Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series. Henry Wood

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ that time was rather more cheering.

      The Squire was standing one hot morning in the yard in his light buff coat, blowing up Dwarf Giles for something that had gone wrong in the stables, when a man was seen making his way from the oak-walk towards the yard. The June hay-making was about, and the smell of the hay was wafted across to us on the wings of the summer breeze.

      “Who’s that, Johnny?” asked the pater: for the sun was shining right in his eyes.

      “It—it looks like Stephen Radcliffe, sir.”

      “You may tell him by his rusty suit of velveteen,” put in Tod; who stood watching a young brood of ducklings in the duck-pond, and the agonies of the hen that had hatched them.

      Stephen Radcliffe it was. He had a stout stick in his hand, and his face was of a curious leaden colour. Which, with him, took the place of paleness.

      “I’ve had bad news, Mr. Todhetley,” he began, in low tones, without any preliminary greeting. “Frank’s dead.”

      The Squire’s straw hat, which he chanced to have taken off, dropped on the stones. “Dead! Frank!” he exclaimed in an awestruck tone. “It can’t be true.”

      “Just the first thought that struck me when I opened the letter,” said Stephen, drawing one from his pocket. “Here it is, though, in black and white.”

      His hands shook like anything as he held out the letter. It was from one of the assistants at Dale’s—a Mr. Pitt: the head doctor, under Dale, Stephen explained. Frank had died suddenly, it stated, without warning of any kind, so that there was no possibility of apprising his friends; and it requested Mr. Radcliffe to go up without delay.

      “It is a dreadful thing!” cried the Squire.

      “So it is, poor fellow,” agreed Stephen. “I never thought it was going to end this way; not yet awhile, at any rate. For him, it’s a happy release, I suppose. He’d never ha’ been good for anything.”

      “What has he died of?” questioned Tod.

      The voice, or the question, seemed to startle Stephen. He looked sharply round, as if he hadn’t known Tod was there, an ugly scowl on his face.

      “I expect we shall hear it was heart disease,” he said, facing the Squire and turning his back upon Tod.

      “Why do you say that, Mr. Radcliffe? Was anything the matter with his heart?”

      “Dale had some doubts of it, Squire. He thought that was the cause of his wasting away.”

      “You never told us that.”

      “Because I never believed it. A Radcliffe never had a weak heart yet. And it’s only a thought o’ mine: he might have died from something else. Laid hands on himself, maybe.”

      “For goodness’ sake don’t bring up such an ill thought as that,” cried the pater explosively. “Wait till you know.”

      “Yes, I must wait till I know,” said Stephen, sullenly. “And a precious inconvenience it is to me to go up at this moment when my hay’s just cut! Frank’s been a bother to me all his life, and he must even be a bother now he’s dead.”

      “Shall I go up for you?” asked the Squire: who in his distress at the sudden news would have thought nothing of offering to start for Kamschatka.

      “No good if you did,” growled Stephen, folding up the letter that the pater handed back to him. “They’d not as much as release him to be buried without me, I expect. I shall bring him down here,” added Stephen, jerking his head in the direction of the churchyard.

      “Yes, yes, poor fellow—let him lie by his mother,” said the Squire.

      Stephen said a good-morrow, meant for the whole of us; and had rounded the duck-pond on his exit, when he stopped, and turned back again to the pater.

      “There’ll be extra expenses, I suppose, up at Dale’s. Have I your authority to discharge them?”

      “Of course you have, Mr. Radcliffe. Or let Dale send in the account to me, if you prefer it.”

      He went off without another word, his head down; his thick stick held over his shoulder. Tho Squire rubbed his face, and wondered what on earth was the next thing to do in this unhappy crisis.

      Annet was in Wales with her mother at some seaside place. It would be a dreadful shock to her. Getting the address from David Skate, the Squire wrote to break it to them in the best manner he could. But now, a mischance happened to that letter. Welsh names are difficult to spell; the pater’s pen put L for Y, or X for Z, something of that sort; and the letter went to a wrong town altogether, and finally came back to him unopened. Stephen Radcliffe had returned then.

      Stephen did not keep his word, instead of bringing Frank down, he left him in London in Finchley Cemetery. “The heat of the weather,” he pleaded by way of excuse when the Squire blew him up. “There was some delay; an inquest, and all that; and unless we’d gone to the expense of lead, it couldn’t be done; Dale said so. What does it signify? He’ll lie as quiet there as he would here.”

      “And was it the heart that was wrong?” asked the pater.

      “No. It was what they called ‘effusion on the brain,’” replied Stephen. “Dale says it’s rather a common case with lunatics, but he never feared it for Frank.”

      “It is distressing to think his poor wife did not see him. Quite a misfortune.”

      “Well, we can’t help it: it was no fault of ours,” retorted Stephen: who had actually had the decency to put himself into a semblance of mourning. “The world ’ud go on differently for many of us, Squire, if we could foresee things.”

      And that was the end of Francis Radcliffe!

      “Finchley Cemetery!” exclaimed Mr. Brandon, when he heard it. “That Stephen Radcliffe has been at his stingy tricks again. You can bury people for next to nothing there.”

      Poor Annet came home in her widow’s weeds, In health she was better; and might grow strong in time. There was no longer any suspense: she knew the worst; that was in itself a rest. The great doubt to be encountered now was, whether she could keep on Pitchley’s Farm. Mr. Brandon was willing to risk it: and David Skate took up his abode at the farm for good, and would do his best in all ways. But the three hundred a-year income, that had been the chief help and stay of herself and Frank, was gone.

      It had lapsed to Stephen. Nothing could be said against that in law, for old Mr. Radcliffe’s will had so decreed it; but it seemed a very cruel thing for every shilling to leave her, an injustice, a wrong. The tears ran down her pale face as she spoke of it one day at Pitchley’s to the Squire: and he, going in wholesale for sympathy, determined to have a tussel with Stephen.

      “You can’t for shame take it all from her, Stephen Radcliffe,” said the Squire, after walking over to Sandstone Torr the next morning. “You must not leave her quite penniless.”

      “I don’t take it from her,” replied Stephen, rumpling up his grizzled hair. “It comes to me of right. It is my own.”

      “Now don’t quibble, Stephen Radcliffe,” said the Squire, rubbing his face, for he went into a fever as usual over his argument, and the day was hot. “The poor thing was your brother’s wife, СКАЧАТЬ