Ludlow

“ As to her manners, they were as assured as Miss Panken’s, but a great deal pleasanter. I wondered who she was and what she did there.
“So this is Johnny Ludlow that I’ve heard tell of!” she exclaimed, catching up my name from Bevere, and sending me a gracious nod. “Shall I give you a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you,” was my answer, though all the while as thirsty as a fish, for the afternoon was hot.
“Oh, you had better: don’t stand on ceremony,” she said, laughing. “There’s nothing like a good cup of tea when the throat’s dry and the weather’s baking. Come! make yourself at home.” ”

“ Geoffrey Ludlow covered his face with his hands, and groaned. Once again she looked at him--this time as if she saw him--and went on:
"Let me speak to you, while I can, of yourself--while I can, I say, for his face is rising between me and all the world beside, and I can hardly force myself to remember any thing, to calculate any thing, to realise any thing which is not him. You ask me not to leave you; you would have me stay! Are you mad, Geoffrey Ludlow? Have you lived among your canvases and your colours until you have ceased to understand what men and women are, and to see facts? ”

“ Though direct and simple in his habits, like most of the seamen of that age, Ludlow had all the loftier sentiments that become a gentleman. He felt keenly for Alida, and he shrunk, with sensitive pride, from incurring the imputation of having acted under the impulses of disappointment. To these motives of forbearance, was also to be added the inherent reluctance which, as an officer of rank, he felt to the degradation of being employed in a duty that more properly belongs to men of less elevated ambition. ”

“ Men of business must always be pushing on, Mrs. Ludlow. Good day to you; and, I say, when--hem! there's any thing to renounce the world, the flesh, and the--hey, you understand? any body wanted to promise and vow, you know,--I'm ready; send for me. I've got my eye on a silver thug already. Goodbye, Ludlow; see you next week. Three before next May, recollect, and all for me. Ta-ta!" and Mr. Stompff stepped into his cab, and drove off, kissing his fat pudgy little hands, with a great belief in Geoffrey Ludlow and a holy horror of his wife. ”

“ He gave a flick to the newspaper, and stared me full in the face. I did not venture to speak.
“Johnny Ludlow, I don’t like your having been initiated into the iniquities of fast life—as met with in billiard-rooms, and similar places.”
“I have got no harm from them, sir.”
“Perhaps not. But you might have got it.”
I supposed I might: and thought of Tod and his losings.
“You have good principles, Johnny Ludlow, and you’ve a bit of sense in your head; and you have been taught to know that this world is not the end of things. Temptation is bad for the best, [356] though. ”

“ Guizot, in the valuable life and criticism prefixed to his edition of the ‘Memoirs,’ describes Ludlow's mind as ‘naturally limited and obtuse,’ and Ludlow as ‘incapable of comprehending events and men.’ Nevertheless his faithful adherence to his principles compels respect, and his stubborn courage excellently qualified him to maintain untenable positions and lost causes. The republicans and advanced whigs of the next century cherished his memory, and adopted his views of Cromwell and the Commonwealth. ”

“ The free-trader received his guests with a chastened air, bowing silently, and with less of levity in his mien than in the former interview. Still Ludlow thought there lingered a forced but sad smile about his handsome mouth; and the Patroon gazed at his fine features, with the admiration that one might feel for the most favored of those who were believed to administer at some supernatural shrine. ”

“ No one in these days, who has not seen the byroads of fifty years ago, can imagine what they were. We had to quarter, as Randal called it, nearly all the way along the deep-rutted, miry lanes; and the tremendous jolts I occasionally met with made my seat in the gig so unsteady that I could not look about me at all, I was so much occupied in holding on. The road was too muddy for me to walk without dirtying myself more than I liked to do, just before my first sight of my Lady Ludlow. ”

“ I know; and so do you, Johnny Ludlow. I say, though it makes one feel queer to find the world’s slipping away. I had looked for so much jolly life in it.”
“Barrington, you may get well yet; you may, indeed. Ask Pink and Featherstone, else, when they next come; ask Mr. Carden. I can’t think what idea you have been getting hold of.”
“There, that’s enough,” he answered. “Don’t bother. I want to be quiet.”
He shut his eyes; and the darkness grew as the minutes passed. Presently some one came into the room with a gentle step: a lady in a black-and-white gown that didn’t rustle. It was Mrs. Hearn. ”

“ None but vulgar people staid at home during the summer season.
"It is too large a sum to throw away now. So I think you had all better conclude at once not to go from home this summer," said Mr. Ludlow.
A gush of tears from Emily and Adeline followed this annunciation, accompanied by a look of decided disapprobation from the mother. Mr. Ludlow felt deeply tried, and for some moments his resolution wavered; but reason came to his aid, and he remained firm. He was accounted a very rich merchant. In good times, he had entered into business, and prosecuted it with great energy. ”

“ They made themselves like a youngish aunt and uncle to him, and had him with them all they could while they stayed in Paris. When they came home they brought the first impressionistic pictures ever seen in the West; at Pymantoning, the village cynic asked which was right side up, and whether he was to stand on his head or not to get them in range. Ludlow remained in France, which he maintained had the only sun for impressionism; and then he changed his mind all at once, and under an impulse of sudden patriotism, declared for the American sky, and the thin, crystalline, American air. ”

“ In April 1684 some of the exiled whigs endeavoured to persuade Ludlow to head a rising in the west of England. Their agent found him ‘no ways disposed to the thing, saying he had done his work, he thought, in the world, and was resolved to leave it to others’ (Confession of Nathaniel Wade, Harl. MS. 6845, f. 269) . The revolution seemed to open to him the prospect of a return to England. The preface to the first edition of his ‘Memoirs’ states that he was sent for as a fit person to be employed in the reconquest of Ireland (p. vii) . ”

“ Mr Ludlow, who was a country magistrate, was a stern, self-opinionated, and narrow-minded man, with very little of the milk of human kindness in his composition. He believed, among other things, that he could put down smuggling by force, and he was engaged in an effort to accomplish the task. Stephen, his son, was rather younger than Jack, a good-looking boy, but he was conceited, headstrong, and not good tempered. ”

“ Bitterly we should have regretted the separation from Lady Ludlow; but we would have gone back gladly, had we known at the time that her circumstances required it: but she would not listen to the proposal for a moment.
“If I cannot act justly towards every one, I will give up a plan which has been a source of much satisfaction; at least, I will not carry it out to such an extent in future. But to these young ladies, who do me the favour to live with me at present, I stand pledged. I cannot go back from my word, Mr. Smithson. ”

“ Ludlow has observed keenly, and thought wisely and deeply; he has read extensively, traveled widely, and rubbed elbows and wits with men great and little of many nations and under varying conditions. He is the "full man" of which the philosopher speaks. ”

“ Ludlow felt for his distress, and encouraged him by a look of approbation. The language of kindness does not always need a tongue; and the conscience of the valet smote him with the idea that he might have expressed himself too strongly, concerning a profession to which the other had devoted life and hopes. ”

“ Putting both her hands into mine, she said how glad she was to see me in London, and held out the child to be kissed. I explained my errand, and my unwillingness to come; saying I could venture to tell her all about it better than I could tell Sir Robert.
She laughed merrily. “He is not any more formidable than I am, Johnny; he is not the least bit so in the world. You shall see whether he is”—opening the door of the next room. “Robert,” she called out in glee, “Johnny Ludlow is here, and is saying you are an ogre. He wants to tell you something, and can’t pluck up courage to do it.” ”

“ It was with a little thrill of satisfaction that Ludlow reflected upon the directness of his course. "It all comes back," he said to himself, "to my old theory, that a process can't be too simple. I used no arts. In such an enterprise I shouldn't have known where to begin. It was my ignorance of the regulation method that served me. Women like a gentleman, of course; but they like a man better." It was the little touch of nature he had discerned in Adela's tone that had set him thinking; but as compared with the frankness of his own attitude it betrayed after all no undue emotion. ”

“ His letters to his familiar friends and the members of his family display his character in a most amiable and pious light, and he was accustomed to unbend amongst his officers and ministers in a manner that none but a man with a kind heart and good conscience could do. Ludlow tells us that on one occasion, after a very serious debate, he threw, in a frolic, a cushion at his head, and when Ludlow took up another cushion to throw it in return, he escaped laughing, and ran down stairs in such a hurry that he had nearly fallen. ”

“ Ludlow stopped suddenly, leaving the uncle to infer what he would wish to add.
“This is generous, and manly, and like a loyal—lover, Captain Ludlow,” returned the Alderman; “though it is not exactly what I intended to suggest. We will not, however, multiply words in the night air—ha! when the cat is asleep, the mice are seen to play! Those night-riding, horse-racing blacks have taken possession of Alida’s pavilion; and we may be thankful the poor girl’s rooms are not as large as Harlaem Common, or we should hear the feet of some hard-driven beast galloping about in them.” ”

“ Tod took his shoulder from the mantelpiece, and sat down to his imposition: one he had to write for having missed chapel.
“You mean well, Johnny, though you are a muff.”
Later in the day I met Dr. Applerigg. He signed to me to stop. “Mr. Ludlow, I find that what you told me this morning was true. And I withdraw every word of condemnation that I spoke. I wish I had never greater cause to find fault than I have with you, in regard to this matter. Not that I can sanction your being out so late, although the plea of excuse be a dying man. You understand?”
“Yes, sir. It shall not occur again.” ”

“ Parsoness of Headleigh,—I forget her name, and it’s no matter, for she’s an ill-bred creature, I hope Bessy will behave herself better—was right-down bursting with laughter, and as near a hee-haw as ever a donkey was, when what does my lady do? Ay! there’s my own dear Lady Ludlow, God bless her! She takes out her own pocket-handkerchief, all snowy cambric, and lays it softly down on her velvet lap, for all the world as if she did it every day of her life, just like Mrs. Brooke, the baker’s wife; and when the one got up to shake the crumbs into the fire-place, the other did just the same. ”

“ You have nerves for the meeting?”
“Her Majesty’s enemies have never reproached me with their want,” returned Ludlow, smiling incredulously. “Proceed with your incantations, that we may know.”
“We are not necromancers, sir, but faithful mariners, who do their mistress’s pleasure. I know that you are sceptical; but bolder men have confessed their mistakes, with less testimony. Hist! we are not alone. I hear the opening and shutting of the brigantine’s transoms.” ”

“ That is one cause, Johnny Ludlow,” she concluded, very tartly.
“Is there any other?”
“Don’t you think that sufficient? I am not going to let them appear before me in rags—and so Crabb Lane knows. But there is another cause, sir. This strike has so altered the course of things that the whole order of ordinary events is turned upside down. Even if the young ones’ frocks were home again, it would be ten to one against their coming to school.” ”

“ Old Brandon finished up his broth, and put the basin down.
“You are a clever fellow, Johnny Ludlow, but not quite clever enough to deceive me. You’d no more get into such debt yourself, than I should. I have a better opinion of you than that. Who has sent you here?”
“Indeed, sir, I came of my own free will. No one knows, even, [364] that I have come. Mr. Brandon, I hope you will help me: it is almost a matter of life or death.” ”

“ Stay where you are, Johnny Ludlow. I choose that you shall be present at this.”
“Johnny need not fret himself that he’ll catch much harm from my iniquities,” said Tod with a sneer.
“Now listen to me, young man,” spoke Mr. Brandon. “If you persist in this insane conduct and refuse to hear reason, I’ll keep you out of danger by putting you in prison.”
Tod stared.
“You owe me a hundred pounds.”
“I am quite conscious of that, sir: and of my inability hitherto to repay it.”
“For that debt I will shut you up in prison. Headstrong young idiots like you must be saved from themselves.” ”

“ As his companions seemed resolved to stay, however, there remained no alternative for the burgher, but patience. Although apprehension of some indiscreet exposure was certainly the feeling uppermost in his mind, he was not entirely without some of the weakness which caused Oloff Van Staats to listen and to gaze with so much obvious interest and secret awe. Even Ludlow, himself, felt more affected than he would have willingly owned, by the extraordinary situation in which he was placed. No man is entirely insensible to the influence of sympathy, let it exert its power in what manner it will. ”