Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series Part 49

Captain Monk tore the paper to bits. "_Not to-night_, tell your mistress, is my answer," said he to Rimmer. "Hubert, you can go to your aunt now; it's past your bed-time."

There could be no appeal, as the boy knew; but he went off unwillingly and in bitter resentment against Mrs. Carradyne. He supposed she had sent for him.

"What a cross old thing you are, Aunt Emma!" he exclaimed as he entered the drawing-room on the other side the hall. "You won't let Harry go in at all to the banquets, and you won't let me stay at them! Papa meant--I think he meant--to let me remain there to hear the chimes. Why need you have interfered to send for me?"

"I neither interfered with you, Hubert, nor sent for you. A gentleman, who did not give his name and preferred to wait outside, wants to see Mr. Danc.o.x; that's all," said Mrs. Carradyne. "You gave my note to your master, Rimmer?"

"Yes, ma'am," replied the butler. "My master bade me say to you that his answer was _not to-night_."

Katherine Monk, her face betraying some agitation, rose from the piano.

"Was the message not given to Mr. Danc.o.x?" she asked of Rimmer.

"Not while I was there, Miss Katherine. The master tore the note into bits, after reading it; and dropped them under the table."

Now it chanced that Mr. Danc.o.x, glancing covertly at the note while the Captain held it to the light, had read what was written there. For a few minutes he said nothing. The Captain was busy sending round the wine.

"Captain Monk--pardon me--I saw my name on that bit of paper; it caught my eye as you held it out," he said in a low tone. "Am I called out? Is anyone in the parish dying?"

Thus questioned, Captain Monk told the truth. No one was dying, and he was not called out to the parish. Some gentleman was asking to speak to him; only that.

"Well, I'll just see who it is, and what he wants," said Mr. Danc.o.x, rising. "Won't be away two minutes, sir."

"Bring him back with you; tell him he'll find good wine here and jolly cheer," said the Captain. And Mr. Danc.o.x went out, swinging his napkin in his hand.

In crossing the hall he met Katherine, exchanged a hasty word with her, let fall the serviette on a chair as he caught up his hat and overcoat, and went out. Katherine ran upstairs.

Hubert lay down on one of the drawing-room sofas. In point of fact, that young gentleman could not walk straight. A little wine takes effect on youngsters, especially when they are not accustomed to it. Mrs.

Carradyne told Hubert the best place for him was bed. Not a bit of it, the boy answered: he should go out on the terrace at twelve o'clock; the chimes would be fine, heard out there. He fell asleep almost as he spoke; presently he woke up, feeling headachy, cross and stupid, and of his own accord went up to bed.

Meanwhile, the dining-room was getting jollier and louder as the time pa.s.sed on towards midnight. Great wonder was expressed at the non-return of the parson; somebody must be undoubtedly grievously sick or dying.

Mr. Speck, the quiet little Hurst Leet doctor, dissented from this.

n.o.body was dying in the parish, he affirmed, or sick enough to need a priest; as a proof of it, _he_ had not been sent for.

Ring, ring, ring! broke forth the chimes on the quiet midnight air, as the church clock finished striking twelve. It was a sweet sound; even those prejudiced against the chimes could hear that: the windows had been opened in readiness.

The gla.s.ses were charged; the company stood on their legs, some of them not at all steady legs just then, bending their ears to listen. Captain Monk stood in his place, majestically waving his head and his left hand to keep time in harmony with The Bay of Biscay. His right hand held his goblet in readiness for the toast when the sounds should cease.

Ring, ring, ring! chimed the last strokes of the bells, dying away to faintness on the still evening air. Suddenly, amidst the hushed silence, and whilst the sweet melody fell yet unbroken on the room, there arose a noise as of something falling outside on the terrace, mingled with a wild scream and the crash of breaking gla.s.s.

One of the guests rushed to the window, and put his head out of it. So far as he could see, he said (perhaps his sight was somewhat obscured), it was a looking-gla.s.s lying further up on the terrace.

Thrown out from one of the upper windows! scornfully p.r.o.nounced the Captain, full of wrath that it should have happened at that critical moment to mar the dignity of his coming toast. And he gave the toast heartily; and the new year came in for them all with good wishes and good wine.

Some little time yet ere the company finally rose. The mahogany frame of the broken looking-gla.s.s, standing on end, was conspicuous on the white ground in the clear frosty night, as they streamed out from the house.

Mr. Speck, whose sight was rather remarkably good, peered at it curiously from the hall steps, and then walked quickly along the snowy terrace towards it.

Sure enough, it was a looking-gla.s.s, broken in its fall from an open window above. But, lying by it in the deep snow, in his white night-shirt, was Hubert Monk.

When the chimes began to play, Hubert was not asleep. Sitting up in bed, he disposed himself to listen. After a bit they began to grow fainter; Hubert impatiently dashed to the window and threw it up to its full height as he jumped on the dressing-table, when in some unfortunate way he overbalanced himself, and pitched out on the terrace beneath, carrying the looking-gla.s.s with him. The fall was not much, for his room was in one of the wings, the windows of which were low; but the boy had struck his head in falling, and there he had lain, insensible, on the terrace, one hand still clasping the looking-gla.s.s.

All the rosy wine-tint fading away to a sickly paleness on the Captain's face, he looked down on his well-beloved son. The boy was carried indoors to his room, reviving with the movement.

"Young bones are elastic," p.r.o.nounced Mr. Speck, when he had examined him; "and none of these are broken. He will probably have a cold from the exposure; that's about the worst."

He seemed to have it already: he was shivering from head to foot now, as he related the above particulars. All the family had a.s.sembled round him, except Katherine.

"Where is Katherine?" suddenly inquired her father, noticing her absence.

"I cannot think where she is," said Mrs. Carradyne. "I have not seen her for an hour or two. Eliza says she is not in her room; I sent her to see. She is somewhere about, of course."

"Go and look for your sister, Eliza. Tell her to come here," said Captain Monk. But though Eliza went at once, her quest was useless.

Miss Katherine was not in the house: Miss Katherine had made a moonlight flitting from it that evening with the Reverend Thomas Danc.o.x.

THE SILENT CHIMES

II.--PLAYING AGAIN

I

It could not be said the Church Leet chimes brought good when they rang out that night at midnight, as the old year was giving place to the new. Mrs. Carradyne, in her superst.i.tion, thought they brought evil.

Certainly evil set in at the same time, and Captain Monk, with all his scoffing obstinacy, could not fail to see it. That fine young lad, his son, fell through the window listening to them; and in the self-same hour the knowledge reached him that Katherine, his eldest and dearest child, had flown from his roof in defiant disobedience, to set up a home of her own.

Hubert was soon well of his bruises; but not of the cold induced by lying in the snow, clad only in his white night-shirt. In spite of all Mr. Speck's efforts, rheumatic fever set in, and for some time Hubert hovered between life and death. He recovered; but would never again be the strong, hearty lad he had been--though indeed he had never been very physically strong. The doctor privately hoped that the heart would be found all right in future, but he would not have answered for it.

The blow that told most on Captain Monk was that inflicted by Katherine.

And surely never was disobedient marriage carried out with the impudent boldness of hers. Church Leet called it "cheek." Church Leet (disbelieving the facts when they first oozed out) could talk of nothing else for weeks. For Katherine had been married in the church hard by, that same night.

Special licenses were very uncommon things in those days; they cost too much; but the Reverend Thomas Danc.o.x had procured one. With Katherine's money: everybody guessed that. She had four hundred a-year of her own, inherited from her dead mother, and full control over it. So the special license was secured, and their crafty plans were laid. The stranger who had presented himself at the Hall that night (by arrangement), asking for Mr. Danc.o.x, thus affording an excuse for his quitting the banquet-room, was a young clergyman of Worcester, come over especially to marry them. When tackled with his deed afterwards, he protested that he had not been told the marriage was to be clandestine. Tom Danc.o.x went out to him from the banquet; Katherine, slipping on a bonnet and shawl, joined them outside; they hastened to the rectory and thence into the church. And while the unconscious master of Leet Hall was entertaining his guests with his good cheer and his stories and his hip, hip, hurrah, his Vicar and Katherine Monk were made one until death should them part.

And death, as it proved, intended to do that speedily.

At first Captain Monk, in his unbounded rage, was for saying that a marriage celebrated at ten o'clock at night by the light of a solitary tallow candle, borrowed from the vestry, could not hold good. Rea.s.sured upon this point, he strove to devise other means to part them. Foiled again, he laid the case before the Bishop of Worcester, and begged his lordship to unfrock Thomas Danc.o.x. The Bishop did not do as much as that; though he sent for Tom Danc.o.x and severely reprimanded him. But that, as Church Leet remarked, did not break bones. Tom had striven to make the best of his own cause to the Bishop, and the worst of Captain Monk's obdurate will; moreover, stolen marriages were not thought much of in those days.

An uncomfortable state of things was maintained all the year, Hall Leet and the Parsonage standing at daggers drawn. Never once did Captain Monk appear at church. If he by cross-luck met his daughter or her husband abroad, he struck into a good fit of swearing aloud; which perhaps relieved his mind. The chimes had never played again; they pertained to the church, and the church was in ill-favour with the Captain. As the end of the year approached, Church Leet wondered whether he would hold the annual banquet; but Captain Monk was not likely to forego that.

Why should he? The invitations went out for it; and they contained an intimation that the chimes would again play.

The banquet took place, a neighbouring parson saying grace at it in the place of Tom Danc.o.x. While the enjoyment was progressing and Captain Monk was expressing his marvel for the tenth time as to what could have become of Speck, who had not made his appearance, a note was brought in by Rimmer--just as he had brought in one last year. This also was from Mrs. Carradyne.

"_Please come out to me for one moment, dear G.o.dfrey. I must say a word to you._"

Captain Monk's first impulse on reading this was to send Rimmer back to say she might go and be hanged. But to call him from the table was so very extreme a measure, that on second thoughts he decided to go to her.

Mrs. Carradyne was standing just outside the door, looking as white as a sheet.