by Ellen Wood
“But I could not help being late, sir, last night; and I was not abroad for any purpose of pleasure. I had been staying with a poor fellow who is sick; dying, in fact: and — and it was not my fault, sir.”
“Take care, young man,” said he, glaring through his spectacles. “There’s one thing I can never forgive if deliberately told me, and that’s a lie.”
“I should be sorry to tell a lie, sir,” I answered: and by the annoyance so visible in his looks and tones, it was impossible to help fancying he had found out, or thought he had found out, Gaiton in one. “What I have said is truth.”
“Go over again what you did say,” cried he, very shortly, after looking at his paper again and then hard at me. And I went over it.
“What do you say the man’s name is?”
“Charles Tasson, sir. He was our scout until he fell ill.”
“Pray do you make a point, Mr. Ludlow, of visiting all the scouts and their friends who may happen to fall sick?”
“No, sir,” I said, uneasily, for there was ridicule in his tone, and I knew he did not believe a word. “I don’t suppose I should ever have thought of visiting Tasson, but for seeing him look so ill one afternoon up at Godstowe.”
“He must be very ill to be at Godstowe!” cried Dr. Applerigg. “Very!”
“He was so ill, sir, that I thought he was dying then. Some flyman he knew had driven him to Godstowe for the sake of the air.”
“But what’s your motive, may I ask, for going to sit with him?” He had a way of laying emphasis on certain of his words.
“There’s no motive, sir: except that he is lonely and dying.”
The doctor looked at me for what seemed ten minutes. “What is this sick man’s address, pray?”
I told him the address in Stagg’s Entry; and he wrote it down, telling me to present myself again before him the following morning.
That day, I met Sophie Chalk; her husband was with her. She nodded and seemed gay as air: he looked dark and sullen as he took off his hat. I carried the news into college.
“Sophie Chalk has her husband down, Tod.”
“Queen Anne’s dead,” retorted he.
“Oh, you knew it!” And I might have guessed that he did by his not having spent the past evening in High Street, but in a fellow’s rooms at Oriel. And he was as cross as two sticks.
“What a fool she must have been to go and throw herself away upon that low fellow Everty!” he exclaimed, putting his shoulders against the mantelpiece and stamping on the carpet with one heel.
“Throw herself away! Well, Tod, opinions vary. I think she was lucky to get him. As to his being low, we don’t know that he is. Putting aside that one mysterious episode of his being down at our place in hiding, which I suppose we shall never come to the bottom of, we know nothing of what Everty has, or has not been.”
“You shut up, Johnny. Common sense is common sense.”
“Everty’s being here — we can’t associate with him, you know, Tod — affords a good opportunity for breaking off the visits to High Street.”
“Who wants to break off the visits to High Street?”
“I do, for one. Madame Sophie’s is a dangerous atmosphere.”
“Dangerous for you, Johnny?”
“Not a bit of it. You know. Be wise in time, old fellow.”
“Of all the muffs living, Johnny, you are about the greatest. In the old days you feared I might go in for marrying Sophie Chalk. I don’t see what you can fear now. Do you suppose I should run away with another man’s wife?”
“Nonsense, Tod!”
“Well, what else is it? Come! Out with it.”
“Do you think our people or the Whitneys would like it if they knew we are intimate with her?”
“They’d not die of it, I expect.”
“I don’t like her, Tod. It is not a nice thing of her to allow the play and the betting, and to have all those fellows there when they choose to go.”
Tod took his shoulder from the mantelpiece, and sat down to his imposition: one he had to write for having missed chapel.
“You mean well, Johnny, though you are a muff.”
Later in the day I met Dr. Applerigg. He signed to me to stop. “Mr. Ludlow, I find that what you told me this morning was true. And I withdraw every word of condemnation that I spoke. I wish I had never greater cause to find fault than I have with you, in regard to this matter. Not that I can sanction your being out so late, although the plea of excuse be a dying man. You understand?”
“Yes, sir. It shall not occur again.”
Down at the house in Stagg’s Entry, that evening, Mrs. Cann met me on the stairs. “One of the great college doctors was here to-day, sir. He came up asking all manner of questions about you — whether you’d been here till a’most midnight yesterday, and what you’d stayed so late for, and — and all about it.”
Dr. Applerigg! “What did you tell him, Mrs. Cann?”
“Tell him, sir! what should I tell him but the truth? That you had stayed here late because of Charley’s being took worse and nobody with him, and had read the burial service to him for his asking; and that you came most evenings, and was just as good to him as gold. He said he’d see Charley for himself then; and he went in and talked to him, oh so gently and nicely about his soul; and gave little Nanny half-a-crown when he went away. Sometimes it happens, sir, that those who look to have the hardest faces have the gentlest hearts. And Charley’s dying, sir. He was took worse again this evening at five o’clock, and I hardly thought he’d have lasted till now. The doctor has been, and thinks he’ll go off quietly.”
Quietly perhaps in one sense, but it was a restless death-bed. He was not still a minute; but he was quite sensible and calm. Waking up out of a doze when I went in, he held out his hand.
“It is nearly over, sir.”
I was sure of that, and sat down in silence. There could be no mistaking his looks.
“I have just had a strange dream,” he whispered, between his laboured breath; and his eyes were wet with tears, and he looked curiously agitated. “I thought I saw mother. It was in a wide place, all light and sunshine, too beautiful for anything but heaven. Mother was looking at me; I seemed to be outside in dulness and darkness, and not to know how to get in. Others that I’ve known in my lifetime, and who have gone on before, were there, as well as mother; they all looked happy, and there was a soft strain of music, like nothing I ever heard in this world. All at once, as I was wondering how I could get in, my sins seemed to rise up before me in a great cloud; I turned sick, thinking of them; for I knew no sinful person might enter there. Then I saw One standing on the brink! it could only have been Jesus; and He held out His hand to me and smiled, ‘I am here to wash out your sins,’ He said, and I thought He touched me with His finger; and oh, the feeling of delight that came over me, of repose, of bliss, for I knew that all earth’s troubles were over, and I had passed into rest and peace for ever.”
Nanny came up, and gave him one or two spoonfuls of wine.
“I don’t believe it was a dream,” he said, after a pause. “I think it was sent to show me what it is I am entering on; to uphold me through the darksome valley of the shadow of death.”
“Mother said she should be watching for us, you know, Charley,” said the child.
A restless fit came over him again, and he stirred uneasily. When it had passed, he was still for awhile and then looked up at me.
“It was the new heaven and the new earth, sir, that we are told of in the Revelation. Would you mind, sir — just those few verses — reading them to me for the last time?”
Nanny brought the Bible, and put the candle on the stand, and I read what he asked for — the first few verses of the twenty-first chapter. The little girl kneeled down by the bed and joined her hands together.
“That’s enough, Nanny,” I whispered. “Put the candle back.”
“But I did not tell all my dream,” he resumed; “not quite all. As I passed over into heaven,
I thought I looked down here again. I could see the places in the world; I could see this same Oxford city. I saw the men here in it, sir, at their cards and their dice and their drink; at all their thoughtless folly. Spending their days and nights without a care for the end, without as much as thinking whether they need a Saviour or not. And oh, their condition troubled me! I seemed to understand all things plainly then, sir. And I thought if they would but once lift up their hearts to Him, even in the midst of their sin, He would take care of them even then, and save them from it in the end — for He was tempted Himself once, and knows how sore their temptations are. In my distress, I tried to call out and tell them this, and it awoke me.”
“Do you think he ought to talk, sir?” whispered Nanny. But nothing more could harm him now.
My time was up, and I ought to be going. Poor Charley spoke so imploringly — almost as though the thought of it startled him.
“Not yet, sir; not yet! Stay a bit longer with me. It is for the last time.”
And I stayed: in spite of my word passed to Dr. Applerigg. It seems to me a solemn thing to cross the wishes of the dying.
So the clock went ticking on. Mrs. Cann stole in and out, and a lodger from below came in and looked at him. Before twelve all was over.
I went hastening home, not much caring whether the proctor met me again, or whether he didn’t, for in any case I must go to Dr. Applerigg in the morning, and tell him I had broken my promise to him, and why. Close at the gates some one overtook and passed me.
It was Tod. Tod with a white face, and his hair damp with running. He had come from Sophie Chalk’s.
“What is it, Tod?”
I laid my hand upon his arm in speaking. He threw it off with a word that was very like an imprecation.
“What is the matter?”
“The devil’s the matter. Mind your own business, Johnny.”
“Have you been quarrelling with Everty?”
“Everty be hanged! The man has betaken himself off.”
“How much have you lost to-night?”
“Cleaned-out, lad. That’s all.”
We got to our room in silence. Tod turned over some cards that lay on the table, and trimmed the candle from a thief.
“Tasson’s dead, Tod.”
“A good thing if some of us were dead,” was the answer. And he turned into his chamber and bolted the door.
III.
Lunch-time at Oxford, and a sunny day. Instead of college and our usual fare, bread-and-cheese from the buttery, we were looking on the High Street from Mrs. Everty’s rooms, and about to sit down to a snow-white damasked table with no end of good things upon it. Madam Sophie had invited four or five of us to lunch with her.
The term had gone on, and Easter was not far off. Tod had not worked much: just enough to keep him out of hot-water. His mind ran on Sophie Chalk more than it did on lectures and chapel. He and the other fellows who were caught by her fascinations mostly spent their spare time there. Sophie dispersed her smiles pretty equally, but Tod contrived to get the largest share. The difference was this: they had lost their heads to her and Tod his heart. The evening card-playing did not flag, and the stakes played for were high. Tod and Gaiton were the general losers: a run of ill-luck had set in from the first for both of them. Gaiton might afford this, but Tod could not.
Tod had his moments of reflection. He’d sit sometimes for an hour together, his head bent down, whistling softly to himself some slow dolorous strain, and pulling at his dark whiskers; no doubt pondering the question of what was to be the upshot of it all. For my part, I devoutly wished Sophie Chalk had been caught up into the moon before an ill-wind had wafted her to Oxford. It was an awful shame of her husband to let her stay on there, turning the under-graduates’ brains. Perhaps he could not help it.
We sat down to table: Sophie at its head in a fresh-looking pink gown and bracelets and nicknacks. Lord Gaiton and Tod sat on either side of her; Richardson was at the foot, and Fred Temple and I faced each other. What fit of politeness had taken Sophie to invite me, I could not imagine. Possibly she thought I should be sure to refuse; but I did not.
“So kind of you all to honour my poor little table!” said Sophie, as we sat down. “Being in lodgings, I cannot treat you as I should wish. It is all cold: chickens, meat-patties, lobster-salad, and bread-and-cheese. Lord Gaiton, this is sherry by you, I think. Mr. Richardson, you like porter, I know: there is some on the chiffonier.”
We plunged into the dishes without ceremony, each one according to his taste, and the lunch progressed. I may as well mention one thing — that there was nothing in Mrs. Everty’s manners at any time to take exception to: never a word was heard from her, never a look seen, that could offend even an old dowager. She made the most of her charms and her general fascinations, and flirted quietly; but all in a lady-like way.
“Thank you, yes; I think I will take a little more salad, Mr. Richardson,” she said to him with a beaming smile. “It is my dinner, you know. I have not a hall to dine in to-night, as you gentlemen have. I am sorry to trouble you, Mr. Johnny.”
I was holding her plate for Richardson. There happened at that moment to be a lull in the talking, and we heard a carriage of some kind stop at the door, and a loud peal at the house-bell.
“It’s that brother of mine,” said Fred Temple. “He bothered me to drive out to some confounded place with him, but I told him I wouldn’t. What’s he bumping up the stairs in that fashion for?”
The room-door was flung open, and Fred Temple put on a savage face, for his brother looked after him more than he liked; when, instead of Temple major, there appeared a shining big brown satin bonnet, and an old lady’s face under it, who stood there with a walking-stick.
“Yes, you see I was right, grandmamma; I said she was not gone,” piped a shrill voice behind; and Mabel Smith, in an old-fashioned black silk frock and tippet, came into view. They had driven up to look after Sophie.
Sophie was equal to the occasion. She rose gracefully and held out both her hands, as though they had been welcome as is the sun in harvest. The old lady leaned on her stick, and stared around: the many faces seemed to confuse her.
“Dear me! I did not know you had a luncheon-party, ma’am.”
“Just two or three friends who have dropped in, Mrs. Golding,” said Sophie, airily. “Let me take your stick.”
The old lady, who looked like a very amiable old lady, sat down in the nearest chair, but kept the stick in her hand. Mabel Smith was regarding everything with her shrewd eyes and compressing her thin lips.
“This is Johnny Ludlow, grandmamma; you have heard me speak of him: I don’t know the others.”
“How do you do, sir,” said the old lady, politely nodding her brown bonnet at me. “I hope you are in good health, sir?”
“Yes, ma’am, thank you.” For she put it as a question, and seemed to await an answer. Tod and the rest, who had risen, began to sit down again.
“I’m sure I am sorry to disturb you at luncheon, ma’am,” said the old lady to Mrs. Everty. “We came in to see whether you had gone home or not. I said you of course had gone; that you wouldn’t stay away from your husband so long as this; and also because we had not heard of you for a month past. But Mabel thought you were here still.”
“I am intending to return shortly,” said Sophie.
“That’s well: for I want to send up Mabel. And I brought in a letter that came to my house this morning, addressed to you,” continued the old lady, lugging out of her pocket a small collection of articles before she found the letter. “Mabel says it is your husband’s handwriting, ma’am; if so, he must be thinking you are staying with me.”
“Thanks,” said Sophie, slipping the letter away unopened.
“Had you not better see what it says?” suggested Mrs. Golding to her.
“Not at all: it can wait. May I offer you some luncheon?”
“Much obleeged, ma’am, but I and Mabel took an early dinner before setting out. An
d on which day, Mrs. Everty, do you purpose going?”
“I’ll let you know,” said Sophie.
“What can have kept you so long here?” continued the old lady, wonderingly. “Mabel said you did not know any of the inhabitants.”
“I have found it of service to my health,” replied Sophie with charming simplicity. “Will you take a glass of sherry, Mrs. Golding?”
“I don’t mind if I do. Just half a glass. Thank you, sir; not much more than half” — to me, as I went forward with the glass and decanter. “I’m sure, sir, it is good of you to be attentive to an old lady like me. If you had a mind for a brisk walk at any time, of three miles, or so, and would come over to my house, I’d make you welcome. Mabel, write down the address.”
“And I wish you had come while I was there, Johnny Ludlow,” said the girl, giving me the paper. “I like you. You don’t say smiling words to people with your lips and mock at them in your heart, as some do.”
I remembered that she had not been asked to take any wine, and I offered it.
“No, thank you,” she said with emphasis. “None for me.” And it struck me that she refused because the wine belonged to Sophie.
The old lady, after nodding a farewell around and shaking hands with Mrs. Everty, stood leaning on her stick between the doorway and the stairs. “My servant’s not here,” she said, looking back, “and these stairs are steep: would any one be good enough to help me down?”
Tod went forward to give her his arm; and we heard the fly drive away with her and Mabel. Somehow the interlude had damped the free go of the banquet, and we soon prepared to depart also. Sophie made no attempt to hinder it, but said she should expect us in to take some tea with her in the evening: and the lot of us filed out together, some going one way, some another. I and Fred Temple kept together.
There was a good-natured fellow at Oxford that term, who had come up from Wales to take his degree, and had brought his wife with him, a nice kind of young girl who put me in mind of Anna Whitney. They had become acquainted with Sophie Chalk, and liked her; she fascinated both. She meant to do it too: for the companionship of staid irreproachable people like Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns, reflected credit on herself in the eyes of Oxford.