by Ellen Wood
“Helen and Anna went out to ask after Mrs. Frost and Barrington. And the boys — but I think you know it — have gone with Sir John to Evesham. You wouldn’t call the house quiet, John, if you could hear the row going on in the nursery.”
He smiled a little. “Charley’s a dreadful Turk: none of us elder ones were ever half as bad. Where’s the mother?”
“Half-an-hour ago she was shut up with some visitors in the drawing-room. It’s those Miss Clutterbucks, John: they always stay long enough to hold a county meeting.”
“Is Mrs. Frost worse — that the girls have gone to ask after her?” he resumed.
“I think so. Harry said Dr. Frost shook his head about her, when they saw him this morning.”
“She’ll never be strong,” remarked John. “And perhaps the bother of the school is too much for her.”
“Hall takes a good deal of that, you know.”
“But Hall cannot take the responsibility; the true care of the school. That must lie on Mrs. Frost.”
What a beautiful sky it was! The sun was nearing the horizon; small clouds, gold and red and purple, lay in the west, line above line. John Whitney sat gazing in silence. There was nothing he liked so much as looking at these beautiful sunsets.
“Go and play for me, will you, Johnny?”
The piano was at the far end of the room in the shade. My playing is really nothing. It was nothing to speak of then, it is nothing to speak of now: but it is soft and soothing; and some people like it. John could play a little himself, but it was too much exertion for him now. They had tried to teach Bill. He was kept hammering at it for half a year, and then the music master told Sir John that he’d rather teach a post. So Bill was released.
“The same thing that you played the evening before last, Johnny. Play that.”
“But I can’t. It was only some rubbish out of my own head, made up as I went along.”
“Make up some more then, old fellow.”
I had hardly sat down, when Lady Whitney came in, stirred the fire — if they kept up much, he felt the room too warm — and took one of the elbow-chairs in front of it.
“Go on, my dear,” she said. “It is very pleasant to hear you.”
But it was not so pleasant to play before her — not that, as I believed, her ears could distinguish the difference between an Irish Jig and the Dead March in Saul — and I soon left off. The playing or the fire had sent Lady Whitney into a doze. I crossed the room and sat down by John.
He was still looking at the sunset, which had not much changed. The hues were deeper, and streaks of gold shot upwards in the sky. Toward the north there was a broad horizon of green, fading into gold, and pale blue. Never was anything more beautiful. John’s eyes fixed on it.
“If it is so beautiful here, Johnny, what will it be there?” he breathed, scarcely above a whisper. “It makes one long to go.”
Sometimes, when he said these things, I hardly knew how to answer, and would let his words die off into silence.
“The picture of heaven is getting realized in my mind, Johnny — though I know how poor an idea of it it must needs be. A wide, illimitable space; the great white throne, and the saints in their white robes falling down before it, and the harpists singing to their harps.”
“You must think of it often.”
“Very often. The other night in bed, when I was between sleep and waking, I seemed to see the end — to go through it. I suppose it was one part thought, and three parts dream. I was dead, Johnny: I had already my white robe on, and angels were carrying me up to heaven. The crystal river was flowing along, beautiful flowers on its banks, and the Tree of Life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. I seemed to see it all, Johnny. Such flowers! such hues; brighter than any jewels ever seen. These colours are lovely” — pointing to the sky— “but they are tame compared with those I saw. Myriads of happy people were flitting about in white, redeemed as I was; the atmosphere shone with a soft light, the most delicious music floated in it. Oh, Johnny, think of this world with its troubles and disappointments and pains; and then think of that other one!”
The sunset was fading. The pale colours of the north were blending together like the changing hues of the opal.
“There are two things I have more than loved here,” he went on. “Colours and music. Not the clashing of many instruments, or the mere mechanical playing, however classically correct, of one who has acquired his art by hard labour: but the soft, sweet, dreamy touch that stirs the heart. Such as yours, Johnny. Stop, old fellow. I know what you would say. That your playing is no playing at all, compared with that of a skilled hand; that the generality of people would wonder what there is in it: but for myself, I could listen to you from night till morning.”
It was very foolish of him to say this; but I liked to hear it.
“It is the sort of music, as I have always fancied, that we shall hear in heaven. It was the sort I seemed to hear the other night in my dream; soft, low, full of melody. That sort, you know, Johnny; not the same. That was this earth’s sweetest music etherealized.”
Hearing him talk like this, the idea struck me that it might be better for us all generally if we turned our thoughts more on heaven and on the life we may find there. It would not make us do our duty any the less earnestly in this world.
“Then take colours,” he went on. “No one knows the intense delight I have felt in them. On high days and holidays, my mother wears that big diamond ring of hers — you know it well, Johnny. Often and often have I stolen it from her finger, to let the light flash upon it, and lost myself for half-an-hour — ay, and more — gazing entranced on its changing hues. I love to see the rays in the drops of the chandeliers; I love to watch the ever-varying shades on a wide expanse of sea. Now these two things that I have so enjoyed here, bright colours and music, we have the promise of finding in heaven.”
“Ay. The Bible tells us so.”
“And I saw the harpers harping with their harps,” he repeated to himself — and then fell into silence. “Johnny, look at the opal in the sky now.”
It was very soft and beautiful.
“And there’s the evening star.”
I turned my head. Yes, there it was, and it trembled in the sky like a point of liquid silver.
“Sometimes I think I shall see the Holy City before I die,” he continued. “See its picture as in a mirror — the New Jerusalem. Oh, Johnny, I should have to shade my eyes. Not a beautiful colour or shade but will be there; and her light like unto a jasper stone, clear as crystal. When I was a little boy — four, perhaps — papa brought me home a kaleidoscope from London. It was really a good one, and its bits of glass were unusually brilliant. Johnny, if I lived to be an old man, I could never describe the intense joy those colours gave me — any more than I can describe the joy I seemed to feel the other night in that dream of heaven.”
He was saying all this in a tender tone of reverence that thrilled through one.
“I remember another thing about colours. The year that papa was pricked for High Sheriff, mamma went over with him to Worcester for the March Assize-time, and she took me. I was seven, I think. On the Sunday morning we went with the crowd to service in the cathedral. It was all very grand and imposing to my young mind. The crashing organ, the long procession of white-robed clergy and college boys, the two majestic beings in scarlet gowns, their trains held up by gentlemen, and the wigs that frightened me! I had been told I was going to college to see the judge. In my astonished mind I don’t think I knew which was judge and which was organ. Papa was in attendance on the judges; the only one who seemed to be in plain clothes in the procession. An impression remained on me that he had a white wand in his hand; but I suppose I was wrong. Attending papa, walked his black-robed chaplain who was to preach; looking like a crow amongst gay-plumaged birds. And, lining the way all along the body of the cathedral from the north entrance to the gates of the choir, were papa’s livery men with their glittering javelins. You’ve seen i
t all, Johnny, and know what the show is to a child such as I was. But now, will you believe that it was all as nothing to me, compared with the sight of the many-coloured, beautiful east window? I sat in full view of it. We had gone in rather late, and so were only part of the throng. Mamma with me in her hand — I remember I wore purple velvet, Johnny — was stepping into the choir after the judges and clergy had taken their places, when one of the black-gowned beadsmen would have rudely shut the gates upon her. Upon that, a verger pushed out his silver mace to stop him. ‘Hist,’ says he, ‘it’s the High Sheriff’s lady — my Lady Whitney;’ and the beadsman bowed and let us pass. We were put into the pew under the sub-dean’s stall. It was Winnington-Ingram, I think, who was sub-dean then, but I am not sure. Whoever it was did not sit in the sub-dean’s stall, but in the next to it, for he had given that up, as was customary, to one of the judges. With the great wig flowing down right upon my head, as it seemed, and the sub-dean’s trencher sticking over the cushion close to it, I was in a state of bewilderment; and they were some way through the Litany — the cathedral service at Worcester began with the Litany then, you remember, as they had early morning prayers — before I ventured to look up at all. As I did so, the colours of the distant east window flashed upon my dazzled sight. Not dazzled with the light, Johnny, though it was a sunny day, but with the charm of the colours. What it was to me in that moment I could never describe. That window has been abused enough by people who call themselves connoisseurs in art; but I know that to me it seemed as the very incarnation of celestial beauty. What with the organ, and the chanting, and the show that had gone before, and now this sight to illuminate it, I seemed to be in Paradise. I sat entranced; unable to take my fascinated eyes from the window: the pew faces it, you know; and were I to live for ever, I can never forget that day, or what it was to me. This will show you what colours have been to me here, Johnny. What, then, will they be to me in heaven?”
“How well you remember things!”
“I always did — things that make an impression on me,” he answered. “A quiet, thoughtful child does so. You were thoughtful yourself.”
True. Or I don’t suppose I could have written these papers. The light in the sky faded out as we sat in silence. John recurred to his dream.
“I thought I saw the Saviour,” he whispered. “I did indeed. Over the crystal river, and beyond the white figures and the harps, was a great light. There stood in it One different from the rest. He had a grand, noble countenance, exquisite in sweetness, and it was turned upon me with a loving smile of welcome. Johnny, I know it was Jesus. Oh, it will be good to be there!”
No doubt of it. Very good for him.
“The strange thing was, that I felt no fear. None. Just as securely as I seemed to lie in the arms of the angels, so did I seem secure in the happiness awaiting me. A great many of us fear death, Johnny; I see now that all fear will cease with this world, to those who die in Christ.”
A sudden burst of subdued sobbing broke the stillness of the room and startled us beyond everything. Lady Whitney had wakened up and was listening.
“Oh, John, my darling boy, don’t talk so!” she said, coming forward and laying her cheek upon his shoulder. “We can’t spare you; we can’t indeed.”
His eyes were full of tears: so were mine. He took his mother’s hand and stroked it.
“But it must be, mother dear?” he gently whispered. “God will temper the loss to you all.”
“Any of them but you, John! You were ever my best and dearest son.”
“It’s all for the best, mother: it must be. The others are not ready to go.”
“And don’t you care to leave us?” she said, breaking down again.
“I did care; very much; but lately I seem to have looked only to the time when we shall meet again. Mother, I do not think now I would live if the chance were offered me.”
“Well, it’s the first time I ever heard of young people wanting to die!” cried Lady Whitney.
“Mother, I think we must be very close on death before we want it,” he gently answered. “Don’t you see the mercy? — that when this world is passing from us, we are led insensibly to long for the next?”
She sat down in the chair that I had got up from, and drew it closer to him. A more simple-minded woman than Lady Whitney never lived. She sobbed gently. He kept her hand between his.
“It will be a great blow to me; I know that; and to your father. He feels it now more than he shows, John. You have been so good and obedient, you see; never naughty and giving us trouble like the rest.”
There was another silence. His quiet voice broke it.
“Mother, dear, the thought has crossed me lately, that it must be good to have one, whom we love very much, taken on to heaven. It must make it seem more like our final home; it must, I think, make us more desirous of getting there. ‘John’s gone on to it,’ you and papa will be thinking; ‘we shall see him again when the end comes.’ And it will cause you to look for the end, instead of turning away from it, as too many do. Don’t grieve, mother! Had it been God’s will, I should have lived. But it was not; and He is taking me to a better home. A little sooner, a little later; it cannot make much difference which, if we are only ready for it when it comes.”
The distant church bells, which always rang on a Friday night, broke upon the air. John asked to have the window opened. I threw it up, and we sat listening. The remembrance of that hour is upon me now, just as vividly as he remembered the moment when he first saw the old east window in the cathedral. The melody of the bells; the sweet scent of the mignonette in the garden; the fading sky: I close my eyes and realize it all.
The girls returned, bringing word that Mrs. Frost was very ill, but not much more so than usual. Directly afterwards we heard Sir John come home.
“They are afraid Barrington’s worse,” observed Helen; “and of course it is worrying Mrs. Frost. Mr. Carden has not been there to-day either, though he was expected: they hope he will be over the first thing in the morning.”
In they trooped, Sir John and the boys; all eagerly talking of the pleasant afternoon they had had, and what they had seen and done at Evesham. But the room, as they said later, seemed to have a strange hush upon it, and John’s face an altered look: and the eager voices died away again.
John was the one to read the chapter that night. He asked to do so; and chose the twenty-first of Revelation. His voice was low, but quite distinct and clear. Without pausing at the end, he went on to the next chapter, which concludes the Bible.
“Only think what it will be, Johnny!” he said to me later, following up our previous conversation. “All manner of precious stones! all sorts of glorious colours! Better even” (with a smile) “than the great east window.”
I don’t know whether it surprised me, or not, to find the house in commotion when I woke the next morning, and to hear that John Whitney was dying. A remarkable change had certainly taken place in him. He lay in bed; not insensible, but almost speechless.
Breakfast was scarcely over when Mr. Carden’s carriage drove in. He had been with Barrington, having started from Worcester at day-dawn. John knew him, and took his hand and smiled.
“What’s to be done for him?” questioned Sir John, pointing to his son.
Mr. Carden gave one meaning look at Sir John, and that was all. Nothing more of any kind could be done for John Whitney.
“Good-bye, Mr. Carden; good-bye,” said John, as the surgeon was leaving. “You have been very kind.”
“Good-bye, my boy.”
“It is so sudden; so soon, you know, Carden,” cried poor Sir John, as they walked downstairs together. “You ought to have warned me that it was coming.”
“I did not know it would be quite so soon as this,” was Mr. Carden’s answer — and I heard him say it.
John had visitors that day, and saw them. Some of the fellows from Frost’s, who came over when they heard how it was; Dr. Frost himself; and the clergyman. At dusk, when he had been
lying quietly for some time, except for the restlessness that often ushers in death, he opened his eyes and began speaking in a whisper. Lady Whitney, thinking he wanted something, bent down her ear. But he was only repeating a verse from the Bible.
“And there shall be no night there: and they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”
Bill, who had his head on the bolster on the other side, broke into a hushed sob. It did not disturb the dying. They were John’s last words.
Quite a crowd went to his funeral. It took place on the following Thursday. Dr. Frost and Mr. Carden (and it’s not so often he wasted his time going to a funeral!) and Featherstone and the Squire amongst them. Poor Sir John sobbed over the grave, and did not mind who saw and heard him, while they cast the earth on the coffin.
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.”
That the solemn promise was applicable to John Whitney, and that he had most assuredly entered on that glorious life, I knew as well then as I know now. The corruptible had put on incorruption, the mortal immortality.
Not much of a story, you will say. But I might have told a worse. And I hope, seeing we must all go out at the same gate, that we shall be as ready for it as he was.
Johnny Ludlow.
THE END
JOHNNY LUDLOW, SECOND SERIES
CONTENTS
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
I.
LOST IN THE POST.
Many a true tale has been told of the disappearance of money in passing through the post. Sometimes the loss is never cleared up, but remains a mystery to the end. One of these losses happened to us, and the circumstances were so curious that they would have puzzled a bench of judges. It was a regular mystery, and could not be accounted for in any way.