by Ellen Wood
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 ho
ur 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.
II
“Aunt Mary Ann, I’ve come back, and brought a visitor with me!”
Mrs. Mary Ann Cramp, superintending the preserving of a pan of morella cherries over the fire in her spacious kitchen, turned round in surprise. I was perched on the arm of the old oak chair, watching the process. I had gone to the farm with a message from Crabb Cot, and Mrs. Cramp, ignoring ceremony, called me into the kitchen.
Standing at the door, with the above announcement, was Julietta Chandler. She had been away on a fortnight’s visit.
“Now where on earth did you spring from, Juliet?” asked Mrs. Cramp. “I did not expect you to-day. A visitor? Who is it?”
“Cherry Dawson, Aunt Mary Ann; and I didn’t think it mattered about letting you know,” returned Juliet. They had given up the longer name, Julietta. “You can see her if you look through the window; she is getting out of the fly at the gate. Cherry Dawson is the nicest and jolliest girl in the world, and you’ll all be in love with her — including you, Johnny Ludlow.”
Sure enough, there she was, springing from the fly which had brought them from Crabb station. A light, airy figure in a fresh brown-holland dress and flapping Leghorn hat. The kitchen window was open, and we could hear her voice all that way off, laughing loudly at something and chattering to the driver. She was very fair, with pretty white teeth, and a pink colour on her saucy face.
Mrs. Cramp left Sally to the cherries, went to the hall door and opened it herself, calling the other maid, Joan, to come down. The visitor flew in with a run and a sparkling laugh, and at once kissed Mrs. Cramp on both cheeks, without saying with your leave or by your leave. I think she would not have minded kissing me, for she came dancing up and shook my hand.
“It’s Johnny Ludlow, Cherry,” said Juliet.
“Oh, how delightful!” cried Miss Cherry.
She was really very unsophisticated; or — very much the other way. One cannot quite tell at a first moment. But, let her be which she might, there was one thing about her that took the eyes by storm. It was her hair.
Whether her rapid movements had unfastened it, or whether she wore it so, I knew not, but it fell on her shoulders like a shower of gold. Her small face seemed to be set in an amber aureole. I had never before seen hair so absolutely resembling the colour of pure gold. As she ran back to Mrs. Cramp from me, it glittered in the sunlight. The shower of gold in which Jupiter went courting Danaë could hardly have been more seductive than this.
“I know you don’t mind my coming uninvited, you dear Mrs. Cramp!” she exclaimed joyously. “I did so want to make your acquaintance. And Clementina was growing such a cross-patch. It’s not Tim’s fault if he can’t come back yet. Is it now?”
“I do not know anything about it,” answered Mrs. Cramp, apparently not quite sure what to make of her.
With this additional company I thought it well to come away, and wished them good morning. At the gate stood the fly still, the horse resting.
“Like to take a lift, Mr. Johnny, as far as your place?” asked the man civilly. “I am just starting back.”
“No, thank you, Lease,” I answered. “I am going across to Duck Brook.”
“Curious young party that, ain’t it, sir?” said Lease, pointing the whip over his shoulder towards the house. “She went and asked me if Mrs. Cramp warn’t an old Image, born in the year One, and didn’t she get her gowns out of Noah’s Ark? And while I was staring at her saying that, she went off into shouts of laughter enough to frighten the horse. Did you see her hair, sir?”
I nodded.
“For my part, I don’t favour that bright yaller for hair, Mr. Johnny. I never knew but one woman have such, and she was more deceitful than a she-fox.”
Lease touched his hat and drove off. He was cousin in a remote degree to poor Maria Lease, and to Lease the pointsman who had caused the accident to the train at Crabb junction and died of the trouble. At that moment, Fred Scott came up; a short, dark young fellow, with fierce black whiskers, good-natured and rather soft. He was fond of playing billiards at the Bell at Islip; had been doing it for some years now.
“I say, Ludlow, has that fly come with Juliet Chandler? Is she back again?”
“Just come. She has brought some one with her: a girl with golden hair.”
“Oh, bother her!” returned Fred. “But it has been as dull as ditchwater without Juliet.”
He dashed in at Mrs. Cramp’s gate and up the winding path. I turned into the Islip Road, and crossed it to take Brook Lane. The leaves were beginning to put on the tints of autumn; the grain was nearly all gathered.
Time the healer! As Mrs. Todhetley says, it may well be called so. Heaven in mercy sends it to the sick and heavy-laden with healing on its wings. Nearly three years had slipped by since the departure for Canada of Valentine Chandler; four years since the tragic death of Oliver Preen.
There are few changes to record. Things and people were for the most part going on as they had done. It was reported that Valentine had turned over a new leaf from the hour he landed over yonder, becoming thoroughly staid and steady. Early in the summer of this year his mother had shut up her cottage at North Crabb to go to Guernsey, on the invitation of a sister from whom she had expectations. Upon this, Julietta, who lived with her mother, went on a long visit to Mrs. Cramp.
Clementina had married. Her husband was a Mr. Timothy Dawson, junior partner in a wholesale firm of general merchants in Birmingham; they had also a house in New York. Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Dawson lived in a white villa at Edgbaston, and went in for style and fashion. At least she did, which might go without telling. The family in which her sister Georgiana was governess occupied another white villa hard by.
Close upon Juliet’s thus taking up her residence with her aunt, finding perhaps the farm rather dull, she struck up a flirtation with Fred Scott, or he with her. They were everlastingly together, mooning about Mrs. Cramp’s grounds, or sauntering up and down the Islip Road. Juliet gave out that they were engaged. No one believed it. At present Fred had nothing to marry upon: his mother, just about as soft as himself, supplied him with as much pocket-money as he asked for, and there his funds ended.
Juliet had now returned from a week or two’s visit she had been paying Clementina, bringing with her, uninvited, the young lady with the golden hair. That hair seemed to be before my eyes as a picture as I walked along. She was Timothy Dawson’s young half-sister. Both the girls had grown tired of staying with Clementina, who worried herself and everyone about her just now because her husband was detained longer than he had anticipated in New York, whither he had gone on business.
Mr. Frederick Scott had said “Bother” in contempt when he first heard of the visitor with the golden hair. He did not say it long. Miss Cherry Dawson cast a spell upon him. He had never met such a rattling, laughing girl in all his born days, which was how he phrased it; had never seen such bewildering hair. Cherry fascinated him. Forgetting his allegiance to Juliet, faithless swain that he was, he went right over to the enemy. Miss Cherry, nothing loth, accepted his homage openly, and enjoyed the raging jealousy of Juliet.
In the midst of this, Juliet received a telegram from Edgbaston. Her sister Clementina was taken suddenly ill and wanted her. She must take the first train.
“Of course you are coming with me, Cherry!” said Juliet.
&n
bsp; “Of course I am not,” laughed Cherry. “I’m very happy here — if dear Mrs. Cramp will let me stay with her. You’ll be back again in a day or two.”
Not seeing any polite way of sending her away in the face of this, Mrs. Cramp let her stay on. Juliet was away a week — and a nice time the other one and Fred had of it, improving the shining hours with soft speeches and love-making. When Juliet got back again, she felt ready to turn herself into a female Bluebeard, and cut off Cherry’s golden head.
Close upon that Mrs. Cramp held her harvest-home. “You may as well come early, and we’ll have tea on the lawn,” she said, when inviting us.
It was a fine afternoon, warm as summer, though September was drawing to its close. Many of the old friends you have heard of were there. Mary MacEveril and her cousin Dick, who seemed to be carrying on a little with one another, as Tod called it; the Letsoms, boys and girls; Emma Chandler, who looked younger than ever, though she could boast of two babies: and others. Jane Preen was there, the weary look which her mild and pretty face had gained latterly very plainly to be seen. We roamed at will about the grounds, and had tea under the large weeping elm tree. Altogether the gathering brought forcibly to mind that other gathering; that of the picnic, four summers ago, when we had sung songs in light-hearted glee, and poor Oliver Preen must have been ready to die of mortal pain.
The element of interest to-day lay in Miss Cherry Dawson. In her undisguised assumption of ownership in Fred Scott, and in Juliet Chandler’s rampant jealousy of the pair. You should have seen the girl flitting about like a fairy, in her white muslin frock, the golden shower of curls falling around her like nothing but threads of transparent amber. Fred was evidently very far gone. Juliet wore white also.
Whether things would have come that evening to the startling pass they did but for an unfortunate remark made in thoughtless fun, not in malice, I cannot tell. It gave a sting to Juliet that she could not bear. A ridiculous pastime was going on. Some of them were holding hands in a circle and dancing round to the “House that Jack Built,” each one reciting a sentence in turn. If you forgot your sentence, you paid a forfeit. The one falling to Juliet Chandler was “This the maiden all forlorn.” “Why, that’s exactly what you are, Juliet!” cried Tom Coney, impulsively, and a laugh went round. Juliet said nothing, but I saw her face change to the hue of death. The golden hair of the other damsel was gleaming just then within view amidst the trees, accompanied by the black head and black whiskers of Mr. Fred Scott.