Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series Part 63

"Jack, were I you, I should stand up in the face and eyes of all the world, and say to them, 'Before G.o.d, I did not kill Pym.' People would believe you then. But you don't do it."

"I have my reasons for not doing it, Johnny Ludlow. G.o.d knows what they are; He knows all things. I dare say I may be set right with the world in time: though I don't see how it is to be done."

A smart young man, a new a.s.sistant, was behind the counter at Ben Rymer's, and served me with the pills. Coming out, box in hand, we met Ben himself. I hardly knew him, he was so spruce. His very hair and whiskers were trimmed down to neatness and looked of a more reasonable colour; his red-brown beard was certainly handsome, and his clothes were well cut.

"Why, he has grown into a dandy, Jack," I said, after we had stood a minute or two, talking with the surgeon.

"Yes," said Jack, "he is going in for the proprieties of life now. Ben may make a gentleman yet--and a good man to boot."

That same afternoon, it chanced that the Squire met Ben Rymer. Striding along in his powerful fashion, Ben came full tilt round the sharp corner that makes the turning to the Islip Road, and nearly ran over the pater.

Ben had been to Oxlip Grange.

"So, sir," cried the pater, stopping him, "I hear you are in practice now, and intend to become a respectable man. It's time you did."

"Ay, at last," replied Ben good-humouredly. "It is a long lane, Squire, that has no turning."

"Don't you lapse back again, Mr. Ben."

"Not if I know it, sir. I hope I shall not."

"It was anxiety on your score, you know, that troubled your good father's mind in dying."

"If it did not bring his death on," readily conceded Ben, his light tone changing. "I know it all, Squire--and have felt it."

"Look here," cried the Squire, catching at Ben's b.u.t.ton-hole, which had a lovely lily-of-the-valley in it, "there was nothing on earth your poor patient father prayed for so earnestly as for your welfare; that you might be saved for time and eternity. Now I don't believe such prayers are ever lost. So you will be helped on your way if you bear steadfastly onwards."

Giving the young man's hand a wring, the Squire turned off on his way.

In half-a-minute he was back again.

"Hey, Mr. Benjamin?--here. How is Sir Dace Fontaine? I suppose you have just left him?"

So Ben had to come back at the call. To the pater's surprise he saw his eyes were moist.

"He is worse, sir, to-day; palpably worse."

"Will he get over it?"

Ben gave his head an emphatic shake, which somehow belied his words: "Cole and Darbyshire think there is hope yet, Squire."

"And you do not; that's evident. Well, good-day."

The next move in this veritable drama was the appearance of Alice Tanerton and her six-months-old baby at Timberdale. Looking upon the Rectory as almost her home--it had been Jack's for many years of his life--Alice came to it without the ceremony of invitation: the object of her coming now being to strive to induce Herbert to let her husband engage himself to Robert Ashton. And this visit of Alice's was destined to bring about a most extraordinary event.

One Wednesday evening when Jack and his wife were dining with us--and that troublesome baby, which Alice could not, as it seemed, stir abroad without, was in the nursery squealing--Alice chanced to say that she had to go to Islip the following day, her mother having charged her to see John Paul the lawyer, concerning a little property that she, Aunt Dean, held in Crabb. It would be a tremendously long walk for Alice from Timberdale, especially as she was not looking strong, and Mrs. Todhetley proposed that I should drive her over in the pony-carriage: which Alice jumped at.

Accordingly, the next morning, which was warm and bright, I took the pony-carriage to the Rectory, picked up Alice, and then drove back towards Islip. As we pa.s.sed Oxlip Grange, which lay in our way, Sir Dace Fontaine was outside in the road, slowly pacing the side-path. I thought I had never seen a man look so ill: so _down_ and gloomy. He raised his eyes, as we came up, to give me a nod. I was nodding back again, when Alice screamed out and startled me. She started the pony too, which sprang on at a tangent.

"Johnny! Johnny Ludlow!" she gasped, her face whiter than death and her lips trembling like an aspen leaf, "did you see that man? Did you see him?"

"Yes. I was nodding to him. What is the matter?"

"It was the man I saw in my dream: the man who had committed the murder in it."

I stared at her, wondering whether she had lost her wits.

"Do you remember the description I gave of that man?" she continued, in excitement. "_I_ do. I wrote it down at the time, and Mr. Todhetley holds it, sealed up. Every word, every particular is in my memory now, as I saw him in my dream. 'A tall, evil-looking, dark man in a long brown coat, who walked with his eyes fixed on the ground.' I tell you, Johnny Ludlow, _that is the man_."

Her vehemence infected me. I looked round after Sir Dace. He was turning this way now. Certainly the description seemed like enough.

His countenance just now did look an evil one; and he was tall and he was dark, and he wore a long brown coat this morning, nearly reaching to his heels, and his eyes were fixed on the ground as he walked.

"But what if his looks do tally with the man you saw in your dream, Alice? What of it?"

"What of it!" she echoed, vehemently. "_What of it!_ Why, don't you see, Johnny Ludlow? This man must have killed Edward Pym."

"Hush, Alice! It is impossible. This is Sir Dace Fontaine."

"I do not care who he is," was her impulsive retort. "As surely as that Heaven is above us, Edward Pym got his death at the hand of this man. My dream revealed it to me."

I might as well have tried to stem a torrent as to argue with her; so I drove on and held my tongue. Arrived at the office of Paul and Chandler, I following her in, leaving a boy with the pony outside. Alice pounced upon old Paul with the a.s.sertion: Sir Dace Fontaine was the evil and guilty man she had seen in her dream. Considering that Paul was a sort of cousin to Sir Dace's late wife, this was pretty well. Old Paul stared at her as I had done. Her cheeks were hectic, her eyes wildly earnest.

She recalled to the lawyer's memory the dream she had related to him; she a.s.serted in the most unqualified manner that Dace Fontaine was guilty. Tom Chandler, who was old Paul's partner and had married his daughter Emma, came into the room in the middle of it, and took his share of staring.

"It must be investigated," said Alice to them. "Will you undertake it?"

"My dear young lady, one cannot act upon a fancy--a dream," cried old Paul: and there was a curious sound of compa.s.sionate pity in his voice, which betrayed to Alice the gratifying fact that he was regarding her as a monomaniac.

"If you will not act, others will," she concluded at last, after exhausting her arguments in vain. And she came away with me in resentment, having totally forgotten all about her mother's business.

To Crabb Cot then--she _would_ go--to take counsel with the Squire. He told her to her face she was worse than a lunatic to suspect Sir Dace; and he would hardly get out the sealed packet at all. It was opened at last, and the dream, as written down in it by herself at the time, read.

"John Tanerton, my husband, was going to sea in command," it began.

"He came to me the morning of the day they were to sail, looking very patient, pale and sorrowful: more so than any one, I think, could look in life. He and I seemed to have had some estrangement the previous night that was not remembered by either of us now, and I, for one, repented of it. Somebody was murdered (though I could not tell how this had been revealed to me), some man; Jack was suspected by all people, but they could not bring it home to him. We were in some strange town; strangers in it; though I, as it seemed to me, had been in it once, many years before. All this while, Jack was standing before me in his sadness and sorrow, mutely appealing to me, as it seemed, to clear him.

Everybody was talking of it and glancing at us askance, everybody shunned us, and we were in cruel distress. Suddenly I remembered that when I was in the town before, the man now murdered had had a bitter quarrel with another man, a gentleman of note in the town; and a conviction came over me, powerful as a revelation, that it was he who had now committed the murder. I left Jack, and told this to some one connected with the ship, its owner, I think. He laughed at the words, saying that the gentleman I would accuse was of high authority in the town, one of its first magnates. That he had done it, however high he might be, I felt perfectly certain; but n.o.body would listen to me; n.o.body would heed so improbable a tale: and, in the trouble this brought me, I awoke. _Such_ trouble! Nothing like it could be felt in real life.

"That was dream the first.

"I lay awake for some little time thinking of it, and then went to sleep again: and this was dream the second.

"The dream seemed to recommence from where it had left off. It was afternoon. I was in a large open carriage, going through the streets of the town, the ship's owner (as I say I think he was) sitting beside me. In pa.s.sing over a bridge we saw two gentlemen walking towards us arm-in-arm on the footpath, one of them an officer in a dusky old red uniform and c.o.c.ked hat, the other a tall, evil-looking dark man, who wore a long brown coat and kept his eyes on the ground. Though I had never seen him in my life before, I _knew_ it was the guilty man; he had killed the other, committed the crime in secret: but ere I could speak, he who was sitting with me said, 'There's the gentleman you would have accused this morning. He stands before everybody else in the town. Fancy your accusing _him_ of such a thing!' It seemed to me that I did not answer, could not answer for the pain. That he was guilty I knew, and not Jack, but I had no means of bringing it home to him. He and the man in uniform walked on in their secure immunity, and I went on in the carriage in my pain. The pain awoke me.

"And now it only remains for me to declare that I have set down this singular dream truthfully, word for word; and I shall seal it up and keep it. It may be of use if any trouble falls upon Jack, as the dream seems to foretell--and of some trouble in store for him he has already felt the shadow. So strangely vivid a dream, and the intense pain it brought and leaves with me, can hardly have visited me for nothing.--ALICE TANERTON."

That was all the paper said. The Squire, poring through his good old spectacles over it, shook his head as Alice pointed out the description of the guilty man, how exactly it tallied with the appearance of Sir Dace Fontaine; but he only repeated Paul the lawyer's words, "One cannot act upon a dream."

"It was Sir Dace; it was Sir Dace," reiterated Alice, clasping her hands piteously. "I am as sure of it as that I hope to go to heaven." And I drove her home in the belief.

There ensued a commotion. Not a commotion to be told to the parish, but a private one amidst ourselves. I never saw a woman in such a fever of excitement as Alice Tanerton was in from that day, or any one take up a matter so warmly.