Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series Part 50

"Well, this is pretty bold of you, Madam Emma," he began angrily. "Are you out of your senses?"

"Hush, G.o.dfrey! Katherine is dying."

"What?" cried the Captain, the words confusing him.

"Katherine is dying," repeated his sister, her teeth chattering with emotion.

In spite of Katherine's rebellion, G.o.dfrey Monk loved her still as the apple of his eye; and it was only his obstinate temper which had kept him from reconciliation. His face took a hue of terror, and his voice a softer tone.

"What have you heard?"

"Her baby's born; something has gone wrong, I suppose, and she is dying.

Sally ran up with the news, sent by Mr. Speck. Katherine is crying aloud for you, saying she cannot die without your forgiveness. Oh, G.o.dfrey, you will go, you will surely go!" pleaded Mrs. Carradyne, breaking down with a burst of tears. "Poor Katherine!"

Never another word spoke he. He went out at the hall-door there and then, putting on his hat as he leaped down the steps. It was a wretched night; not white, clear, and cold as the last New Year's Eve had been, or mild and genial as the one before it; but damp, raw, misty.

"You think I have remained hard and defiant, father," Katherine whispered to him, "but I have many a time asked G.o.d's forgiveness on my bended knees; and I longed--oh, how I longed!--to ask yours. What should we all do with the weight of sin that lies on us when it comes to such an hour as this, but for Jesus Christ--for G.o.d's wonderful mercy!"

And, with one hand in her father's and the other in her husband's, both their hearts aching to pain, and their eyes wet with bitter tears, poor Katherine's soul pa.s.sed away.

After quitting the parsonage, Captain Monk was softly closing the garden gate behind him--for when in sorrow we don't do things with a rush and a bang--when a whirring sound overhead caused him to start. Strong, hardened man though he was, his nerves were unstrung to-night in company with his heartstrings. It was the church clock preparing to strike twelve. The little doctor, Speck, who had left the house but a minute before, was standing at the churchyard fence close by, his arms leaning on the rails, probably ruminating sadly on what had just occurred.

Captain Monk halted beside him in silence, while the clock struck.

As the last stroke vibrated on the air, telling the knell of the old year, the dawn of the new, another sound began.

Ring, ring, ring! Ring, ring, ring!

The chimes! The sweet, soothing, melodious chimes, carolling forth The Bay of Biscay. Very pleasant were they in themselves to the ear.

But--did they fall pleasantly on Captain Monk's? It may be, not. It may be, a wish came over him that he had never thought of inst.i.tuting them.

But for doing that, the ills of his recent life had never had place.

George West's death would not have lain at his door, or room been made by it for Tom Danc.o.x, and Katherine would not be lying as he had now left her--cold and lifeless.

"Could _nothing_ have been done to save her, Speck?" he whispered to the doctor, whose arms were still on the churchyard railings, listening to the chimes in silence--though indeed he had asked the same question indoors before.

"Nothing; or you may be sure, sir, it would have been," answered Mr.

Speck. "Had all the medical men in Worcestershire been about her, they could not have saved her any more than I could. These unfortunate cases happen now and then," sighed he, "showing us how powerless we really are."

Well, it was grievous news wherewith to startle the parish. And Mrs.

Carradyne, a martyr to belief in ghosts and omens, grew to dread the chimes with a nervous and nameless dread.

II

It was but the first of February, yet the weather might have served for May-day: one of those superb days that come once in a while out of their season, serving to remind the world that the dark, depressing, dreary winter will not last for ever; though we may have half feared it means to, forgetting the rea.s.suring promise of the Divine Ruler of all things, given after the Flood:

"_While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease._"

The warm and glorious sunbeams lay on Church Leet, as if to woo the bare hedges into verdant life, the cold fields to smiling plains. Even the mounds of the graveyard, interspersed amidst the old tombstones, looked green and cheerful to-day in the golden light.

Turning slowly out of the Vicarage gate came a good-looking clergyman of seven-or-eight-and-twenty. A slender man of middle height, with a sweet expression on his pale, thoughtful face, and dark earnest eyes. It was the new Vicar of Church Leet, the Reverend Robert Grame.

For a goodish many years have gone on since that tragedy of poor Katherine's death, and this is the second appointed Vicar since that inauspicious time.

Mr. Grame walked across the churchyard, glancing at the inscriptions on the tombs. Inside the church porch stood the clerk, old John Cale, keys in hand. Mr. Grame saw him and quickened his pace.

"Have I kept you waiting, Cale?" he cried in his pleasant, considerate tones. "I am sorry for that."

"Not at all, your reverence; I came afore the time. This here church is but a step or two off my home, yonder, and I'm as often out here as I be indoors," continued John Cale, a fresh-coloured little man with pale grey eyes and white hair. "I've been clerk here, sir, for seven-and-thirty years."

"You've seen more than one parson out then, I reckon."

"More than one! Ay, sir, more than--more than six times one, I was going to say; but that's too much, maybe. Let's see: there was Mr. Cartright, he had held the living I hardly know how many years when I came, and he held it for many after that. Mr. West succeeded him--the Reverend George West; then came Thomas Danc.o.x; then Mr. Atterley: four in all. And now you've come, sir, to make the fifth."

"Did they all die? or take other livings?"

"Some the one thing, sir, and some the other. Mr. Cartright died, he was old; and Mr. West, he--he----" John Cale hesitated before he went on--"he died; Mr. Danc.o.x got appointed to a chaplaincy somewhere over the seas; he was here but about eighteen months, hardly that; and Mr.

Atterley, who has just left, has had a big church with a big income, they say, given to him over in Oxfordshire."

"Which makes room for me," smiled Robert Grame.

They were inside the church now; a small and very old-fashioned church, with high pews, dark and sombre. Over the large pew of the Monks, standing sideways to the pulpit, sundry slabs were on the wall, their inscriptions testifying to the virtues and ages of the Monk family dead and gone. Mr. Grame stood to read them. One slab of white marble, its black letters fresh and clear, caught especially his eye.

"Katherine, eldest child of G.o.dfrey Monk, gentleman, and wife of the Reverend Thomas Danc.o.x," he read out aloud. "Was that he who was Vicar here?"

"Ay, 'twas. She married him again her father's wish, and died, poor thing, just a year after it," replied the clerk. "And only twenty-three, as you see, sir! The Captain came down and forgave her on her dying bed, and 'twas he that had the stone put up there. Her baby-girl was taken to the Hall, and is there still: ten years old she must be now; 'twas but an hour or two old when the mother died."

"It seems a sad history," observed Mr. Grame as he turned away to enter the vestry.

John Cale did the honours of its mysteries: showing him the chest for the surplices; the cupboard let into the wall for the register; the place where candles and such-like stores were kept. Mr. Grame opened a door at one end of the room and saw a square flagged place, containing grave-digging tools and the hanging ropes of the bell which called people to church. Shutting the door again, he crossed to a door on the opposite side. But that he could not open.

"What does this lead to?" he asked. "It is locked."

"It's always kept locked, that door is, sir; and it's a'most as much as my post is worth to open it," said the clerk, his voice sinking to a mysterious whisper. "It leads up to the chimes."

"The chimes!" echoed the new parson in surprise. "Do you mean to say this little country church can boast of chimes?"

John Cale nodded. "Lovely, pleasant things they be to listen to, sir, but we've not heard 'em since the midnight when Miss Katherine died.

They play a tune called 'The Bay o' Biscay.'"

Selecting a key from the bunch that he carried in his hand, he opened the door, displaying a narrow staircase, unprotected as a ladder and nearly perpendicular. At the top was another small door, evidently locked.

"Captain Monk had all this done when he put the chimes up," remarked he. "I sweep the dust off these stairs once in three months or so, but otherwise the door's not opened. And that one," nodding to the door above, "never."

"But why?" asked the clergyman. "If the chimes are there, and are, as you say, melodious, why do they not play?"

"Well, sir, I b'lieve there's a bit of superst.i.tion at the bottom of it," returned the clerk, not caring to explain too fully lest he should have to tell about Mr. West's death, which might not be the thing to frighten a new Vicar with. "A feeling has somehow got abroad in the parish (leastways with a many of its folk) that the putting-up of its bells brought ill-luck, and that whenever the chimes ring out some dreadful evil falls on the Monk family."

"I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed the Vicar, hardly knowing whether to laugh or lecture. "The parish cannot be so ignorant as that!

How can the putting-up of chimes bring ill-luck?"