Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series Part 58

Hubert turned at the call.

"Harry! Why, Harry!"

Hand locked in hand, they sat down on a bench beside the path; face gazing into face. There had always been a likeness between them: in the bright-coloured, waving hair, the blue eyes and the well-favoured features. But Harry's face was redolent of youth and health; in the other's might be read approaching death.

"You are very thin, Bertie; thinner even than I expected to see you,"

broke from the traveller involuntarily.

"_You_ are looking well, at any rate," was Hubert's answer. "And I am so glad you are come: I thought you might have been here a month ago."

"The voyage was unreasonably long; we had contrary winds almost from port to port. I got on to Worcester yesterday, slept there, and hired a horse and gig to bring me over this morning. What about Eliza's wedding, Hubert? I was just in time to see her drive away. Cale, with whom I had a word down yonder, says the master does not like it."

"He does not like it and would not countenance it: washed his hands of it (as he told us) altogether."

"Any good reason for that?"

"Not particularly good, that I see. Somehow he disliked Hamlyn; and Tom Rivers wanted Eliza, which would have pleased him greatly. But Eliza was not without blame. My father gave way so far as to ask her to delay things for a few months, not to marry in haste, and she would not. She might have conceded as much as that."

"Did you ever know Eliza concede anything, Bertie?"

"Well, not often."

"Who gave her away?"

"I did: look at my gala toggery"--opening his overcoat. "He wanted to forbid it. 'Don't hinder me, father,' I pleaded; 'it is the last brotherly service I can ever render her.' And so," his tone changing to lightness, "I have been and gone and done it."

Harry Carradyne understood. "Not the last, Hubert; don't say that. I hope you will live to render her many another yet."

Hubert smiled faintly. "Look at me," he said in answer.

"Yes, I know; I see how you look. But you may take a turn yet."

"Ah, miracles are no longer wrought for us. Shall I surprise you very much, cousin mine, if I say that were the offer made me of prolonged life, I am not sure that I should accept it?"

"Not unless health were renewed with it; I can understand that. You have had to endure suffering, Bertie."

"Ay. Pain, discomfort, fears, weariness. After working out their torment upon me, they--why then they took a turn and opened out the vista of a refuge."

"A refuge?"

"The one sure Refuge offered by G.o.d to the sick and sorrowful, the weary and heavy-laden--Himself. I found it. I found _Him_ and all His wonderful mercy. It will not be long now, Harry, before I see Him face to face. And here comes His true minister, but for whom I might have missed the way."

Harry turned his head, and saw, advancing up the drive, a good-looking young clergyman. "Who is it?" he involuntarily cried.

"Your brother-in-law, Robert Grame. Lucy's husband."

It was not the fas.h.i.+on in those days for a bride's mother (or one acting as her mother) to attend the bride to church; therefore Mrs. Carradyne, following it, was spared risk of conflict with Captain Monk on that score. She was in Eliza's room, a.s.sisting at the putting on of the bridal robes (for we have to go back an hour or so) when a servant came up to say that Mr. Hamlyn waited below. Rather wondering--for he was to have driven straight to the church--Mrs. Carradyne went downstairs.

"Pardon me, dear Mrs. Carradyne," he said, as he shook hands, and she had never seen him look so handsome, "I could not pa.s.s the house without making one more effort to disarm Captain Monk's prejudices, and asking for his blessing on us. Do you think he will consent to see me?"

Mrs. Carradyne felt sure he would not, and said so. But she sent Rimmer to the library to ask the question. Mr. Hamlyn pencilled down a few anxious words on paper, folded it, and put it into the man's hand.

No; it proved useless. Captain Monk was harder than adamant; he sent Rimmer back with a flea in his ear, and the pet.i.tion torn in two.

"I feared so," sighed Mrs. Carradyne. "He will not this morning see even Eliza."

Mr. Hamlyn did not sigh in return; he spoke a cross, impatient word: he had never been able to see reason in the Captain's dislike to him, and, with a brief good-morning, went out to his carriage. But, remembering something when crossing the hall, he came back.

"Forgive me, Mrs. Carradyne; I quite forgot that I have a note for you.

It is from Mrs. Peveril, I believe; it came to me this morning, enclosed in a letter of her husband's."

"You have heard at last, then!"

"At last--as you observe. Though Peveril had nothing particular to write about; I daresay he does not care for letter writing."

Slipping the note into her pocket, to be opened at leisure, Mrs.

Carradyne returned to the adorning of Eliza. Somehow, it was rather a prolonged business--which made it late when the bride with her bridesmaid and Hubert drove from the door.

Mrs. Carradyne remained in the room--to which Eliza was not to return--putting up this, and that. The time slipped on, and it was close upon twelve o'clock when she got back to the drawing-room. Captain Monk was in it then, standing at the window, which he had thrown wide open.

To see more clearly the bridal party come out of church, was the thought that crossed Mrs. Carradyne's mind in her simplicity.

"I very much feared they would be late," she observed, sitting down near her brother: and at that moment the church clock began to strike twelve.

"A good thing if they were _too_ late!" he answered. "Listen."

She supposed he wanted to count the strokes--what else could he be listening to? And now, by the stir at the distant gates, she saw that the bridal party had come out.

"Good heavens, what's that?" shrieked Mrs. Carradyne, starting from her chair.

"The chimes," stoically replied the Captain. And he proceeded to hum through the tune of "The Bay of Biscay," and beat a noiseless accompaniment with his foot.

"_The Chimes_, Emma," he repeated, when the melody had finished itself out. "I ordered them to be played. It's the last day of the old year, you know."

Laughing slightly at her consternation, Captain Monk closed the window and quitted the room. As Mrs. Carradyne took her handkerchief from her pocket to pa.s.s it over her face, grown white with startled terror, the note she had put there came out also, and fell on the carpet.

Picking it up, she stood at the window, gazing forth. Her sight was not what it used to be; but she discerned the bride and bridegroom enter their carriage and drive away; next she saw the bridesmaid get into the carriage from the Hall, a.s.sisted by Hubert, and that drive off in its turn. She saw the crowd disperse, this way and that; she even saw the gig there, its occupant talking with John Cale. But she did not look at him particularly; and she had not the slightest idea but that Harry was in India.

And all that time an undercurrent of depression was running riot in her heart. None knew with what a strange terror she had grown to dread the chimes.

She sat down now and opened Mrs. Peveril's note. It treated chiefly of the utterly astounding ways that untravelled old lady was meeting with in foreign parts. "If you will believe me," wrote she, "the girl that waits on us wears carpet slippers down at heel, and a short cotton jacket for best, and she puts the tea-tray before me with the handle of the tea-pot turned to me and the spout standing outwards, and she comes right into the bed-room of a morning with Charles's shaving-water without knocking." But the one sentence that arrested Mrs. Carradyne's attention above any other was the following: "I reckon that by this time you have grown well acquainted with our esteemed young friend. He is a good, kindly gentleman, and I'm sure never could have done anything to deserve his wife's treatment of him."

"Can she mean Mr. Hamlyn?" debated Mrs. Carradyne, all sorts of ideas leaping into her mind with a rush. "If not--what other 'esteemed friend'

can she allude to?--_she_, old herself, would call _him_ young. But Mr.

Hamlyn has not any wife. At least, had not until to-day."

She read the note over again. She sat with it open, buried in a reverie, thinking no end of things, good and bad: and the conclusion she at last came to was, that, with the unwonted exercise of letter-writing, poor old Mrs. Peveril's head had grown confused.

"Well, Hubert, did it all go off well?" she questioned, as her nephew entered the room, some sort of excitement on his wasted face. "I saw them drive away."