Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

“Darbyshire. He says you are in love with her as much as ever Brook was.”

St. George laughed. “Old Darbyshire? Well, perhaps he is not far wrong. Any way, love’s free, I believe. Were I her father, Brook should prove his eligibility to propose for her, or else give her up. Good-day, Todhetley; good-day, Johnny.”

St. George went off at a quick pace. Tod, looking after him, made his comments. “Should not wonder but he wins her. He is the better man of the two–”

“The better man!” I interrupted.

“As to means, at any rate: and see what a fine upright free-limbed fellow he is! And where will you find one more agreeable?”

“In tongue, nowhere; I admit that. But I wouldn’t give up William Brook for him, were I Ellin Delorane.”

That St. George was in love with her grew as easy to be seen as is the round moon in harvest. Small blame to him. Who could be in the daily companionship of a sweet girl like Ellin Delorane, and not learn to love her, I should like to know? Tod told St. George he wished he had his chance.

At last St. George spoke to her. It was in April, eighteen months after Brook’s departure. Ellin was in the garden at sunset, busy with the budding flowers, when St. George came to join her, as he sometimes did, on leaving the office for the day. Aunt Hester sat sewing at the open glass-doors of the window.

“I have been gardening till I am tired,” was Ellin’s greeting to him, as she sat down on a bench near the sweetbriar bush.

“You look pale,” said Mr. St. George. “You often do look pale now, Ellin: do you think you can be quite well?”

“Pray don’t let Aunt Hester overhear you,” returned Ellin in covert, jesting tones. “She begins to have fancies, she says, that I am not as well as I ought to be, and threatens to call in Mr. Darbyshire.”

“You need some one to take care of you; some one near and dear to you, who would study your every look and action, who would not suffer the winds of heaven to blow upon your face too roughly,” went on St. George, plunging into Shakespeare. “Oh, Ellin, if you would suffer me to be that one–”

Her face turned crimson; her lips parted with emotion; she rose up to interrupt him in a sort of terror.

“Pray do not continue, Mr. St. George. If—if I understand you rightly, that you—that you–”

“That I would be your loving husband, Ellin; that I would shelter you from all ill until death us do part. Yes, it is nothing less than that.”

“Then you must please never to speak of such a thing again; never to think of it. Oh, do not let me find that I have been mistaking you all this time,” she added in uncontrollable agitation: “that while I have ever welcomed you as my friend—and his—you have been swayed by another motive!”

He did not like the agitation; he did not like the words; and he bit his lips, striving for calmness.

“This is very hard, Ellin.”

“Let us understand each other once for all,” she said—“and oh, I am so sorry that there’s need to say it. What you have hinted at is impossible. Impossible: please not to mistake me. You have been my very kind friend, and I value you; and, if you will, we can go on still on the same pleasant terms, caring for one another in friendship. There can be nothing more.”

“Tell me one thing,” he said: “we had better, as you intimate, understand each other fully. Can it be that your hopes are still fixed upon William Brook?”

“Yes,” she answered in a low tone, as she turned her face away. “I hope he will come home yet, and that—that matters may be smoothed for us with papa. Whilst that hope remains it is simply treason to talk to me as you would have done,” she concluded with a spurt of anger.

“Ellin,” called out Aunt Hester, putting her head out beyond the glass-doors, “the sun has set; you had better come in.”

“One moment, Ellin,” cried Mr. St. George, preventing her: “will you forgive me?”

“Forgive and forget, too,” smiled Ellin, her brow smoothing itself. “But you must never recur to the subject again.”

So Mr. St. George went home, his accounts settled—as Tod would have said: and the days glided on.

“What is it that ails Ellin?”

It was a piping-hot morning in July, in one of the good old hot summers that we seem never to get now; and Aunt Hester sat in her parlour, its glass-doors open, adding up the last week’s bills of the butcher and the baker, when she was interrupted by this question from her brother. He had come stalking upon her, rattling as usual, though quite unconsciously, the silver in his trousers pockets. The trousers were of nankeen: elderly gentlemen wore them in those days for coolness.

“What ails her!” repeated Aunt Hester, dropping the bills in alarm. “Why do you ask me, John?”

“Now, don’t you think you should have been a Quaker?” retorted Mr. Delorane. “I put a simple question to you, and you reply to it by asking me another. Please to answer mine first. What is it that is the matter with Ellin?”

Aunt Hester sighed. Of too timid a nature to put forth her own opinion upon any subject gratuitously in her brother’s house, she hardly liked to give it even when asked for. For the past few weeks Ellin had been almost palpably fading; was silent and dispirited, losing her bright colour, growing thinner; might be heard catching her breath in one of those sobbing sighs that betoken all too surely some secret, ever-present sorrow. Aunt Hester had observed this; she now supposed it had at length penetrated to the observation of her brother.

“Can’t you speak?” he demanded.

“I don’t know what to say, John. Ellin does not seem well, and looks languid: of course this broiling weather is against us all. But–”

“But what?” cried the lawyer, as she paused. “As to broiling weather, that’s nothing new in July.”

“Well, John—only you take me up so—and I’m sure I shouldn’t like to anger you. I was about to add that I think it is not so much illness of body with Ellin as illness of mind. If one’s mind is ransacked with perpetual worry–”

“Racked with perpetual worry,” interrupted Mr. Delorane, unconsciously correcting her mistake. “What has she to worry her?”

“Dear me! I suppose it is about William Brook. He has been gone nearly two years, John, and seems to be no nearer coming home with a fortune than he was when he left. I take it that this troubles the child: she is losing hope.”

Mr. Delorane, standing before the open window, his back to his sister, turned the silver coins about in his pockets more vehemently than before. “You say she is not ailing in body?”

“Not yet. She is never very strong, you know.”

“Then there’s no need to be uneasy.”

“Well, John—not yet, perhaps. But should this state of despair, if I don’t use too strong a word, continue, it will tell in tune upon her health, and might bring on—bring on–”

“Bring on what?” sharply asked the lawyer.

“I was thinking of her mother,” said poor Aunt Hester, with as much deprecation as though he had been the Great Mogul: “but I trust, John, you won’t be too angry with me for saying it.”

Mr. Delorane did not say whether he was angry or not. He stood there, fingering his sixpences and shillings, gazing apparently at the grass-plat, in reality seeing nothing. He was recalling a past vision: that of his delicate wife, dying of consumption before her time; he seemed to see a future vision: that of his daughter, dying as she had died.

“When it comes to dreams,” timidly went on Aunt Hester, “I can’t say I like it. Not that I am one to put faith in the foolish signs old wives talk of—that if you dream of seeing a snake, you’ve got an enemy; or, if you seem to be in the midst of a lot of beautiful white flowers, it’s a token of somebody’s death. I am not so silly as that, John. But for some time past Ellin has dreamt perpetually of one theme—that of being in trouble about William Brook. Night after night she seems to be searching for him: he is lost, and she cannot tell how or where.”

Had Aunt Hester suddenly begun to hold forth in the unknown tongue, it could not have brought greater surprise to Mr. Delorane. He turned short round to stare at her.

“Seeing what a wan and weary face the child has come down with of late, I taxed her with not sleeping well,” continued Aunt Hester, “and she confessed to me that she was feeling a good bit troubled by her dreams. She generally has them towards morning, and the theme is always the same. The dreams vary, but the subject is alike in all—William Brook is lost, and she is searching for him.”

“Nonsense! Rubbish!” put in Mr. Delorane.

“Well, John, I dare say it is nonsense,” conceded Aunt Hester meekly: “but I confess I don’t like dreams that come to you persistently night after night and always upon one and the same subject. Why should they come?—that’s what I ask myself. Be sure, though, I make light of the matter to Ellin, and tell her her digestion is out of order. Over and over again, she says, they seem to have the clue to his hiding place, but they never succeed in finding him. And—and I am afraid, John, that the child, through this, has taken up the notion that she shall never see him again.”

Mr. Delorane, making some impatient remark about the absurdity of women in general, turned round and stood looking into the garden as before. Ellin’s mind was getting unhinged with the long separation, she had begun to regard it as hopeless, and hence these dreams that Brook was “lost,” he told himself, and with reason: and what was he to do?

How long he stood thus in perfect silence, no sound to be heard but the everlasting jingling of the loose silver, Aunt Hester did not know; pretty near an hour she thought. She wished he would go; she felt very uncomfortable, as she always did feel when she vexed him—and here were the bills waiting to be added up. At length he turned sharply, with the air of one who has come to some decision, and returned to the office.