Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

by Mrs. Henry Wood

“Ah, my dear, you careless young people make jokes of things that would fret us old ones to fiddle-strings,” reproved Mrs. Cramp. “The four Indians may be with her, you know, and most likely are, concealed in cupboards. You don’t know what such desperate characters might do—break into your house here some dark night and kill you in your bed. It is not a pleasant thing, is it, Squire?”

“That it’s not, if it be as you put it,” assented he, growing hot.

“Look here, Mrs. Cramp,” interposed Tod. “If the lady has never been seen, how can it be known she is black, or pig-faced?”

“I’ve never treated the pig-faced report as anything but rubbish,” answered Mrs. Cramp; “but I’ll tell you, Mr. Joseph, how it has come out that she’s black. I heard from Susan Dennet yesterday morning, and she asked whether any letters were lying at home for her or Mary. So I sent my servant Peggy last evening to inquire—a stupid thing of a girl she is, comes from over beyond Bromyard. Peggy went to the kitchen-door—and they have a chain there as well as to the other—and was told that no letters had come for the Miss Dennets. It was growing dark, and Peggy, who had never been on the premises before, mistook the path, and turned into one that took her to the latticed arbour. Many a time have I sat there in poor Jacob’s days, with the Malvern Hills in the distance.”

“So have I, Mary Ann,” added the Squire, calling her unconsciously by her Christian name, his thoughts back in the time when they were boy and girl together.

“Peggy found her mistake then, and was turning back, when there stood in her path a black woman, who must have followed her down: black face, black hands, all black. What’s more, she was wrapped round in yellow; a shroud, Peggy declares, but the girl was quite beyond herself with fright, and could not be expected to know shrouds from cloaks in the twilight. The woman stood stock still, never speaking, only staring; and Peggy tore back in her terror, and fell into the arms of a railway-porter, just then bringing a parcel from the station. ‘Goodness help us!’ she shrieked out, ‘there’s a blackamore in the path yonder:’ and the girl came home more dead than alive. That is how I’ve learnt the mysterious lady is black,” summed up Mrs. Cramp; “and knowing what we do know, I don’t like it.”

Neither did the Squire. And Mrs. Cramp departed in a flutter. We all liked her, in spite of her white stockings and shoes.

Some few months before this, a party of strangers appeared one morning at Worcester, and took handsome lodgings there. Four fashionable-looking gentlemen, with dark skins and darker hair; natives, apparently, of some remote quarter of the globe, say Asia or Africa, whose inhabitants are of a fine copper colour; and one lady, understood to be their sister, who was darker than they were—almost quite black. Two rather elderly and very respectable English servants, man and wife, were in their train. They lived well, these people, regardless of cost: had sumptuous dishes on their table, choice fruits, hot-house flowers. They made no acquaintance whatever in the town, rarely went abroad on foot, but took an airing most days in a large old rumbling open barouche, supplied by the livery stables. Worcester, not less alive to curiosity than is any other city, grew to be all excitement over these people, watched their movements with admiration, and called them “The Indians.” The lady was seen in the barouche but once, enveloped in a voluminous yellow mantle, the hood of which was drawn over her face. It transpired that she was not in good health, and one evening, when she had a fainting-fit, a doctor was called in to her. His report to the town the next day was that she was really a coloured woman, very much darker than her brothers, with the manners and culture of a lady, but strikingly reserved. After a sojourn of about two months, the party, servants and all, quitted their lodgings, giving the landlady only an hour’s notice, to spend, as they gave out, a week at Malvern. They paid their bill in full, asked permission to leave two or three of their heaviest trunks with her, and departed.

But they did not go to Malvern. It was not discovered where they did go. Nothing more was seen of them; nothing certain heard. The trunks they had left proved to be empty; some accounts owing in the town came in to be paid. All this looked curious. By-and-by a frightful rumour arose—that these people had been mixed up in some dreadful crime: one report said forgery, another murder. It was affirmed that Scotland Yard had been looking for them for months, and that they had disguised themselves as Indians (to quote the word Worcester used) to avert detection. But some observant individuals maintained that they were Indians (to use the word again), that no disguise or making-up could have converted their faces to what they were. Nothing more had as yet been heard of them, saving that a sum of money, enough to cover the small amount of debts left behind, was transmitted to the landlady anonymously. Excitement had not yet absolutely died away in the town. It was popularly supposed that the Indians were lying concealed in some safe hiding-place, perhaps not far distant.