JUDY’S NEWS.
Perhaps my reader may be sufficiently interested in the person, who,
having once begun to tell his story, may possibly have allowed his
feelings, in concert with the comfortable confidence afforded by the
mask of namelessness, to run away with his pen, and so have babbled of
himself more than he ought—may be sufficiently interested, I say, in my
mental condition, to cast a speculative thought upon the state of my
mind, during my illness, with regard to Miss Oldcastle and the stranger
who was her mother’s guest at the Hall. Possibly, being by nature
gifted, as I have certainly discovered, with more of hope than is
usually mingled with the other elements composing the temperament of
humanity, I did not suffer quite so much as some would have suffered
during such an illness. But I have reason to fear that when I was
light-headed from fever, which was a not uncommon occurrence,
especially in the early mornings during the worst of my illness—when
Mrs Pearson had to sit up with me, and sometimes an old woman of the
village who was generally called in upon such occasions—I may have
talked a good deal of nonsense about Miss Oldcastle. For I remember
that I was haunted with visions of magnificent conventual ruins which I
had discovered, and which, no one seeming to care about them but
myself, I was left to wander through at my own lonely will. Would I
could see with the waking eye such a grandeur of Gothic arches and
“long-drawn aisles” as then arose upon my sick sense! Within was a
labyrinth of passages in the walls, and “long-sounding corridors,” and
sudden galleries, whence I looked down into the great church aching
with silence. Through these I was ever wandering, ever discovering new
rooms, new galleries, new marvels of architecture; ever disappointed
and ever dissatisfied, because I knew that in one room somewhere in the
forgotten mysteries of the pile sat Ethelwyn reading, never lifting
those sea-blue eyes of hers from the great volume on her knee, reading
every word, slowly turning leaf after leaf; knew that she would sit
there reading, till, one by one, every leaf in the huge volume was
turned, and she came to the last and read it from top to bottom—down to
the finis and the urn with a weeping willow over it; when she would
close the book with a sigh, lay it down on the floor, rise and walk
slowly away, and leave the glorious ruin dead to me as it had so long
been to every one else; knew that if I did not find her before that
terrible last page was read, I should never find her at all; but have
to go wandering alone all my life through those dreary galleries and
corridors, with one hope only left—that I might yet before I died find
the “palace-chamber far apart,” and see the read and forsaken volume
lying on the floor where she had left it, and the chair beside it upon
which she had sat so long waiting for some one in vain.
And perhaps to words spoken under these impressions may partly be
attributed the fact, which I knew nothing of till long afterwards, that
the people of the village began to couple my name with that of Miss
Oldcastle.
When all this vanished from me in the returning wave of health that
spread through my weary brain, I was yet left anxious and thoughtful.
There was no one from whom I could ask any information about the family
at the Hall, so that I was just driven to the best thing—to try to cast
my care upon Him who cared for my care. How often do we look upon God
as our last and feeblest resource! We go to Him because we have nowhere
else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us,
not upon the rocks, but into the desired haven; that we have been
compelled, as to the last remaining, so to the best, the only, the
central help, the causing cause of all the helps to which we had turned
aside as nearer and better.
One day when, having considerably recovered from my second attack, I
was sitting reading in my study, who should be announced but my friend
Judy!
“Oh, dear Mr Walton, I am so sorry you have been so ill!” exclaimed the
impulsive girl, taking my hand in both of hers, and sitting down beside
me. “I haven’t had a chance of coming to see you before; though we’ve
always managed—I mean auntie and I—to hear about you. I would have come
to nurse you, but it was no use thinking of it.”
I smiled as I thanked her.
“Ah! you think because I’m such a tom-boy, that I couldn’t nurse you. I
only wish I had had a chance of letting you see. I am so sorry for
you!”
“But I’m nearly well now, Judy, and I have been taken good care of.”
“By that frumpy old thing, Mrs Pearson, and—”
“Mrs Pearson is a very kind woman, and an excellent nurse,” I said; but
she would not heed me.
“And that awful old witch, Mother Goose. She was enough to give you bad
dreams all night she sat by you.”
“I didn’t dream about Mother Goose, as you call her, Judy. I assure
you. But now I want to hear how everybody is at the Hall.”
“What, grannie, and the white wolf, and all?”
“As many as you please to tell me about.”
“Well, grannie is gracious to everybody but auntie.”
“Why isn’t she gracious to auntie?”
“I don’t know. I only guess.”
“Is your visitor gone?”
“Yes, long ago. Do you know, I think grannie wants auntie to marry him,
and auntie doesn’t quite like it? But he’s very nice. He’s so funny!
He’ll be back again soon, I daresay. I don’t QUITE like him—not so well
as you by a whole half, Mr Walton. I wish you would marry auntie; but
that would never do. It would drive grannie out of her wits.”
To stop the strange girl, and hide some confusion, I said:
“Now tell me about the rest of them.”
“Sarah comes next. She’s as white and as wolfy as ever. Mr Walton, I
hate that woman. She walks like a cat. I am sure she is bad.”
“Did you ever think, Judy, what an awful thing it is to be bad? If you
did, I think you would be so sorry for her, you could not hate her.”
At the same time, knowing what I knew now, and remembering that
impressions can date from farther back than the memory can reach, I was
not surprised to hear that Judy hated Sarah, though I could not believe
that in such a child the hatred was of the most deadly description.
“I am afraid I must go on hating in the meantime,” said Judy. “I wish
some one would marry auntie, and turn Sarah away. But that couldn’t be,
so long as grannie lives.”
“How is Mr Stoddart?”
“There now! That’s one of the things auntie said I was to be sure to
tell you.”
“Then your aunt knew you were coming to see me?”
“Oh, yes, I told her. Not grannie, you know.—You mustn’t let it out.”
“I shall be careful. How is Mr Stoddart, then?”
“Not well at all. He was taken ill before you, and has been in bed and
by the fireside ever since. Auntie doesn’t know what to do with him, he
is so out of spirits.”
“If to-morrow is fine, I shall go and see him.”
“Thank you. I believe that’s just what auntie wanted. He won’t like it
at first, I daresay. But he’ll come to, and you’ll do him good. You do
everybody good you come near.”
“I wish that were true, Judy. I fear it is not. What good did I ever do
you, Judy?”
“Do me!” she exclaimed, apparently half angry at the question. “Don’t
you know I have been an altered character ever since I knew you?”
And here the odd creature laughed, leaving me in absolute ignorance of
how to interpret her. But presently her eyes grew clearer, and I could
see the slow film of a tear gathering.
“Mr Walton,” she said, “I HAVE been trying not to be selfish. You have
done me that much good.”
“I am very glad, Judy. Don’t forget who can do you ALL good. There is
One who can not only show you what is right, but can make you able to
do and be what is right. You don’t know how much you have got to learn
yet, Judy; but there is that one Teacher ever ready to teach if you
will only ask Him.”
Judy did not answer, but sat looking fixedly at the carpet. She was
thinking, though, I saw.
“Who has played the organ, Judy, since your uncle was taken ill?” I
asked, at length.
“Why, auntie, to be sure. Didn’t you hear?”
“No,” I answered, turning almost sick at the idea of having been away
from church for so many Sundays while she was giving voice and
expression to the dear asthmatic old pipes. And I did feel very ready
to murmur, like a spoilt child that had not had his way. Think of HER
there, and me here!
“Then,” I said to myself at last, “it must have been she that played I
know that my Redeemer liveth, that last time I was in church! And
instead of thanking God for that, here I am murmuring that He did not
give me more! And this child has just been telling me that I have
taught her to try not to be selfish. Certainly I should be ashamed of
myself.”
“When was your uncle taken ill?”
“I don’t exactly remember. But you will come and see him to-morrow? And
then we shall see you too. For we are always out and in of his room
just now.”
“I will come if Dr Duncan will let me. Perhaps he will take me in his
carriage.”
“No, no. Don’t you come with him. Uncle can’t bear doctors. He never
was ill in his life before, and he behaves to Dr Duncan just as if he
had made him ill. I wish I could send the carriage for you. But I
can’t, you know.”
“Never mind, Judy. I shall manage somehow.—What is the name of the
gentleman who was staying with you?”
“Don’t you know? Captain George Everard. He would change his name to
Oldcastle, you know.”
What a foolish pain, like a spear-thrust, they sent through me—those
words spoken in such a taken-for-granted way!
“He’s a relation—on grannie’s side mostly, I believe. But I never could
understand the explanation. What makes it harder is, that all the
husbands and wives in our family, for a hundred and fifty years, have
been more or less of cousins, or half-cousins, or second or third
cousins. Captain Everard has what grandmamma calls a neat little
property of his own from his mother, somewhere in Northumberland; for
he IS only a third son, one of a class grannie does not in general feel
very friendly to, I assure you, Mr Walton. But his second brother is
dead, and the eldest something the worse for the wear, as grannie says;
so that the captain comes just within sight of the coronet of an old
uncle who ought to have been dead long ago. Just the match for auntie!”
“But you say auntie doesn’t like him.”
“Oh! but you know that doesn’t matter,” returned Judy, with bitterness.
“What will grannie care for that? It’s nothing to anybody but auntie,
and she must get used to it. Nobody makes anything of her.”
It was only after she had gone that I thought how astounding it would
have been to me to hear a girl of her age show such an acquaintance
with worldliness and scheming, had I not been personally so much
concerned about one of the objects of her remarks. She certainly was a
strange girl. But strange as she was it was a satisfaction to think
that the aunt had such a friend and ally in her wild niece. Evidently
she had inherited her father’s fearlessness; and if only it should turn
out that she had likewise inherited her mother’s firmness, she might
render the best possible service to her aunt against the oppression of
her wilful mother.
“How were you able to get here to-day?” I asked, as she rose to go.
“Grannie is in London, and the wolf is with her. Auntie wouldn’t leave
uncle.”
“They have been a good deal in London of late, have they not?”
“Yes. They say it’s about money of auntie’s. But I don’t understand.
_I_ think it’s that grannie wants to make the captain marry her; for
they sometimes see him when they go to London.”