Johnny Ludlow, Second Series

“Aunt Mary! Aunt Mary! Oh, please let her come! I want Aunt Mary.”

And then it struck Sir Geoffry Chavasse that a gentleman’s child, such as this one by his appearance evidently was, would not have been out without an attendant. He turned round, and saw a lady in black standing by the lodge. The wailing cry began again.

“Aunt Mary! I want Aunt Mary.”

There was no help for it. She came on with her agitated face, from which every drop of blood had faded. Sir Geoffry, occupied with the child, did not notice her much.

“I am so grieved,” he began; “I trust the injury will be found not to be very serious. My horse–”

He had lifted his eyes then, and knew her instantly. His own face turned crimson; the words he had been about to say died unspoken on his lips. For a moment they looked in each other’s faces, and might have seen, had the time been one of less agitation, how markedly sorrow had left its traces there. The next, they remembered the present time, and what was due from them.

“I beg your pardon: Miss Layne, I think?” said Sir Geoffry, contriving to release one hand and raise his hat.

“Yes, sir,” she answered, and bowed in return.

He sat down on the bank for a moment to obtain a better hold of the child. Blood was dripping from one of the little velvet sleeves. Sir Geoffry, carrying him as gently as was possible, made all haste to the house. The window of what had been the garden-parlour stood open, and he took him into it at once. Ah, how they both remembered it. It had been refurnished and embellished now: but the room was the room still. Sir Geoffry had returned home that morning. His wife and Lady Chavasse were not expected for a day or two. Scarcely any servants were as yet in the house; but the woman who had been left in charge, Hester Picker, came in with warm water. She curtsied to Miss Layne.

“Dear little fellow!” she exclaimed, her tongue ready as of old. “How did it happen, sir?”

“My horse knocked him down,” replied Sir Geoffry. “Get me some linen, Picker.”

The boy lay on the sofa where he had been put, his hat off, and his pretty light brown hair falling from his face, pale now. Apparently there was no injury except to the arm. Sir Geoffry looked at Mary.

“I am a bit of a surgeon,” he said. “Will you allow me to examine his hurt as a surgeon would? Duffham cannot be here just yet.”

“Oh yes, certainly,” she answered.

“I must cut his velvet sleeve up.”

And she bowed in acquiescence to that.

Hester Picker came in with the linen. Before commencing to cut the sleeve, Sir Geoffry touched the arm here and there, as if testing where the damage might lie. Arthur cried out.

“That hurts you,” said Sir Geoffry.

“Not much,” answered the little fellow, trying to be brave. “Papa’s a soldier, and I want to be a soldier, so I won’t mind a little hurt.”

“Your papa’s a soldier? Ah, yes, I think I remember,” said Sir Geoffry, turning to Mary. “It is the little son of Captain Layne.”

“My papa is Major Layne now,” spoke up Arthur, before she could make any answer. “He and mamma live in India.”

“And so you want to be a soldier, the same as papa?” said Sir Geoffry, testing the basin of water with his finger, which Picker was holding, and which had been brought in very hot.

“Yes, I do. Aunt Mary there says No, and grandmamma says No; but—oh, what’s that?”

He had caught sight of the blood for the first time, and broke off with a shuddering cry. Sir Geoffry was ready now, and had the scissors in his hand. But before using them he spoke to Miss Layne.

“Will you sit here whilst I look at it?” he asked, putting a chair with its face to the open window, and its back to the sofa. And she understood the motive and thanked him: and said she would walk about outside.

By-and-by, when she was tired of waiting, and all seemed very quiet, she looked in. Arthur had fainted. Sir Geoffry was bathing his forehead with eau-de-Cologne; Picker had run for something in a tumbler and wine stood on the table.

“Was it the pain?—did it hurt him very badly?” asked Mary, supposing that the arm had been bathed and perhaps dressed.

“I have not done anything to it; I preferred to leave it for Duffham,” said Sir Geoffry—and at the same moment she caught sight of the velvet sleeve laid open, and something lying on it that looked like a mass of linen. Mary turned even whiter than the child.

“Do not be alarmed,” said Sir Geoffry. “Your little nephew is only faint from the loss of blood. Drink this,” he added, bringing her a glass of wine.

But she would not take it. As Sir Geoffry was putting it on the table, Arthur began to revive. Young children are elastic—ill one minute, well the next; and he began to talk again.

“Aunt Mary, are you there?”

She moved to the sofa, and took his uninjured hand.

“We must not tell grandmamma, Aunt Mary. It would frighten her.”

“Bless his dear little thoughtful heart!” interjected Hester Picker. “Here comes something.”

The something proved to be a fly, and it brought Mr. Duffham. Before the groom had reached the village, he overtook this said fly and the surgeon in it, who was then returning home from another accident. Turning round at the groom’s news—“Some little child had run against Sir Geoffry’s horse, and was hurt”—he came up to the Grange.

When Mr. Duffham saw that it was this child, he felt curiously taken aback. Up the room and down the room looked he; then at Sir Geoffry, then at Miss Layne, then at Hester Picker, saying nothing. Last of all he walked up to the sofa and gazed at the white face lying there.

“Well,” said he, “and what’s this? And how did it happen?”

“It was the peacock,” Arthur answered. “I ran away from Aunt Mary to look at it, and the horse came.”

“The dear innocent!” cried Hester Picker. “No wonder he ran. It’s a love of a peacock.”

“Don’t you think it was very naughty, young sir, to run from your aunt?” returned Mr. Duffham.

“Yes, very; because she had told me not to. Aunt Mary, I’ll never do it again.”

The two gentlemen and Hester Picker remained in the room; Mary again left it. The arm was crushed rather badly; and Mr. Duffham knew it would require care and skill to cure it.

“You must send to Worcester for its best surgeon to help you,” said the baronet, when the dressing was over. “I feel that I am responsible to Major Layne.”

Old Duffham nearly closed his eyelids as he glanced at the speaker. “I don’t think it necessary,” he said; “no surgeon can do more than I can. However, it may be satisfactory to Major Layne that we should be on the safe side, so I’ll send.”

When the child was ready, Mary got into the fly, which had waited, and Mr. Duffham put him to lie on her lap.

“I hope, Miss Layne, I may be allowed to call to-morrow and see how he gets on,” said Sir Geoffry, at the same time. And she did not feel that it was possible for her to say No. Mr. Duffham mounted beside the driver; to get a sniff, he said, of the evening air.

“How he is changed! He has suffered as I have,” murmured Mary Layne to herself, as her tears fell on Baby Arthur, asleep now. “I am very thankful that he has no suspicion.”

The child had said, “Don’t tell grandmamma;” but to keep it from Mrs. Layne was simply impossible. With the first stopping of the fly at the door, out came the old lady; she had been marvelling what had become of them, and was wanting her tea. Mr. Duffham took her in again, and said a few words, making light of it, before he lifted out Baby Arthur.

A skilful surgeon was at the house the next day, in conjunction with Mr. Duffham. The arm and its full use would be saved, he said; its cure effected; but the child and those about him must have patience, for it might be rather a long job. Arthur said he should like to write to his papa in India, and tell him that it was his own fault for running away from Aunt Mary; he could write letters in big text hand. The surgeon smiled, and told him he must wait until he could use both arms again.

The doctors had not left the house many minutes when Sir Geoffry Chavasse called, having walked over from the Grange. Miss Layne sent her mother to receive him, and disappeared herself. The old lady, her perceptions a little dulled with time and age, and perhaps also her memory, felt somewhat impressed and flattered at the visit. To her it almost seemed the honour that it used to be: that one painful episode of the past seemed to be as much forgotten at the moment as though it had never had place. She took Sir Geoffry upstairs.

Arthur was lying close to the window, in the strong light of the fine morning. It was the first clear view Sir Geoffry had obtained of him. The garden-parlour at the Grange faced the east, so that the room on the previous evening, being turned from the setting sun, had been shady at the best, and the sofa was at the far end of it. As Sir Geoffry gazed at the child now, the face struck him as being like somebody’s; he could not tell whose. The dark blue eyes especially, turned up in all their eager brightness to his, seemed quite familiar.

“He says I must not write to papa until I get well,” said Arthur, who had begun to look on Sir Geoffry as an old acquaintance.

“Who does?” asked the baronet.

“The gentleman who came with Mr. Duffham.”

“He means the doctor from Worcester, Sir Geoffry,” put in old Mrs. Layne. She was sitting in her easy-chair near, as she had been previously; her spectacles keeping the place between the leaves of the closed Bible, which she had again taken on her lap; her withered hands, in their black lace mittens and frilled white ruffles, were crossed upon the Book. Every now and then she nodded with incipient sleep.

“I am so very sorry this should have happened,” Sir Geoffry said, turning to Mrs. Layne. “The little fellow was running up to get a look at the peacock, it seems; and I was riding rather fast. I shall never ride fast round that corner again.”

“But, Sir Geoffry, they tell me that the child ran right against you at the corner: that it was no fault of yours at all, sir.”

“It was my fault, grandmamma,” said Arthur. “And, Sir Geoffry, that’s why I wanted to write to papa; I want to tell him so.”

“I think I had better write for you,” said Sir Geoffry, looking down at the boy with a smile.

“Will you? Shall you tell him it was my fault?”

“No. I shall tell him it was mine.”

“But it was not yours. You must not write what is not true. If Aunt Mary thought I could tell a story, or write one, oh, I don’t know what she’d do. God hears all we say, you know.”

Sir Geoffry smiled—a sad smile—at the earnest words, at the eager look in the bright eyes. Involuntarily the wish came into his mind that he had a brave, fearless-hearted, right-principled son, such as this boy evidently was.

“Then I think I had better describe how it happened, and let Major Layne judge for himself whether it was my fast riding or your fast running that caused the mischief.”

“You’ll tell about the peacock? It had its tail out.”

“Of course I’ll tell about the peacock. I shall say to Major Layne that his little boy—I don’t think I have heard your name,” broke off Sir Geoffry. “What is it?”

“It’s Arthur. Papa’s is Richard. My big brother’s is Richard too; he is at King’s College. Which name do you like best?”

“I think I like Arthur best. It is my own name also.”

“Yours is Sir Geoffry.”

“And Arthur as well.”

But at this juncture old Mrs. Layne, having started up from a nod, interposed to put a summary stop to the chatter, telling Arthur crossly that Mr. Duffham and the other doctor had forbid him to talk much. And then she begged pardon of Sir Geoffry for saying it, but thought the doctors wished the child to be kept quiet and cool. Sir Geoffry took the opportunity to say adieu to the little patient.

“May I come to see the peacock when I get well, Sir Geoffry?”

“Certainly. You shall come and look at him for a whole day if grandmamma will allow you to.”

Grandmamma gave no motion or word of assent, but Arthur took it for granted. “Betsy can bring me if Aunt Mary won’t; Betsy’s my nurse. I wish I could have him before that window to look at while I lie here to get well. I like peacocks and musical boxes better than anything in the world.”

“Musical boxes!” exclaimed Sir Geoffry. “Do you care for them?”

“Oh yes; they are beautiful. Do you know the little lame boy who can’t walk, down Piefinch Cut? His father comes to do grandmamma’s garden. Do you know him, Sir Geoffry? His name’s Reuben.”

“It’s Noah, the gardener’s son, sir,” put in Mrs. Layne aside to Sir Geoffry. “He was thrown downstairs when a baby, and has been a cripple ever since.”

But the eager, intelligent eyes were still cast up, waiting for the answer. “Where have I seen them?” mentally debated Sir Geoffry, alluding to the eyes.

“I know the name?” he answered.

“Well, Reuben has got a musical box, and it plays three tunes. He is older than I am: he’s ten. One of them is ‘The Blue Bells of Scotland.’”

Sir Geoffry nodded and went away. He crossed straight over to Mr. Duffham’s, and found him writing a letter in his surgery.

“I hope the child will do well,” said the baronet, when he had shaken hands. “I have just been to see him. What an intelligent, nice little fellow it is.”

“Oh, he will be all right again in time, Sir Geoffry,” was the doctor’s reply, as he began to fold his letter.

“He is a pretty boy, too, very. His eyes are strangely like some one’s I have seen, but for the life of me I cannot tell whose!”

“Really?—do you mean it?” cried Mr. Duffham, speaking, as it seemed, in some surprise.

“Mean what?”

“That you cannot tell.”

“Indeed I can’t. They puzzled me all the while I was there. Do you know? Say, if you do.”

“They are like your own, Sir Geoffry.”

“Like my own!”

“They are your own eyes over again. And yours—as poor Layne used to say, and as the picture in the Grange dining-room shows us also, for the matter of that—are Sir Peter’s. Sir Peter’s, yours, and the child’s: they are all the same.”

For a long space of time, as it seemed, the two gentlemen gazed at each other. Mr. Duffham with a questioning and still surprised look: Sir Geoffry in a kind of bewildered amazement.

“Duffham! you—you– Surely it is not that child!”

“Yes, it is.”

He backed to a chair and stumbled into it, rather than sat down; somewhat in the same manner that Mrs. Layne had backed against the counter nearly seven years before and upset the scales. The old lady seemed to have aged since quicker than she ought to have done: but her face then had not been whiter than was Geoffry Chavasse’s now.

“Good Heavens!”

The dead silence was only broken by these murmured words that fell from his lips. Mr. Duffham finished folding his note, and directed it.

“Sir Geoffry, I beg your pardon! I beg it a thousand times. If I had had the smallest notion that you were ignorant of this, I should never have spoken.”

Sir Geoffry took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. Some moisture had gathered there.

“How was I to suspect it?” he asked.

“I never supposed but that you must have known it all along.”

“All along from when, Duffham?”

“From—from—well, from the time you first knew that a child was over there.”

Sir Geoffry cast his thoughts back. He could not remember anything about the child’s coming to Church Dykely. In point of fact, the Grange had been empty at the time.

“I understood that the child was one of Captain and Mrs. Layne’s,” he rejoined. “Every one said it; and I never had any other thought. Even yesterday at the Grange you spoke of him as such, Duffham.”

“Of course. Miss Layne was present—and Hester Picker—and the child himself. I did not speak to deceive you, Sir Geoffry. When you said what you did to me in coming away, about calling in other advice for the satisfaction of Major Layne, I thought you were merely keeping up appearances.”

“And it is so, then?”

“Oh dear, yes.”

Another pause. Mr. Duffham affixed the stamp to his letter, and put the paper straight in his note-case. Sir Geoffry suddenly lifted his hand, as one whom some disagreeable reflection overwhelms.

“To think that I was about to write to Major Layne! To think that I should have stood there, in the old lady’s presence, talking boldly with the child! She must assume that I have the impudence of Satan.”

“Mrs. Layne is past that, Sir Geoffry. Her faculties are dulled: three-parts dead. That need not trouble you.”

The baronet put aside his handkerchief and took up his hat to leave. He began stroking its nap with his coat-sleeve.

“Does my mother know of this, do you think?”

“I am sure she neither knows nor suspects it. No one does, Sir Geoffry: the secret has been entirely kept.”

“The cost of this illness must be mine, you know, Duffham.”

“I think not, Sir Geoffry,” was the surgeon’s answer. “It would not do, I fear. There’s no need, besides: Miss Layne is rich now.”

“Rich! How is she rich?”

And Mr. Duffham had to explain. A wealthy gentleman in India, some connection of the Laynes, had died and left money to Mary Layne. Six or seven hundred a year; and plenty of ready means. Sir Geoffry Chavasse went out, pondering upon the world’s changes.

He did not call to see the invalid again; but he bought a beautiful musical box at Worcester, and sent it in to the child by Duffham. It played six tunes. The boy had never in his life been so delighted. He returned his love and thanks to Sir Geoffry; and appended several inquiries touching the welfare of the peacock.

The first news heard by Lady Chavasse and Lady Rachel on their coming home, was of the accident caused to Major Layne’s little son by Sir Geoffry’s horse. Hester Picker and the other servants were full of it. It happened to be the day that Sir Geoffry had gone to Worcester after the box, so he could not join in the narrative. A sweet, beautiful boy, said Hester to my ladies, and had told them he meant to be a soldier when he grew up, as brave as his papa. Lady Chavasse, having digested the news, and taken inward counsel with herself, decided to go and see him: it would be right and neighbourly, she thought. It might be that she was wishing to bestow some slight mark of her favour upon the old lady before death should claim her: and she deemed that the honour of a call would effect this. In her heart she acknowledged that the Laynes had behaved admirably in regard to the past; never to have troubled her or her son by word or deed or letter; and in her heart she felt grateful for it. Some people might have acted differently.

“I think I will go and see him too,” said Lady Rachel.

“No, pray don’t,” dissented Lady Chavasse, hastily. “You already feel the fatigue of your journey, Rachel: do not attempt to increase it.”

And as Lady Rachel really was fatigued and did not care much about it, one way or the other, she remained at home.

It was one of Mrs. Layne’s worst days—one of those when she seemed three-parts childish—when Lady Chavasse was shown into the drawing-room. Mary was there. As she turned to receive her visitor, and heard the maid’s announcement “Lady Chavasse,” a great astonishment inwardly stirred her, but her manner remained quiet and self-possessed. Just a minute’s gaze at each other. Lady Chavasse was the same good-looking woman as of yore; not changed, not aged by so much as a day. Mary was changed: the shy, inexperienced girl had grown into the calm, self-contained woman; the woman who had known sorrow, who had its marks impressed on her face. She had been pretty once, she was gravely beautiful now. Perhaps Lady Chavasse had not bargained for seeing her; Mary had certainly never thought thus to meet Lady Chavasse: but here they were, face to face, and each must make the best of it. As they did; and with easy courtesy, both being gentlewomen. Lady Chavasse held out her hand, and Mary put hers into it.

After shaking hands with Mrs. Layne—who was too drowsy properly to respond, and shut her eyes again—my lady spoke a few pleasant words of regret for the accident, of her wish to see the little patient, of her hope that Major and Mrs. Layne might not be allowed to think any care on Sir Geoffry’s part could have averted it. Mary went upstairs with her. Lady Chavasse could only be struck with the improved appearance of the house, quite suited now to be the abode of gentle-people; and with its apparently well-appointed if small household.

The child lay asleep: his nurse, Betsy, sat sewing by his side. The girl confessed that she had allowed him sometimes to run in and take a look at the peacock. Lady Chavasse would not have him awakened: she bent and kissed his cheek lightly: and talked to Mary in a whisper. It was just as though there had been no break in their acquaintanceship, just as though no painful episode, in which they were antagonistic actors, had ever occurred between them.

“I hear you have come into a fortune, Miss Layne,” she said, as she shook hands with Mary again in the little hall before departure. For Hester Picker had told of this.

“Into a great deal of money,” replied Mary.

“I am glad to hear it: glad,” came the parting response, whispered emphatically in Mary’s ear, and it was accompanied by a pressure of the fingers.

Mr. Duffham was standing at his door, watching my lady’s exit from Mrs. Layne’s house, his eyes lost in wonder. Seeing him, she crossed over, and went in, Mr. Duffham throwing open the door of his sitting-room. She began speaking of the accident to Major Layne’s little son—what a pity it was, but that she hoped he would do well. Old Duffham replied that he hoped so too, and thought he would.

“Mrs. Layne seems to be growing very old,” went on Lady Chavasse. “She was as drowsy as she could be this afternoon, and seemed scarcely to know me.”

“Old people are apt to be sleepy after dinner,” returned the doctor.

And then there was a pause. Lady Chavasse (as Duffham’s diary expresses it) seemed to be particularly absent in manner, as if she were thinking to herself, instead of talking to him. Because he had nothing else to say, he asked after the health of Lady Rachel. That aroused her at once.

“She is not strong. She is not strong. I am sure of it.”

“She does not seem to ail much, that I can see,” returned Duffham, who often had to hear this same thing said of Lady Rachel. “She never requires medical advice.”

“I don’t care: she is not strong. There are no children,” continued Lady Chavasse, dropping her voice to a whisper; and a kind of piteous, imploring expression darkened her eyes.

“No.”

“Four years married, going on for five, and no signs of any. No signs of children, Mr. Duffham.”

“I can’t help it, my lady,” returned Duffham.

“Nobody can help it. But it is an awful misfortune. It is beginning to be a great trouble in my life. As the weeks and months and years pass on—the years, Mr. Duffham—and bring no hope, my very spirit seems to fail. ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’”

“True.”

“It has been the one great desire of my later years,” continued Lady Chavasse, too much in earnest to be reticent, “and it does not come. I wonder which is the worst to be borne; some weighty misfortune that falls and crushes, or a longed-for boon that we watch and pray for in vain? The want of it, the eager daily strain of disappointment, has become to me worse than a nightmare.”

Little Arthur Layne, attended by Betsy, spent a day at the Grange on his recovery, invited to meet the peacock. The ladies were very kind to him: they could but admire his gentle manners, his fearless bearing. Sir Geoffry played a game at ninepins with him on the lawn—which set of ninepins had been his own when a child, and had been lying by ever since. Betsy was told she might carry them home for Master Layne: Sir Geoffry gave them to him.

After that, the intercourse dropped again, and they became strangers as before. Except that Lady Chavasse would bow from her carriage if she saw Mrs. or Miss Layne, and Sir Geoffry raise his hat. The little boy had more notice: when they met him out, and were walking themselves, they would, one and all, stop and speak to him.

So this episode of the accident seemed to fade into the past, as other things had faded: and the time went on.

Part the Fourth