Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series Part 40

Oliver had accompanied Jane to the end of Brook Lane. There, at the Islip Road, they parted; she going on to Crabb, Oliver walking back again. Upon reaching the Inlets, that favourite spot of his, he sat down on the bench that faced the highway; the self-same bench Jane had sat on when she was watching for his arrival from Tours, in the early days of spring. He had not sat there above a minute when he saw his father, with one or two more gentlemen, get over the gate from the field opposite.

They were returning from shooting, and had their guns in their hands.

Mr. Preen walked quickly over the road to Oliver.

"Take my gun indoors," he said; "I am not going in just yet. It is loaded."

He walked away down the road with his friends, after speaking. Oliver took the gun, walked slowly down one of the Inlets, and placed himself on the nearest bench there, lodging the gun against the end. In a few minutes there arose a loud report.

Sam was in the upper part of the field on the other side the brook with the waggon and waggoner. He turned to look where the noise came from, and thought he saw some one lying on the ground by the bench. They both came round in haste, he and the waggoner, and found Oliver Preen lying dead with the gun beside him. Running for a.s.sistance, Sam helped to carry him home, and then went for the nearest doctor; but it was all of no avail. Oliver was dead.

Was it an accident, or was it intentional? People asked the question. At the coroner's inquest, Mr. Preen, who was so affected he could hardly give evidence, said that, so far as he believed, Oliver was one of the last people likely to lay violent hands on himself; he was of too calm and gentle a temperament for that. The rustic jury, pitying the father and believing him, gave Oliver the benefit of the doubt. Loaded guns were dangerous, they observed, apt to go off of themselves almost; and they brought it in Accidental Death.

But Jane knew better. I thought I knew better. I'm afraid Mr. Preen knew better.

And what of that appearance of Oliver which Jane saw? It could not have been Oliver in the flesh, but I think it must have been Oliver in the spirit. Many a time and oft in the days that followed did Jane recount it over to me; it seemed a relief to her distress to talk of it. "He said he would come, alive or dead, to meet me; and he came."

And I, Johnny Ludlow, break off here to state that the account of this apparition is strictly true. Every minute particular attending it, even to the gig coming with Sam in it to fetch Jane from the tea-table, is a faithful record of that which occurred.

I took an opportunity of questioning Sam, asking whether he had seen the appearance. It was as we were coming away from the grave after the funeral. Oliver was buried in Duck Brook churchyard, close under the clock which had told him the time when he stood with his father posting the letters that past afternoon at Dame Sym's window. "We are too late, father," he had said. But for being too late the tragedy might never have happened, for the letter, which caused all the trouble and commotion, would have reached Mr. Paul's hands safely the next morning.

"No, sir," Sam answered me, "I can't say that I saw anything. But just as Miss Jane spoke, calling out that Mr. Oliver was there, a kind of shivering wind seemed to take me, and I turned icy cold. It was not her words that could have done it, sir, for I was getting so before she spoke. And at the last Inlet, when she called it out again, I went almost out of my mind with cold and terror. The horse was affrighted too; his coat turned wet."

That was the tragedy: no one can say I did wrong to call it one. For years and years it has been in my mind to write it. But I had hoped to end the paper less sadly; only the story has lengthened itself out, and there's no s.p.a.ce left. I meant to have told of Jane's brighter fate in the after days with Valentine, the one lover of her life. For Val pulled himself up from his reckless ways, though not at Islip; and in a distant land they are now sailing down the stream of life together, pa.s.sing through, as we all have to do, its storms and its sunshine. All this must be left for another paper.

IN LATER YEARS

I

I think it must have been the illness he had in the summer that tended to finally break down Valentine Chandler. He had been whirling along all kinds of doubtful ways before, but when a sort of low fever attacked him, and he had to lie by for weeks, he was about done for.

That's how we found it when we got to Crabb Cot in October. Valentine, what with illness, his wild ways and his ill-luck, had come to grief and was about to emigrate to Canada. His once flourishing practice had run away from him; no prospect seemed left to him in the old country.

"It is an awful pity!" I remarked to Mrs. Cramp, having overtaken her in the Islip Road, as she was walking towards home.

"Ay, it is that, Johnny Ludlow," she said, turning her comely face to me, the strings of her black bonnet tied in a big bow under her chin.

"Not much else was to be expected, taking all things into consideration.

George Chandler, Tom's brother, makes a right good thing of it in Canada, farming, and Val is going to him."

"We hear that Val's mother is leaving North Villa."

"She can't afford to stay in it now," returned Mrs. Cramp, "so has let it to the Miss Dennets, and taken a pretty little place for herself in Crabb. Georgiana has gone out as a governess."

"Will she like that?"

"Ah, Master Johnny! There are odd moments throughout all our lives when we have to do things we don't like any more than we like poison--I hate to look at the place," cried Mrs. Cramp, energetically. "When I think of Mrs. Jacob's having to turn out of it, and all through Val's folly, it gives me the creeps."

This applied to North Villa, of which we then were abreast. Mrs. Cramp turned her face from it, and went on sideways, like a crab.

"Why, here's Jane Preen!"

She was coming along quietly in the afternoon sunshine. I thought her altered. The once pretty blush-rose of her dimpled cheeks had faded; in her soft blue eyes, so like Oliver's, lay a look of sadness. He had been dead about a year now. But the blush came back again, and the eyes lighted up with smiles as I took her hand. Mrs. Cramp went on; she was in a hurry to reach her home, which lay between Islip and Crabb. Jane rang the bell at North Villa.

"Shall I take a run over to Duck Brook to-morrow, Jane, and sit with you in the Inlets, and we'll have a spell of gossip together?"

"I never sit in the Inlets now," she said, in a half whisper, turning her face away.

"Forgive me, Jane," I cried, repenting my thoughtlessness; and she disappeared up the garden path.

Susan opened the door. Her mistress was out, she said, but Miss Clementina was at home. It was Clementina that Jane wanted to see.

Valentine, still weak, was lying on the sofa in the parlour when Jane entered. He got up, all excitement at seeing her, and they sat down together.

"I brought this for Clementina," she said, placing a paper parcel on the table. "It is a pattern which she asked me for. Are you growing stronger?"

"Clementina is about somewhere," he observed; "the others are out. Yes, I am growing stronger; but it seems to me that I am a long while about it."

They sat on in silence, side by side, neither speaking. Valentine took Jane's hand and held it within his own, which rested on his knee. It seemed that they had lost their tongues--as we say to the children.

"Is it all decided?" asked Jane presently. "Quite decided?"

"Quite, Jane. Nothing else is left for me."

She caught her breath with one of those long sighs that tell of inward tribulation.

"I should have been over to see you before this, Jane, but that my legs would not carry me to Duck Brook and back again without sitting down by the wayside. And you--you hardly ever come here now."

A deep flush pa.s.sed swiftly over Jane's face. She had not liked to call at the troubled house. And she very rarely came so far as Crabb now: there seemed to be no plea for it.

"What will be the end, Val?" she whispered.

Valentine groaned. "I try not to think of it, my dear. When I cannot put all thought of the future from me, it gives me more torment than I know how to bear. If only----"

The door opened, and in came Clementina, arresting what he had been about to say.

"This is the pattern you asked me for, Clementina," Jane said, rising to depart on her return home. For she would not risk pa.s.sing the Inlets after sunset.

A week or two went by, and the time of Valentine Chandler's departure arrived. He had grown well and strong apparently, and went about to say Good-bye to people in a subdued fashion. The Squire took him apart when Val came for that purpose to us, and talked to him in private. Tod called it a "Curtain Lecture." Valentine was to leave Crabb at daybreak on the Sat.u.r.day morning for London, and go at once on board the ship lying in the docks about to steam away for Quebec.

It perhaps surprised none of us who knew the Chandler girls that they should be seen tearing over the parish on the Friday afternoon to invite people to tea. "It will be miserably dull this last evening, you know, Johnny," they said to me in their flying visit; "we couldn't stand it alone. Be sure to come in early: and leave word that Joseph Todhetley is to join us as soon as he gets back again." For Tod had gone out.

According to orders, I was at North Villa betimes: and, just as on that other afternoon, I met Jane Preen at the gate. She had walked in from Duck Brook.