Kitabı oku: «Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series», sayfa 26

“It is a pity girls should be at them at all—drawing on the young men! I am speaking generally, Mrs. Dyke.”

“It is a pity the young men should be so soft as to be drawn on by them—if you’ll excuse my saying it, sir,” she returned, quickly. “But there—what would you? Human nature’s the same all the world over: Jack and Jill. The young men like to talk to the girls, and the girls like very much to talk to the young men. Of course these barmaids lay themselves out to the best advantage, in the doing of their hair and their white frills, and what not, which is human nature again, sir. Look at a young lady in a drawing-room: don’t she set herself off when she is expecting the beaux to call?”

Mrs. Dyke paused for want of breath. Her tongue ran on fast, but it told of good sense.

“The barmaids are but like the young ladies, sir; and the young fellows that congregate there get to admire them, while sipping their drops at the counter; if, as I say, they are soft enough. When the girls get hold of one softer than the rest, why, perhaps one of them gets over him so far as to entrap him to give her his name—just as safe as you hook and land a fish.”

“And I suppose it has a different termination sometimes?”

Honest Mrs. Dyke shook her head. “We won’t talk about that, sir: I can’t deny that it may happen once in a way. Not often, let’s hope. The young women, as a rule, are well-conducted and respectable: they mostly know how to take care of themselves.”

“I should say Miss Panken does.”

Mrs. Dyke’s broad face shone with merriment. “Ain’t she impudent? Oh yes, sir, Polly Panken can take care of herself, never fear. But it’s not a good atmosphere for young girls to be in, you see, sir, these public bars; whether it may be only at a railway counter, or at one of them busy taverns in the town, or at the gay places of amusement, the manners and morals of the girls get to be a bit loose, as it were, and they can’t help it.”

“Or anybody else, I suppose.”

“No, sir, not as things are; and it’s just a wrong upon them that they should be exposed to it. They’d be safer and quieter in a respectable service, which is the state of life many of ’em were born to—though a few may be superior—and better behaved, too: manners is sure to get a bit corrupted in the public line. But the girls like their liberty; they like the free-and-easy public life and its idleness; they like the flirting and the chaffing and the nonsense that goes on; they like to be dressed up of a day as if they were so many young ladies, their hair done off in bows and curls and frizzes, and their hands in cuffs and lace-edgings; now and then you may see ’em with a ring on. That’s a better life, they think, than they’d lead as servants or shop-women, or any of the other callings open to this class of young women: and perhaps it is. It’s easier, at any rate. I’ve heard that some quite superior young people are in it, who might be, or were, governesses, and couldn’t find employment, poor young ladies, through the market being so overstocked. Ah, it is a hard thing, sir, for a well-brought-up young woman to find lady-like employment nowadays. One thing is certain,” concluded Mrs. Dyke, “that we shall never have a lack of barmaids in this country until a law is passed by the legislature—which, happen, never will be passed—to forbid girls serving in these places. There’d be less foolishness going on then, and a deal less drinking.”

These were Pitt’s ideas over again.

A loud laugh outside, and Lizzie came running in. “Why, Aunt Dyke, are you there!—entertaining Mr. Johnny Ludlow!” she exclaimed, as she threw herself into a chair. “Well, I never. And what do you two think I am going to do to-morrow?”

“Now just you mind your manners, young woman,” advised the aunt.

“I am minding them—don’t you begin blowing-up,” retorted Lizzie, her face brimming over with good-humour.

“You might have your things stole; you and the girl out together,” said Mrs. Dyke.

“There’s nothing to steal but chairs and tables. I’m sure I’m much obliged to you both for sitting here to take care of them. You’ll never guess what I am going to do,” broke off Lizzie, with shrieks of laughter. “I am going to take my old place again at the Bell-and-Clapper, and serve behind the counter for the day: Mabel Falkner wants a holiday. Won’t it be fun!”

“Your husband will not let you; he would not like it,” I said in my haste, while Mrs. Dyke sat in open-mouthed amazement.

“And I shall put on my old black dress; I’ve got it yet; and be a regular barmaid again. A lovely costume, that black is!” ironically ran on Lizzie. “Neat and not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his tail pea-green. You need not look as though you thought I had made acquaintance with him and heard him say it, Mr. Johnny; I only borrowed it from one of Bulwer’s novels that I read the other day.”

If I did not think that, I thought Madam Lizzie had been making acquaintance this afternoon with something else. “Drops!” as Mrs. Dyke called it.

“There I shall be to-morrow, at the old work, and you can both come and see me at it,” said Lizzie. “I’ll treat you more civilly, Mr. Johnny, than Polly Panken did.”

“But I say that your husband will not allow you to go,” I repeated to her.

“Ah, he’s in bed,” she laughed; “he can’t get out of it to stop me.”

“You are all on the wrong tack, Lizzie girl,” spoke up the aunt, severely. “If you don’t mind, it will land you in shoals and quicksands. How dare you think of running counter to what you know your husband’s wishes would be?”

She received this with a louder laugh than ever. “He will not know anything about it, Aunt Dyke. Unless Mr. Johnny Ludlow here should tell him. It would not make any difference to me if he did,” she concluded, with candour.

And as I felt sure it would not, I held my tongue.

By degrees, as the days went on, Roger got about again, and when I left London he was back at St. Bartholomew’s. Other uncanny things had happened to me during this visit of mine, but not one of them brought with it so heavy a weight as the thought of poor Roger Bevere and his blighted life.

“His health may get all right if he will give up drinking,” were the last words Pitt said to me. “He has promised to do so.”

The weather was cold and wintry as we began our railway journey. From two to three years have gone on, you must please note, since the time told of above. Mr. Brandon was about to spend the Christmas with his sister, Lady Bevere—who had quitted Hampshire and settled not far from Brighton—and she had sent me an invitation to accompany him.

We took the train at Evesham. It was Friday, and the shortest day in the year; St. Thomas, the twenty-first of December. Some people do not care to begin a journey on a Friday, thinking it bodes ill-luck: I might have thought the same had I foreseen what was to happen before we got home again.

London reached, we met Roger Bevere at the Brighton Station, as agreed upon. He was to travel down with us. I had not seen him since the time of his illness in London, except for an hour once when I was in town upon some business for the Squire. Nothing had transpired to his friends, so far as I knew, of the fatal step he had taken; that was a secret still.

I cannot say I much liked Roger’s appearance now, as he sat opposite me in the railway-carriage, leaning against the arm of the comfortably-cushioned seat. His fair, pleasant face was gentle as ever, but the once clear blue eyes no longer looked very clear and did not meet ours freely; his hands shook, his fingers were restless. Mr. Brandon did not much like the signs either, to judge by the way he stared at him.

“Have you been well lately, Roger?”

“Oh yes, thank you, Uncle John.”

“Well, your looks don’t say much for you.”

“I am rather hard-worked,” said Roger. “London is not a place to grow rosy in.”

“Do you like your new work?” continued Mr. Brandon. For Roger had done with St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and was outdoor assistant to a surgeon in private practice, a Mr. Anderson.

“I like it better than the hospital work, Uncle John.”

“Ah! A fine idea that was of yours—wanting to set up in practice for yourself the minute you had passed. Your mother did well to send the letter to me and ask my advice. Some of you boys—boys, and no better—fresh from your hospital studies, screw a brass-plate on your door, announcing yourselves to the world as qualified surgeons. A few of you go a step further and add M.D.”

“Many of us take our degree as physician at once, Uncle John,” said Roger. “It is becoming quite the custom.”

“Just so: the custom!” retorted Mr. Brandon, cynically. “Why didn’t you do it, and modestly call yourself Dr. Bevere? In my former days, young man, when some ultra-grave ailment necessitated application to a physician, we went to him in all confidence, knowing that he was a man of steady years, of long-tried experience, whose advice was to be relied upon. Now, if you are dying and call in some Dr. So-and-so, you may find him a young fellow of three or four and twenty. As likely as not only an M.B. in reality, who has arrogated to himself the title of Doctor. For I hear some of them do it.”

“But they think they have a right to be called so, Uncle John. The question–”

“What right?” sharply demanded Mr. Brandon. “What gives it them?”

“Well—courtesy, I suppose,” hesitated Roger.

“Oh,” said Mr. Brandon.

I laughed. His tone was so quaint.

“Yes, you may laugh, Johnny Ludlow—showing your thoughtlessness! There’ll soon be no modesty left in the world,” he continued; “there’ll soon be no hard, plodding work. Formerly, men were content to labour on patiently for years, to attain success, whether in fame, fortune, or for a moderate competency. Now they must take a leap into it. Tradespeople retire before middle-age, merchants make colossal fortunes in a decade, and (to leave other anomalies alone) you random young hospital students spring into practice full-fledged M.D.’s.”

“The world is changing, Uncle John.”

“It is,” assented Mr. Brandon. “I’m not sure that we shall know it by-and-by.”

From Brighton terminus we had a drive of two or three miles across country to get to Prior’s Glebe—as Lady Bevere’s house was named. It was old-fashioned and commodious, and stood in a large square garden that was encircled by a thick belt of towering shrubs. Nothing was to be seen around it but a huge stretch of waste land; half a-mile-off, rose a little church and a few scattered cottages. “The girls must find this lively!” exclaimed Roger, taking a comprehensive look about him as we drove up in the twilight.

Lady Bevere, kind, gentle, simple-mannered as ever, received us lovingly. Mr. Brandon kissed her, and she kissed me and Roger. It was the first Christmas Roger had spent at home since rushing into that mad act of his; he had always invented some excuse for declining. The eldest son, Edmund, was in the navy; the second, George, was in the Church; Roger was the third; and the youngest, John, had a post in a merchant’s house in Calcutta. Of the four girls, only the eldest, Mary, and the youngest were at home. The little one was named Susan, but they called her Tottams. The other two were on a visit to their aunt, the late Sir Edmund Bevere’s sister.

Dinner was waiting when we got in, and I could not snatch half a word with Roger while making ready for it. He and I had two little rooms opening to each other. But when we went upstairs for the night we could talk at will; and I put my candle down on his chest of drawers.

“How are things going with you, Roger?”

“Don’t talk of it,” he cried, with quite a burst of emotion. “Things cannot be worse than they are.”

“I fancy you have not pulled up much, as Pitt used to call it, have you, old friend? Your hands and your face tell tales.”

“How can I pull up?” he retorted.

“You promised that you would.”

“Ay. Promised! When all the world’s against a fellow, he may not be able to keep his promises. Perhaps may not care to.”

“How is Lizzie?” I said then, dropping my voice.

“Don’t talk of her,” repeated Bevere, in a tone of despair; despair if I ever heard it. It shut me up.

“Johnny, I’m nearly done over; sick of it all,” he went on. “You don’t know what I have to bear.”

“Still—as regards yourself, you might pull up,” I persisted, for to give in to him, and his mood and his ways, would never do. “You might if you chose, Bevere.”

“I suppose I might, if I had any hope. But there’s none; none. People tell us that as we make our bed so we must lie upon it. I made mine in an awful fashion years ago, and I must pay the penalty.”

“I gather from this—forgive me, Bevere—that you and your wife don’t get along together.”

“Get along! Things with her are worse than you may think for. She—she—well, she has not done her best to turn out well. Heaven knows I’d have tried my best; the thing was done, and nothing else was left for us: but she has not let me. We are something like cat-and-dog now, and I am not living with her.”

“No!”

“That is, I inhabit other lodgings. She is at the old place. I am with a medical man in Bloomsbury, you know. It was necessary for me to be near him, and six months ago I went. Lizzie acquiesced in that; the matter was obvious. I sometimes go to see her; staying, perhaps, from Saturday to Monday, and come away cursing myself.”

“Don’t. Don’t, Bevere.”

“She has taken to drink,” he whispered, biting his agitated lips. “For pretty near two years now she has not been a day sober. As Heaven hears me, I believe not one day. You may judge what I’ve had to bear.”

“Could nothing be done?”

“I tried to do it, Johnny. I coaxed, persuaded, threatened her by turns, but she would not leave it off. For four months in the autumn of last year, I did not let a drop of anything come into the house; drinking water myself all the while—for her sake. It was of no use: she’d go out and get it: every public-house in the place knows her. I’d come home from the hospital in the evening and find her raving and rushing about the rooms like a mad woman, or else lying incapable on the bed. Believe me, I tried all I could to keep her straight; and Mrs. Dyke, a good, motherly woman, you remember, did her best to help me; but she was too much for both of us, the demon of drink had laid too fast hold of her.”

“Does she come bothering you at your new lodgings?”

“She doesn’t know where to come,” replied Bevere; “I should not dare to tell her. She thinks I am in the doctor’s house, and she does not know where that is. I have told her, and her Aunt Dyke has told her, that if ever she attempts to come after me there, I shall stop her allowance. Scott—you remember Richard Scott!”

“Of course.”

“Well, Scott lives now near the Bell-and-Clapper: he is with a surgeon there. Scott goes to see her for me once a-week, or so, and brings me news of her. I declare to you, Johnny Ludlow, that when I first catch sight of his face I turn to a cold shiver, dreading what he may have to say. And you talk about pulling up! With such a wife as that, one is thankful to drown care once in a way.”

“I—I suppose, Roger, nothing about her has ever come out here?”

He started up, his face on fire. “Johnny, lad, if it came out here—to my mother—to all of them—I should die. Say no more. The case is hopeless, and I am hopeless with it.”

Any way, it seemed hopeless to talk further then, and I took up my candle. “Just one more word, Roger: Does Lizzie know you have come down here? She might follow you.”

His face took a look of terror. The bare idea scared him. “I say, don’t you invent impossible horrors,” gasped he. “She couldn’t come; she has never heard of the place in connection with me. She has never heard anything about my people, or where they live, or don’t live, or whether I have any. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Roger.”

III

People say you can never sleep well in a strange bed. I know I did not sleep well, but very badly, that first night at Lady Bevere’s. It was not the fault of the bed, or of its strangeness; it was Roger’s trouble haunting me.

He did not seem to have slept well either, to judge by his looks when I went into his room in the morning. His fair, pleasant face was pale; his lips trembled, the blue eyes had torment in their depths.

“I have had a bad dream,” he said, in answer to a remark I made. “An awful dream. It came to me in my last sleep this morning; and morning dreams, they say, come true. I’m afraid I have you to thank for it, Johnny.”

“Me!”

“You suggested last night, startling me well-nigh out of my senses by it, that Lizzie might follow me down here. Well, I dreamt she did so. I saw her in the dining-room, haranguing my mother, her red-gold hair streaming over her shoulders and her arms stretched wildly out. Uncle John stood in a corner of the room, looking on.”

I felt sorry, and told him so: of course my speaking had prompted the dream. He need not fear. If Lizzie did not know he had come down here, or that his family lived here, or anything about them, she could not follow him.

“You see shadows where no shadows are, Roger.”

“When a man spoils his life on its threshold, it is all shadow; past, present, and future.”

“Things may mend, you know.”

“Mend!” he returned: “how can they mend? They may grow worse; never mend. My existence is one long torment. Day by day I live in dread of what may come: of her bringing down upon herself some public disgrace and my name with it. No living being, man or woman, can imagine what it is to me; the remorse for my folly, the mortification, the shame. I believe honestly that but for a few things instilled into me at my mother’s knee in childhood, I should have put an end to myself.”

“It is a long lane that has no turning.”

“Lanes have different outlets: bad as well as good.”

“I think breakfast must be ready, Roger.”

“And I started with prospects so fair!” he went on. “Never a thought or wish in my heart but to fulfil honestly the duties that lay in my way to the best of my power, to God and to man. And I should have done it, but for – Johnny Ludlow,” he broke off, with a deep breath of emotion, “when I see other young fellows travelling along the same wrong road, once earnest, well-meaning lads as I was, not turning aside of their own wilful, deliberate folly, but ensnared to it by the evil works and ways they encounter in that teeming city, my soul is wrung with pity for them. I sometimes wonder whether God will punish them for what they can hardly avoid; or whether He will not rather let His anger fall on those who throw temptations in their way.”

Poor Roger, poor Roger! Mr. Brandon used to talk of the skeleton in his closet: he little suspected how terrible was the skeleton in Roger’s.

Lady Bevere kept four servants: for she was no better off, except for a little income that belonged to herself, than is many another admiral’s widow. An upper maid, Harriet, who helped to wait, and did sewing: a housemaid and a cook; and an elderly man, Jacob, who had lived with them in the time of Sir Edmund.

During the afternoon of this day, Saturday, Roger and I set off to walk to Brighton with the two girls. Not by the high-road, but by a near way (supposed to cut off half the distance) across a huge, dreary, flat marsh, of which you could see neither the beginning nor the end. In starting, we had reached the gate at the foot of the garden, when Harriet came running down the path. She was a tall, thin, civil young woman, with something in her voice or in her manner of speaking that seemed to my ear familiar, though I knew not how or why.

“Miss Mary,” she said, “my lady asks have you taken umbrellas, if you please. She thinks it will snow when the sun goes down.”

“Yes, yes; tell mamma we have them,” replied Mary: and Harriet ran back.

“How was it the mother came to so lonely a spot as this?” questioned Roger, as we went along, the little one, Tottams, jumping around me. “You girls must find it lively?”

Mary laughed as she answered. “We do find it lively, Roger, and we often ask her why she came. But when mamma and George looked at the place, it was a bright, hot summer’s day. They liked it then: it has plenty of rooms in it, you see, though they are old-fashioned; and the rent was so very reasonable. Be quiet, Tottams.”

“So reasonable that I should have concluded the place had a ghost in it,” said Roger.

“George’s curacy was at Brighton in those days, you know, Roger: that is why we came to the neighbourhood.”

“And George had left for a better curacy before you had well settled down here! Miss Tottams, if you pull at Johnny Ludlow like that, I shall send you back by yourself.”

“True. But we like the place very well now we are used to it, and we know a few nice people. One family—the Archers—we like very much. Six daughters, Roger; one of them, Bessy, would make you a charming wife. You will have to marry, you know, when you set up in practice. They are coming to us next Wednesday evening.”

My eye caught Roger’s. I did not intend it. Caught the bitter expression in it as he turned away.

Brighton reached, we went on the pier. Then, while they did some commissions for Lady Bevere at various shops, I went to the post-office, to register two letters for Mr. Brandon. Tottams wanted to keep with me, but they took her, saying she’d be too troublesome. The letters registered, I came out of the office, and was turning away, when some one touched me on the arm.

“Mr. Ludlow, I think! How are you?”

To my surprise it was Richard Scott. He seemed equally surprised to see me. I told him I had come down with Roger Bevere to spend Christmas week at Prior’s Glebe.

“Lucky fellow!” exclaimed Scott, “I have to go back to London and drudgery this evening: came down with my governor last night for an operation to-day. Glad to say it’s all well over.”

But a thought had flashed into my mind: I ought not to have said so much. Drawing Scott out of the passing crowd, I spoke.

“Look here, Scott: you must be cautious not to say that Bevere’s down here. You must not speak of it.”

“Speak where?” asked Scott, turning his head towards me. He had put his arm within mine as we walked along. “Where?”

“Oh—well—up with you, you know—in Bevere’s old quarters. Or—or in the railway-room at the Bell-and-Clapper.”

Scott laughed. “I understand. Madam Lizzie might be coming after him to his mother’s. But—why, what an odd thing!”

Some thought seemed to have struck him suddenly. He paused in his walk as well as in his speech.

“I dare say it was nothing,” he added, going on again. “Be at ease as to Bevere, Ludlow. I should as soon think of applying to him a lighted firebrand.”

“But what is it you call odd?” I asked, feeling sure that, whatever it might be, it was connected with Bevere.

“Why, this,” said Scott. “Last night, when we got here, I left my umbrella in the carriage, having a lot of other things to see to of my own and the governor’s. I went back as soon as I found it out, but could hear nothing of it. Just now I went up again and got it”—slightly showing the green silk one he held in his hand. “A train from London came in while I stood there, bringing a heap of passengers. One of them looked like Lizzie.”

I could not speak from consternation.

“Having nothing to do while waiting for my umbrella to be brought, I was watching the crowd flock out of the station,” continued Scott. “Amidst it I saw a head of red-gold hair, just like Lizzie’s. I could not see more of her than that; some other young woman’s head was close to hers.”

“But do you think it was Lizzie?”

“No, I do not. So little did I think it that it went clean out of my mind until you spoke. It must have been some accidental resemblance; nothing more; red-gold hair is not so very uncommon. There’s nothing to bring her down to Brighton.”

“Unless she knows that he is here.”

“That’s impossible.”

“What a wretched business it is altogether!”

“You might well say that if you knew all,” returned Scott. “She drinks like a fish. Like a fish, I assure you. Twice over she has had a shaking-fit of three days’ duration—I suppose you take me, Ludlow—had to be watched in her bed; the last time was not more than a week ago. She’ll do for herself, if she goes on. It’s an awful clog on Bevere. The marriage in itself was a piece of miserable folly, but if she had been a different sort of woman and kept herself steady and cared for him–”

“The problem to me is, how Bevere could have been led away by such a woman.”

“Ah, but you must not judge of that by what she is now. She was a very attractive girl, and kept her manners within bounds. Just the kind of girl that many a silly young ape would lose his head for; and Bevere, I take it, lost his heart as well as his head.”

“Did you know of the marriage at the time?”

“Not until after it had taken place.”

“They could never have pulled well together as man and wife; two people so opposite as they are.”

“No, I fancy not,” answered Richard Scott, looking straight out before him, but as though he saw nothing. “She has not tried at it. Once his wife, safe and sure, she thought she had it all her own way—as of course in one sense she had, and could give the reins to her inclination. Nothing that Bevere wanted her to do, would she do. He wished her to give up all acquaintance with the two girls at the Bell-and-Clapper; but not she. He–”

“Is Miss Panken flourishing?”

“Quite,” laughed Scott, “The other one came to grief—Mabel Falkner.”

“Did she! I thought she seemed rather nice.”

“She was a very nice little girl indeed, as modest as Polly Panken is impudent. The one could take care of herself; the other couldn’t—or didn’t. Well, Mabel fell into trouble, and of course lost her post. Madam Lizzie immediately gave her house-room, setting Bevere, who forbade it, at defiance. What with grief and other disasters, the girl fell sick there; had an illness, and had to be kept I don’t know how long. It put Bevere out uncommonly.”

“Is this lately?”

“Oh no; last year. Lizzie– By the way,” broke off Scott, stopping again and searching his pocket, “I’ve got a note from her for Bevere. You can give it him.”

The words nearly seared away my senses. A note from Lizzie to Bevere! “Why, then, she must know he is here!” I cried.

“You don’t understand,” quietly said Scott, giving me a note from his pocket-book. “A day or two ago, I met Lizzie near the Bell-and-Clapper. She–”

“She is well enough to be out, then!”

“Yes. At times she is as well as you are. Well, I met her, and she began to give me a message for her husband, which I could not then wait to hear. So she sent this note to me later, to be delivered to him when we next met. I had not time to go to him yesterday, and here the note is still.”

It was addressed “Mr. Bevary.” I pointed out the name to Scott.

“Does she not know better, think you?”

“Very likely not,” he answered. “A wrong letter, more or less, in a name, signifies but little to one of Lizzie’s standard of education. It is not often, I expect, she sees the name on paper, or has to write it. Fare you well, Ludlow. Remember me to Bevere.”

Scott had hardly disappeared when they met me. I said nothing of having seen him. After treating Tottams to some tarts and a box of bonbons, we set off home again; the winter afternoon was closing, and it was nearly dark when we arrived. Getting Roger into his room, I handed him the note, and told him how I came by it. He showed me the contents.

“Dear Roger,

“When you where last at home, you said you should not be able to spend Christmas with me, so I am thinking of trying a little jaunt for myself. I am well now and mean to keep so, and a few days in the country air may help me and set me up prime. I inscribe this to let you know, and also to tell you that I shall pay my journey with the quarter’s rent you left, so you must send or bring the sum again. Aunt Dyke has got the rumaticks fine, she can’t come bothering me with her lectures quite as persistent as usual. Wishing you the compliments of the season, I remain,

“Your affectionate wife,

“Lizzie.”

“Gone into Essex, I suppose; she has talked sometimes of her cousin there,” was all the remark made by Bevere. And he set the note alight, and sent it blazing up the chimney. Of course I did not mention Scott’s fancy about the red-gold hair.

Sunday. We crossed the waste land in the morning to the little church I have spoken of. A few cottages stood about it, and a public-house with a big sign, on which was painted a yellow bunch of wheat, and the words The Sheaf o’ Corn. It was bitterly cold weather, the wind keen and cutting, the ground a sort of grey-white from a sprinkling of snow that had fallen in the night. I suppose they don’t, as a rule, warm these rural churches, from want of means or energy, but I think I never felt a church so cold before. Mr. Brandon said it had given him a chill.

In the evening, after tea, we went to church by moonlight. Not all of us this time. Mr. Brandon stayed away to nurse his chill, and Roger on the plea of headache. The snow was beginning to come down smartly. The little church was lighted with candles stuck in tin sconces nailed to the wall, and was dim enough. Lady Bevere whispered to me that the clergyman had a service elsewhere in the afternoon, so could only hold his own in the evening.

It was snowing with a vengeance when we came out—large flakes half as big as a shilling, and in places already a foot deep. We made the best of our way home, and were white objects when we got there.

“Ah!” remarked Mr. Brandon, “I thought we should have it. Hope the wind will go down a little now.”

The girls and their mother went upstairs to take off their cloaks. I asked Mr. Brandon where Roger was. He turned round from his warm seat by the fire to answer me.

“Roger is outside, enjoying the benefit of the snow-storm. That young man has some extraordinary care upon his conscience, Johnny, unless I am mistaken,” he added, his thin voice emphatic, his eyes throwing an inquiry into mine.

“Do you fancy he has, sir?” I stammered. At which Mr. Brandon threw a searching look at me, as if he had a mind to tax me with knowing what it was.