Johnny Ludlow Second Series Part 68

"Don't you go and say again I was asleep! He must have stepped back and got away through these laurels; yes, here are the marks. I say, Tom"--dropping my voice to a whisper--"perhaps he's here now."

"We'll soon see that," said Tom Coney, plunging amidst the laurels with a crash, and beating about with the stick.

But there was no trace of him. Tom came out presently, covered with the beaten snow, and we went indoors; he veering round partly to his first opinion, and a little incredulous, in spite of the footprints.

"If any man was there, Johnny, how did he get away? I don't see, for my part, what he could possibly want. A thief would have gone to work in a different manner."

"Well, let it be so. I shall say nothing about it to them when they come home. Mrs. Todhetley's timid, you know, she would fancy the man was outside still, and be lying awake all night, listening for the smashing in of doors and windows."

Cracking the fire into a blaze; as much of a blaze, that is, as its dilapidated state allowed; I called Thomas to light the lamp and shut the shutters. When I told him of the affair, bidding him not mention it, he took a different view of it altogether, and put it down to the score of one of the younger maid-servants.

"They've got sweethearts, Master Johnny, the huzzies have; lots of sweethearts. One or the t'other of 'em is always a sidling sheepfaced up to the house, as though he didn't dare to say his soul was his own."

They came in from church before the fire had burnt up, and the Squire scolded me for letting it go so low. The coal we get in Worcestershire is the Staffordshire coal; it does not burn up in a minute as London coal does, but must have time.

Nothing of course was said about the man; I and Tom Coney--who stayed supper--held our tongues, as agreed upon. But I told Tod in going up to bed. He was sleepy, and did not think much of it. The fact was, as I could plainly perceive, that to any of them, when related, it did not seem to be much. They had not seen it as I had.

Timberdale Rectory, a cosy, old-fashioned house, its front walls covered with ivy, stood by itself amidst pasture-land, a field's length from the church. Mrs. Todhetley sent me there on the Monday morning, to invite the Rector, Herbert Tanerton, and his wife to dine with us the next evening, for we had a prime codfish sent as a present from London. The Squire and Tod had gone out shooting. It was January weather; cold and bright, with a frosty sky. Icicles drooped from the trees, and the snow in Crabb Ravine was above my ankles. The mater had said to me, "I should go the road way, Johnny;" but I did not mind the snow.

In Timberdale I met Margaret Rymer. She had her black cloak on, and her natty little black bonnet; and the gentle and refined face under it, with its mild brown eyes, put me more than ever in mind of her dead father.

Does any one remember her? I told something about her and her people early in this volume. When Thomas Rymer died, partly of a broken heart, Benjamin had again gone off, and Margaret continued to keep the business going. She understood the drugs thoroughly. During all the months that had elapsed since, the son had not made his appearance at home.

Timberdale would say, "Why does not Benjamin come back to carry on affairs in his father's place?" but it had no satisfactory answer.

Latterly, Timberdale had let Benjamin alone, and busied itself with Margaret.

Six months ago, the Reverend Isaac Sale had come to Timberdale as curate. He was a plain, dark little man of sterling worth, and some thirty years of age--older than the Rector. Margaret Rymer met him at the Sunday School, where she taught regularly, and he fell desperately in love with her--if it's not wrong to say that of a parson. As a rule, men and women like contrasts; and perhaps the somewhat abrupt-mannered man with the plain and rugged features had been irresistibly attracted by the delicate face of Margaret, and by her singularly gentle ways.

In position she was not his equal; but Mr. Sale made no secret of his attachment, or that he wanted Margaret to be his wife. Mrs. Rymer entirely opposed it: how was the business to be kept going without Margaret, she demanded; or herself, either?

Mr. Sale had taken the curacy as a temporary thing. He was waiting for some expected appointment abroad. When it fell to him, Margaret Rymer would have to choose between sailing with him as his wife, or staying at home and giving him up for good. So said Timberdale.

After standing to talk a bit with Margaret, who had come out on an errand for her mother, I ran on to the Rectory. Mr. Tanerton and his wife were in the snug little bow-windowed front-room. He, spare and colourless, young yet, with cold grey eyes and thin light whiskers, sat by the blazing fire of wood and coal, that went roaring and sparkling up the chimney. Somehow Herbert Tanerton gave you the idea of being always in a chill. Well meaning, and kind in the main, he was yet severe, taking too much note of offences, and expecting all the world, and especially his own flock, to be better than gold.

His wife, kind, genial, and open-hearted, sat at the window, st.i.tching a wristband for one of her husband's new shirts--he was as particular over _them_ as he was over the parish sins--and glancing cheerfully out between whiles at the snowy landscape. When she was Grace Coney, and niece at the farm, we were very intimate; a nice, merry-hearted, capable girl, rather tall and slender, with bright dark hazel eyes, and a wide mouth that seemed always to be smiling to show its pretty white teeth.

Seeing me coming, she ran to open the porch-door. As yet, she and Herbert had no children.

"Come in, Johnny! Is it not a lovely day? Herbert thinks it the coldest morning we have had; but I tell him that is because he does not feel very well. And he has been put out a little."

"What about?" I asked, as the Rector turned in his chair to shake hands with me. For she had said all that in his hearing.

"Oh, there are one or two things. Sam Mullett----"

"Where's the use of talking of the stupid old man, Grace?" cried the parson, crossly. "He is getting too old for his place."

"And Mr. Sale is going to leave," added Mrs. Tanerton, as I sat down by the table, after delivering the invitation. "The appointment he expected has been offered to him; it is a chaplaincy at the Bahama Islands. Mr.

Sale has known of it for a week, and never told Herbert until yesterday."

"He spoke to me in the vestry after morning service," said the Rector, in an injured tone. "And he said at the same time that he was not sure he should accept it; it did not quite depend upon himself. I saw as clearly what he meant to imply as though he had avowed it; that it depended upon that girl, Margaret Rymer. It is a preposterous thing. The idea of a clergyman and a gentleman wanting to marry _her_! She keeps a chemist's shop!"

"It was her father who kept it," I said eagerly, for I liked Margaret Rymer, and did not care to hear her disparaged. "And he was a gentleman born."

"What has that to do with it?" retorted the parson, who was in one of his most touchy humours. "Had her grandfather been a duke, it would make no difference to what she is. Look at the mother!"

"Margaret is a lady in mind, in looks, and in manners," I persisted.

"If I loved Margaret Rymer, I would marry her, though I were an archdeacon."

"That's just like you, Johnny Ludlow! you have no more sense than a child in some things," said the parson, crustily. Grace glanced up from her work and laughed; and looked as if she would like to take part with me.

"I never could have suspected Sale of such folly," went on the Rector, warming his hands over the blaze. "Grace, do you think that soup's ready?"

"I will see," answered Grace, putting the wristband on the little work-table; and she touched my shoulder playfully in pa.s.sing.

Herbert Tanerton sat in silence; knitting his brow into lines. I took the chair on the other side the fireplace opposite to him, thinking of this and that, and fingering the tongs to help me: a habit I was often scolded for at home--that of fingering things.

"Look here, Mr. Tanerton. If they go all the way out to settle at the Bahamas, it will not signify there who Margaret has been here. Whether she may have helped in her father's business, or whether she may have been--as you said--a duke's granddaughter, and brought up accordingly, it will be all one to the Bahamas. Mr. Sale need not say to the Bahamas, 'My wife used to sell pennyworths of rhubarb and magnesia.'"

"It is not that," crossly responded the Rector--"what people will think or say; it is for Sale's own sake that I object. He cannot like the connection. A clergyman should marry in his own sphere."

"I suppose men are differently const.i.tuted, clergymen as well as others," said I, with deprecation, remembering that I was a plain, inexperienced lad, and he was the Rector of Timberdale. "Some persons don't care for social distinctions as others do, don't even see them: perhaps Mr. Sale is one."

"He cares for probity and honour--he would not choose to ally himself to crime, to disgrace," sternly spoke the Rector. "And he would do that in marrying Margaret Rymer. Remember what the son did, that ill-doing Benjamin," added he, dropping his voice. "You know all about it, Johnny.

The affair of the bank-note, I mean."

And if Herbert Tanerton had said to me the affair of the moon and planets, I could not have been more surprised. "How did you get to know of it?" I asked, when speech came to me.

"Mr. Rymer told me on his death-bed. I was attending him spiritually. Of course, I have never spoken of it, even to my wife--I should not think of speaking of it; but I consider that it lies in my duty to disclose the facts to Mr. Sale."

"Oh no, don't--don't, please, Mr. Tanerton!" I cried out, starting up in a sort of distress, for the words seemed to take hold of me. "No one knows of it: no one but the Squire, and I, as you say, and Mrs. Rymer, and you, and Ben himself; Jelf's dead, you know. It need never be brought up again in this world; and I dare say it never will be. Pray don't tell Mr. Sale--for Margaret's sake."

"But I have said that I consider it my duty to tell him," replied the parson, steadily. "Here he comes!"

I turned to the window, and saw Sale trudging up to the parsonage through the snowy field pathway, his black hair and red rugged face presenting a sort of contrast to the white glare around. Ugly, he might be called; but it was a face to be liked, for all that. And the ring of his voice was true and earnest.

The affair of the bank-note had helped to kill Thomas Rymer, and sent Mr. Ben off on his wanderings again. It was a bit of ill-luck for Ben, for he had really pulled up, was reading hard at his medical books, and become as steady as could be. Never since then--some ten months ago now--had Ben been heard of; never had it been spoken of to man or woman.

_Need_ Herbert Tanerton disclose it to the curate? No: and I did not think he would do it.

"We were just talking of you," was the Rector's greeting to Mr. Sale, as the curate came into the room. "Bring a chair to the front of the fire: Johnny, keep your seat. I'm sure it's cold enough to make one wish to be in the fire to-day, instead of before it."

"What were you saying about me?" asked Mr. Sale, drawing forward the chair to sit down, as bidden, and giving me a nod in his short way.

"Have you come to tell me your decision--to go or stay?" asked the Rector, neglecting to answer the question.

"Not this morning. My decision is not yet made. I came to tell you how very ill Jael Batty is. I'm not at all sure that she will get over this bout."

"Oh," said the Rector, in a slighting tone, as if Jael Batty had no right to intrude herself into more momentous conversation. "Jael Batty is careless and indifferent in her duties, anything but what she ought to be, and makes her deafness an excuse for not coming to church. I'll try and get out to see her in the course of the day. She is always having these attacks. What we were speaking of was your friendship with Miss Rymer."

Herbert Tanerton, as I have said, meant to be kind, and I believe he had people's welfare at heart; but he had a severe way of saying things that seemed to take all the kindness out of his words. He was a great stickler for "duty," and if once he considered it was his duty to tell a fellow of his faults, tell he did, face to face, in the most uncompromising manner. He had decided that it was his duty to hold forth to Mr. Sale, and he plunged into the discourse without ceremony.