Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series. Mrs. Henry Wood
sat down again, drew the candle to him, and read it. It was from one of his former friends, a Mr. Briarly; offering on his own part and on that of another former friend, one Pratt, a visit to Pitchley’s Farm.
Instincts arise to all of us: instincts that it might be well to trust to oftener than we do. A powerful instinct, against the offered visit, rushed into the mind of Francis Radcliffe. But the chances are, that, in the obligations of hospitality, it would not have prevailed, even had the chance been afforded him.
“Cool, I must say!” said Frank, with a laugh. “Look here, Annet; these two fellows are going to take us by storm to-morrow. If I don’t want them, says Briarly, I must just shut the door in their faces.”
“But you’ll be glad to see them, won’t you, Frank?” she remarked in her innocence.
“Yes. I shall like well enough to see them again. It’s our busy time, though: they might have put it off till after harvest.”
As many friends went to this entertainment at Pitchley’s Farm as liked to go. Mr. Brandon was one of them: he walked over with us—with me, and Tod, and the Squire, and the mater. Stephen Radcliffe and his wife were there, Becca in a black silk with straps of rusty velvet across it. Stephen mostly sat still and said nothing, but Becca’s sly eyes were everywhere. Frank and his wife, well dressed and hospitable, welcomed us all; and the board was well spread with cold meats and dainties.
Old Brandon had a quiet talk with Annet in a corner of the porch. He told her he was glad to find Frank seemed likely to do well at the farm.
“He tries his very best, sir,” she said.
“Ay. Somehow I thought he would. People said ‘Frank Radcliffe has his three hundred a-year to fall back upon when he gets out of Pitchley’s’: but I fancied he might stay at Pitchley’s instead of getting out of it.”
“We are getting on as well as we can be, sir, in a moderate way.”
“A moderate way is the only safe way to get on,” said Mr. Brandon, putting his white silk handkerchief corner-wise on his head against the sun. “That’s a true saying, He who would be rich in twelve months is generally a beggar in six. You are helping Frank well, my dear. I have heard of it: how industrious you are, and keep things together. It’s not often a good old head like yours is set upon young shoulders.”
Annet laughed. “My shoulders are not so very young, sir. I was twenty-four last birthday.”
“That’s young to manage a farm, child. But you’ve had good training; you had an industrious mother”—indicating an old lady on the lawn in a big lace cap and green gown. “I can tell you what—when I let Frank Radcliffe have the lease, I took into consideration that you were coming here as well as he. Why!—who are these?”
Two stylish-looking fellows were dashing up in a dog-cart; pipes in their mouths, and portmanteaus behind them. Shouting and calling indiscriminately about for Frank Radcliffe; for a man to take the horse and vehicle, that they had contrived to charter at the railway terminus; for a glass of bitter beer apiece, for they were confoundedly dry—there was no end of a commotion.
They were the two visitors from London, Briarly and Pratt. Their tones moderated somewhat when they saw the company. Frank came out; and received a noisy greeting that might have been heard at York. One of them trod on Mr. Brandon’s corns as he went in through the porch. Annet looked half frightened.
“Come to stay here!—gentlemen from London!—Frank’s former friends!” repeated old Brandon, listening to her explanation. “Fine friends, I should say! Frank Radcliffe,”—laying hold of him as he was coming back from giving directions to his servant—“how came you to bring those men down into your home?”
“They came of their own accord, Mr. Brandon.”
“Friends of yours, I hear?”
“Yes, I knew them in the old days.”
“Oh. Well—I should not like to go shouting and thundering up to a decent house with more aboard me than I could carry. Those men have both been drinking.”
Frank was looking frightfully mortified. “I am afraid they have,” he said. “The heat of the day and the dust on the journey must have caused them to take more than they were aware of. I’m very sorry. I assure you, Mr. Brandon, they are really quiet, good fellows.”
“May be. But the sooner you see their backs turned, the better, young man.”
From that day, the trouble set in. Will it be believed that Frank Radcliffe, after keeping himself straight for ever so much more than a year, fell away again? Those two visitors must have found their quarters at Pitchley’s Farm agreeable, for they stayed on and on, and made no sign of going away. They were drinkers, hard and fast. They drank, themselves, and they seduced Frank to drink—though perhaps he did not require much seduction. Frank’s ale was poured out like water. Dozens of port, ordered and paid for by Briarly, arrived from the wine-merchant’s; Pratt procured cases of brandy. From morning till night liquor was under poor Frank’s nose, tempting him to sin. Their heads might be strong enough to stand the potions; Frank’s was not. It was June when the new life set in; and on the first of September, when all three staggered in from a day’s shooting, Frank was in a fever and curiously trembling from head to foot.
By the end of the week he was strapped down in his bed, a raving madman; Duffham attending him, and two men keeping guard.
Duffham made short work with Briarly and Pratt. He packed them and their cases of wine and their portmanteaus off together; telling them they had done enough mischief for one year, and he must have the house quiet for both its master and mistress. Frank’s malady was turning to typhus fever, and a second doctor was called in from Evesham.
The next news was, that Pitchley’s Farm had a son and heir. They called it Francis. It did not live many days, however: how was a son and heir likely to live, coming to that house of fright and turmoil? Frank’s ravings might be heard all over it; and his poor wife was nearly terrified out of her bed.
The state of things went on. October came in, and there was no change. It was not known whether Annet would live or die. Frank was better in health, but his mind was gone.
“There’s one chance for him,” said Duffham, coming across to Dyke Manor to the Squire: “and that is, a lunatic asylum. At home he cannot be kept; he is raving mad. No time must be lost in removing him.”
“You think he may get better in an asylum?” cried the Squire, gloomily.
“Yes. I say it is his best chance. His wife, poor thing, is horrified at the thought: but there’s nothing else to be done. The calmness of an asylum, the sanatory rules and regulations observed there, will restore him, if anything will.”
“How is she?” asked the Squire.
“About as ill as she can be. She won’t leave her bed on this side Christmas. And the next question is, Squire—where shall he be placed? Of course we cannot act at all without your authority.”
The Squire, you see, was Frank Radcliffe’s trustee. At the present moment Frank was dead in the eye of the law, and everything lay with the Squire. Not a sixpence of the income could any one touch now, but as he pleased to decree.
After much discussion, in which Stephen Radcliffe had to take his share, according to law and order, Frank was conveyed to a small private asylum near London. It belonged to a Dr. Dale: and the Evesham doctor strongly recommended it. The terms seemed high to us: two hundred pounds a-year: and Stephen grumbled at them. But Annet begged and prayed that money might not be spared; and the Squire decided to pay it. So poor Frank was taken to town; and Stephen, as his nearest male relative—in fact, his only one—officially consigned him to the care of Dr. Dale.
And that’s the jolly condition things were in, that Christmas, at Pitchley’s Farm. Its master in a London madhouse, its mistress in her sick-bed, and the