Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series

Mrs. Moffit picked up a letter and consulted it, looking at the young lady from time to time, as if taking stock of her appearance. “I received a letter this morning from the country—a family require a well-qualified governess for their one little girl. Your testimonials as to qualifications might suit—and you are, I believe, a gentlewoman–”

“Oh, yes; my father was–”

“Yes, yes, I remember—I’ve got it down; don’t worry me,” impatiently spoke the oracle, cutting short the interruption. “So far you might suit: but in other respects—I hardly know what to think.”

“But why?” asked the other timidly, blushing a little under the intent gaze.

“Well, you are very young, for one thing; and they might think you too good-looking.”

The girl’s blush grew red as a rose; she had delicate features and it made her look uncommonly pretty. A half-smile sat in her soft, dark hazel eyes.

“Surely that could not be an impediment. I am not so good-looking as all that!”

“That’s as people may think,” was the significant answer. “Some families will not take a pretty governess—afraid of their sons, you see. This family says nothing about looks; for aught I know there may be no sons in it. ‘Thoroughly competent’—reading from the letter—‘a gentlewoman by birth, of agreeable manners and lady-like. Salary, first year, to be forty pounds.’”

“And will you not recommend me?” pleaded the young governess, her voice full of entreaty. “Oh, please do! I know I should be found fully competent, and promise you that I would do my best.”

“Well, there may be no harm in my writing to the lady about you,” decided Mrs. Moffit, won over by the girl’s gentle respect—with which she did not get treated by all her clients. “Suppose you come here again on Monday next?”

The end of the matter was that Miss West was engaged by the lady mentioned—no other than Mrs. Carradyne. And she journeyed down into Worcestershire to enter upon the situation.

But clever (and generally correct) Mrs. Moffit made one mistake, arising, no doubt, from the chronic state of hurry she was always in. “Miss West is the daughter of the late Colonel William West,” she wrote, “who went to India with his regiment a few years ago, and died there.” What Miss West had said to her was this: “My father, a clergyman, died when I was a little child, and my uncle William, Colonel West, the only relation I had left, died three years ago in India.” Mrs. Moffit somehow confounded the two.

This might not have mattered on the whole. But, as you perceive, it conveyed a wrong impression at Leet Hall.

“The governess I have engaged is a Miss West; her father was a military man and a gentleman,” spake Mrs. Carradyne one morning at breakfast to Captain Monk. “She is rather young—about twenty, I fancy; but an older person might never get on at all with Kate.”

“Had good references with her, I suppose?” said the Captain.

“Oh, yes. From the agent, and especially from the ladies who have brought her up.”

“Who was her father, do you say?—a military man?”

“Colonel William West,” assented Mrs. Carradyne, referring to the letter she held. “He went to India with his regiment and died there.”

“I’ll refer to the army-list,” said the Captain; “daresay it’s all right. And she shall keep Kate in order, or I’ll know the reason why.”

The evening sunlight lay on the green plain, on the white fields from which the grain had been reaped, and on the beautiful woods glowing with the varied tints of autumn. A fly was making its way to Leet Hall, and its occupant, looking out of it on this side and that, in a fever of ecstasy, for the country scene charmed her, thought how favoured was the lot of those who could live out their lives amidst its surroundings.

In the drawing-room at the Hall, watching the approach of this same fly, stood Mrs. Hamlyn, a frown upon her haughty face. Philip Hamlyn was still detained in the West Indies, and since her reconciliation to her father, she would go over with her baby-boy to the Hall and remain there for days together. Captain Monk liked to have her, and he took more notice of the baby than he had ever taken of a baby yet. For when Kate was an infant he had at first shunned her, because she had cost Katherine her life. This baby, little Walter, was a particularly forward child, strong and upright, walked at ten months old, and much resembled his mother in feature. In temper also. The young one would stand sturdily in his little blue shoes and defy his grandpapa already, and assert his own will, to the amused admiration of Captain Monk.

Eliza, utterly wrapt up in her child, saw her father’s growing love for him with secret delight; and one day when he had the boy on his knee, she ventured to speak out a thought that was often in her heart.

“Papa,” she said, with impassioned fervour, “he ought to be the heir, your own grandson; not Harry Carradyne.”

Captain Monk simply stared in answer.

“He lies in the direct succession; he has your own blood in his veins. Papa, you ought to see it.”

Certainly the gallant sailor’s manners were improving. For perhaps the first time in his life he suppressed the hot and abusive words rising to his tongue—that no son of that man, Hamlyn, should come into Leet Hall—and stood in silence.

“Don’t you see it, papa?”

“Look here, Eliza: we’ll drop the subject. When my brother, your uncle, was dying, he wrote me a letter, enjoining me to make Emma’s son the heir, failing a son of my own. It was right it should be so, he said. Right it is; and Harry Carradyne will succeed me. Say no more.”

Thus forbidden to say more, Eliza Hamlyn thought the more, and her thoughts were not pleasant. At one time she had feared her father might promote Kate Dancox to the heirship, and grew to dislike the child accordingly. Latterly, for the same reason, she had disliked Harry Carradyne; hated him, in fact. She herself was the only remaining child of the house, and her son ought to inherit.

She stood this evening at the drawing-room window, this and other matters running in her mind. Miss Kate, at the other end of the room, had prevailed on Uncle Harry (as she called him) to play a game at toy ninepins. Or perhaps he had prevailed on her: anything to keep her tolerably quiet. She was in her teens now, but the older she grew the more troublesome she became; and she was remarkably small and childish-looking, so that strangers took her to be several years younger than she really was.

“This must be your model governess arriving, Aunt Emma,” exclaimed Mrs. Hamlyn, as the fly came up the drive.

“I hope it is,” said Mrs. Carradyne; and they all looked out. “Oh, yes, that’s an Evesham fly—and a ramshackle thing it appears.”

“I wonder you did not send the carriage to Evesham for her, mother,” remarked Harry, picking up some of the nine-pins which Miss Kate had swept off the table with her hand.

Mrs. Hamlyn turned round in a blaze of anger. “Send the carriage to Evesham for the governess. What absurd thing will you say next, Harry?”

The young man laughed in good humour. “Does it offend one of your prejudices, Eliza?—a thousand pardons, then. But really, nonsense apart, I can’t see why the carriage should not have gone for her. We are told she is a gentlewoman. Indeed, I suppose anyone else would not be eligible, as she is to be made one of ourselves.”

“And think of the nuisance it will be! Do be quiet, Harry! Kate ought to have been sent to school.”

“But your father would not have her sent, you know, Eliza,” spoke Mrs. Carradyne.

“Then–”

“Miss West, ma’am,” interrupted Rimmer, the butler, showing in the traveller.

“Dear me, how very young!” was Mrs. Carradyne’s first thought. “And what a lovely face!”

She came in shyly. In her whole appearance there was a shrinking, timid gentleness, betokening refinement of feeling. A slender, lady-like girl, in a plain, dark travelling-suit and a black bonnet lined and tied with pink, a little lace border shading her nut-brown hair. The bonnets in those days set off a pretty face better than do these modern ones. That’s what the Squire tells us.

Mrs. Carradyne advanced and shook hands cordially; Eliza bent her head slightly from where she stood; Harry Carradyne stood up, a pleasant welcome in his blue eyes and in his voice, as he laughingly congratulated her upon the ancient Evesham fly not having come to grief en route. Kate Dancox pressed forward.

“Are you my new governess?”

The young lady smiled and said she believed so.

“Aunt Eliza hates governesses; so do I. Do you expect to make me obey you?”

The governess blushed painfully; but took courage to say she hoped she should. Harry Carradyne thought it the very loveliest blush he had ever seen in all his travels, and she the sweetest-looking girl.

And when Captain Monk came in he quite took to her appearance, for he hated to have ugly people about him. But every now and then there was a look in her face, or in her eyes, that struck him as being familiar—as if he had once known someone who resembled her. Pleasing, soft, dark hazel eyes they were as one could wish to see, with goodness in their depths.

III

Months passed away, and Miss West was domesticated in her new home. It was not all sunshine. Mrs. Carradyne, ever considerate, strove to render things agreeable; but there were sources of annoyance over which she had no control. Kate, when she chose, could be verily a little elf, a demon; as Mrs. Hamlyn often put it, “a diablesse.” And she, that lady herself, invariably treated the governess with a sort of cool, indifferent contempt; and she was more often at Leet Hall than away from it. The Captain, too, gave way to fits of temper that simply terrified Miss West. Reared in the quiet atmosphere of a well-trained school, she had never met with temper such as this.

On the other hand—yes, on the other hand, she had an easy place of it, generous living, was regarded as a lady, and—she had learnt to love Harry Carradyne for weal or for woe.

But not—please take notice—not unsolicited. Tacitly, at any rate. If Mr. Harry’s speaking blue eyes were to be trusted and Mr. Harry’s tell-tale tones when with her, his love, at the very least, equalled hers. Eliza Hamlyn, despite the penetration that ill-nature generally can exercise, had not yet scented any such treason in the wind: or there would have blown up a storm.

Spring was to bring its events; but first of all it must be said that during the winter little Walter Hamlyn was taken ill at Leet Hall when staying there with his mother. The malady turned out to be gastric fever, and Mr. Speck was in constant attendance. For the few days that the child lay in danger, Eliza was almost wild. The progress to convalescence was very slow, lasting many weeks; and during that time Captain Monk, being much with the little fellow, grew to be fond of him with an unreasonable affection.

“I’m not sure but I shall leave Leet Hall to him after all,” he suddenly observed to Eliza one day, not noticing that Harry Carradyne was standing in the recess of the window. “Halloa! are you there, Harry? Well, it can’t be helped. You heard what I said?”

“I heard, Uncle Godfrey: but I did not understand.”

“Eliza thinks Leet Hall ought to go in the direct line—through her—to this child. What should you say to that?”

“What could he say to it?” imperiously demanded Eliza. “He is only your nephew.”

Harry looked from one to the other in a sort of bewildered surprise: and there came a silence.

“Uncle Godfrey,” he said at last, starting out of a reverie, “you have been good enough to make me your heir. It was unexpected on my part, unsolicited; but you did do it, and you caused me to leave the army in consequence, to give up my fair prospects in life. I am aware that this deed is not irrevocable, and certainly you have the right to do what you will with your own property. But you must forgive me for saying that you should have made quite sure of your intentions beforehand: before taking me up, if it be only to throw me aside again.”

“There, there, we’ll leave it,” retorted Captain Monk testily. “No harm’s done to you yet, Mr. Harry; I don’t know that it will be.”

But Harry Carradyne felt sure that it would be; that he should be despoiled of the inheritance. The resolute look of power on Eliza’s face, bent on him as he quitted the chamber, was an earnest of that. Captain Monk was not the determined man he had once been; that was over.

“A pretty kettle of fish, this is,” ruefully soliloquised Harry, as he marched along the corridor. “Eliza’s safe to get her will; no doubt of that. And I? what am I to do? I can’t repurchase and go back amongst them again like a returned shilling; at least, I won’t; and I can’t turn Parson, or Queen’s Counsel, or Cabinet Minister. I’m fitted for nothing now, that I see, but to be a gentleman-at-large; and what would the gentleman’s income be?”

Standing at the corridor window, softly whistling, he ran over ways and means in his mind. He had a pretty house of his own, Peacock’s Range, formerly his father’s, and about four hundred a-year. After his mother’s death it would not be less than a thousand a-year.

“That means bread and cheese at present. Later– Heyday, young lady, what’s the matter?”

The school room door, close by, had opened with a burst, and Miss Kate Dancox was flying down the stairs—her usual progress the minute lessons were over. Harry strolled into the room. The governess was putting the littered table straight.

“Any admission, ma’am?” cried he quaintly, making for a chair. “I should like to ask leave to sit down for a bit.”

Alice West laughed, and stirred the fire by way of welcome; he was a very rare visitor to the school-room. The blaze, mingling with the rays of the setting sun that streamed in at the window, played upon her sweet face and silky brown hair, lighted up the bright winter dress she wore, and the bow of pink ribbon that fastened the white lace round her slender, pretty throat.

“Are you so much in need of a seat?” she laughingly asked.

“Indeed I am,” was the semi-grave response. “I have had a shock.”

“A very sharp one, sir?”

“Sharp as steel. Really and truly,” he went on in a different tone, as he left the chair and stood up by the table, facing her; “I have just heard news that may affect my whole future life; may change me from a rich man to a poor one.”

“Oh, Mr. Carradyne!” Her manner had changed now.

“I was the destined inheritor, as you know—for I’m sure nobody has been reticent upon the subject—of these broad lands,” with a sweep of the hand towards the plains outside. “Captain Monk is now pleased to inform me that he thinks of substituting for me Mrs. Hamlyn’s child.”

“But would not that be very unjust?”

“Hardly fair—as it seems to me. Considering that my good uncle obliged me to give up my own prospects for it.”

She stood, her hands clasped in sympathy, her face full of earnest sadness. “How unkind! Why, it would be cruel!”

“Well, I confess I felt it to be so at the first blow. But, standing at the outside window yonder, pulling myself together, a ray or two of light crept in, showing me that it may be for the best after all. ‘Whatever is, is right,’ you know.”

“Yes,” she slowly said—“if you can think so. But, Mr. Carradyne, should you not have anything at all?—anything to live upon after Captain Monk’s death?”

“Just a trifle, I calculate, as the Americans say—and it is calculating I have been—so that I need not altogether starve. Would you like to know how much it will be?”

“Oh, please don’t laugh at me!”—for it suddenly struck the girl that he was laughing, perhaps in reproof, and that she had spoken too freely. “I ought not to have asked that; I was not thinking—I was too sorry to think.”

“But I may as well tell you, if you don’t mind. I have a very pretty little place, which you have seen and heard of, called by that delectable title Peacock’s Range–”

“Is Peacock’s Range yours?” she interrupted, in surprise. “I thought it belonged to Mr. Peveril.”

“Peacock’s Range is mine and was my father’s before me, Miss Alice. It was leased to Peveril for a term of years, but I fancy he would be glad to give it up to-morrow. Well, I have Peacock’s Range and about four hundred pounds a-year.”

Her face brightened. “Then you need not talk about starving,” she said, gaily.

“And, later, I shall have altogether about a thousand a-year. Though I hope it will be very long before it falls to me. Do you think two people might venture to set up at Peacock’s Range, and keep, say, a couple of servants upon four hundred a-year? Could they exist upon it?”

“Oh, dear, yes,” she answered eagerly, quite unconscious of his drift. “Did you mean yourself and some friend?”

He nodded.

“Why, I don’t see how they could spend it all. There’d be no rent to pay. And just think of all the fruit and vegetables in the garden there!”

“Then I take you at your word, Alice,” he cried, impulsively, passing his arm round her waist. “You are the ‘friend.’ My dear, I have long wanted to ask you to be my wife, and I did not dare. This place, Leet Hall, encumbered me: for I feared the opposition that I, as its heir, should inevitably meet.”

She drew away from him, with doubting, frightened eyes. Mr. Harry Carradyne brought all the persuasion of his own dancing blue ones to bear upon her. “Surely, Alice, you will not say me nay!”

“I dare not say yes,” she whispered.

“What are you afraid of?”

“Of it altogether; of your friends. Captain Monk would—would—perhaps—turn me out. And there’s Mrs. Carradyne!”

Harry laughed. “Captain Monk can have no right to any voice in my affairs, once he throws me off; he cannot expect to have a finger in everyone’s pie. As to my mother—ah, Alice, unless I am much mistaken, she will welcome you with love.”

Alice burst into tears: emotion was stirring her to its depths. “Please to let it all be for a time,” she pleaded.

“If you speak it would be sure to lead to my being turned away.”

“I will let it be for a time, my darling, so far as speaking about it goes: for more reasons than one it may be better. But you are my promised wife, Alice; always recollect that.”

And Mr. Harry Carradyne, bold as a soldier should be, took a few kisses from her unresisting lips to enforce his mandate.

IV

Some time rolled on, calling for no particular record. Mr. Hamlyn’s West Indian property, which was large and lucrative, had been giving him trouble of late; at least, those who had the care of it gave it, and he was obliged to go over occasionally to see after it in person. Between times he stayed with his wife at Peacock’s Range; or else she joined him in London. Their town residence was in Bryanston Square; a pretty house, but not large.

It had been an unfavourable autumn; cold and wet. Snow had fallen in November, and the weather continued persistently dull and dreary. One gloomy afternoon towards the close of the year, Mrs. Hamlyn, shivering over her drawing-room fire, rang impatiently for more coal to be piled upon it.

“Has Master Walter come in yet?” she asked of the footman.

“No, ma’am. I saw him just now playing in front there.”

She went to the window. Yes, running about the paths of the Square garden was the child, attended by his nurse. He was a sturdy little fellow. His mother, wishing to make him hardy, sent him out in all weathers, and the boy throve upon it. He was three years old now, but looked older; and he was as clever and precocious as some children are at five or six. Her heart thrilled with a strange joy only at the sight of him: he was her chief happiness in life, her idol. Whether he would succeed to Leet Hall she knew not; since that one occasion, Captain Monk had said no more upon the subject, for or against it.

Why need she have longed for it so fervently? to the setting at naught the express wishes of her deceased uncle and to the detriment of Harry Carradyne? It was simply covetousness. As his father’s eldest son (there were no younger ones yet) the boy would inherit a fine property, a large income; but his doting mother must give him Leet Hall as well.

Her whole heart went out to the child as she watched him playing there. A few snowflakes were beginning to fall, and twilight would soon be drawing on, but she would not call him in. Standing thus at the window, it gradually grew upon her to notice that something was standing back against the opposite rails, looking fixedly at the houses. A young, fair woman apparently, with a profusion of light hair; she was draped in a close dark cloak which served to conceal her figure, just as the thick veil she wore concealed her face.

“I believe it is this house she is gazing at so attentively—and at me,” thought Mrs. Hamlyn. “What can she possibly want?”

The woman did not move away and Mrs. Hamlyn did not move; they remained staring at one another. Presently Walter burst into the room, laughing in glee at having distanced his nurse. His mother turned, caught him in her arms and kissed him passionately. Wilful though he was by disposition, and showing it at times, he was a lovable, generous child, and very pretty: great brown eyes and auburn curls. His life was all sunshine, like a butterfly’s on a summer’s day; his path as yet one of roses without their thorns.

“Mamma, I’ve got a picture-book; come and look at it,” cried the eager little voice, as he dragged his mother to the hearthrug and opened the picture-book in the light of the blaze. “Penelope bought it for me.”

She sat down on a footstool, the book on her lap and one arm round him, her treasure. Penelope waited to take off his hat and pelisse, and was told to come for him in five minutes.

“It’s not my tea-time yet,” cried he defiantly.

“Indeed, then, Master Walter, it is long past it,” said the nurse. “I couldn’t get him in before, ma’am,” she added to her mistress. “Every minute I kept expecting you’d be sending one of the servants after us.”

“In five minutes,” repeated Mrs. Hamlyn. “And what’s this picture about, Walter? Is it a little girl with a doll?”

“Oh, dat bootiful,” said the eager little lad, who was not yet as advanced in speech as he was in ideas. “It says she–dere’s papa!”

In came Philip Hamlyn, tall, handsome, genial. Walter ran to him and was caught in his arms. He and his wife were just a pair for adoring the child.

But nurse, inexorable, appeared again at the five minutes’ end, and Master Walter was carried off.

“You came home in a cab, Philip, did you not? I thought I heard one stop.”

“Yes; it is a miserable evening. Raining fast now.”

“Raining!” she repeated, rather wondering to hear it was not snowing. She went to the window to look out, and the first object her eyes caught sight of was the woman; leaning in the old place against the railings, in the growing twilight.

“I’m not sorry to see the rain; we shall have it warmer now,” remarked Mr. Hamlyn, who had drawn a chair to the fire. “In fact, it’s much warmer already than it was this morning.”

“Philip, step here a minute.”

His wife’s tone had dropped to a half-whisper, sounding rather mysterious, and he went at once.

“Just look, Philip—opposite. Do you see a woman standing there?”

“A woman—where?” cried he, looking of course in every direction but the right one.

“Just facing us. She has her back against the railings.”

“Oh, ay, I see now; a lady in a cloak. She must be waiting for some one.”

“Why do you call her a lady?”

“She looks like one—as far as I can see in the gloom. Does she not? Her hair does, any way.”

“She has been there I cannot tell you how long, Philip; half-an-hour, I’m sure; and it seems to me that she is watching this house. A lady would hardly do that.”

“This house? Oh, then, Eliza, perhaps she’s watching for one of the servants. She might come in, poor thing, instead of standing there in the rain.”

“Poor thing, indeed!—what business has any woman to watch a house in this marked manner?” retorted Eliza. “The neighbourhood will be taking her for a female detective.”

“Nonsense!”

“She has given me a creepy feeling; I can tell you that, Philip.”

“But why?” he exclaimed.

“I can’t tell you why; I don’t know why; it is so. Do not laugh at me for confessing it.”

Philip Hamlyn did laugh; heartily. “Creepy feelings” and his imperiously strong-minded wife could have but little affinity with one another.