Johnny Ludlow First Series Part 41

She told this for my benefit; just as if she had divined the night's work; Sanker knew it before. I felt sick with remorse as I listened--and Tod had called him a coward! Let us get away.

"I wish you could stay, my lads," cried Mr. Vale; "it vexes me to turn you out supperless. What's this, Charlotte? Ah yes, to be sure! I wish you could put up the whole table for them."

For Mrs. Vale had been putting up some tartlets, and gave us each a packet of them. "Eat them as you go along," she said. "And give my love to Harry."

"And tell him that he must bring you both on Sunday, to spend the day,"

added Mr. Vale. "Perhaps young Mr. Todhetley will come also. You might have breakfast, and go with us to church. I'll write to Dr. Frost."

Outside at last; I and my shame. These good, simple-hearted people--oh, had we indeed, between us, made them childless? "Young Mr. Todhetley,"

waiting amid the stubble in the outer field, came springing up to the fence, his face white in the light of the hunter's moon.

"What a long while you have been! Well?"

"Nothing," said Sanker, briefly. "No news! I don't think we've been much above five minutes."

What a walk home it was! Mr. Blair, the out-of-school master, came down upon us with his thunder, but Tod seemed never to hear him. The boys, hushed and quiet as nature is before an impending storm, had not dared to tell and provoke it. I could not see Lacketer.

"Where's Vale?" roared Mr. Blair, supposing he had been with us. "But that prayers are waiting, I'd cane all four of you. Where are you going, Todhetley?"

"Don't stop me, Mr. Blair," said Tod, putting him aside with a quiet authority and a pain in his voice that made Blair stare. We called Blair, Baked Pie, because of his name, Pyefinch.

"Read the prayers without me, please Mr Blair," went on Tod. "I must see Dr. Frost. If you don't know what has happened to-night, sir, ask the rest to tell you."

He went out to his interview with the Doctor. Tod was not one to shirk his duty. Seeing Vale's father and mother he had shrunk from; but the confession to Dr. Frost he made himself. What pa.s.sed between them we never knew: how much contrition Tod spoke, how much reproach the Doctor.

Roger and Miles, the man-servant and boy, were called into the library, and sent abroad: we thought it might be to search the banks of the river, or give notice for it to be dragged. The next called in was Sanker. The next, Lacketer.

But Lacketer did not answer the call. He had vanished. Mr. Blair went searching for him high and low, and could not find him. Lacketer had run away. He knew his time at Worcester House was over, and thought he'd save himself from dismissal. It was he who had been the thief, and whom Sanker suspected. As good mention here that Dr. Frost got a letter from his aunt the next Sat.u.r.day, saying the school did not agree with her nephew, and she had withdrawn him from it.

Whether the others slept that night, I can't tell; I did not. Harry Vale's drowned form was in my mind all through it; and the sorrow of Mr.

and Mrs. Vale. In the morning Tod got up, looking more like one dead than alive: he had one of his frightful headaches. I felt ready to die myself; it seemed that never another happy morning could dawn on the world.

"Shall I ask if I may bring you some breakfast up here, Tod? And it's just possible, you know, that Vale----"

"Hold your peace, Johnny!" he snapped. "If ever you tell me a false thing of a fellow again, I'll thrash your life out of you."

He came downstairs when he was dressed, and went out, waiting neither for breakfast nor prayers. I went out to watch him away, knowing he must be going to Vale Farm.

Oh, I never shall forget it. As Tod pa.s.sed round the corner by the railings, he ran up against him. _Him_, Harry Vale.

My sight grew dim; I couldn't see; the field and railings were reeling.

But it only lasted for a moment or two. Tod's breath was coming in great gasps then, and he had Vale's two hands grasped in his. I thought he was going to hug him; a loud sob broke from him.

"We have been thinking you were drowned!"

Vale smiled. "I am too good a swimmer for that."

"But you disappeared at once."

"I struck back out of the river the instant I got into it; I was afraid you'd come in after me; and crept round the alder trees lower down. When you were all gone I swam across in my clothes; see how they've shrunk!"

"Swam across! Have you not been home?"

"No, I went to my uncle's: it's nearer than home: and they made me go to bed, and dried my things, and sent to tell Dr. Frost. I did not say why I went into the water," added Vale, lifting his kind face. "But the Doctor came round the ferry late, and he knew all about it. They talked to me well, he and my uncle, about being frightened at nothing, and I've promised not to be so stupid again."

"G.o.d bless you, Vale!" cried Tod. "You know it was a mistake."

"Yes, Dr. Frost said so. The half-crown was my own. My uncle met us boys when we were out walking yesterday morning, and gave it me. I thought you might have seen him give it."

Tod linked his arm within Vale's and walked off to the breakfast-room.

The wonder to me was how, with Vale's good honest face and open manners, we could have thought him capable of theft. But when you once go in for a mistake it carries you on in spite of improbabilities. The boys were silent for an instant when Vale went in, and then you'd have thought the roof was coming off with cheers. Tod stood looking from the window, and I vow I saw him rub his handkerchief across his eyes.

We went to Vale Farm on Sunday morning early: the four of us invited, and Harding. Mr. Vale shook hands twice with us all round so heartily, that we might see, I thought, they bore no malice; and Mrs. Vale's breakfast was a sight to do you good, with its jugs of cream and home-made sausages.

After that, came church: it looked like a procession turning out for it.

Mr. and Mrs. Vale and the grandmother, an upright old lady with a China-c.r.a.pe shawl and white hair, us five and a man and maid-servant behind. The river lay on the right, the church was in front of us; people dotted the fields on their way to it, and the bells were ringing as they do at a wedding.

"This is a different sort of Sunday from what we thought last Thursday it would be," I said in Tod's ear when we were together for a minute at the gate.

"Johnny, if I were older, and went in for that kind of thing, as perhaps I shall do sometime, I should like to put up a public thanksgiving in church to-day."

"A public thanksgiving?"

"For mercies received."

I stared at Tod. He did not seem to heed it, but took his hat off and walked with it in his hand all across the churchyard.

XI

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

Perhaps this might be called the beginning of the end of the chain of events that I alluded to in that other paper. An end that terminated in distress, and death, and sorrow.

It was the half-year following that hunt of ours by moonlight. Summer weather had come in, and we were looking forward to the holidays, hoping the heat would last.

The half-mile field, so called from its length, on Vale Farm was being mowed. Sunday intervened, and the gra.s.s was left to dry until the Monday. The haymakers had begun to rake it into c.o.c.ks. The river stretched past along the field on one side; a wooden fence bounded it on the other. It was out of all proportion, that field, so long and so narrow.

Tod and I and Sanker and Harry Vale were spending the Sunday at the Farm. Since that hunt last autumn Mr. and Mrs. Vale often invited us.

There was no evening service, and we went into the hay-field, and began throwing the hay at one another. It was rare fun; they might almost have heard our shouts at Worcester House: and I don't believe but that every one of us forgot it was Sunday.

What with the sultry weather and the hay, some of us got into a tolerable heat. The river wore a tempting look; and Tod and Sanker, without so much as a thought, undressed themselves behind the trees, and plunged in. It was twilight then; the air had began to wear its weird silence; the shadows were putting on their ghastliness; the moon, well up, sailed along under white clouds.

I and Vale were walking slowly back towards the Farm, when a great cry broke over the water,--a cry as of something in pain; but whether from anything more than a night-bird, was uncertain. Vale stopped and turned his head.

A second cry: louder, longer, more distinct, and full of agony. It came from one of those two in the water. Vale flew back with his fleet foot--fleeter than any fellow's in the school, except Tod's and Snepp's.