Johnny Ludlow, First Series

II.

FINDING BOTH OF THEM

Worcester Assizes were being held, and Squire Todhetley was on the grand jury. You see, although Dyke Manor was just within the borders of Warwickshire, the greater portion of the Squire’s property lay in Worcestershire. This caused him to be summoned to serve. We were often at his house there, Crabb Cot. I forget who was foreman of the jury that time: either Sir John Pakington, or the Honourable Mr. Coventry.

The week was jolly. We put up at the Star-and-Garter when we went to Worcester, which was two or three times a-year; generally at the assizes, or the races, or the quarter-sessions; one or other of the busy times.

The Pater would grumble at the bills—and say we boys had no business to be there; but he would take us, if we were at home, for all that. The assizes came on this time the week before our summer holidays were up; the Squire wished they had not come on until the week after. Anyway, there we were, in clover; the Squire about to be stewed up in the county courts all day; I and Tod flying about the town, and doing what we liked.

The judges came in from Oxford on the usual day, Saturday. And, to make clear what I am going to tell about, we must go back to that morning and to Dyke Manor. It was broiling hot weather, and Mrs. Todhetley, Hugh, and Lena, with old Thomas and Hannah, all came on the lawn after breakfast to see us start. The open carriage was at the door, with the fine dark horses. When the Squire did come out, he liked to do things well; and Dwarf Giles, the groom, had gone on to Worcester the day before with the two saddle-horses, the Pater’s and Tod’s. They might have ridden them in this morning, but the Squire chose to have his horses sleek and fresh when attending the high sheriff.

“Shall I drive, sir?” asked Tod.

“No,” said the Pater. “These two have queer tempers, and must be handled carefully.” He meant the horses, Bob and Blister. Tod looked at me; he thought he could have managed them quite as well as the Pater.

“Papa,” cried Lena, as we were driving off, running up in her white pinafore, with her pretty hair flying, “if you can catch that naughty kidnapper at Worcester, you put her in prison.”

The Squire nodded emphatically, as much as to say, “Trust me for that.” Lena alluded to the woman who had taken her off and stolen her clothes two or three weeks before. Tod said, afterwards, there must have been some prevision on the child’s mind when she said this.

We reached Worcester at twelve. It is a long drive, you know. Lots of country-people had arrived, and the Squire went off with some of them. Tod and I thought we’d order luncheon at the Star—a jolly good one; stewed lampreys, kidneys, and cherry-tart; and let it go into the Squire’s bill.

I’m afraid I envied Tod. The old days of travelling post were past, when the sheriff’s procession would go out to Whittington to meet the judges’ carriage. They came now by rail from Oxford, and the sheriff and his attendants received them at the railway station. It was the first time Tod had been allowed to make one of the gentlemen-attendants. The Squire said now he was too young; but he looked big, and tall, and strong. To see him mount his horse and go cantering off with the rest sent me into a state of envy. Tod saw it.

“Don’t drop your mouth, Johnny,” said he. “You’ll make one of us in another year or two.”

I stood about for half-an-hour, and the procession came back, passing the Star on its way to the county courts. The bells were ringing, the advanced heralds blew their trumpets, and the javelin-guard rode at a foot-pace, their lances in rest, preceding the high sheriff’s grand carriage, with its four prancing horses and their silvered harness. Both the judges had come in, so we knew that business was over at Oxford; they sat opposite to the sheriff and his chaplain. I used to wonder whether they travelled all the way in their wigs and gowns, or robed outside Worcester. Squire Todhetley rode in the line next the carriage, with some more old ones of consequence; Tod on his fine bay was nearly at the tail, and he gave me a nod in passing. The judges were going to open the commission, and Foregate Street was crowded.

The high sheriff that year was a friend of ours, and the Pater had an invitation to the banquet he gave that evening. Tod thought he ought to have been invited too.

“It’s sinfully stingy of him, Johnny. When I am pricked for sheriff—and I suppose my turn will come some time, either for Warwickshire or Worcestershire—I’ll have more young fellows to my dinner than old ones.”

The Squire, knowing nothing of our midday luncheon, was surprised that we chose supper at eight instead of dinner at six; but he told the waiter to give us a good one. We went out while it was getting ready, and walked arm-in-arm through the crowded streets. Worcester is always full on a Saturday evening; it is market-day there, as every one knows; but on Assize Saturday the streets are almost impassable. Tod, tall and strong, held on his way, and asked leave of none.

“Now, then, you two gents, can’t you go on proper, and not elbow respectable folks like that?”

“Holloa!” cried Tod, turning at the voice. “Is it you, old Jones?”

Old Jones, the constable of our parish, touched his hat when he saw it was us, and begged pardon. We asked what he was doing at Worcester; but he had only come on his own account. “On the spree,” Tod suggested to him.

“Young Mr. Todhetley,” cried he—the way he chiefly addressed Tod—“I’d not be sure but that woman’s took—her that served out little Miss Lena.”

“That woman!” said Tod. “Why do you think it?”

Old Jones explained. A woman had been apprehended near Worcester the previous day, on a charge of stripping two little boys of their clothes in Perry Wood. The description given of her answered exactly, old Jones thought, to that given by Lena.

“She stripped ’em to the skin,” groaned Jones, drawing a long face as he recited the mishap, “two poor little chaps of three years, they was, living in them cottages under the Wood—not as much as their boots did she leave on ’em. When they got home their folks didn’t know ’em; quite naked they was, and bleating with terror, like a brace of shorn sheep.”

Tod put on his determined look. “And she is taken, you say, Jones?”

“She was took yesterday, sir. They had her before the justices this morning, and the little fellows knowed her at once. As the ’sizes was on, leastways as good as on, their worships committed her for trial there and then. Policeman Cripp told me all about it; it was him that took her. She’s in the county gaol.”

We carried the tale to the Pater that night, and he despatched a messenger to Mrs. Todhetley, to say that Lena must be at Worcester on the Monday morning. But there’s something to tell about the Sunday yet.

If you have been in Worcester on Assize Sunday, you know how the cathedral is on that morning crowded. Enough strangers are in the town to fill it: the inhabitants who go to the churches at other times attended it then; and King Mob flocks in to see the show.

Squire Todhetley was put in the stalls; Tod and I scrambled for places on a bench. The alterations in the cathedral (going on for years before that, and going on for years since, and going on still) caused space to be limited, and it was no end of a cram. While people fought for standing-places, the procession was played in to the crash of the organ. The judges came, glorious in their wigs and gowns; the mayor and aldermen were grand as scarlet and gold chains could make them; and there was a large attendance of the clergy in their white robes. The Bishop had come in from Hartlebury, and was on his throne, and the service began. The Rev. Mr. Wheeler chanted; the Dean read the lessons. Of course the music was all right; they put up fine services on Assize Sundays now; and the sheriff’s chaplain went up in his black gown to preach the sermon. Three-quarters of an hour, if you’ll believe me, before that sermon came to an end!

Ere the organ had well played its Amen to the Bishop’s blessing, the crowd began to push out. We pushed with the rest and took up our places in the long cathedral nave to see the procession pass back again. It came winding down between the line of javelin-men. Just as the judges were passing, Tod motioned me to look opposite. There stood a young boy in dreadful clothes, patched all over, but otherwise clean; with great dark wondering eyes riveted on the judges, as if they had been stilted peacocks; on their wigs, their solemn countenances, their held-up scarlet trains.

Where had I seen those eyes, and their brightness? Recollection flashed over me before Tod’s whisper: “Jake’s boy; the youngster we saw in the tent.”

To get across the line was impossible: manners would not permit it, let alone the javelin-guard. And when the procession had passed, leaving nothing but a crowd of shuffling feet and the dust on the white cathedral floor, the boy was gone.

“I say, Johnny, it is rather odd we should come on those tent-people, just as the woman has turned up,” exclaimed Tod, as we got clear of the cathedral.

“But you don’t think they can be connected, Tod?”

“Well, no; I suppose not. It’s a queer coincidence, though.”

This we also carried to the Squire, as we had the other news. He was standing in the Star gateway.

“Look here, you boys,” said he, after a pause given to thought; “keep your eyes open; you may come upon the lad again, or some of his folk. I should like to do something for that poor man; I’ve wished it ever since he brought home Lena, and that confounded Molly drove him out by way of recompense.”

“And if they should be confederates, sir?” suggested Tod.

“Who confederates? What do you mean, Joe?”

“These people and the female-stripper. It seems strange they should both turn up again in the same spot.”

The notion took away the Pater’s breath. “If I thought that; if I find it is so,” he broke forth, “I’ll—I’ll—transport the lot.”

Mrs. Todhetley arrived with Lena on Sunday afternoon. Early on Monday, the Squire and Tod took her to the governor’s house at the county prison, where she was to see the woman, as if accidentally, nothing being said to Lena.

The woman was brought in: a bold jade with a red face: and Lena nearly went into convulsions at the sight of her. There could be no mistake the woman was the same: and the Pater became redhot with anger; especially to think he could not punish her in Worcester.

As the fly went racing up Salt Lane after the interview, on its way to leave the Squire at the county courts, a lad ran past. It was Jake’s boy; the same we had seen in the cathedral. Tod leaped up and called to the driver to stop, but the Pater roared out an order to go on. His appearance at the court could not be delayed, and Tod had to stay with Lena. So the clue was lost again. Tod brought Lena to the Star, and then he and I went to the criminal court, and bribed a fellow for places. Tod said it would be a sin not to hear the kidnapper tried.

It was nearly the first case called on. Some of the lighter cases were taken first, while the grand jury deliberated on their bills for the graver ones. Her name, as given in, was Nancy Cole, and she tried to excite the sympathies of the judge and jury by reciting a whining account of a deserting husband and other ills. The evidence was quite clear. The two children (little shavers in petticoats) set up a roar in court at sight of the woman, just as Lena had done in the governor’s house; and a dealer in marine stores produced their clothes, which he had bought of her. Tod whispered to me that he should go about Worcester after this in daily dread of seeing Lena’s blue-silk frock and open-worked stockings hanging in a shop window. Something was said during the trial about the raid the prisoner had also recently made on the little daughter of Mr. Todhetley, of Dyke Manor, Warwickshire, and of Crabb Cot, Worcestershire, “one of the gentlemen of the grand jury at present sitting in deliberation in an adjoining chamber of the court.” But, as the judge said, that could not be received in evidence.

Mrs. Cole brazened it out: testimony was too strong for her to attempt denial. “And if she had took a few bits o’ things, ’cause she was famishing, she didn’t hurt the childern. She’d never hurt a child in her life; couldn’t do it. Just contrairy to that; she gave ’em sugar plums—and candy—and a piece of a wig,1 she did. What was she to do? Starve? Since her wicked husband, that she hadn’t seen for this five year, deserted of her, and her two boys, fine grown lads both of ’em, had been accused of theft and got put away from her, one into prison, t’other into a ’formitory, she hadn’t no soul to care for her nor help her to a bit o’ bread. Life was hard, and times was bad; and—there it was. No good o’ saying more.”