death in the snow, and had been carried into The Rising Sun. A young woman wearing smart clothes, added a labourer, as the rest of the voices died away: got benighted, perhaps, poor thing, and lost her way, and so lay down to die; seemed to have been dead quite a day or two, if not more. The missis at The Sheaf o’ Corn yonder had been over, and recognized her as having called in there on Sunday night and had some drink.

Why, as the man spoke, should the dread thought have flashed into my mind—was it Lizzie? Why should it have flashed simultaneously into Roger’s? Had Lizzie lost her way that past Sunday night—and sunk down into some sheltered nook to rest awhile, and so sleep and then death overtook her? Roger glanced at me with frightened eyes, a dawn of horror rising to his countenance.

“I will just step in and take a look at her,” I said, and bore on steadily for the door of the inn, deaf for once to Mr. Brandon’s authoritative call. What did I want looking at dead women, he asked: was the sight so pleasant? No, it was not pleasant, I could have answered him, and I’d rather have gone a mile away from it; but I went in for Roger’s sake.

The innkeeper—an elderly man, with a bald head and red nose—came forward, grumbling that for the past hour or two it had been sharp work to keep out the crowd, all agape to see the woman. I asked him to let me see her, assuring him it was not out of idle curiosity that I wished it. Believing me, he acquiesced at once; civilly remarking, as he led the way through the house, that he had sent for the police, and expected them every minute.

On the long table of a bleak-looking outer kitchen, probably used only in summer, lay the dead. I took my look at her.

Yes, it was Lizzie. Looking as peaceful as though she had only just gone to sleep. Poor thing!

“Do you recognize her, sir? Did you think you might?”

I shook my head in answer. It would not have done to acknowledge it. Thanking him, I went out to Roger. Mr. Brandon fired off a tirade of reproaches at me, and said he was glad to see I had turned white.

“Yes,” I emphatically whispered to Roger in the midst of it. “Go you in, and satisfy yourself.”

Roger disappeared inside the inn. Mr. Brandon was so indignant at the pair of us, that he set off at a sharp pace for home again, I with him, Roger presently catching us up. Twice during the walk, Roger was taken with a shivering-fit, as though sickening for the ague. Mr. Brandon held his tongue then, and recommended him, when we got in, to put himself between some hot blankets.

In the dead woman’s pocket was found Harriet Field’s address; and a policeman presented himself at Prior’s Glebe with the news of the calamity and to ask what Harriet knew of her. Away went Harriet to The Rising Sun, and recognized the dead. It was her sister, she said; she had called to see her on Sunday night, having walked over from Brighton, and must have lost her way on the waste land in returning. What name, was the next question put; and, after a moment’s hesitation, Harriet answered “Elizabeth Field.” Not feeling altogether sure of the marriage, she said nothing about it.

Will you accuse Roger Bevere of cowardice for holding aloof; for keeping silence? Then you must accuse me for sanctioning it. He could not bring himself to avow all the past shame to his mother. And what end would it answer now if he did?—what good effect to his poor, wretched, foolish wife? None.

“Johnny,” he said to me, with a grasp of his fevered hand, “is it wrong to feel as if a great mercy had been vouchsafed me?—is it wicked? Heaven knows, I pity her fate; I would have saved her from it if I could. Just as I’d have kept her from her evil ways, and tried to be a good husband to her—but she would not let me.”

They held an inquest upon her next day: or, as the local phraseology of the place put it, “Sat upon the body of Elizabeth Field.” The landlady of The Sheaf o’ Corn was an important witness.

She testified that the young woman came knocking at the closed door of the inn on the Sunday evening during church time, saying she had lost her way. Nobody was at home but herself and the servant-girl, her husband having gone to church. They let her in. She called for a good drop of drink—brandy-and-water—while sitting there, and was allowed to have it, though it was out of serving hours, as she declared she was perishing with cold. Before eight o’clock, she left, and was away about half-an-hour. Then she came back again, had more to drink, and bought a pint bottle of brandy, to carry, as she told them, home to her lodgings, and she got the girl to draw the cork, saying her rooms did not possess a corkscrew. She took the bottle away with her. Was she tipsy? interposed the coroner at this juncture. Not very, the witness replied, not so tipsy but that she could walk and talk, but she had had quite enough. She went away, and they saw her no more.

Harriet’s evidence, next given, did not amount to much. The deceased, her younger sister, had lived for some years in London, but she did not know at what address latterly; she used to serve at a refreshment-bar, but had left it. Until the past Sunday night, when Lizzie called unexpectedly at Prior’s Glebe, they had not met for five or six years: it was then arranged that Lizzie should come to drink tea with her the next afternoon: but she never came. Felt convinced that the death was pure accident, through her having lost her way in the snow.

With this opinion the room agreed. Instead of taking the direct path to Brighton, as Harriet had enjoined, she must have turned back to The Sheaf o’ Corn for more drink. And that she had wandered in a wrong direction, upon quitting it, across the waste land, there could not be any doubt; or that she had sat down, or fallen down, possibly from fatigue, in the drift where she was found. The brandy bottle lay near her, empty. Whether she died of the brandy, or of the exposure to the cold night, might be a question. The jury decided that it was the latter.

And nothing whatever had come out touching Roger.

Harriet had already given orders for a decent funeral, in the neighbouring graveyard. It took place on the afternoon of the following day, Friday. By a curious little coincidence, George Bevere was asked to take the service, the incumbent being ill with a cold. It afforded a pretext for Roger’s attending. He and I walked quietly up in the wake of George, and stood at the grave together. Harriet thanked us for it afterwards: she looked upon it as a compliment paid to herself.

“Scott shall forward to her every expense she has been put to as soon as I am back in London,” said Roger to me. “He will know how to manage it.”

“Shall you tell Mrs. Dyke?”

“To be sure I shall. She is a trustworthy, good woman.”

Our time at Prior’s Glebe was up, and we took our departure from it on the Saturday morning; another day of intense cold, of dark blue skies, and of bright sunshine. George left with us.

“My dear, you will try—you will try to keep straight, won’t you; to be what you ought to be,” whispered Lady Bevere in the bustle of starting, as she clasped Roger’s hands in the hall, tears falling from her eyes: all just as it was that other time in Gibraltar Terrace. “For my sake, dear; for my sake.”

“I shall do now, mother,” he whispered back, meeting her gaze through his wet eyelashes, his manner strangely solemn. “God has been very good to me, and I—I will try from henceforth to do my best in all ways.”

And Roger kept his word.

KETIRA THE GIPSY

I

“I tell you what it is, Abel. You think of everybody else before yourself. The Squire says there’s no sense in it.”

“No sense in what, Master Johnny?”

“Why, in supplying those ill-doing Standishes with your substance. Herbs, and honey, and medicine—they are always getting something or other out of you.”

“But they generally need it, sir.”

“Well, they don’t deserve it, you know. The Squire went into a temper to-day, saying the vagabonds ought to be left to starve if they did not choose to work, instead of being helped by the public.”

Our hen-roosts had been robbed, and it was pretty certain that one or other of the Standish brothers was the thief. Perhaps all three had a hand in it. Chancing to pass Abel Carew’s garden, where he was at work, I turned in to tell him of the raid; and stayed, talking. It was pleasant to sit on the bench outside the cottage-window, and watch him tend his roots and flowers. The air was redolent of perfume; the bees were humming as they sailed in the summer sunshine from herb to herb, flower to flower; the dark blue sky was unclouded.

“Just look at those queer-looking people, Abel! They must be gipsies.”

Abel let his hands rest on his rake, and lifted his eyes to the common. Crossing it, came two women, one elderly, one very young—a girl, in fact. Their red cloaks shone in the sun; very coarse and sunburnt straw hats were tied down with red kerchiefs. That they belonged to the gipsy fraternity was apparent at the first glance. Pale olive complexions, the elder one’s almost yellow, were lighted up with black eyes of wonderful brilliancy. The young girl was strikingly beautiful; her features clearly cut and delicate, as though carved from marble, her smooth and abundant hair of a purple black. The other’s hair was purple black also, and had not a grey thread in it.

“They must be coming to tell our fortunes, Abel,” I said jestingly. For the two women seemed to be making direct for the gate.

No answer from Abel, and I turned to look at him. He was gazing at the coming figures with the most intense gaze, a curious expression of inquiring doubt on his face. The rake fell from his hand.

“My search is ended,” spoke the woman, halting at the gate, her glittering black eyes scanning him intently. “You are Abel Carew.”

“Is it Ketira?” he asked, the words dropping from him in slow hesitation, as he took a step forward.

“Am I so much changed that you need doubt it for a moment?” she returned: and her tone and accent fell soft and liquid; her diction was of the purest, with just the slightest foreign ring in it. “Forty years have rolled on since you and I met, Abel Carew; but I come of a race whose faces do not change. As we are in youth, so we are in age—save for the inevitable traces left by time.”

“And this?” questioned Abel, as he looked at the girl and drew back his gate.

“She is Ketira also; my youngest and dearest. The youngest of sixteen children, Abel Carew; and every one of them, save herself, lying under the sod.”

“What—dead?” he exclaimed. “Sixteen!”

“Fifteen are dead, and are resting in peace in different lands: ten of them died in infancy ere I had well taken my first look at their little faces. She is the sixteenth. See you the likeness?” added the gipsy, pointing to the girl’s face; as she stood, modest and silent, a conscious colour tingeing her olive cheeks, and glancing up now and again through her long black eyelashes at Abel Carew.

“Likeness to you, Ketira?”

“Not to me: though there exists enough of it between us to betray that we are mother and daughter. To him—her father.”

And, while Abel was looking at the girl, I looked. And in that moment it struck me that her face bore a remarkable likeness to his own. The features were of the same high-bred cast, pure and refined; you might have said they were made in the same mould.

“I see; yes,” said Abel.

“He has been gone, too, this many a year; as you, perhaps, may know, Abel; and is with the rest, waiting for us in the spirit-land. Kettie does not remember him, it is so long ago. There are only she and I left to go now. Kettie–”

She suddenly changed her language to one I did not understand. Neither, as was easy to be seen, did Abel Carew. Whether it was Hebrew, or Egyptian, or any other rare tongue, I knew not; but I had never in my life heard its sounds before.

“I am telling Kettie that in you she may see what her father was—for the likeness in your face and his, allowing for the difference of age, is great.”

“Does Kettie not speak English?” inquired Abel.

“Oh yes, I speak it,” answered the girl, slightly smiling, and her tones were soft and perfect as those of her mother.

“And where have you been since his death, Ketira? Stationary in Ai–”

He dropped his voice to a whisper at the last word, and I did not catch it. I suppose he did not intend me to.

“Not stationary for long anywhere,” she answered, passing into the cottage with a majestic step. I lifted my hat to the women—who, for all their gipsy dress and origin, seemed to command consideration—and made off.

The arrival of these curious people caused some commotion at Church Dykely. It was so rare we had any event to enliven us. They took up their abode in a lonely cottage no better than a hut (one room up and one down) that stood within that lively place, the wilderness on the outskirts of Chanasse Grange; and there they stayed. How they got a living nobody knew: some thought the gipsy must have an income, others that Abel helped them.

“She was very handsome in her youth,” he said to me one day, as if he wished to give some explanation of the arrival I had chanced to witness. “Handsomer and finer by far than her daughter is; and one who was very near of kin to me married her—would marry her. She was a born gipsy, of what is called a high-caste tribe.”

That was all he said. For Abel’s sake, who was so respected, Church Dykely felt inclined to give respect to the women. But, when it was discovered that Ketira would tell the fortune of any one who cared to go surreptitiously to her lonely hut, the respect cooled down. “Ketira the gipsy,” she was universally called: nobody knew her by any other name. The fortune-telling came to the ears of Abel, arousing his indignation. He went to Ketira in distress, begging of her to cease such practices—but she waved him majestically out of the hut, and bade him mind his own business. Occasionally the mother and daughter shut up their dwelling and disappeared for weeks together. It was assumed they went to attend fairs and races, camping out with the gipsy fraternity. Kettie at all times and seasons was modest and good; never was an unmaidenly look seen from her, or a bold word heard. In appearance and manner and diction she might have been a born lady, and a high-bred one. Graceful and innocent was Kettie; but heedless and giddy, as girls are apt to be.

“Look there, Johnny!”

We were at Worcester races, walking about on the course. I turned at Tod’s words, and saw Ketira the gipsy, her red cloak gleaming in the sun, just as it had gleamed that day, a year before, on Dykely Common. For the past month she had been away, and her cottage shut up.

She stood at the open door of a carriage, reading the hand of the lady inside it. A notable object was Ketira on the course, with her quaint attire, her majestic figure, her fine olive-dark features, and the fire of her brilliant eyes. What good or ill luck she was promising, I know not; but I saw the lady turn pale and snatch her hand away. “You cannot know what you tell me,” she cried in a haughty tone, sharp enough and loud enough to be heard.

“Wait and see,” rejoined Ketira, turning away.

“So you have come here to see the fun, Ketira,” I said to her, as she was brushing by me. During the past year I had seen more of her than many people had, and we had grown familiar; for she, as she once expressed it, “took” to me.

“The fun and the business; the pleasure and the wickedness,” she answered, with a sweep of the hand round the course. “There’s plenty of it abroad.”

“Is Kettie not here?” I asked: and the question made her eyes glare. Though, why, I was at a loss to know, seeing that a race-ground is the legitimate resort of gipsies.

“Kettie! Do you suppose I bring Kettie to these scenes—to be gazed at by this ribald mass?”

“Well, it is a rabble, and a good one,” I answered, looking at the crowd.

“Nay, boy,” said she, following my glance, “it’s not the rabble Kettie need fear, as you count rabble; it’s their betters”—swaying her arms towards the carriages, and the dandies, their owners or guests; some of whom were balancing themselves on the steps to talk to the pretty girls within, and some were strolling about the enclosed paddock, forbidden ground but to the “upper few.” “Ketira is too fair to be shown to them.”

“They would not eat her, Ketira.”

“No, they would not eat her,” she replied in a dreamy tone, as if her thoughts were elsewhere.

“And I don’t see any other harm they could do her, guarded by you.”

“Boy,” she said, dropping her voice to an impressive whisper, and lightly touching my arm with her yellow hand, “I have read Kettie’s fate in the stars, and I see that there is some great and grievous peril approaching her. It may be averted; there’s just a chance that it may: meanwhile I am encompassing her about with care, guarding her as the apple of my eye.”

“And if it should not be averted?” I asked in the moment’s impulse, carried away by the woman’s impressive earnestness.

“Then woe be to those who bring the evil upon her!”

“And of what nature is the evil?”

“I know not,” she replied, her eyes taking again their dreamy, far-off look. “Woe is me!—for I know it not.”

“How do you do, Ludlow? Not here alone, are you?”

A good-looking young fellow, Hyde Stockhausen, had reined in his horse to ask the question: giving at the same time a keen glance to the gipsy woman and then a half-smile at me, as if he suspected I was having my fortune told.

“The rest are on the course somewhere. The Squire is driving old Jacobson about.”

As Hyde nodded and rode on, I chanced to see Ketira’s face. It was stretched out after him with the most eager gaze on it, a defiant look in her black eyes. I thought Stockhausen must have offended her.

“Do you know him?” I asked involuntarily.

“I never saw him before; but I don’t like him,” she answered, showing her white and gleaming teeth. “Who is he?”

“His name is Stockhausen.”

“I don’t like him,” she repeated in a muttering tone. “He is an enemy. I don’t like his look.”

Considering that he was a well-looking man, with a pleasant face and gay blue eyes, a face that no reasonable spirit could take umbrage at, I wondered to hear her say this.

“You must have a peculiar taste in looks, Ketira, to dislike his.”

“You don’t understand,” she said abruptly: and, turning away, disappeared in the throng.

Only once more did I catch sight of Ketira that day. It was at the lower end of Pitchcroft, near the show. She was standing in front of a booth, staring at a group of horsemen who seemed to have met and halted there, one of whom was young Stockhausen. Again the notion crossed me that he must in some way have affronted her. It was on him her eyes were fixed: and in them lay the same curious, defiant expression of antagonism, mingled with fear.

Hyde Stockhausen was the step-son of old Massock of South Crabb. The Stockhausens had a name in Worcestershire for dying off, as I have told the reader before. Hyde’s father had proved no exception. After his death the widow married Massock the brickmaker, putting up with the man’s vulgarity for the sake of his riches. It took people by surprise: for she had been a lady always, as Miss Hyde and as Mrs. Stockhausen; one might have thought she would rather have put up with a clown from Pershore fair than with Massock the illiterate. Hyde Stockhausen was well educated: his uncle, Tom Hyde the parson, had taken care of that. At twenty-one he came into some money, and at once began to do his best to spend it. He was to have been a parson, but could not get through at Oxford, and gave up trying for it. His uncle quarrelled with him then: he knew Hyde had not tried to pass, and that he openly said nobody should make a parson of him. After the quarrel, Hyde went off to see what the Continent was like. He stayed so long that the world at home thought he was lost. For the past ten or eleven months he had been back at his mother’s at South Crabb, knocking about, as Massock phrased it to the Squire one day. Hyde said he was “looking-out” for something to do: but he was quite easy as to the future, feeling sure his old uncle would leave him well off. Parson Hyde had never married; and had plenty of money to bequeath to somebody. As to Hyde’s own money, that had nearly come to an end.

Naturally old Massock (an ill-conditioned kind of man) grew impatient over this state of things, reproaching Hyde with his idle habits, which were a bad example for his own sons. And only just before this very day that we were on Worcester racecourse, rumours reached Church Dykely that Stockhausen was coming over to settle there and superintend certain fields of brick-making, which Massock had recently purchased and commenced working. As if Massock could not have kept himself and his bricks at South Crabb! But it was hardly likely that Hyde, really a gentleman, would take to brick-making.