Johnny Ludlow, Second Series

“I do.”

“You!—you little mite! Brought your knowledge of rhubarb to good use, eh? What’s the matter with papa?”

“He has not been well for a long while. I don’t know what it is. Mr. Darbyshire says”—she dropped her voice a little—“that he is sure there’s something on his mind.”

“Poor old dad!—just like him! If a woman came in with a broken arm, he’d take it to heart.”

“Benjamin, I think it is you that he has most at heart,” the girl took courage to say.

Mr. Benjamin laughed. “Me! He needn’t trouble about me. I am as steady as old Time, Maggie. I’ve come home to stay; and I’ll prove to him that I am.”

“Come home to stay!” faltered Margaret.

“I can take care of things here. I am better able to do it than you.”

“My father will not put me out of my place here,” said Margaret, steadily. “He has confidence in me; he knows I do things just as he does.”

“And for that reason he makes you his substitute! Don’t assume, Miss Maggie; you’d be more in your place stitching wristbands in the parlour than as the presiding genius in a drug-shop. How d’ye do, mother?”

The sound of his voice had reached Mrs. Rymer. She did not believe her own ears, and came stealing forth to look, afraid of what she might see. To give Madam Rymer her due, she was quite as honest-natured as her husband; and the matter of the bank-note, the wrong use made of the keys she was foolish enough to lend surreptitiously to Mr. Benjamin, had brought her no light shock at the time. Ill-conduct in the shape of billiards, and beer, and idleness, she had found plenty of excuse for in her son; but when it came to felony, it was another thing altogether.

“It is him!” she muttered, as he saw her, and turned. “Where on earth have you sprung from?” demanded Mrs. Rymer.

“Not from the skies, mother. Hearing the governor was on the sick list, I thought I ought to come over and see him.”

“None of your lies, Ben,” said Mrs. Rymer. “That has not brought you here. You are in some disgraceful mess again.”

“It has brought me here—and nothing else,” said Ben: and he spoke truth. “Ashton of Timberdale–”

A faint groan—a crash as of breaking glass. When they turned to look, there was Rymer, fallen against the counter in his shock of surprise and weakness. His arm had thrown down an empty syrup-bottle.

And that’s how Benjamin Rymer came home. His father and mother had never seen him since before the discovery of the trouble; for as soon as he had changed the bank-note in the letter, he was off. The affair had frightened him a little—that is, the stir made over it, of which he had contrived to get notice; since then he had been passably steady, making a living for himself in Birmingham as assistant to a surgeon and druggist. He had met Robert Ashton a short time ago (this was the account he now gave), heard from that gentleman rather a bad account of his father, and so thought it his duty to give up what he was about, and come home. His duty! Ben Rymer’s duty!!

Ben was a tall, bony fellow, with a passably liberal education. He might not have been unsteady but for bad companions. Ben did not aid in robbing the butcher’s till—he had not quite come to that—neither was he privy to it; but he did get persuaded into trying to dispose of one of the stolen notes. It had been the one desperate act of his life, and it had sobered him. Time, however, effaces impressions; from two to three years had gone on since then; nothing had transpired, never so much as a suspicion had fallen on Mr. Benjamin, and he grew bold and came home.

Timberdale rubbed its eyes with astonishment that next autumn day, when it woke up to see Benjamin Rymer in his father’s shop, a white apron on, and serving the customers who went in, as naturally as though he had never left it. Where had he been all that while? they asked. Improving himself in his profession, coolly avowed Ben with unruffled face.

And so the one chance—rest of mind—for the father’s return to health and life, went out. The prolonged time, passing without discovery, giving a greater chance day by day that it might never happen, could but have a beneficial effect on Mr. Rymer. But when Ben made his appearance, put his head, so to say, into the very stronghold of danger, all his sickness and his fear came back again.

Ben did not know why his father kept so poorly and looked so ill. Never a word, in his sensitiveness, had Mr. Rymer spoken to his son of that past night’s work. Ben might suspect, but he did not know. Mr. Rymer would come down when he was not fit to do so, and take up his place in the shop on a stool. Ben made fun of it: in sport more than ill-feeling: telling the customers to look at the old ghost there. Ben made himself perfectly at home; would sometimes hold a levée in the shop if his father was out of it, when he and his friends, young men of Timberdale, would talk and laugh the roof off.

People talk of the troubles of the world, and say their name is legion: poverty, sickness, disappointment, disgrace, debt, difficulty; but there is no trouble the human heart can know like that brought by rebellious children. To old Rymer, with his capacity for taking things to heart, it had been as a long crucifixion. And yet—the instinctive love of a parent cannot die out: recollect David’s grief for wicked Absalom: “Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

Still, compared with what he used to be, Ben Rymer was steady. As the winter approached, there set in another phase of the reformation; for he pulled up even from the talking and laughing, and became as good as gold. You might have thought he had taken his dead grandfather, the clergyman, for a model, and was striving to walk in his steps. He went to church, read his medical works, was pleasant at home, gentle with Margaret, and altogether the best son in the world.

“Will it last, Benjamin?” his father asked him sorrowfully.

“It shall last, father; I promise it,” was the earnestly-spoken answer. “Forget the past, and I will never, I hope, try you again.”

Ben kept his promise throughout the winter, and seemed likely to keep it always. Mr. Rymer grew stronger, and was in business regularly, which gave Ben more leisure for his books. It was thought that a good time had set in for the Rymers; but, as Mrs. Todhetley says, you cannot control Fate.

One day, when we were again staying at Crabb Cot, I had to call at the shop for a box of “Household Pills,” Rymer’s own making. When any one was ailing at home, Mrs. Todhetley would administer a dose of these pills. But that Rymer was so conscientious a man, I should have thought they were composed of bread and pepper. Mrs. Todhetley pinned her faith to them, and said they did wonders.

Well, I had to go to Timberdale on other matters, and was told to call, when there, for a box of these delectable Household Pills. Mr. Rymer and his son stood behind the counter, the one making up his books, Ben pounding something in a mortar. Winter was just on the turn, and the trees and hedges were beginning to shoot into bud. Ben left his pounding to get the pills.

“Is this Mr. Rymer’s? Halloa, Ben! All right. How goes it, old boy?”

The door had been opened with a burst, and the above words met our ears, in a tone not over-steady. They came from a man who wore sporting clothes, and his hat very much on one side. Ben Rymer stared in surprise; his mouth dropped.

But that it was early in the day, and one does not like to libel people, it might have been thought the gentleman had taken a little too much of something strong. He swaggered up to the counter, and held out his hand to Ben. Ben, just then wrapping up the box of pills, did not appear to see it.

“Had a hunt after you, old fellow,” said the loud-voiced stranger. “Been to Birmingham and all kinds of places. Couldn’t think where you’d hid yourself.”

“You are back pretty soon,” growled Ben, who certainly did not seem to relish the visit.

“Been back a month. Couldn’t get on in the New World; its folks are too down for me. I say, I want a word with you. Can’t say it here, I suppose?”

“No,” returned Ben, rather savagely.

“Just come out a bit, Ben,” resumed the stranger, after a short pause.

“I can’t,” replied Ben—and his tone sounded more like I won’t. “I have my business to attend to.”

“Bother business! Here goes, then: it’s your fault if you make me speak before people. Gibbs has come out of hiding, and is getting troublesome–”

“If you will go outside and wait, I’ll come to you,” interrupted Ben at this, very quickly.

The man turned and swaggered out. Ben gave me the pills with one hand, and took off his apron with the other. Getting his hat, he was hastening out, when Mr. Rymer touched his arm.

“Who is that man, Benjamin?”

“A fellow I used to know in Tewkesbury, father.”

“What’s his name?”

“Cotton. I’ll soon despatch him and be back again,” concluded Ben, as he disappeared.

I put down half-a-crown for the pills, and Mr. Rymer left his place to give me the change. There had been a sort of consciousness between us, understood though not expressed, since the night when I had seen him giving way to his emotion in Crabb Ravine. This man’s visit brought the scene back again. Rymer’s eyes looked into mine, and then fell.

“Ben is all right now, Mr. Rymer.”

“I could not wish him better than he is. It’s just as though he were striving to atone for the past. I thought it would have killed me at the time.”

“I should forget it.”

“Forget it I never can. You don’t know what it was, Mr. Johnny,” he continued in a sort of frightened tone, a red spot coming into his pale thin cheeks, “and I trust you never will know. I never went to bed at night but to lie listening for a summons at my door—the officers searching for my son, or to tell me he was taken. I never rose in the morning but my spirit fainted within me, as to what news the day might bring forth.”

Mr. Benjamin and his friend were pacing side by side in the middle of the street when I went out, probably to be out of the reach of eavesdroppers. They did not look best pleased with each other; seemed to be talking sharply.