Johnny Ludlow, Third Series

I

“Had I better go? I should like to.”

“Go! why of course you had better go,” answered the Squire, putting down the letter.

“It will be the very thing for you, Johnny,” added Mrs. Todhetley. “We were saying yesterday that you ought to have a change.”

I had not been well for some time; not strong. My old headaches stuck to me worse than usual; Duffham complained that the pulse was feeble. Therefore a letter from Dr. Knox of Lefford, pressing me to go and stay with them, seemed to have come on purpose. Janet had added a postscript: “You must come, Johnny Ludlow, if it is only to see my two babies, and you must not think of staying less than a month.” Tod was from home, visiting in Leicestershire.

Three days, and I was off, bag and baggage. To Worcester first, and then onwards again, direct for Lefford. The very journey seemed to do me good. It was a lovely spring day: the hedges were bursting into bud; primroses and violets nestled in the mossy banks.

You have not forgotten, I dare say, how poor Janet Carey’s hard life, her troubles, and the sickness those troubles brought, culminated in a brave ending when Arnold Knox, of Lefford, made her his wife. Some five years had elapsed since then, and we were all of us that much older. They had asked me to visit them over and over again, but until now I had not done it. Mr. Tamlyn, Arnold’s former master and present partner, with whom they lived, was growing old; he only attended to a few of the old patients now.

It was a cross-grained kind of route, and much longer than it need have been could we have gone straight as a bird flies. The train made all sorts of detours, and I had to change no less than three times. For the last few miles I had had the carriage to myself, but at Toome Junction, the last station before Lefford, a gentleman got in: a rather elderly man with grey hair. Not a syllable did we say, one to another—Englishmen like—and at length Lefford was gained.

“In to time exactly,” cried this gentleman then, peering out at the gas-lighted station. “The clock’s on the stroke of eight.”

Getting my portmanteau, I looked about for Dr. Knox’s brougham, which would be waiting for me, and soon pitched upon one, standing near the flys. But my late fellow-passenger strode on before me.

“I thought I spied you out, Wall,” he said to the coachman. “Quite a chance your being here, I suppose?”

“I’m waiting for a gentleman from Worcester, sir,” answered the man, looking uncommonly pleased, as he touched his hat. “Dr. Knox couldn’t come himself.”

“Well, I suppose you can take me as well as the gentleman from Worcester,” answered the other, as he turned from patting the old horse, and saw me standing there. And we got into the carriage.

It proved to be Mr. Shuttleworth, he who had been old Tamlyn’s partner for a short time, and had married his sister. Tamlyn’s people did not know he was coming to-night, he told me. He was on his way to a distant place, to see a relative who was ill; by making a round of it, he could take Lefford, and drop in at Mr. Tamlyn’s for the night—and was doing so.

Janet came running to the door, Mr. Tamlyn walking slowly behind her. He had a sad countenance, and scanty grey hair, and looked ever so much older than his actual years. Since his son died, poor Bertie, life’s sunshine had gone out for him. Very much surprised were they to see Mr. Shuttleworth as well as me.

Janet gave us a sumptuous high-tea, pouring out unlimited cups of tea and pressing us to eat of all the good things. Except that she had filled out a little from the skeleton she was, and looked as joyous now as she had once looked sad, I saw little difference in her. Her boy, Arnold, was aged three and a half: the little girl, named Margaret, after Miss Deveen, could just walk.

“Never were such children in all the world before, if you listen to Janet,” cried old Tamlyn, looking at her fondly—for he had learnt to love Janet as he would a daughter—and she laughed shyly and blushed.

“You don’t ask after mine,” put in Mr. Shuttleworth, quaintly; “my one girl. She is four years old now. Such a wonder! such a paragon! other babies are nothing to it; so Bessy says. Bessy is silly over that child, Tamlyn.”

Old Tamlyn just shook his head. They suddenly remembered the one only child he had lost, and changed the subject.

“And what about everything!” asked Mr. Shuttleworth, lighting a cigar, as we sat round the fire after our repast, Janet having gone out to see to a room for Shuttleworth, or perhaps to contemplate her sleeping babies. “I am glad you have at last given up the parish work.”

“There’s enough to do without it; the practice increases daily,” cried Tamlyn. “Arnold is much liked.”

“How are all the old patients?”

“That is a comprehensive question,” smiled Tamlyn. “Some are flourishing, and some few are, of course, dead.”

“Is Dockett with you still?”

“No. Dockett is in London at St. Thomas’s. Sam Jenkins is with us in his place. A clever young fellow; worth two of Dockett.”

“Who is Sam Jenkins?”

“A nephew of Lady Jenkins—you remember her? At least, of her late husband’s.”

“I should think I do remember Lady Jenkins,” laughed Shuttleworth. “How is she? Flourishing about the streets as usual in that red-wheeled carriage of hers, dazzling as the rising sun?”

“Lady Jenkins is not well,” replied Tamlyn, gravely. “She gives me some concern.”

“In what way does she give you concern?”

“Chiefly because I can’t find out what it is that’s amiss with her?”

“Has she been ill long?”

“For some months now. She is not very ill: goes out in her carriage to dazzle the town, as you observe, and has her regular soirées at home. But I don’t like her symptoms: I don’t understand them, and they grow worse. She has never been well, really well, since that French journey.”

“What French journey?”

“At the end of last summer, my Lady Jenkins must needs get it into her head that she should like to see Paris. Stupid old thing, to go all the way to France for the first time in her life! She did go, taking Mina Knox with her—who is growing up as pretty a girl as you’d wish to see. And, by the way, Shuttleworth, Mina is in luck. She has had a fortune left her. An old gentleman, not related to them at all, except that he was Mina’s godfather, left her seven thousand pounds last year in his will. Arnold is trustee.”

“I am glad of it. Little Mina and I used to be great friends. Her mother is as disagreeable as ever, I suppose?”

“As if she’d ever change from being that!” returned Tamlyn. “I have no patience with her. She fritters away her own income, and then comes here and worries Arnold’s life out with her embarrassments. He does for her more than I should do. Educates young Dicky, for one thing.”

“No doubt. Knox always had a soft place in his heart. But about Lady Jenkins?”

“Lady Jenkins went over to Paris with her maid, taking Mina as her companion. It was in August. They stayed three weeks there, racketing about to all kinds of show-places, and overdoing it, of course. When they arrived at Boulogne on their way back, expecting to cross over at once, they found they had to wait. A gale was raging, and the boats could not get out. So they put up at an hotel there; and, that night, Lady Jenkins was taken alarmingly ill—the journey and the racketing and the French living had been too much for her. Young people can stand these things, Johnny Ludlow; old ones can’t,” added Tamlyn, looking at me across the hearth.

“Very true, sir. How old is Lady Jenkins?”

“Just seventy. But you wouldn’t have thought her so much before that French journey. Until then she was a lively, active, bustling woman, with a good-natured, pleasant word for every one. Now she is weary, dull, inanimate; seems to be, half her time, in a sort of lethargy.”

“What was the nature of the illness?” asked Shuttleworth. “A seizure?”

“No, nothing of that sort. I’m sure I don’t know what it was,” added old Tamlyn, rubbing back his scanty grey hair in perplexity. “Any way, they feared she was going to die. The French doctor said her getting well was a miracle. She lay ill ten days, keeping her bed, and was still ill and very weak when she reached home. Mina believes that a lady who was detained at the same hotel by the weather, and who came forward and offered her services as nurse, saved Lady Jenkins’s life. She was so kind and attentive; never going to her bed afterwards until Lady Jenkins was up from hers. She came home with them.”

“Who did? This lady?”

“Yes; and has since remained with Lady Jenkins as companion. She is a Madame St. Vincent; a young widow–”

“A Frenchwoman!” exclaimed Mr. Shuttleworth.

“Yes; but you wouldn’t think it. She speaks English just as we do, and looks English. A very nice, pleasant young woman; as kind and loving to Lady Jenkins as though she were her daughter. I am glad they fell in with her. She– Oh, is it you, Sam?”

A tall smiling young fellow of eighteen, or so, had come in. It was Sam Jenkins: and, somehow, I took to him at once. Mr. Shuttleworth shook hands and said he was glad to hear he promised to be a second Abernethy. Upon which Sam’s wide mouth opened in laughter, showing a set of nice teeth.

“I thought Dr. Knox was here, sir,” he said to Mr. Tamlyn, as if he would apologize for entering.

“Dr. Knox is gone over to the Brook, but I should think he’d be back soon now. Why? Is he wanted?”

“Only a message, sir, from old Willoughby’s. They’d like him to call there as soon as convenient in the morning.”

“Now, Sam, don’t be irreverent,” reproved his master. “Old Willoughby! I should say Mr. Willoughby if I were you. He is no older than I am. You young men of the present day are becoming very disrespectful; it was different in my time.”

Sam laughed pleasantly. Close upon that, Dr. Knox came in. He was more altered than Janet, looking graver and older, his light hair as wild as ever. He was just thirty now.

Mr. Shuttleworth left in the morning, and afterwards Dr. Knox took me to see his step-mother. Her house (but it was his house, not hers), Rose Villa, was in a suburb of the town, called the London Road. Mrs. Knox was a dark, unpleasing-looking woman; her voice harsh, her crinkled black hair untidy—it was never anything else in a morning. The two eldest girls were in the room. Mina was seventeen, Charlotte twelve months younger. Mina was the prettiest; a fair girl with a mild face and pleasant blue eyes, her manner and voice as quiet as her face. Charlotte seemed rather strong-minded.

“Are you going to the soirée next door to-night, Arnold?” cried Mrs. Knox, as we were leaving.

“I think not,” he answered. “Janet wrote to decline.”

“You wished her to decline, I dare say!” retorted Mrs. Knox. “You always did despise the soirées, Arnold.”

Dr. Knox laughed pleasantly. “I have never had much time for soirées,” he said; “and Janet does not care for them. Besides, we think it unkind to leave Mr. Tamlyn alone.” At which latter remark Mrs. Knox tossed her head.

“I must call on Lady Jenkins, as I am up here,” observed Dr. Knox to me, when we were leaving. “You don’t mind, do you, Johnny?”

“I shall like it. They were talking about her last night.”

It was only a few yards higher up. A handsome dwelling, double the size of Rose Villa, with two large iron gates flanked by imposing pillars, on which was written in gold letters, as large as life, “Jenkins House.”

Dr. Knox laughed. “Sir Daniel Jenkins re-christened it that,” he said, dropping his voice, lest any ears should be behind the open windows: “it used to be called ‘Rose Bank.’ They moved up here four years ago; he was taken ill soon afterwards and died, leaving nearly all his money to his wife unconditionally: it is over four thousand a-year. He was in business as a drysalter, and was knighted during the time he was mayor.”

“Who will come in for the money?”

“That is as Lady Jenkins pleases. There are lots of relations, Jenkinses. Sir Daniel partly brought up two orphan nephews—at least, he paid for their schooling and left each a little money to place them out in life. You have seen the younger of them, Sam, who is with us; the other, Dan, is articled to a solicitor in the town, old Belford. Two other cousins are in the drysalting business; and the ironmonger, Sir Daniel’s youngest brother, left several sons and daughters. The old drysalter had no end of nephews and nieces, and might have provided for them all. Perhaps his widow will do so.”

Not possessing the faintest idea of what “drysalting” might be, unless it had to do with curing hams, I was about to inquire, when the house-door was thrown open by a pompous-looking gentleman in black—the butler—who showed us into the dining-room, where Lady Jenkins was sitting. I liked her at first sight. She was short and stout, and had pink cheeks and a pink turned-up nose, and wore a “front” of flaxen curls, surmounted by a big smart cap with red roses and blue ribbons in it; but there was not an atom of pretence about her, and her blue eyes were kindly. She took the hands of Dr. Knox in hers, and she shook mine warmly, saying she had heard of Johnny Ludlow.

Turning from her, I caught the eyes of a younger lady fixed upon me. She looked about seven-and-twenty, and wore a fashionable black-and-white muslin gown. Her hair was dark, her eyes were a reddish brown, her cheeks had a fixed bloom upon them. The face was plain, and it struck me that I had seen it somewhere before. Dr. Knox greeted her as Madame St. Vincent.

When we first went in, Lady Jenkins seemed to wake up from a doze. In two minutes she had fallen into a doze again, or as good as one. Her eyelids drooped, she sat perfectly quiet, never speaking unless spoken to, and her face wore a sort of dazed, or stupid look. Madame St. Vincent talked enough for both of them; she appealed frequently to Lady Jenkins—“Was it not so, dear Lady Jenkins?”—or “Don’t you remember that, dear Lady Jenkins?” and Lady Jenkins docilely answered “Yes, dear,” or “Yes, Patty.”

That Madame St. Vincent was a pleasant woman, as Mr. Tamlyn had said, and that she spoke English as we did, as he had also said, there could not be a doubt. Her tongue could not be taken for any but a native tongue; moreover, unless my ears deceived me, it was native Worcestershire. Ever and anon, too, a homely word would be dropped by her in the heat of conversation that belonged to Worcestershire proper, and to no other county.

“You will come to my soirée this evening, Mr. Ludlow,” Lady Jenkins woke up to say to me as we were leaving.

“Johnny can come; I dare say he would like to,” put in Dr. Knox; “although I and Janet cannot–”

“Which is very churlish of you,” interposed Madame St. Vincent.

“Well, you know what impediments lie in our way,” he said, smiling. “Sam can come up with Johnny, if you like, Lady Jenkins.”

“To be sure; let Sam come,” she answered, readily. “How is Sam? and how does he get on?”

“He is very well, and gets on well.”

Dr. Knox walked down the road in silence, looking grave. “Every time I see her she seems to me more altered,” he observed presently, and I found he was speaking of Lady Jenkins. “Something is amiss with her, and I cannot tell what. I wish Tamlyn would let me take the case in hand!”

Two peculiarities obtained at Lefford. The one was that the universal dinner hour, no-matter how much you might go in for fashion, was in the middle of the day; the other was that every evening gathering, no matter how unpretentious, was invariably called a “soirée.” They were the customs of the town.