Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

Bevere lay down again, painfully uneasy yet, as was plain to be seen.

“I didn’t want any one to find me out here,” he said. “If some—some people came, there might be the dickens to pay. And Uncle John is up now, worse luck! He does not understand London ways, and he is the strictest old guy that ever wore silver shoe-buckles—you should see him on state occasions. Ask Johnny Ludlow there whether he is strait-laced or not; he knows. Johnny, this is Charley Lightfoot: one of us at Bart’s.”

Charley turned to shake hands, saying he had heard of me. He then set himself to soothe Bevere, assuring him he would not tell any one where he was lying, or that he had been to see him.

“Don’t mind my temper, old friend,” whispered Bevere, repentantly, his blue eyes going out to the other’s in sad yearning. “I am a bit tried—as you’d admit, if all were known.”

Lightfoot departed. By-and-by the Squire and Mr. Brandon returned, and Mrs. Mapping gave us some lunch in her parlour. When the Squire was ready to leave, I ran up to say good-bye to Roger. He gazed at me questioningly, eyes and cheeks glistening with fever. “Is it true?” he whispered.

“Is what true?”

“That Uncle John has written for my mother?”

“Oh yes, that’s true.”

“Good Heavens!” murmured Bevere.

“Would you not like to see her?”

“It’s not that. She’s the best mother living. It is—for fear—I didn’t want to be found out lying here,” he broke off, “and it seems that all the world is coming. If it gets to certain ears, I’m done for.”

Scarlet and more scarlet grew his cheeks. His pulse must have been running up to about a hundred-and-fifty.

“As sure as you are alive, Roger, you’ll bring the fever on again!”

“So much the better. I do—save for what I might say in my ravings,” he retorted. “So much the better if it carries me off! There’d be an end to it all, then.”

“One might think you had a desperate secret on your conscience,” I said to him in my surprise. “Had set a house on fire, or something as good.”

“And I have a secret; and it’s something far more dreadful than setting a house on fire,” he avowed, recklessly, in his distress. “And if it should get to the knowledge of Uncle John and the mother—well, I tell you, Johnny Ludlow, I’d rather die than face the shame.”

Was he raving now?—as he had been on the verge of it, in the fever, a day or two ago. No, not by the wildest stretch of the fancy could I think so. That he had fallen into some desperate trouble which must be kept secret, if it could be, was all too evident. I thought of fifty things as I went home and could not fix on one of them as likely. Had he robbed the hospital till?—or forged a cheque upon its house-surgeon? The Squire wanted to know why I was so silent.

When I next went to Gibraltar Terrace Lady Bevere was there. Such a nice little woman! Her face was mild, like Roger’s, her eyes were blue and kind as his, her tones as genial. As Mary Brandon she had been very pretty, and she was pleasing still.

She had married a lieutenant in the navy, Edmund Bevere. Her people did not like it: navy lieutenants were so poor, they said. He got on better, however, than the Brandons had thought for; got up to be rear-admiral and to be knighted. Then he died; and Lady Bevere was left with a lot of children and not much to bring them up on. I expect it was her brother, Mr. Brandon, who helped to start them all in life. She lived in Hampshire, somewhere near Southsea.

In a day or two, when Roger was better and sat up in blankets in an easy-chair, Mr. Brandon and the Squire began about his shortcomings—deeming him well enough now to be tackled. Mr. Brandon demanded where his lodgings were, for their locality seemed to be a mystery; evidently with a view of calling and putting a few personal questions to the landlady; and Roger had to confess that he had had no particular lodgings lately; he had shared Dick Scott’s. This took Mr. Brandon aback. No lodgings of his own!—sharing young Scott’s! What was the meaning of it? What did he do with all the money allowed him, if he could not pay for rooms of his own? And to the stern questioning Roger only answered that he and Scott liked to be together. Pitt laughed a little to me when he heard of this, saying Bevere was too clever for the old mentors.

“Why! don’t you believe he does live with Scott?” I asked.

“Oh, he may do that; it’s likely enough,” said Pitt. “But medical students, running their fast career in London, are queer subjects, let me tell you, Johnny Ludlow; they don’t care to have their private affairs supervised.”

“All of them are not queer—as you call it, Pitt.”

“No, indeed,” he answered, warmly: “or I don’t know what would become of the profession. Many of them are worthy, earnest fellows always, steady as old time. Others pull up when they have had their fling, and make good men: and a few go to the bad altogether.”

“In which class do you put Roger Bevere?”

Pitt took a minute to answer. “In the second, I hope,” he said. “To speak the truth, Bevere somewhat puzzles me. He seems well-intentioned, anxious, and can’t have gone so far but he might pull-up if he could. But–”

“If he could! How do you mean?”

“He has got, I take it, into the toils of a fast, bad set; and he finds their habits too strong to break through. Any way without great difficulty.”

“Do you think he—drinks?” I questioned, reluctantly.

“No mistake about that,” said Pitt. “Not so sharply as some of them do, but more than is good for him.”

I’m sure if Roger’s pulling-up depended upon his mother, it would have been done. She was so gentle and loving with him; never finding fault, or speaking a harsh word. Night and morning she sat by the bed, holding his hands in hers, and reading the Psalms to him—or a prayer—or a chapter in the Bible. I can see her now, in her soft black gown and simple little white lace cap, under which her hair was smoothly braided.

Whatever doubts some of us might be entertaining of Roger, nothing unpleasant in regard to him transpired. Dreaded enemies did not find him out, or come to besiege the house; though he never quite lost his undercurrent of uneasiness. He soon began to mend rapidly. Scott visited him every second or third day; he seemed to be fully in his confidence, and they had whisperings together. He was a good-natured, off-hand kind of young man, short and thick-set. I can’t say I much cared for him.

The Squire had left London. I remained on with Miss Deveen, and went down to Gibraltar Terrace most days. Lady Bevere was now going home and Mr. Brandon with her. Some trouble had arisen about the lease of her house in Hampshire, which threatened to end in a lawsuit, and she wanted him to see into it. They fixed upon some eligible lodgings for Roger near Russell Square, into which he would move when they left. He was sufficiently well now to go about; and would keep well, Pitt said, if he took care of himself. Lady Bevere held a confidential interview with the landlady, about taking care of her son Roger.

And she gave a last charge to Bevere himself, when taking leave of him the morning of her departure. The cab was at the door to convey her and Mr. Brandon to Waterloo Station, and I was there also, having gone betimes to Gibraltar Terrace to see the last of them.

“For my sake, my dear,” pleaded Lady Bevere, holding Roger to her, as the tears ran down her cheeks: “you will do your best to keep straight for my sake!”

“I will, I will, mother,” he whispered back in agitation, his own eyes wet; “I will keep as straight as I can.” But in his voice there lay, to my ear, a ring of hopeless despair. I don’t know whether she detected it.

She turned and took my hands. She and Mr. Brandon had already exacted a promise from me that once a-week at least, so long as I remained in London, I would write to each of them to give news of Roger’s welfare.

“You will be sure not to forget it, Johnny? I am very anxious about him—his health—and—and all,” she added in a lowered voice. “I am always fearing lest I did not do my duty by my boys. Not but that I ever tried to do it; but somehow I feel that perhaps I might have done it better. Altogether I am full of anxiety for Roger.”

“I will be sure to write to you regularly as long as I am near him, dear Lady Bevere.”

It was on a Tuesday morning that Lady Bevere and Mr. Brandon left London. In the afternoon Roger was installed in his new lodgings by Mr. Pitt, who had undertaken to see him into them. He had the parlour and the bed-chamber behind it. Very nice rooms they were, the locality and street open and airy; and the landlady, Mrs. Long, was a comfortable, motherly woman. Where his old lodgings had been situated, he had never said even to me: the Squire’s opinion was (communicated in confidence to Mr. Brandon), that he had played up “Old Gooseberry” in them, and was afraid to say.

I had meant to go to him on the Wednesday, to see that the bustle of removal had done him no harm; but Miss Deveen wanted me, so I could not. On the Thursday I got a letter from the Squire, telling me to do some business for him at Westminster. It took me the whole of the day: that is, the actual business took about a quarter-of-an-hour, and waiting to see the people (lawyers) took the rest. This brought it, you perceive, to Friday.

On that morning I mounted to the roof of a city omnibus, which set me down not far off the house. Passing the parlour-windows to knock at the door, I saw in one of them a card: “Apartments to let.” It was odd, I thought, they should put it in a room that was occupied.

“Can I see Mr. Bevere?” I asked of the servant.

“Mr. Bevere’s gone, sir.”

“Gone where? Not to the hospital?” For he was not to attempt to go there until the following week.

“He is gone for good, sir,” she answered. “He went away in a cab yesterday evening.”

Not knowing what to make of this strange news, hardly believing it, I went into the parlour and asked to see the landlady—who came at once. It was quite true: Bevere had left. Mrs. Long, who, though elderly, was plump and kindly, sat down to relate the particulars.

“Mr. Bevere went out yesterday morning, sir, after ordering his dinner—a roast fowl—for the same hour as the day before; two o’clock. It was past three, though, before he came in: and when the girl brought the dinner-tray down, she said Mr. Bevere wanted to speak to me. I came up, and then he told me he was unexpectedly obliged to leave—that he might have to go into the country that night; he didn’t yet know. Well, sir, I was a little put out: but what could I say? He paid me what was due and the rent up to the week’s end, and began to collect his things together: Sarah saw him cramming them into his new portmanteau when she brought his tea up. And at the close of the evening, between the lights, he had a cab called and went away in it.”

“Alone?”

“Quite alone, sir. On the Wednesday afternoon Dr. Pitt came to see him, and that same evening a young man called, who stayed some time; Scott, I think the name was; but nobody at all came yesterday.”

“And you do not know where Mr. Bevere is?—where he went to?”

“Why no, sir; he didn’t say. The cab might have taken him to one of the railway-stations, for all I can tell. I did not ask questions. Of course it is not pleasant for a lodger to leave you in that sudden manner, before he has well been three days in the house,” added Mrs. Long, feelingly, “especially with the neighbours staring out on all sides, and I might have asked him for another week’s rent in lieu of proper notice; but I couldn’t be hard with a well-mannered, pleasant young gentleman like Mr. Bevere—and with his connections, too. I’m sure when her ladyship came here to fix on the rooms, she was that kind and affable with me I shall never forget it—and talked to me so lovingly about him—and put half-a-crown into Sarah’s hand when she left! No, sir, I couldn’t be hard upon young Mr. Bevere.”

Mrs. Long had told all she knew, and I wished her good-day. Where to now? I deliberated, as I stood on the doorstep. This sudden flight looked as though Roger wanted to avoid people. If any one was in the secret of it, it would be Richard Scott, I thought; and I turned my steps to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.

I suppose I interrupted Scott at some critical performance, for he came to me with his coat-cuffs turned up and no wristbands on.

“Glad to see you, I’m sure,” cried he; “thought it might be an out-patient. Bevere?—oh, do you want him?” he ran on, not giving himself time to understand me perfectly, or pretending at it. “Bevere is at his new lodgings near Russell Square. He will not be back here until next week.”

“But he is not at his new lodgings,” I said. “He has left them.”

“Left!” cried Scott, staring.

“Left for good, bag and baggage. Gone altogether.”

“Gone where?” asked Scott.

“That’s what I have come to ask you. I expect you know.”

Scott’s face presented a puzzle. I wondered whether he was as innocent as he looked.

“Let us understand one another,” said he. “Do you tell me that Bevere has left his new lodgings?”

“He has. He left them last night. Ran away from them, as one may say.”

“Why, he had only just got into them! Were the people sharks? I was with him on Wednesday night: he did not complain of anything then.”

“He must have left, I fancy, for some private reason of his own. Don’t you know where he is gone, Scott? You are generally in his confidence.”

“Don’t know any more than the dead.”

To dispute the declaration was not in my power. Scott seemed utterly surprised, and said he should go to Mrs. Long’s the first leisure moment he had, to see if any note or message had been left for him. But I had already put that question to the landlady, and she answered that neither note nor message of any kind had been left for anybody. So there we were, nonplussed, Scott standing with his hands in his pockets. Make the best of it we would, it resolved itself into nothing more than this: Bevere had vanished, leaving no clue.

From thence I made my way to Mr. Pitt’s little surgery near Gibraltar Terrace. The doctor was alone in it, and stood compounding pills behind the counter.

“Bevere run away!” he exclaimed at my first words. “Why, what’s the meaning of that? I don’t know anything about it. I was going to see him this afternoon.”

With my arms on the counter, my head bending towards him, I recounted to Pitt the particulars Mrs. Long had given me, and Scott’s denial of having any finger in the pie. The doctor gave his head a twist.

“Says he knows no more than the dead, does he! That may be the case; or it may not. Master Richard Scott’s assertions go for what they are worth with me where Bevere’s concerned: the two are as thick as thieves. I’ll find him, if I can. What do you say?—that Bevere would not conceal himself from me? Look here, Johnny Ludlow,” continued Pitt rapidly, bringing forward his face till it nearly touched mine, and dropping his voice to a low tone, “that young man must have got into some dangerous trouble, and has to hide himself from the light of day.”

Leaving Pitt to make his patients’ physic, I went out into the world, not knowing whether to seek for Bevere in this quarter or in that. But, unless I found him, how could I carry out my promise of writing to Lady Bevere?

I told Miss Deveen of my dilemma. She could not help me. No one could help, that I was able to see. There was nothing for it but to wait until the next week, when Bevere might perhaps make his appearance at the hospital. I dropped a note to Scott, asking him to let me know of it if he did.

But of course the chances were that Bevere would not appear at the hospital: with need to keep his head en cachette, he would be no more safe there than in Mrs. Long’s rooms: and I might have been hunting for him yet, for aught I can tell, but for coming across Charley Lightfoot.

It was on the following Monday. He was turning out of the railway-station near Miss Deveen’s, his uncle, Dr. Lightfoot, being in practice close by. Telling him of Roger Bevere’s flight, which he appeared not to have heard of, I asked if he could form any idea where he was likely to have got to.

“Oh, back to the old neighbourhood that he lived in before his accident, most likely,” carelessly surmised Lightfoot, who did not seem to think much of the matter.

“And where is that?”

“A goodish distance from here. It is near the Bell-and-Clapper Station on the underground line.”

“The Bell-and-Clapper Station!”

Lightfoot laughed. “Ironically called so,” he said, “from a bell at the new church close by, that claps away pretty well all day and all night in the public ears.”

“Not one of our churches?”

“Calls itself so, I believe. I wouldn’t answer for it that its clergy have been licensed by a bishop. Bevere lived somewhere about there; I never was at his place; but you’ll easily find it out.”

“How? By knocking at people’s doors and inquiring for him?”

Lightfoot put on his considering-cap. “If you go to the refreshment-room of the Bell-and-Clapper Station and ask his address of the girls there,” said he, “I dare say they can give it you. Bevere used to be uncommonly fond of frequenting their company, I believe.”

Running down to the train at once I took a ticket for the Bell-and-Clapper Station, and soon reached it. It was well named: the bell was clanging away with a loud and furious tongue, enough to drive a sick man mad. What a dreadful infliction for the houses near it!

Behind the counter in the refreshment-room stood two damsels, exchanging amenities with a young man who sat smoking a cigar, his legs stretched out at ease. Before I had time to speak, the sound of an up-train was heard; he drank up the contents of a glass that stood at his elbow, and went swiftly out.

It was a pretty looking place: with coloured decanters on its shelves and an array of sparkling glass. The young women wore neat black gowns, and might have looked neat enough altogether but for their monstrous heads of hair. That of one in particular was a sight to be seen, and must have been copied from some extravagant fashion plate. She was dark and handsome, with a high colour and a loud voice, evidently a strong-minded young woman, perfectly able to take care of herself. The other girl was fair, smaller and slighter, with a somewhat delicate face, and a quiet manner.

“Can you give me the address of Mr. Roger Bevere?” I asked of this younger one.

The girl flushed scarlet, and looked at her companion, who looked back again. It was a curious sort of look, as much—I thought—as to say, what are we to do? Then they both looked at me. But neither spoke.

“I am told that Mr. Bevere often comes here, and that you can give me his address.”

“Well, sir—I don’t think we can,” said the younger one, and her speech was quite proper and modest. “We don’t know it, do we, Miss Panken?”

“Perhaps you’ll first of all tell me who it was that said we could give it you,” cried Miss Panken, in tones as strong-minded as herself, and as though she were by a very long way my superior in the world.

“It was one of his fellow-students at the hospital.”

“Oh—well—I suppose we can give it you,” she concluded. “Here, I’ll write it down. Lend me your pencil, Mabel: mine has disappeared. There,” handing me the paper, “if he is not there, we can’t tell you where he is.”

“Roger Bevary, 22, New Crescent,” was what she wrote. I thanked her and went out, encountering two or three young men who rushed in from another train and called individually for refreshment.

New Crescent was soon found, but not Bevere. The elderly woman-servant who answered me said Mr. Bevere formerly lived with them, but left about eighteen months back. He had not left the neighbourhood, she thought, as she sometimes met him in it. She saw him only the past Saturday night when she was out on an errand.

“What, this past Saturday!” I exclaimed. “Are you certain?”

“To be sure I am, sir. He was smoking a pipe and looking in at the shop windows. He saw me and said, Good-night, Ann: he was always very pleasant. I thought he looked ill.”

Back I went to the refreshment-room. Those girls knew his address well enough, but for some reason would not give it—perhaps by Bevere’s orders. Two young men were there now, sipping their beer, or whatever it was, and exchanging compliments with Miss Panken. I spoke to her civilly.

“Mr. Bevere does not live at New Crescent: he left it eighteen months ago. Did you not know that? I think you can give me his address if you will.”

She did not answer me at all. It may be bar-room politeness. Regarding me for a full minute superciliously from my head to my boots, she slowly turned her shoulders the other way, and resumed her talk with the customers.

I spoke then to the other, who was wiping glasses. “It is in Mr. Bevere’s own interest that I wish to find him; I wish it very particularly indeed. He lives in this neighbourhood; I have heard that: if you can tell me where, I shall be very much obliged to you.”

The girl’s face looked confused, timid, full of indecision, as if she knew the address but did not know whether to answer or not. By this time I had attracted attention, and silence fell on the room. Strong-minded Miss Panken came to the relief of her companion.

“Did you call for a glass of ale?” she asked me, in a tone of incipient mockery.

“Nor for soda?—nor bitters?—not even cherry-brandy?” she ran on. “No? Then as you don’t seem to want anything we supply here, perhaps you’ll take yourself off, young man, and leave space for them that do. Fancy this room being open to promiscuous inquirers, and us young ladies being obliged to answer ’em!” added Miss Panken affably to her two friends. “I’d like to see it!”

Having thus put me down and turned her back upon me, I had nothing to wait for, and walked out of the lady’s presence. The younger one’s eyes followed me with a wistful look. I’m sure she would have given the address had she dared.

After that day, I took to haunt the precincts of the Bell-and-Clapper, believing it to be my only chance of finding Bevere. Scott had a brief note from him, no address to it, stating that he was not yet well enough to resume his duties; and this note Scott forwarded to me. A letter also came to me; from Lady Bevere asking what the matter was that I did not write, and whether Roger was worse. How could I write, unless I found him?

So, all the leisure time that I could improvise I spent round about the Bell-and-Clapper. Not inside the room, amid its manifold attractions: Circe was a wily woman, remember, and pretty bottles are insidious. That particular Circe, also, Miss Panken, might have objected to my company and ordered me out of it.

Up one road, down another, before this row of houses and that, I hovered for ever like a walking ghost. But I saw nothing of Bevere.

Luck favoured me at last. One afternoon towards the end of the week, I was standing opposite the church, watching the half-dozen worshippers straggling into it, for one of its many services, listening to the irritating ding-dong of its bell, and wondering the noise was put up with, when suddenly Richard Scott came running up from the city train. Looking neither to the right nor the left, or he must inevitably have seen me, he made straight for a cross-road, then another, and presently entered one of a row of small houses whose lower rooms were on a level with the ground and the yard or two of square garden that fronted them. “Paradise Place.” I followed Scott at a cautious distance.

“Bevere lives there!” quoth I, mentally.

Should I go in at once boldly, and beard him? While deliberating—for somehow it goes against my nature to beard anybody—Scott came striding out and turned off the other way: which led to the shops. I crossed over and went in quietly at the open door.

The parlour, small and shabby as was Mrs. Mapping’s in Gibraltar Terrace, was on the left, its door likewise open. Seated at a table, taking his tea, was Roger Bevere; opposite to him, presiding over the ceremonies, sat a lady who must unquestionably have been first-cousin to those damsels at the Bell-and-Clapper, if one might judge by the hair.

“Roger!” I exclaimed. “What a dance you have led us!”

He started up with a scarlet face, his manner strangely confused, his tongue for the moment lost. And then I saw that he was without his coat, and his arm was bandaged.