Never a moment did he allow himself for thought, never an instant’s hesitation served to stop him. Catching up the letter, he thrust it into his breast pocket, and set off across country again at a tearing pace, not waiting to see MacEveril.
He seemed to have flown over hedges and ditches and to be home in no time. Little wonder that when he was seen sitting under the walnut tree in the garden and was called in to tea, his mother and sister exclaimed at his heated face. They never suspected he had been out.
All that night Oliver lay awake: partly wondering how he should dispose of his prize to make it available; partly telling himself, in shame-faced reproach, that he would not use it, but send it back to old Paul. It came into his mind that if he did use it he might change it at the silversmith’s as if for the Todhetleys, the Squire’s name on the back suggesting the idea to him. It would not do, he thought, to go into a shop, any shop, purchase some trifling article and tender a ten-pound note in payment. That might give rise to suspicion. Some months before, when at Crabb Cot, he had heard Mrs. Todhetley relate the history of her brooch, where she bought it, what she paid for it, and all about it, to Colonel Letsom’s wife and other people, for it happened that several callers had come in together. The brooch had been passed round the company and admired. Oliver remembered this, and resolved to make use of it to disarm suspicion at the silversmith’s. He knew the principal shops in Worcester very well indeed, and Worcester itself. He had stayed for some time, when sixteen, with an uncle who was living there; but he had not visited the city since coming to Duck Brook.
Thursday, the day following that on which he took the money, was the day of the picnic. Oliver started with Jane for it in the morning, as may be remembered, the ten-pound note hidden safely about him. Much to Oliver’s surprise his mother put seven shillings into his hand. “You’ll not want to use it, and must give it me back to-morrow,” she said, “but it does not look well to go to a thing of this sort with quite empty pockets.” Oliver thanked her, kissed her, and they drove off. Before reaching Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s, after passing Islip Grange—the property of Lady Fontaine, as may be remembered, who was first cousin to John Paul—they overtook Sam, walking on to take back the gig. “We may as well get out here,” said Oliver, and he pulled up. Getting out, and helping out Jane, he sent Sam and the gig back at once. He bade his sister walk on alone to Mrs. Chandler’s, saying he wanted to do a little errand first. But he charged her not to mention that; only to say, if questioned, that he would join them by-and-by. He ran all the way to the station, regardless of the heat, and caught a train for Worcester.
The rest is known. Oliver changed the note at the silversmith’s, bought himself a pair of dandy gloves, with one or two other small matters, and made the best of his way back again. But it was past the middle of the afternoon when he got to the picnic: trains do not choose our time for running, but their own. Jane wondered where he had been. Hearing of the pigeon-match, she thought it was there. She asked him, in a whisper, where he had found those delicate gloves; Oliver laughed and said something about a last relic from Tours.
And there it was. He had taken the note; he, Oliver Preen; and got the gold for it. That day of the picnic was in truth the worst he had ever experienced, the one hard day of all his life, as he had remarked to Jane. Not only had he committed a deed in it which might never be redeemed, but he also learnt that Emma Paul’s love was given not to him, but to another. It was for her sake he had coveted new gloves and money in his pockets, that he might not look despicable in her sight.
The dearest and surest of expectations are those that fail. While Oliver, as the days went on, was feverishly looking out, morning after morning, for the remittance from Tours, he received a letter to say it was not coming. His friend, with many expressions of regret, wrote to the effect that he was unable to send it at present; later, he hoped to do so. Of course, it never came. And Oliver had not been able to replace the money, and—this was the end of it.
In a whispering, sobbing tone, he told these particulars by degrees to Jane as they sat there. She tried to comfort him; said it might never be known beyond themselves at home; rather advocated his going away for a short time, as proposed, while things righted themselves, and their father’s anger cooled down. But Oliver could not be comforted. Then, leaving the unsatisfactory theme, she tried another, and began telling him of the wedding at Islip that morning, and of how Tom and Emma looked–
“Don’t, Jane,” he interrupted; and his wailing, shrinking tone seemed to betray the keenest pain of all.
They walked home together in silence, Jane clinging to his arm. The night shades lay upon the earth, the stars were shining in the sky. Oliver laid his hand upon the garden gate and paused.
“Do you remember, Jane, when I was coming in here for the first time, how a strange shiver took me, and you thought I must have caught a chill. It was a warning, my dear; a warning of the evil that lay in store for me.”
He would not go into the parlour to supper, but went softly up to his room and shut himself in for the night. Poor Oliver! Poor, poor Oliver!
The following day, Friday, Mr. Preen, allowing himself the unwonted luxury of a holiday for a day’s shooting, was away betimes. For the afternoon and evening, Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s daughters, Clementina, Georgiana, and Julietta, had organised a party to celebrate their cousin Tom’s wedding; Miss Julietta called it a “flare-up.”
Jane Preen had promised, for herself and for Oliver, to be there by three o’clock. For Oliver! She made herself ready after dinner; and then, looking everywhere for her brother, found him standing in the road just outside the garden gate. He said he was not going. Jane reproached him, and he quite laughed at her. He go into company now! she might know better. But Jane had great influence over him, and as he walked with her along the road—for she was going to walk in and walk back again at night—she nearly persuaded him to fetch her. Only nearly; not quite. Oliver finally refused, and they had almost a quarrel.
Then the tears ran down Jane’s cheeks. Her heart was aching to pain for him; and her object in pressing him to come was to take him out of his loneliness.
“Just this one evening, Oliver!” she whispered, clinging to him and kissing him. “I don’t ask you a favour often.”
And Oliver yielded. “I’ll come for you, Janey,” he said, kissing her in return. “That is, I will come on and meet you; I cannot go to the house.”
With that, they parted. But in another minute, Jane was running back again.
“You will be sure to come, Oliver? You won’t disappoint me? You won’t go from your word?”
Oliver felt a little annoyed; the sore heart grows fretful. “I swear I’ll come, then,” he said; “I’ll meet you, alive or dead.”
I was at the party. Not Tod; he had gone shooting. We spent the afternoon in the garden. It was not a large party, after all; only the Letsoms, Jane Preen, and the Chandler girls; but others were expected later. Jane had a disconsolate look. Knowing nothing of the trouble at Duck Brook, I thought she was sad because Valentine had not come early, according to promise. We knew later that he had been kept by what he called a long-winded client.
At five o’clock we went indoors to tea. Those were the days of real, old-fashioned teas, not sham ones, as now. Hardly had we seated ourselves round the table, and Mrs. Jacob Chandler was inquiring who took sugar and who didn’t, when one of the maids came in.
“If you please, Miss Preen, the gig is come for you,” she said.
“The gig!” exclaimed Jane. “Come for me! You must be mistaken, Susan.”
“It is at the gate, Miss Jane, and Sam’s in it. He says that his master and missus have sent him to take you home immediate.”
Jane, all astonishment, followed by some of us, went out to see what Sam could mean. Sam only repeated in a stolid kind of way the message he had given to Susan. His master and mistress had despatched him for Miss Jane and she must go home at once.
“Is anything the matter?—anyone ill?” asked Jane, turning pale.
Sam, looking more stolid than before, professed not to know anything; he either did not or would not. Miss Jane had to go, and as quick as she could, was all he would say.
Jane put on her things, said good-bye in haste, and went out again to the gig. Sam drove off at a tangent before she had well seated herself.
“Now, Sam, what’s the matter?” she began.
Sam, in about three stolid words, protested, as before, he couldn’t say what was the matter; except that he had been sent off for Miss Jane.
Jane noticed, and thought it odd, that he did not look at her as he spoke, though he was frank and open by habit; he had never looked in any of their faces since coming to the door.
“Where’s Mr. Oliver?” she asked. But Sam only muttered that he “couldn’t say,” and drove swiftly.
They went on in silence after that, Jane seeing it would be useless to inquire further, and were soon at Duck Brook. She felt very uneasy. What she feared was, that her father and Oliver might have quarrelled, and that the latter was about to be turned summarily out of doors.
“Why, there’s Mr. Oliver!” she exclaimed. “Pull up, Sam.”
They were passing the first Inlet. Oliver stood at the top of it, facing the road, evidently looking out for her, as Jane thought. His gaze was fixed, his face white as death.
“I told you to pull up, Sam; how dare you disobey me and drive on in that way?” cried Jane; for Sam had whipped up the horse instead of stopping. Jane, looking at his face saw it had gone white too.
“There he is! there he is again! There’s Mr. Oliver!”
They had approached the other Inlet as Jane spoke. Oliver stood at the top of it, exactly as he had stood at the other, his gaze fixed on her, his face ghastly. Not a muscle of his face moved; a dead man could not be more still. Sam, full of terror, was driving on like lightning, as if some evil thing were pursuing him.
And now Jane turned pale. What did it mean? these two appearances? It was totally impossible for Oliver to be at the last Inlet, if it was he who stood at the other. A bird of the air might have picked him up, carried him swiftly over the trees and dropped him at the second Inlet; nothing else could have done it in the time. What did it mean?
Mr. Preen was waiting at the door to receive Jane. He came a little way with slow steps down the path to meet her as the gig stopped. She ran in at the gate.
“What has happened, papa?” she cried. “Where’s Oliver?”
Oliver was upstairs, lying upon his bed—dead. Mr. Preen disclosed it to her as gently as he knew how.
It was all too true. Oliver had died about two hours before. He had shot himself at the Inlets, close by the melancholy osiers that grew over the brook.
Oliver had accompanied Jane to the end of Brook Lane. There, at the Islip Road, they parted; she going on to Crabb, Oliver walking back again. Upon reaching the Inlets, that favourite spot of his, he sat down on the bench that faced the highway; the self-same bench Jane had sat on when she was watching for his arrival from Tours, in the early days of spring. He had not sat there above a minute when he saw his father, with one or two more gentlemen, get over the gate from the field opposite. They were returning from shooting, and had their guns in their hands. Mr. Preen walked quickly over the road to Oliver.
“Take my gun indoors,” he said; “I am not going in just yet. It is loaded.”
He walked away down the road with his friends, after speaking. Oliver took the gun, walked slowly down one of the Inlets, and placed himself on the nearest bench there, lodging the gun against the end. In a few minutes there arose a loud report.
Sam was in the upper part of the field on the other side the brook with the waggon and waggoner. He turned to look where the noise came from, and thought he saw some one lying on the ground by the bench. They both came round in haste, he and the waggoner, and found Oliver Preen lying dead with the gun beside him. Running for assistance, Sam helped to carry him home, and then went for the nearest doctor; but it was all of no avail. Oliver was dead.
Was it an accident, or was it intentional? People asked the question. At the coroner’s inquest, Mr. Preen, who was so affected he could hardly give evidence, said that, so far as he believed, Oliver was one of the last people likely to lay violent hands on himself; he was of too calm and gentle a temperament for that. The rustic jury, pitying the father and believing him, gave Oliver the benefit of the doubt. Loaded guns were dangerous, they observed, apt to go off of themselves almost; and they brought it in Accidental Death.
But Jane knew better. I thought I knew better. I’m afraid Mr. Preen knew better.
And what of that appearance of Oliver which Jane saw? It could not have been Oliver in the flesh, but I think it must have been Oliver in the spirit. Many a time and oft in the days that followed did Jane recount it over to me; it seemed a relief to her distress to talk of it. “He said he would come, alive or dead, to meet me; and he came.”
And I, Johnny Ludlow, break off here to state that the account of this apparition is strictly true. Every minute particular attending it, even to the gig coming with Sam in it to fetch Jane from the tea-table, is a faithful record of that which occurred.
I took an opportunity of questioning Sam, asking whether he had seen the appearance. It was as we were coming away from the grave after the funeral. Oliver was buried in Duck Brook churchyard, close under the clock which had told him the time when he stood with his father posting the letters that past afternoon at Dame Sym’s window. “We are too late, father,” he had said. But for being too late the tragedy might never have happened, for the letter, which caused all the trouble and commotion, would have reached Mr. Paul’s hands safely the next morning.
“No, sir,” Sam answered me, “I can’t say that I saw anything. But just as Miss Jane spoke, calling out that Mr. Oliver was there, a kind of shivering wind seemed to take me, and I turned icy cold. It was not her words that could have done it, sir, for I was getting so before she spoke. And at the last Inlet, when she called it out again, I went almost out of my mind with cold and terror. The horse was affrighted too; his coat turned wet.”
That was the tragedy: no one can say I did wrong to call it one. For years and years it has been in my mind to write it. But I had hoped to end the paper less sadly; only the story has lengthened itself out, and there’s no space left. I meant to have told of Jane’s brighter fate in the after days with Valentine, the one lover of her life. For Val pulled himself up from his reckless ways, though not at Islip; and in a distant land they are now sailing down the stream of life together, passing through, as we all have to do, its storms and its sunshine. All this must be left for another paper.
IN LATER YEARS
I
I think it must have been the illness he had in the summer that tended to finally break down Valentine Chandler. He had been whirling along all kinds of doubtful ways before, but when a sort of low fever attacked him, and he had to lie by for weeks, he was about done for.
That’s how we found it when we got to Crabb Cot in October. Valentine, what with illness, his wild ways and his ill-luck, had come to grief and was about to emigrate to Canada. His once flourishing practice had run away from him; no prospect seemed left to him in the old country.
“It is an awful pity!” I remarked to Mrs. Cramp, having overtaken her in the Islip Road, as she was walking towards home.
“Ay, it is that, Johnny Ludlow,” she said, turning her comely face to me, the strings of her black bonnet tied in a big bow under her chin. “Not much else was to be expected, taking all things into consideration. George Chandler, Tom’s brother, makes a right good thing of it in Canada, farming, and Val is going to him.”
“We hear that Val’s mother is leaving North Villa.”
“She can’t afford to stay in it now,” returned Mrs. Cramp, “so has let it to the Miss Dennets, and taken a pretty little place for herself in Crabb. Georgiana has gone out as a governess.”
“Will she like that?”
“Ah, Master Johnny! There are odd moments throughout all our lives when we have to do things we don’t like any more than we like poison—I hate to look at the place,” cried Mrs. Cramp, energetically. “When I think of Mrs. Jacob’s having to turn out of it, and all through Val’s folly, it gives me the creeps.”
This applied to North Villa, of which we then were abreast. Mrs. Cramp turned her face from it, and went on sideways, like a crab.
“Why, here’s Jane Preen!”
She was coming along quietly in the afternoon sunshine. I thought her altered. The once pretty blush-rose of her dimpled cheeks had faded; in her soft blue eyes, so like Oliver’s, lay a look of sadness. He had been dead about a year now. But the blush came back again, and the eyes lighted up with smiles as I took her hand. Mrs. Cramp went on; she was in a hurry to reach her home, which lay between Islip and Crabb. Jane rang the bell at North Villa.
“Shall I take a run over to Duck Brook to-morrow, Jane, and sit with you in the Inlets, and we’ll have a spell of gossip together?”
“I never sit in the Inlets now,” she said, in a half whisper, turning her face away.
“Forgive me, Jane,” I cried, repenting my thoughtlessness; and she disappeared up the garden path.
Susan opened the door. Her mistress was out, she said, but Miss Clementina was at home. It was Clementina that Jane wanted to see.
Valentine, still weak, was lying on the sofa in the parlour when Jane entered. He got up, all excitement at seeing her, and they sat down together.
“I brought this for Clementina,” she said, placing a paper parcel on the table. “It is a pattern which she asked me for. Are you growing stronger?”
“Clementina is about somewhere,” he observed; “the others are out. Yes, I am growing stronger; but it seems to me that I am a long while about it.”
They sat on in silence, side by side, neither speaking. Valentine took Jane’s hand and held it within his own, which rested on his knee. It seemed that they had lost their tongues—as we say to the children.
“Is it all decided?” asked Jane presently. “Quite decided?”
“Quite, Jane. Nothing else is left for me.”
She caught her breath with one of those long sighs that tell of inward tribulation.
“I should have been over to see you before this, Jane, but that my legs would not carry me to Duck Brook and back again without sitting down by the wayside. And you—you hardly ever come here now.”
A deep flush passed swiftly over Jane’s face. She had not liked to call at the troubled house. And she very rarely came so far as Crabb now: there seemed to be no plea for it.
“What will be the end, Val?” she whispered.
Valentine groaned. “I try not to think of it, my dear. When I cannot put all thought of the future from me, it gives me more torment than I know how to bear. If only–”
The door opened, and in came Clementina, arresting what he had been about to say.
“This is the pattern you asked me for, Clementina,” Jane said, rising to depart on her return home. For she would not risk passing the Inlets after sunset.
A week or two went by, and the time of Valentine Chandler’s departure arrived. He had grown well and strong apparently, and went about to say Good-bye to people in a subdued fashion. The Squire took him apart when Val came for that purpose to us, and talked to him in private. Tod called it a “Curtain Lecture.” Valentine was to leave Crabb at daybreak on the Saturday morning for London, and go at once on board the ship lying in the docks about to steam away for Quebec.
It perhaps surprised none of us who knew the Chandler girls that they should be seen tearing over the parish on the Friday afternoon to invite people to tea. “It will be miserably dull this last evening, you know, Johnny,” they said to me in their flying visit; “we couldn’t stand it alone. Be sure to come in early: and leave word that Joseph Todhetley is to join us as soon as he gets back again.” For Tod had gone out.
According to orders, I was at North Villa betimes: and, just as on that other afternoon, I met Jane Preen at the gate. She had walked in from Duck Brook.
“You are going to spend the evening here, Jane?”
“Yes, it is the last evening,” she sighed. “Valentine wished it.”
“The girls have been to invite me; wouldn’t let me say No. There’s to be quite a party.”
“A party!” exclaimed Jane, in surprise.
“If they could manage to get one up.”
“I am sure Valentine did not know that this morning.”
“I daresay not. I asked the girls if Valentine wanted a crowd there on his last evening, and they exclaimed that Valentine never knew what was good for him.”
“As you are here, Johnny,” she went on, after a silence, “I wonder if you would mind my asking you to do me a favour? It is to walk home with me after tea. I shall not be late this evening.”
“Of course I will, Jane.”
“I cannot go past the Inlets alone after dark,” she whispered. “I never do so by daylight but a dreadful shiver seizes me. I—I’m afraid of seeing something.”
“Have you ever seen it since that first evening, Jane?”
“Never since. Never once. I do not suppose that I shall ever see it again; but the fear lies upon me.”
She went on to explain that the gig could not be sent for her that evening, as Mr. Preen had gone to Alcester in it and taken Sam. Her mode and voice seemed strangely subdued, as if all spirit had left her for ever.
In spite of their efforts, the Miss Chandlers met with little luck. One of the Letsom girls and Tom Coney were all the recruits they were able to pick up. They came dashing in close upon our heels. In the hall stood Valentine’s luggage locked and corded, ready for conveyance to the station.
There’s not much to relate of that evening: I hardly know why I allude to it at all—only that these painful records sometimes bring a sad sort of soothing to the weary heart, causing it to look forward to that other life where will be no sorrow and no parting.
Tod came in after tea. He and Coney kept the girls alive, if one might judge by the laughter that echoed from the other room. Tea remained on the table for anyone else who might arrive, but Mrs. Jacob Chandler had turned from it to put her feet on the fender. She kept me by her, asking about a slight accident which had happened to one of our servants. Valentine and Jane were standing at the doors of the open window in silence, as if they wanted to take in a view of the garden. And that state of things continued, as it seemed to me, for a good half-hour.
It was a wild night, but very warm for November. White clouds scudded across the face of the sky; moonlight streamed into the room. The fire was low, and the green shade had been placed over the lamp, so that there seemed to be no light but that of the moon.
“Won’t you sing a song for the last time, Valentine?” I heard Jane ask him with half a sob.
“Not to-night; I’m not equal to it. But, yes, I will; one song,” he added, turning round. “Night and day that one song has been ever haunting me, Jane.”
He was sitting down to the piano when Mrs. Cramp came in. She said she would go up to take her bonnet off, and Mrs. Chandler went with her. This left me alone at the fire. I should have made a start for the next room where the laughing was, but that I did not like to disturb the song then begun. Jane stood listening just outside the open window, her hands covering her bent face.
Whether the circumstances and surroundings made an undue impression on me, I know not, but the song struck me as being the most plaintive one I had ever heard and singularly appropriate to that present hour. The singer was departing beyond seas, leaving one he loved hopelessly behind him.
“Remember me, though rolling ocean place its bounds ’twixt thee and me,
Remember me with fond emotion, and believe I’ll think of thee.”
So it began; and I wish I could recollect how it went on, but I can’t; only a line here and there. I think it was set to the tune of Weber’s Last Waltz, but I’m not sure. There came a line, “My lingering look from thine will sever only with an aching heart;” there came another bit towards the end: “But fail not to remember me.”
Nothing in themselves, you will say, these lines; their charm lay in the singing. To listen to their mournful pathos brought with it a strange intensity of pain. Valentine sang them as very few can sing. That his heart was aching, aching with a bitterness which can never be pictured except by those who have felt it; that Jane’s heart was aching as she listened, was all too evident. You could feel the anguish of their souls. It was in truth a ballad singularly applicable to the time and place.
The song ceased; the music died away. Jane moved from the piano with a sob that could no longer be suppressed. Valentine sat still and motionless. As to me, I made a quiet glide of it into the other room, just as Mrs. Cramp and Mrs. Jacob Chandler were coming in for some tea. Julietta seized me on one side and Fanny Letsom on the other; they were going in for forfeits.
Valentine Chandler left the piano and went out, looking for Jane. Not seeing her, he followed on down the garden path, treading on its dry, dead leaves. The wind, sighing and moaning, played amidst the branches of the trees, nearly bare now; every other minute the moon was obscured by the flying clouds. Warm though the night was, and grand in its aspect, signs might be detected of the approaching winter.
Jane Preen was standing near the old garden arbour, from which could be seen by daylight the long chain of the Malvern Hills. Valentine drew Jane within, and seated her by his side.
“Our last meeting; our last parting, Jane!” he whispered from the depth of his full heart.
“Will it be for ever?” she wailed.
He took time to answer. “I would willingly say No; I would promise it to you, Jane, but that I doubt myself. I know that it lies with me; and I know that if God will help me, I may be able to–”
He broke down. He could not go on. Jane bent her head towards him. Drawing it to his shoulder, he continued:
“I have not been able to pull up here, despite the resolutions I have made from time to time. I was one of a fast set of men at Islip, and—somehow—they were stronger than I was. In Canada it may be different. I promise you, my darling, that I will strive to make it so. Do you think this is no lesson to me?”
“If not–”
“If not, we may never see each other again in this world.”
“Oh, Valentine!”
“Only in Heaven. The mistakes we make here may be righted there.”
“And will it be nothing to you, never to see me again here?—no sorrow or pain?”
“No sorrow or pain!” Valentine echoed the words out of the very depths of woe. Even then the pain within him was almost greater than he could bear.
They sat on in silence, with their aching hearts. Words fail in an hour of anguish such as this. An hour that comes perhaps but once in a lifetime; to some of us, never. Jane’s face lay nestled against his shoulder; her hand was in his clasp. Val’s tears were falling; he was weak yet from his recent illness; Jane’s despair was beyond tears.
We were in the height and swing of forfeits when Valentine and Jane came in. They could not remain in the arbour all night, you see, romantic and lovely though it might be to sit in the moonlight. Jane said she must be going home; her mother had charged her not to be late.
When she came down with her things on, I, remembering what she had asked me, took my hat and waited for her in the hall. But Valentine came out with her.
“Thank you all the same, Johnny,” she said to me. And I went back to the forfeits.
They went off together, Jane’s arm within his—their last walk, perhaps, in this world. But it seemed that they could not talk any more than they did in the garden, and went along for the most part in silence. Just before turning into Brook Lane they met Tom Chandler—he who was doing so much for Valentine in this emigration matter. He had come from Islip to spend a last hour with his cousin.
“Go on, Tom; you’ll find them all at home,” said Valentine. “I shall not be very long after you.”
Upon coming to the Inlets, Jane clung closer to Valentine’s arm. It was here that she had seen her unfortunate brother Oliver standing, after his death. Valentine hastily passed his arm round her to impart a sense of protection.
At the gate they parted, taking their farewell hand-shake, their last kiss. “God help you, my dear!” breathed Valentine. “And if—if we never meet again, believe that no other will ever love you as I have loved.”
He turned back on the road he had come, and Jane went in to her desolate home.