Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series

One of the last to see signs and tokens, though they took place under her open eyes, was Mrs. Carradyne. But she saw at last. The clergyman could not walk across a new-mown field, or down a shady lane, or be hastening along the dusty turnpike road, but by some inexplicable coincidence he would be met by Miss Monk; and when he came to the Hall to pass an hour with Hubert, she generally made a third at the interview. It had pleased her latterly to take to practising on the old church organ; and if Mr. Grame was not wiled into the church with her and her attendant, the ancient clerk, who blew the bellows, she was sure to alight upon him in going or returning.

One fine evening, dinner over, when the last beams of the sun were slanting into the drawing-room, Eliza Monk was sitting back on a sofa, reading; Kate romped about the room, and Mrs. Carradyne had just rung the bell for tea. Lucy had been spending the afternoon with Mrs. Speck, and Hubert had now gone to fetch her home.

“Good gracious, Kate, can’t you be quiet!” exclaimed Miss Monk, as the child in her gambols sprang upon the sofa, upsetting the book and its reader’s temper. “Go away: you are treading on my flounces. Aunt Emma, why do you persist in having this tiresome little reptile with us after dinner?”

“Because your father will not let her be sent to the nursery,” said Mrs. Carradyne.

“Did you ever know a child like her?”

“She is only as her mother was; as you were, Eliza—always rebellious. Kate, sit down to the piano and play one of your pretty tunes.”

“I won’t,” responded Kate. “Play yourself, Aunt Emma.”

Dashing through the open glass doors, Kate began tossing a ball on the broad gravel walk below the terrace. Mrs. Carradyne cautioned her not to break the windows, and turned to the tea-table.

“Don’t make the tea yet, Aunt Emma,” interrupted Miss Monk, in tones that were quite like a command. “Mr. Grame is coming, and he won’t care for cold tea.”

Mrs. Carradyne returned to her seat. She thought the opportunity had come to say something to her niece which she had been wanting to say.

“You invited Mr. Grame, Eliza?”

“I did,” said Eliza, looking defiance.

“My dear,” resumed Mrs. Carradyne with some hesitation, “forgive me if I offer you a word of advice. You have no mother; I pray you to listen to me in her stead. You must change your line of behaviour to Mr. Grame.”

Eliza’s dark face turned red and haughty. “I do not understand you, Aunt Emma.”

“Nay, I think you do understand me, my dear. You have incautiously allowed yourself to fall into—into an undesirable liking for Mr. Grame. An unseemly liking, Eliza.”

“Unseemly!”

“Yes; because it has not been sought. Cannot you see, Eliza, how he instinctively recedes from it? how he would repel it were he less the gentleman than he is? Child, I shrink from saying these things to you, but it is needful. You have good sense, Eliza, keen discernment, and you might see for yourself that it is not to you Mr. Grame’s love is given—or ever will be.”

For once in her life Eliza Monk allowed herself to betray agitation. She opened her trembling lips to speak, but closed them again.

“A moment yet, Eliza. Let us suppose, for argument’s sake, that Mr. Grame loved you; that he wished to marry you; you know, my dear, how utterly useless it would be. Your father would not suffer it.”

“Mr. Grame is of gentle descent; my father is attached to him,” disputed Eliza.

“But Mr. Grame has nothing but his living—a hundred and sixty pounds a year; you must make a match in accordance with your own position. It would be Katherine’s trouble, Katherine’s rebellion over again. But this was mentioned for argument’s sake only; Mr. Grame will never sue for anything of the kind; and I must beg of you, my dear, to put all idea of it away, and to change your manner towards him.”

“Perhaps you fancy he may wish to sue for Lucy!” cried Eliza, in fierce resentment.

“That is a great deal more likely than the other. And the difficulties in her case would not be so great.”

“And pray why, Aunt Emma?”

“Because, my dear, I should not resent it as your father would. I am not so ambitious for her as he is for you.”

“A fine settlement for her—Robert Grame and his hundred–”

“Who is taking my name in vain?” cried a pleasant voice from the open window; and Robert Grame entered.

“I was,” said Eliza readily; her tone changing like magic to sweet suavity, her face putting on its best charm. “About to remark that the Reverend Robert Grame has a hundred faults. Aunt Emma agrees with me.”

He laughed lightly, regarding it as pleasantry, and inquired for Hubert.

Eliza stepped out on the terrace when tea was over, talking to Mr. Grame; they began to pace it slowly together. Kate and her ball sported on the gravel walk beneath. It was a warm, serene evening, the silver moon shining, the evening star just appearing in the clear blue sky.

“Lucy being away, you cannot enjoy your usual flirtation with her,” remarked Miss Monk, in a light tone.

But he did not take it lightly. Rarely had his voice been more serious than when he answered: “I beg your pardon. I do not flirt—I have never flirted with Miss Carradyne.”

“No! It has looked like it.”

Mr. Grame remained silent. “I hope not,” he said at last. “I did not intend—I did not think. However, I must mend my manners,” he added more gaily. “To flirt at all would ill become my sacred calling. And Lucy Carradyne is superior to any such trifling.”

Her pulses were coursing on to fever heat. With her whole heart she loved Robert Grame: and the secret preference he had unconsciously betrayed for Lucy had served to turn her later days to bitterness.

“Possibly you mean something more serious,” said Eliza, compressing her lips.

“If I mean anything, I should certainly mean it seriously,” replied the young clergyman, his face blushing as he made the avowal. “But I may not. I have been reflecting much latterly, and I see I may not. If my income were good it might be a different matter. But it is not; and marriage for me must be out of the question.”

“With a portionless girl, yes. Robert Grame,” she went on rapidly with impassioned earnestness, “when you marry, it must be with someone who can help you; whose income will compensate for the deficiency of yours. Look around you well: there may be some young ladies rich in the world’s wealth, even in Church Leet, who will forget your want of fortune for your own sake.”

Did he misunderstand her? It was hardly possible. She had a large fortune; Lucy none. But he answered as though he comprehended not. It may be that he deemed it best to set her ill-regulated hopes at rest for ever.

“One can hardly suppose a temptation of that kind would fall in the way of an obscure individual like myself. If it did, I could only reject it. I should not marry for money. I shall never marry where I do not love.”

They had halted near one of the terrace seats. On it lay a toy of Kate’s, a little wooden “box of bells.” Mechanically, her mind far away, Eliza took it up and began, still mechanically, turning the wire which set the bells playing with a soft but not unpleasant jingle.

“You love Lucy Carradyne!” she whispered.

“I fear I do,” he answered. “Though I have struggled against the conviction.”

A sudden crash startled them; shivers of glass fell before their feet; fit accompaniment to the shattered hopes of one who stood there. Kate Dancox, aiming at Mr. Grame’s hat, had sent her ball through the window. He leaped away to catch the culprit, and Eliza Monk sat down on the bench, all gladness gone out of her. Her love-dream had turned out to be a snare and a delusion.

“Who did that?”

Captain Monk, frightened from his after-dinner nap by the crash, came forth in anger. Kate got a box on the ear, and was sent to bed howling.

“You should send her to school, papa.”

“And I will,” declared the Captain. “She startled me out of a sleep. Out of a dream, too. And it is not often I dream. I thought I was hearing the chimes again.”

“Chimes which I have not yet been fortunate enough to hear at all,” said Mr. Grame with a smile. Eliza recalled the sound of the bells she had set in motion, and thought it must have reached her father in his sleep.

“By George, no! You shall, though, Grame. They shall ring the new year in when it comes.”

“Aunt Emma won’t like that,” laughingly commented Eliza. She was trying to be gay and careless before Robert Grame.

“Aunt Emma may dislike it!” retorted the Captain. “She has picked up some ridiculously absurd notion, Grame, that the bells bring ill-luck when they are heard. Women are so foolishly superstitious.”

“That must be a very far-fetched superstition,” said the parson.

“One might as well believe in witches,” mocked the Captain. “I have given in to her fancies for some years, not to cross her, and allowed the bells to be silent: she’s a good woman on the whole; but be hanged if I will any longer. On the last day of this year, Grame, you shall hear the chimes.”

How it came about nobody exactly knew, unless it was through Hubert, but matters were smoothed for the parson and Lucy.

Mrs. Carradyne knew his worth, and she saw that they were as much in love with one another as ever could be Hodge and Joan. She liked the idea of Lucy being settled near her—and the vicarage, large and handsome, could have its unused rooms opened and furnished. Mr. Grame honestly avowed that he should have asked for Lucy before, but for his poverty; he supposed that Lucy was poor also.

“That is so; Lucy has nothing of her own,” said Mrs. Carradyne to this. “But I am not in that condition.”

“Of course not. But—pardon me—I thought your property went to your son.”

Mrs. Carradyne laughed. “A small estate of his father’s, close by here, became my son’s at his father’s death,” she said. “My own money is at my disposal; the half of it will eventually be Lucy’s. When she marries, I shall allow her two hundred a year: and upon that, and your stipend, you will have to get along together.”

“It will be like riches to me,” said the young parson all in a glow.

“Ah! Wait until you realise the outlets for money that a wife entails,” nodded Mrs. Carradyne in her superior wisdom. “Not but that I’m sure it’s good for young people, setting up together, to be straitened at the beginning. It teaches them economy and the value of money.”

Altogether it seemed a wonderful prospect to Robert Grame. Miss Lucy thought it would be Paradise. But a stern wave of opposition set in from Captain Monk.

Hubert broke the news to him as they were sitting together after dinner. To begin with, the Captain, as a matter of course, flew into a passion.

“Another of those beggarly parsons! What possessed them, that they should fix upon his family to play off their machinations upon! Lucy Carradyne was his niece: she should never be grabbed up by one of them while he was alive to stop it.”

“Wait a minute, father,” whispered Hubert. “You like Robert Grame; I know that: you would rather see him carry off Lucy than Eliza.”

“What the dickens do you mean by that?”

Hubert said a few cautious words—hinting that, but for Lucy’s being in the way, poor Katherine’s escapade might have been enacted over again. Captain Monk relieved his mind by some strong language, sailor fashion; and for once in his life saw he must give in to necessity.

So the wedding was fixed for the month of February, just one year after they had met: that sweet time of early spring, when spring comes in genially, when the birds would be singing, and the green buds peeping and the sunlight dancing.

But the present year was not over yet. Lucy was sewing at her wedding things. Eliza Monk, smarting as from an adder’s sting, ran away to visit a family who lived near Oddingly, an insignificant little place, lying, as everybody knows, on the other side of Worcester, famous only for its dullness and for the strange murders committed there in 1806—which have since passed into history. But she returned home for Christmas.

Once more it was old-fashioned Christmas weather; Jack Frost freezing the snow and sporting his icicles. The hearty tenants, wending their way to the annual feast in the winter twilight, said how unusually sharp the air was, enough to bite off their ears and noses.

The Reverend Robert Grame made one at the table for the first time, and said grace at the Captain’s elbow. He had heard about the freedom obtaining at these dinners; but he knew he was utterly powerless to suppress it, and he hoped his presence might prove some little restraint, just as poor George West had hoped in the days gone by: not that it was as bad now as it used to be. A rumour had gone abroad that the chimes were to play again, but it died away unconfirmed, for Captain Monk kept his own counsel.

The first to quit the table was Hubert. Captain Monk looked up angrily. He was proud of his son, of his tall and graceful form, of his handsome features, proud even of his bright complexion; ay, and of his estimable qualities. While inwardly fearing Hubert’s signs of fading strength, he defiantly refused to recognise it or to admit it openly.

“What now?” he said in a loud whisper. “Are you turning renegade?”

The young man bent over his father’s shoulder. “I don’t feel well; better let me go quietly, father; I have felt pain here all day”—touching his left side. And he escaped.

There was present at table an elderly gentleman named Peveril. He had recently come with his wife into the neighbourhood and taken on lease a small estate, called by the odd name of Peacock’s Range, which belonged to Hubert and lay between Church Dykely and Church Leet. Mr. Peveril put an inopportune question.

“What is the story, Captain, about some chimes which were put up in the church here and are never allowed to ring because they caused the death of the Vicar? I was told of it to-day.”

Captain Monk looked at Mr. Peveril, but did not speak.

“One George West, I think. Was he parson here?”

“Yes, he was parson here,” said Farmer Winter, finding nobody else answered Mr. Peveril, next to whom he sat. He was a very old man now, but hale and hearty still, and a steadfast ally of his landlord. “Given that parson his way and we should never have had the chimes put up at all. Sweet sounding bells they are, too.”

“But how could the chimes kill him?” went on Mr. Peveril. “Did they kill him?”

“George West was a quarrelsome, mischief-making meddler, good for nothing but to set the parish together by the ears; and I must beg of you to drop his name when at my table, Peveril. As to the chimes, you will hear them to-night.”

Captain Monk spoke in his sternest tones, and Mr. Peveril bowed. Robert Grame had listened in surprise. He wondered what it all meant—for nobody had ever told him of this phase of the past. The table clapped its unsteady hands and gave a cheer for the chimes, now to be heard again.

“Yes, gentlemen,” said the Captain, not a whit more steady than his guests. “They shall ring for us to-night, though it brought the parson out of his grave.”

A few minutes before twelve the butler, who had his orders, came into the dining-room and set the windows open. His master gave him another order and the man withdrew. Entering the drawing-room, he proceeded to open those windows also. Mr. Peveril, and one or two more guests, sat with the family; Hubert lay back in an easy-chair.

“What are you about, Rimmer?” hastily cried out Mrs. Carradyne in surprise. “Opening the windows!”

“It is by the master’s orders, ma’am,” replied the butler; “he bade me open them, that you and the ladies might get a better hearing of the chimes.”

Mrs. Carradyne, superstitious ever, grew white as death. “The chimes!” she breathed in a dread whisper. “Surely, surely, Rimmer, you must be mistaken. The chimes cannot be going to ring again!”

“They are to ring the New Year in,” said the man. “I have known it this day or two, but was not allowed to tell, as Madam may guess”—glancing at his mistress. “John Cale has got his orders, and he’ll set ’em going when the clock has struck twelve.”

“Oh, is there no one who will run to stop it?” bewailed Mrs. Carradyne, wringing her hands in all the terror of a nameless fear. “There may yet be time. Rimmer! can you go?”

Hubert came out of his chair laughing. Rimmer was round and fat now, and could not run if he tried. “I’ll go, aunt,” he said. “Why, walking slowly, I should get there before Rimmer.”

The words, “walking slowly,” may have misled Mrs. Carradyne; or, in the moment’s tribulation, perhaps she forgot that Hubert ought not to be the one to use much exertion; but she made no objection. No one else made way, and Hubert hastened out, putting on his overcoat as he went towards the church.

It was the loveliest night; the air was still and clear, the landscape white and glistening, the moon bright as gold. Hubert, striding along at a quick walk, had traversed half the short distance, when the church clock struck out the first note of midnight. And he knew he should not be in time—unless–

He set off to run: it was such a very little way! Flying along without heed to self, he reached the churchyard gate. And there he was forced—forced—to stop to gather up his laboured breath.

Ring, ring, ring! broke forth the chimes melodiously upon Hubert’s ear. “Stop!” he shouted, panting; “stop! stop!”—just as if John Cale could hear the warning: and he began leaping over the gravestones in his path, after the irreverent fashion of Miss Kate Dancox.

“Stop!” he faintly cried in his exhaustion, dashing through the vestry, as the strains of “The Bay of Biscay” pursued their harmonious course overhead, sounding louder here than in the open air. “Sto–”

He could not end the word. Pulling the little door open, he put his foot on the first step of the narrow ladder of a staircase: and then fell prone upon it. John Cale and young Mr. Threpp, the churchwarden’s son, who had been the clerk’s companion, were descending the stairs, after the chimes had chimed themselves out, and they had locked them up again to (perhaps) another year, when they found some impediment below.

“What is it?” exclaimed young Mr. Threpp. The clerk turned on his lantern.

It was Hubert, Captain Monk’s son and heir. He lay there with a face of deadly whiteness, a blue shade encircling his lips.

THE SILENT CHIMES

III.—RINGING AT MIDDAY

I

It was an animated scene; and one you only find in England. The stubble of the cornfields looked pale and bleak in the departing autumn, the wind was shaking down the withered leaves from the trees, whose thinning branches told unmistakably of the rapidly-advancing winter. But the day was bright after the night’s frost, and the sun shone on the glowing scarlet coats of the hunting-men, and the hounds barked in every variety of note and leaped with delight in the morning air. It was the first run of the season, and the sportsmen were fast gathering at the appointed spot—a field flanked by a grove of trees called Poachers’ Copse.

Ten o’clock, the hour fixed for the throw-off, came and went, and still Poachers’ Copse was not relieved of its busy intruders. Many a gentleman fox-hunter glanced at his hunting-watch as the minutes passed, many a burly farmer jerked his horse impatiently; while the grey-headed huntsman cracked his long whip amongst his canine favourites and promised them they should soon be on the scent. The delay was caused by the non-arrival of the Master of the Hounds.

But now all eyes were directed to a certain quarter, and by the brightened looks and renewed stir, it might be thought that he was appearing. A stranger, sitting his horse well and quietly at the edge of Poachers’ Copse, watched the newcomers as they came into view. Foremost of them rode an elderly gentleman in scarlet, and by his side a young lady who might be a few years past twenty.

“Father and daughter, I’ll vow,” commented the stranger, noting that both had the same well-carved features, the same defiant, haughty expression, the same proud bearing. “What a grandly-handsome girl! And he, I suppose, is the man we are waiting for. Is that the Master of the Hounds?” he asked aloud of the horseman next him, who chanced to be young Mr. Threpp.

“No, sir, that is Captain Monk,” was the answer. “They are saying yonder that he has brought word the Master is taken ill and cannot hunt to-day”—which proved to be correct. The Master had been taken with giddiness when about to mount his horse.

The stranger rode up to Captain Monk; judging him to be regarded—by the way he was welcomed and the respect paid him—as the chief personage at the meet, representing in a manner the Master. Lifting his hat, he begged grace for having, being a stranger, come out, uninvited, to join the field; adding that his name was Hamlyn and he was staying with Mr. Peveril at Peacock’s Range.

Captain Monk wheeled round at the address; his head had been turned away. He saw a tall, dark man of about five-and-thirty years, so dark and sunburnt as to suggest ideas of his having recently come from a warmer climate. His hair was black, his eyes were dark brown, his features and manner prepossessing, and he spoke as a man accustomed to good society.

Captain Monk, lifting his hat in return, met him with cordiality. The field was open to all, he said, but any friend of Peveril’s would be doubly welcome. Peveril himself was a muff, in so far as that he never hunted.

“Hearing there was to be a meet to-day, I could not resist the temptation of joining it; it is many years since I had the opportunity of doing so,” remarked the stranger.

There was not time for more, the hounds were throwing off. Away dashed the Captain’s steed, away dashed the stranger’s, away dashed Miss Monk’s, the three keeping side by side.

Presently came a fence. Captain Monk leaped it and galloped onwards after the other red-coats. Miss Eliza Monk would have leaped it next, but her horse refused it; yet he was an old hunter and she a fearless rider. The stranger was waiting to follow her. A touch of the angry Monk temper assailed her and she forced her horse to the leap. He had a temper also; he did not clear it, and horse and rider came down together.

In a trice Mr. Hamlyn was off his own steed and raising her. She was not hurt, she said, when she could speak; a little shaken, a little giddy—and she leaned against the fence. The refractory horse, unnoticed for the moment, got upon his legs, took the fence of his own accord and tore away after the field. Young Mr. Threpp, who had been in some difficulty with his own steed, rode up now.

“Shall I ride back to the Hall and get the pony-carriage for you, Miss Eliza?” asked the young man.

“Oh, dear, no,” she replied, “thank you all the same. I should prefer to walk home.”

“Are you equal to walking?” interposed the stranger.

“Quite. The walk will do away with this faintness. It is not the first fall I have had.”

The stranger whispered to young Mr. Threpp—who was as good-natured a young fellow as ever lived. Would he consent to forego the sport that day and lead his horse to Mr. Peveril’s? If so, he would accompany the young lady and give her the support of his arm.

So William Threpp rode off, leading Mr. Hamlyn’s horse, and Miss Monk accepted the stranger’s arm. He told her a little about himself as they walked along. It might not have been an ominous commencement, but intimacies have grown sometimes out of a slighter introduction. Their nearest way led past the Vicarage. Mr. Grame saw them from its windows and came running out.

“Has any accident taken place?” he asked hurriedly. “I hope not.”

Eliza Monk’s face flushed. He had been Lucy’s husband several months now, but she could not yet suddenly meet him without a thrill of emotion. Lucy ran out next; the pretty young wife for whom she had been despised. Eliza answered Mr. Grame curtly, nodded to Lucy, and passed on.

“And, as I was telling you,” continued Mr. Hamlyn, “when this property was left to me in England, I made it a plea for throwing up my post in India, and came home. I landed about six weeks ago, and have been since busy in London with lawyers. Peveril, whom I knew in the days gone by, wrote to invite me to come to him here on a week’s visit, before he and his wife leave for the South of France.”