Johnny Ludlow, Second Series

Autumn leaves were strewing the ground, autumn skies were overhead. A ray of the sun came slanting into the library, passing right across the face of Sir Geoffry Chavasse. The face had an older expression on it than his thirty years would justify. It looked worn and weary, and the bright hair, with its golden tinge, was less carefully arranged than it used to be, as if exertion were becoming a burden, or that vanity no longer troubled him; and his frame was almost painfully thin; and a low hacking cough took him at intervals. It might have been thought that Sir Geoffry was a little out of health, and wanted a change. Lady Chavasse, his mother, had begun to admit a long-repressed doubt whether any change would benefit him.

A common desk of stained walnut-wood was open on the table before him: he had been reading over and putting straight some papers it contained—notes and diaries, and so forth. Two or three of these he tore across and threw into the fire. Out of a bit of tissue paper, he took a curl of bright brown hair, recalling the day and hour when he had surreptitiously cut it off, and refused to give it up again to its blushing owner. Recalling also the happy feelings of that time—surreptitiously still, as might be said, for what business had he with them now? Holding the hair to his lips for a brief interval, he folded it up again, and took out another bit of paper. This contained a lady’s ring of chased gold set with a beautiful and costly emerald. In those bygone years he had bought the ring, thinking to give it in payment of the stolen hair; but the young lady in her shyness had refused so valuable a present. Sir Geoffry held the ring so that its brightness glittered in the sun, and then wrapped it up again. Next he unfolded a diary, kept at that past period, and for a short time afterwards: then it was abruptly broken off, and had never since been written in. He smiled to himself as he read a page here and there—but the smile was full of sadness.

Lady Chavasse came into the room rather abruptly: Sir Geoffry shut up the diary, and prepared to close and lock the desk. There was a disturbed, restless, anxious look on my lady’s face: there was a far more anxious and bitter pain ever making havoc with her heart.

“Why, Geoffry! have you got out that old desk?”

Sir Geoffry smiled as he carried it to its obscure place in a dark corner of the library. When he was about twelve years old, and they were passing through London, he went to the Lowther Arcade and bought this desk, for which he had been saving up his shillings.

“I don’t believe any lad ever had so valuable a prize as I thought I had purchased in that desk, mother,” was his laughing remark.

“I dare say it has a great deal of old rubbish in it,” said Lady Chavasse, slightingly.

“Not much else—for all the good it can ever be. I was only glancing over the rubbish—foolish mementoes of foolish days. These days are weary; and I hardly know how to make their hours fly.”

Lady Chavasse sighed at the words. He used to go shooting in the autumn—fishing—hunting once in a way, in the later season: he had not strength for these sports now.

Opening the desk he commonly used, a very handsome one that had been Lady Chavasse’s present to him, he took a small book from it and put it into his breast-pocket. Lady Chavasse, watching all his movements, as she had grown accustomed to do, saw and knew what the book was—a Bible. Perhaps nothing had struck so much on my lady’s fears as the habit he had fallen into of often reading the Bible. She had come upon him doing it in all kinds of odd places. Out amidst the rocks at the seaside where they had recently been staying—and should have stayed longer but that he grew tired and wanted to come home; out in the seats of this garden, amidst the roses, or where the roses had him with this small Bible. He always slipped it away when she or any one else approached: but the habit was casting on her spirit a very ominous shadow. It seemed to show her that he knew he must be drawing near to the world that the Bible tells of, and was making ready for his journey. How her heart ached, ached always, Lady Chavasse would not have liked to avow.

“Where’s Rachel?” he asked.

“On her sofa, upstairs.”

Sir Geoffry stirred the fire mechanically, his thoughts elsewhere—just as he had stirred it in a memorable interview of the days gone by. Unconsciously they had taken up the same position as on that unhappy morning: he with his elbow on the mantelpiece, and his face partly turned from his mother; she in the same chair, and on the same red square of the Turkey carpet. The future had been before them then: it lay in their own hands, so to say, to choose the path for good or for ill. Sir Geoffry had pointed out which was the right one to take, and said that it would bring them happiness. But my lady had negatived it, and he could only bow to her decree. And so, the turning tide was passed, not seized upon, and they had been sailing on a sea tolerably smooth, but without depth in it or sunshine on it. What had the voyage brought forth? Not much. And it seemed, so far as one was concerned, nearly at an end now.

“I fancy Rachel cannot be well, mother,” observed Sir Geoffry, “She would not lie down so much if she were.”

“A little inertness, Geoffry, nothing more. About Christmas?” continued Lady Chavasse. “Shall you be well enough to go to the Derrestons’, do you think?”

“I think we had better let Christmas draw nearer before laying out any plans for it,” he answered.

“Yes, that’s all very well: but I am going to write to Lady Derreston to-day, and she will expect me to mention it. Shall you like to go?”

A moment’s pause, and then he turned to her: his clear, dark-blue eyes, ever kind and gentle, looking straight into hers; his voice low and tender.

“I do not suppose I shall ever go away from the Grange again.”

She turned quite white. Was it coming so near as that? A kind of terror took possession of her.

“Geoffry! Geoffry!”

“My darling mother, I will stay with you if I can; you know that. But the fiat does not lie with you or with me.”

Sir Geoffry went behind her chair, and put his arms round her playfully, kissing her with a strange tenderness of heart that he sought to hide.

“It may be all well yet, mother. Don’t let it trouble you before the time.”

She could not make any rejoinder, could not speak, and quitted the room to hide her emotion.

In the after-part of the day the surgeon, Duffham, bustled in. His visit was later than usual.

“And how are you, Sir Geoffry?” he asked, as they sat alone, facing each other between the table and the fire.

“Much the same, Duffham.”

“Look here, Sir Geoffry—you should rally both yourself and your spirits. It’s of no use giving way to illness. There’s a certain listlessness upon you; I’ve seen it for some time. Shake it off.”

“Willingly—if you will give me the power to do so,” was Sir Geoffry’s reply. “The listlessness you speak of proceeds from the fact that my health and energies fail me. As to my spirits, there’s nothing the matter with them.”

Mr. Duffham turned over with his fingers a glass paper-weight that happened to lie on the table, as if he wanted to see the fishing-boats on the sea that its landscape represented, and then he glanced at Sir Geoffry.

“Of course you wish to get well?”—with a slight emphasis on the “wish.”

“Most certainly I wish to get well. For my mother’s sake—and of course also for my wife’s, as well as for my own. I don’t expect to, though, Duffham.”

“Well, that’s saying a great deal,” retorted Duffham, pretending to make a mockery of it.

“I’ve not been strong for some time—as you may have seen, perhaps: but since the beginning of May, when the intensely hot weather came in, I have felt as—as–”

“As what, Sir Geoffry?”

“As though I should never live to see another May, hot or cold.”

“Unreasonable heat has that effect on some people, Sir Geoffry. Tries their nerves.”

“I am not aware that it tries mine. My nerves are as sound as need be. The insurance offices won’t take my life at any price, Duffham,” he resumed.

“Have you tried them?”

“Two of the best in London. When I began to grow somewhat doubtful about myself in the spring, I thought of the future of those near and dear to me, and would have insured my life for their benefit. The doctors refused to certify. Since then I have felt nearly sure in my own mind that what must be will be. And, day by day, I have watched the shadow drawing nearer.”

The doctor leaned forward and spoke a few earnest words of encouragement, before departing. Sir Geoffry was only too willing to receive them—in spite of the inward conviction that lay upon him, Lady Rachel Chavasse entered the library in the course of the afternoon. She wore a sweeping silk, the colour of lilac, and gold ornaments. Her face had not changed: with its classically-carved contour and its pale coldness.

“Does Duffham think you are better, Geoffry?”

“Not much, I fancy.”

“Suppose we were to try another change—Germany, or somewhere?” she calmly suggested.

“I would rather be here than anywhere, Rachel.”

“I should like you to get well, you know, Geoffry.”

“I should like it too, my dear.”

“Mamma has written to ask us to go into Somersetshire for Christmas,” continued Lady Rachel, putting her foot, encased in its black satin shoe and white silk stocking, on the fender.

“Ay. My mother was talking about it just now. Well, we shall see between now and Christmas, Rachel. Perhaps they can come to us instead.”

Lady Rachel turned her very light eyes upon her husband: eyes in which there often sat a peevish expression. It was not discernible at the present moment: they were coldly calm.

“Don’t you think you shall be quite well by Christmas?”

“I cannot speak with any certainty, Rachel.”

She stood a minute or two longer, and then walked round the room before the shelves, in search of some entertaining book. It was quite evident that the state of her husband did not bring real trouble to her heart. Was the heart too naturally cold?—or was it that as yet no suspicion of the seriousness of the case had penetrated to her? Something of both, perhaps.

Selecting a book, she was leaving the library with it when Sir Geoffry asked if she would not rather stay by the fire to read. But she said she preferred to go to her sofa.

“Are you well, Rachel?” he asked.

“My back feels tired, always. I suppose we are something alike, Geoffry—not over-strong,” she concluded, with a smile.

That night Duffham made the annexed entry in his journal.

He does know the critical state he is in. Has known it, it seems, for some time. I suspected he did. Sir Geoffry’s one that you may read as a book in his open candour. He would “get well if he could,” he says, for his mother’s sake. As of course he would, were the result under his own control: a fine young fellow of the upper ten, with every substantial good to make life pleasant, and no evil habits or thoughts to draw him backward, would not close his eyes on this world without a pang, and a struggle to remain a while longer in it.

I cannot do more for him than I am doing. All the faculty combined could not. Neither do I say, as he does, that he will not get better: on the contrary, I think there’s just a chance that he will: and I honestly told him so. It’s just a toss-up. He was always delicate until he grew to manhood: then he seemed to become thoroughly healthy and strong. Query: would this delicacy have come back again had his life been made as happy as it might have been? My lady can debate that point with herself in after-years: it may be that she’ll have plenty of time to do it in. Sir Geoffry’s is one of those sensitive natures where the mind seems almost wholly to influence the body; and that past trouble was a sharp blow to him. Upright and honourable, he could not well bear the remorse that fell upon him—it has been keenly felt, ay, I verily believe, until this hour: another’s life was blighted that his might be aggrandized. My own opinion is, that had he been allowed to do as he wished, and make reparation, thereby securing his own happiness, he might have thrown off the tendency to delicacy still and always; and lived to be as old as his father, Sir Peter. Should my lady ever speak to me upon the subject, I shall tell her this. Geoffry Chavasse has lived with a weight upon him. It was not so much that his own hopes were gone and his love-dream wrecked, as that he had brought far worse than this upon another. Yes; my lady may thank herself that his life seems to have been wasted. Had there been children he might, in a degree, have forgotten what went before, and the mind would no longer have preyed upon the body. Has the finger of Heaven been in this? My pen ought to have written “specially in this:” for that Finger is in all things.

I hope he will get better. Yes, I do, in spite of a nasty doubt that crops up in my mind as I say it. I love him as I did in the old days, and respect him more. Qui vivra verra—to borrow a French phrase from young Master Arthur over the way. And now I put up my diary for the night.

Mrs. Layne was dead. Mary lived alone in her house now, with her servants and Arthur.

Never a woman so respected as she; never a lady, high or low, so revered and looked up to as Mary Layne. All the village would fly to her on an emergency; and she had both counsel and help to give. The poor idolized her. A noble, tender, good gentlewoman, with the characteristic humility in her bearing that had been observable of late years, and the gentle gravity on her thoughtful face. My lady, with all her rank and her show and her condescension, had never been half so much respected as this. The little boy—in knickerbockers now, and nine years old—was a great favourite; he also got some honour reflected on him through Colonel Layne. There had been a time of trouble in India, and Major Layne had grandly distinguished himself and gained honour and promotion. The public papers proclaimed his bravery and renown; and Arthur received his share of reflected glory. As the boy passed on his pony, the blacksmith, Dobbs, would shoot out from his forge to look after him, and say to the stranger whose horse had cast a shoe, “There goes the little son of the brave Colonel Layne: maybe you’ve heerd of his deeds over in Ingee.” Perhaps the blacksmith considered he had acquired a sort of right in Arthur, since the pony—a sure-footed Welsh animal—was kept in the stable that belonged to his forge, and was groomed by himself or son. Miss Layne paid him for it; but, as the blacksmith said, it went again’ the grain; he’d ha’ been proud to do aught for her and the little gentleman without pay.

And somehow, what with one thing and another, my lady grew to think that if anything removed her from Chavasse Grange, Mary would take her place as best and chiefest in Church Dykely, and she herself would not be missed. But it was odd the thought should dawn upon her. Previsions of coming events steal into the minds of a great many of us; we know not whence they arise, and at first look on them only as idle thoughts, never recognizing them for what they are—advance shadows of the things to be.

One sunshiny afternoon, close upon winter, Arthur and Mr. Duffham went out riding. Mary watched them start; the doctor on his old grey horse (that had been her father’s), and Arthur on his well-groomed pony. The lad sat well; as brave-looking a little gentleman, with his upright carriage, open face, and nice attire—for Mary was particular there—as had ever gratified a fond aunt’s eye, or a blacksmith’s heart.

Close by the gates of Chavasse Grange, they met Sir Geoffry and his mother strolling forth. Mr. Duffham’s hopes had not been fulfilled. Outwardly there was not much change in the baronet, certainly none for the better; inwardly there was a great deal. He knew now how very certain his fate was, and that it might not be delayed for any great length of time; a few weeks, a few months: as God should will.

“Lady Rachel is not well,” observed Sir Geoffry to the surgeon. “You must see her, Duffham. I suppose you can’t come in now?”

“Yes, I can: I’m in no hurry,” was the doctor’s answer.

“May I come too, and see the peacock, Sir Geoffry? I’ll wait here, though, if Mr. Duffham thinks I ought.”

Of course the boy was told that the peacock would take it as a slight if he did not pay him a visit, and they all turned up the avenue. Arthur got off his pony and led it, and talked with Lady Chavasse.

“Why did you get off yet?” asked Sir Geoffry, turning to him.

“Lady Chavasse is walking,” answered the boy, simply.

It spoke volumes for his innate sense of politeness. Sir Geoffry remembered that he had possessed the same when a child.

“Have you heard what papa has done?” asked Arthur, putting the question generally. “It has been in all the newspapers, and he is full colonel now. Did you read it, Sir Geoffry?”

“Yes, I read it, Arthur.”

“And the Queen’s going to thank papa when he comes to England, and to make him Sir Richard. Everybody says so. Dobbs thinks papa will be made general before he dies.”

Dobbs was the blacksmith. They smiled at this. Not at the possibility for Colonel Layne, but at Dobbs.

“And, with it all, Aunt Mary does not want me to be a soldier!” went on the boy in rather an aggrieved tone. “Richard’s enough, she says. Dick gets on well at King’s College: he is to go to Woolwich next. I don’t see the peacock!”

They had neared the house, but the gay plumaged bird, for which Arthur retained his full admiration, was nowhere in sight. Servants came forward and led the horses away. Mr. Duffham went on to see Lady Rachel: Arthur was taken into the garden-parlour by Sir Geoffry.

“And so you would like to be a soldier:” he said, holding the boy before him, and looking down at his bright, happy face.

“Oh, I should: very much. If papa says I’m not to be—or mamma—or Aunt Mary—if they should tell me ‘No, no, you shall not,’ why, it would be at an end, and I’d try and like something else.”

“Listen, Arthur,” said Sir Geoffry, in a low, earnest tone. “What you are to be, and what you are not to be, lie alike in the will of God. He will direct you aright, no doubt, when the time of choice shall come–”

“And that’s what Aunt Mary says,” interrupted the lad. “She says– There’s the peacock!”

He had come round the corner, his tail trailing; the poor peahen following humbly behind him, as usual. Arthur went outside the window. The peacock had a most unsociable habit of stalking away with a harsh scream if approached; Arthur knew this, and stayed where he was, talking still with Sir Geoffry. When Lady Chavasse entered, he was deep in a story of the musical box.

“Yes, a wicked boy went into Reuben Noah’s, and broke his box for the purpose. Aunt Mary is letting me get it mended for him with some sixpences I had saved up. Reuben is very ill just now—in great pain; and Aunt Mary has let me lend him mine—he says when he can hear the music, his hip does not hurt him so much. You are not angry with me for lending it, are you, Sir Geoffry?”

“My boy, I am pleased.”

“Why should Sir Geoffry be angry—what is it to him?” cried Lady Chavasse, amused with the chatter.

“Sir Geoffry gave it to me,” said Arthur, looking at her with wide-open eyes, in which the great wonder that any one should be ignorant of that fact was expressed. “Reuben wishes he could get here to see the peacock: but he can’t walk, you know. I painted a beautiful one on paper and took it to him. Aunt Mary said it was not much like a real peacock; it was too yellow. Reuben liked it, and hung it up on his wall. Oh!”

For the stately peacock, stepping past the window as if the world belonged to him, suddenly threw wide his tail in an access of vanity. The tail had not long been renewed, and was in full feather. Arthur’s face went into a radiant glow. Lady Chavasse, smiling at the childish delight, produced some biscuit that the peacock was inordinately fond of, and bade him go and feed it.

“Oh, Geoffry,” she exclaimed in the impulse of the moment, as the boy vaulted away, “if you only had such a son and heir as that!”

“Ay. It might have been, mother. That child himself might have been Sir Arthur after me, had you so willed it.”

“Been Sir Arthur after you!” she exclaimed. “Are you in a dream, Geoffry? That child!”

“I have thought you did not know him, but I never felt quite sure. He passes to the world for the son of Colonel Layne—as I trust he may so pass always. Don’t you understand?”

It was so comical a thing, bringing up thoughts so astounding, and the more especially because she had never had the remotest suspicion of it, that Lady Chavasse simply stared at her son in silence. All in a moment a fiery resentment rose up in her heart: she could not have told at whom or what.

“I will never believe it, Geoffry. It cannot be.”

“It is, mother.”

He was leaning against the embrasure of the window as he stood, watching the boy in the distance throwing morsels of biscuit right into the peacock’s mouth, condescendingly held wide to receive them. Lady Chavasse caught the strange sadness glistening in her son’s eyes, and somehow a portion of her hot anger died away.

“Yes: there was nothing to prevent it,” sighed Sir Geoffry. “Had you allowed it, mother, the boy might have been born my lawful son, my veritable heir. Other sons might have followed him: the probability is, there would have been half-a-dozen of them feeding the peacock now, instead of—of—I was going to say—of worse than none.”

Lady Chavasse looked out at the boy with eager, devouring eyes: and whether there was more of longing in their depths, or of haughty anger, a spectator could not have told. In that same moment a vision, so vivid as to be almost like reality, stole before her mental sight—of the half-dozen brave boys crowding round the peacock, instead of only that one on whose birth so cruel a blight had been cast.

“A noble heir he would have made us, mother; one of whom our free land might have been proud,” spoke Sir Geoffry, in a low tone of yearning that was mixed with hopeless despair. “He bears my name, Arthur. I would give my right hand—ay, and the left too—if he could be Sir Arthur after me!”

Arthur turned round. His cap was on the grass, his blue eyes were shining.

“He is frightfully greedy and selfish, Lady Chavasse. He will not let the peahen have a bit.”

“A beautiful face,” murmured Sir Geoffry. “And a little like what mine must have been at his age, I fancy. Sometimes I have thought that you would see the likeness, and that it might impart its clue.”

“Since when have you known him?—known this?”

“Since the day after the accident, when my horse threw him down. Duffham dropped an unintentional word, and it enlightened me. Some nights ago I dreamt that the little lad was my true heir,” added Sir Geoffry. “I saw you kiss him in the dream.”

“You must have been letting your thoughts run on it very much,” retorted Lady Chavasse, rather sharply.

“They are often running on it, mother: the regret for what might have been and for what is, never seems to leave me,” was his reply. “For some moments after I awoke from that dream I thought it was reality: I believe I called out ‘Arthur.’ Rachel started, and inquired between sleeping and waking what the matter was. To find it was only a dream—to remember that what is can never be changed or redeemed in this world, was the worst pain of all.”

“You may have children yet,” said Lady Chavasse, after a pause. “It is not impossible.”

“Well, I suppose not impossible,” was the hesitating rejoinder. “But–”

“But you don’t think it. Say it out, Geoffry.”

“I do not think it. My darling mother, don’t you see how it is with me?” he added, in an impulse of emotion—“that I am not to live. A very short time now, and I shall be lying with my father.”

A piteous cry broke from her. It had to be suppressed. The ungrateful peacock, seeing no more dainty biscuit in store, had fluttered off with a scream, putting his tail down into the smallest possible compass; and Arthur came running back to the room. Mr. Duffham next appeared; his face grave, his account of Lady Rachel evasive. He suspected some latent disease of the spine, but did not wish to say so just yet.