Johnny Ludlow Third Series Part 71

"He neither spoke nor answered me: he turned off, and went quickly down the road. I think it was Tom; I do indeed."

"What am I to do?" cried Dolly. "Oh, if I could but find him!"

"There's nothing to do, that we can see," answered the young Quakeress.

"I have talked it over with Aunt Rachel. It would appear as though he did not care to show himself: else, if it were truly thy brother, why did he not come in? I will look out for him every night and speak to him if he appears again. I promise thee that, Dolly."

"Why do you say 'appears,' Elizabeth?" cried the girl. "You think it was himself, do you not; not his--his spirit?"

"Truly, I can but conclude it was himself."

Dolly, in a state of bewilderment, what with one thing and another, was married to Alick Mapping in St. Martin's Church, by its white-haired Rector, Digby Smith. A yellow post-chaise waited at the church-gates and carried them to Tewkesbury. The following day they went on by coach to Gloucester, where Mr. Mapping intended to stay a few days before proceeding to London.

They took up their quarters at a comfortable country inn on the outskirts of the town. On the second day after their arrival, Dolly, about to take a country walk with her husband, ran downstairs from putting her bonnet on, and could not see him. The barmaid told her he had gone into the town to post a letter, and asked Dolly to step into the bar-parlour to wait.

It was a room chiefly used by commercial travellers. Dolly's attention was caught by something over the mantelpiece. In a small gla.s.s-case, locked, there was the portrait of a man cleverly done in pencil; by its side hung a plain silver watch with a seal and key attached to a short black ribbon: and over all was a visiting-card, inscribed in ink, "Mr.

Gardner." Dolly looked at this and turned sick and faint: it was her father's likeness, her father's watch, seal, and ribbon. Of an excitable nature, she burst into tears, and the barmaid ran in. There and then, the mystery so long hanging about Robert Grape's fate was cleared up, so far as it ever would be in this world.

He had left Bridgenorth, as may be remembered, on the Thursday morning.

Towards the evening of the following day, Friday, as Dolly now heard, he appeared at this very inn. This same barmaid, an obliging, neat, and modest young woman, presenting a rare contrast to the barmaids of the present day, saw him come in. His face had a peculiar, grey shade upon it, which attracted her notice, and she asked him if he felt ill. He answered that he felt pretty well then, but supposed he must have had a fainting-fit when walking into the town, for to his surprise he found himself on the gra.s.s by the roadside, waking up from a sort of stupor.

He engaged a bedroom for the night, and she thought he said--but she had never been quite sure--that he had come to look out for a horse at the fair to be held in Gloucester the next day. He took no supper, "not feeling up to it," he said, but drank a gla.s.s of weak brandy-and-water, and ate a biscuit with it, before going up to bed. The next morning he was found dead; had apparently died quietly in his sleep. An inquest was held, and the medical men testified that he had died of heart disease.

Poor Dolly, listening to this, wondered whether the pitch out of the gig at Bridgenorth had fatally injured him.

"We supposed him to be a Mr. Gardner," continued the barmaid, "as that card"--pointing to it--"was found in his pocket-book. But we had no clue as to who he was or whence he came. His stockings were marked with a 'G'

in red cotton; and there was a little loose money in his pocket and a bank-note in his pocket-book, just enough to pay the expenses of the funeral."

"But that likeness," said Dolly. "How did you come by it? Who took it?"

"Ah, ma'am, it was a curious thing, that--but such things do not happen by chance. An idle young man of the town used to frequent our inn; he was clever at drawing, and would take off a likeness of any one near him with a few strokes of a pen or pencil in a minute or two, quite surrept.i.tious like and for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. Wonderful likenesses they were. He was in the bar-parlour, this very room, ma'am, while the stranger was drinking his brandy-and-water, and he dashed off this likeness."

"It is _exactly_ like," said poor Dolly. "But his name was Grape, not Gardner. It must have been the card of some acquaintance."

"When n.o.body came forward to identify the stranger, the landlord got the sketch given up to him," continued the young woman. "He put it in this case with the watch and seal and card, and hung it where you see, hoping that sometime or other it might be recognized."

"But did you not let it be known abroad that he had died?" sighed Dolly.

"Why, of course we did; and put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Gloucester papers to ask if any Mr. Gardner was missing from his friends. Perhaps the name, not being his, served to mislead people. That's how it was, ma'am."

So that the one disappearance, that of Robert Grape, was now set at rest.

THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE.

IN AFTER YEARS.

I.

We found her out through Mr. Brandon's nephew, Roger Bevere, a medical student, who gave his people trouble, and one day got his arm and head broken. Mr. Brandon and the Squire were staying in London at the Tavistock Hotel. I, Johnny Ludlow, was also in London, visiting Miss Deveen. News of the accident was brought to Mr. Brandon; the young man had been carried into No. 60, Gibraltar Terrace, Islington, and a doctor named Pitt was attending him.

We went to see him at once. A narrow, quiet street, as I recollected well, this Gibraltar Terrace, the dwellings it contained facing each other, thirty in a row. No. 60 proved to be the same house to which we had gone once before, when inquiring about the illness of Francis Radcliffe, and Pitt was the same doctor. It was the same landlady also; I knew her as soon as she opened the door; a slender, faded woman, long past middle life, with a pink flush on her thin cheeks, and something of the lady about her.

"What an odd thing, Johnny!" whispered the Squire, recognizing the landlady as well as the house. "Mapping, I remember her name was."

Mr. Brandon went upstairs to his nephew. We were shown by her into the small parlour, which looked as faded as it had looked on our last visit, years before: as faded as she was. While relating to us how young Bevere's accident occurred, she had to run away at a call from upstairs.

"Looks uncommonly careworn, doesn't she, Johnny!" remarked the Squire.

"Seems a nice sort of person, though."

"Yes, sir. I like her. Does it strike you that her voice has a home-ring in it? I think she must be from Worcesters.h.i.+re."

"A home-ring--Worcesters.h.i.+re!" retorted he. "It wouldn't be you, Johnny, if you did not get up some fancy or other. Here she comes! You are not from Worcesters.h.i.+re, are you, ma'am?" cried the Squire, going to the root of the question at once, in his haste to convict my fancy of its sins.

"Yes, I am, sir," she replied; and I saw the pink flush on her cheeks deepen to crimson. "I knew you, sir, when I was a young girl, many years ago. Though I should not have recognized you when you were last here, but that you left your card. We lived at Islip, sir; at that pretty cottage with the yellow roses round the porch. You must remember Dolly Grape."

"But you are not Dolly Grape!" returned the Squire, pus.h.i.+ng up his spectacles.

"Yes, sir, I was Dolly Grape. Your mother knew us well; so did you."

"Goodness bless my heart!" softly cried the Squire, gazing at her as if the news were too much for him. And then, starting up impulsively, he grasped her hand and gave it a hearty shake. A sob seemed to take her throat. The Squire sat back again, and went on staring at her.

"My father disappeared mysteriously on one of his journeys; you may remember us by that, sir."

"To be sure I remember it--Robert Grape!" a.s.sented the Squire. "Had to do with the post-horse duty. Got as far as Bridgenorth, and was never heard of again. And it is really you--Dolly Grape! And you are living here--letting lodgings! I'm afraid the world has not been overkind to you."

She shook her head; tears were running down her faded cheeks.

"No, it has not, sir," she answered, as she wiped them away with her handkerchief. "I have had nothing but ups and downs in life since leaving Worcester: sad misfortunes: sometimes, I think, more than my share. Perhaps you heard that I married, sir--one Mr. Mapping?"

The Squire nodded slightly. He was too busy gazing at her to pay attention to much else.

"I am looking at you to see if I can trace the old features of the old days," he said, "and I do now; they grow upon my memory; though you were but a slip of a girl when I used to see you. I wonder I did not recognize you at first."

"And I wonder that you can even recognize me now, sir," she returned: "trouble and grief have so much altered me. I am getting old, too."

"Have you lived in this house long?"

"Nearly ten years, sir. I live by letting my rooms."

The Squire's voice took a tone of compa.s.sion.

"It can't be much of a living, once the rent and taxes are paid."

Mrs. Mapping's mild blue eyes, that seemed to the Squire to be of a lighter tinge than of yore, wore a pa.s.sing sadness. Any one able to read it correctly might have seen she had her struggles.

"Are you a widow?"