Harry Fairfieldwas a captain in his county militia. It was right that the House of Fairfield should be represented in that corps. Charlie, who was of an easy compliant temper, would have taken the commission and the light duties, if that dignity had been put upon him. But Harry chose it. It extended his acquaintance, added to his opportunities of selling his horses, and opened some houses, small and great, to him, in a neighbourly fashion, when making his circuits to fair and market. He knew something of games, too, and was shrewd at whist and draughts, and held a sure cue at billiards. On the whole, his commission turned him in something in the course of a year.
It was upon some regimental business that Sergeant-Major Archdale was awaiting his return at Wyvern.
Harry Fairfield, as it happened, was thinking of the Sergeant as he rode into the yard in gloomy rumination.
“Well, Archdale, what’s the news?” said he, as he dismounted.
The news was not a great deal. After he had heard it Harry paused for a time, and said he—
“Quite well, Archdale, I hope?”
“Well, sir, I thank you.”
Again Harry paused.
“How did you come, Archdale?”
“Walked, sir.”
“Walked, oh! very well.”
Here was another pause.
“Archdale, you must go in. Here, Clinton, get some luncheon for Sergeant-Major Archdale. A drink of beer and a mouthful won’t do you no harm; and, Archdale, before you go let me know; I may have a word, and I’ll say it walking down the avenue. Get Mr. Archdale some luncheon, Clinton, and some sherry.”
“I thank you, sir,” said the Sergeant-Major. “’Tis more like a supper for me; I’ve had my dinner, sir, some time.”
And with a stiff military step the Sergeant followed Clinton into the house.
The Sergeant-Major was above the middle size, and stout of body, which made him look shorter. His hair was closely cut, and of a pale blue iron gray. His face was rather pale, and smooth as marble; full and long, with a blue chin, and a sort of light upon his fixed lineaments, not exactly a smile, but a light that was treacherous and cruel. For the rest his military coat, which was of the old-fashioned cut, and his shako, with all the brasses belonging to them, and his Wellington boots, were natty and brilliant, and altogether unexceptionable, and a more perfectly respectable-looking man you could not have found in his rank of life in the country.
Without a word, with a creak in his boots, he marched slowly in, with inflexible countenance, after Clinton.
The Squire met Harry in the hall.
“Hollo! it’s a week a most since I set eyes on ye—ye’ll look out some other place for that mad filly ye bought of Jim Hardress: she’s broke a boy’s arm this morning in the stable;I’ll not look after him, I promise ye; ’tis your affair, mind, and you better look sharp, and delay may cost ye money. Ye’re over clever. The devil owes ye a cake this many a day, and he’s a busy bishop, and he’ll pay ye a loaf yet, I promise you. She shan’t be kicking my men—and she bites the manger besides. Get her away, mind, or, by my soul, I’ll sell her for the damage.”
So old Squire Harry stalked on, and the last scion of his stock grinned after him, sulkily, and snarled something between his teeth, so soon as he was quite out of hearing.
“Who’s arm’s broke, Dick, or is it all a d——d lie o’ the Governor’s?” inquired Harry of a servant who happened to be passing at that moment.
“Well, yes, sir, Jim Slade’s arm was broke in the stable. ’Twas a kick, sir.”
“What kicked him?”
“The new horse that came in on Thursday, sir.”
“Mare, ye mean. Why that thing’s a reg’lar lamb; she never kicked no one. A child might play wi’ her. More like ’twas the Governor kicked him. And what did he do wi’ his arm?”
“The doctor, down in the town, set it, and bound it up wi’ splints, sir.”
“Well,Ididn’t tell him, mind that—I wasn’t here, ye know—good-natured of the doctor, I’ll not deny, but he shan’t be sending in no bills to me. And how’s Jim since—gettin’ on nicely, I’ll swear.”
“I don’t know, sir; I didn’t see him since.”
“Hoot! then it’s all right, I warrant ye, and ye can tell old Slade, if he likes it, I’ll get him a bit of a writin’ to the hospital for Jim; but it won’t be nothin’—not a bit.”
And with this economical arrangement, Harry dismissed the subject for the present, and took his stand upon the hall-door steps, and smoked his pipe, awaiting the close of Sergeant-Major Archdale’s repast.
The long shadows and lights of golden sunset faded before the guest appeared, and twilight and the moths were abroad.
Almost as the servant informed Harry Fairfield that Mr. Archdale was coming round to the hall-door to receive his commands, the Sergeant-Major appeared in front of the house, and Harry Fairfield stepped down to the court and was received by the militiaman with a military salute.
“I’ll walk a bit wi’ you, Archdale; I want a word about another matter—not regimental business. We’ll walk down towards the gate.”
Stiffly and silently the Sergeant-Major marched beside the smoking gentleman, who having got a little way from the house, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and dropped it into his pocket.
“That militia sogerin’ is beggarly pay for a man like you, Archdale; and I’ll want a clever fellow, by-and-by—for when the Squire goes off the hooks, and that can’t be a long way off—I’ll have a deal o’ trouble lookin’ after things; for there’s a young chap to succeed, and a plaguy long minority ’twill be, and one way or another the trouble will fall to my share, bein’ uncle, ye see, to the little fellow. Am I making it plain what I mean?”
“Quite plain, sir,” said the cold voice of the Sergeant-Major.
“Well, there’s the property down at Warhampton, a devilish wide stretch o’ land for the rental. There’s good shootin’ there, and two keepers, but I doubt they makes away wi’ the game, andtheywant lookin’ after; and there’s the old park o’ Warhampton—ye know that part o’ the country?”
“Yes, sir, well.”
“I know you do. Well, it should turn in a good penny more than the Governor gets. I can’t bring it home to them, but I know what I think. Where the horse lies down, the hair will be foun’, and I doubt the park-book’s doctored. There’ll be a sort o’ steward wanted there, d’ye see. D’ye know Noulton farm?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, it’s a nice thing, a snug house, and as many acres as you’d want to begin wi’; the tenant’s going after harvest—you’d be the very man for’t, and I’ll tell them I’ll do all I can to serve my nephew, but I must live myself too. I’ve nout but my time and my wits to turn a penny by, and if I try to manage for him I’ll want the best help I can get, d’ye see? andyou’rethe man I want; I’ve got no end o’ a character o’ ye, for honesty and steadiness and the like; and ye’re a fellow can use his eyes, and hold his tongue; and ye’d have the farm and the house—ye know them—rent free; and the grazing of three cows on the common, and it’s none o’ your overstocked, bare commons, but as sweet a bit o’ grass as ye’d find in the kingdom; and ye shall a’ fifty pounds a year beside; and the farm’s nigh forty acres, and it’s worth close on a hundred more. And—if ye do all we want well, and I’m sure you will—I’ll never lose sight o’ ye while grass grows and you and me lives.”
“I thank you, sir,” said the cold, clear voice of Archdale.
“And there’s a little bit of a secret—I wouldn’t tell another—about myself, Archdale. I’ll tellyou, though,” said Harry, lowering his voice.
“Yes, sir,” said Archdale, in the same cold stern way, which irritated Harry.
“Well, I’m not talking, mind, to Sergeant-Major Archdale, if you like the other thing, at Noulton, best.”
“Noulton best, sir, certainly; thank you.”
“But to Mr. Archdale of Noulton, and steward of Warhampton, mind ye, and ’twill be settled next harvest.”
“I thank you, sir.”
“Don’t walk so quick, we’re gettin’ over the ground too fast. Well, there’s a thing you’ll have to keep dark for me.”
“You’ll find me confidential, sir; my superior officers did.”
“I know that well—I know you, Archdale, and that is why I chose you out o’ a thousand, and it’s a confidential fellow—d——d confidential—I want, for the country’s all one as the town for talk, and tongues will keep goin’ like the bells on a sheep-walk, and there’s many a bit o’ nonsense, that’s no great odds when all’s told, that a chap wouldn’t like to have made the laugh or the talk o’ the country side.”
“Yes, sir,” said the inflexible Sergeant-Major.
“You held the same rank in the line, Sergeant-Major, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” said the Sergeant-Major, and saluted from habit.
“I thought so, and that says a deal for you, Mr. Archdale; and I remember one of your papers says you were the youngest sergeant ever made in your regiment?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, that says a lot too, and a very responsible office that is. Egad, from all I ’a seen, I’d say the sergeants has more to do with the state of a regiment than all the other officers, commissioned or non-commissioned, put together.”
“There’s a good deal depends on ’em, sir.”
“You keep to yourself, Archdale; that’s the way to rise.”
“I was a man of few acquaintances, sir, and confidential with my superior officers, and few words, but I meant ’em, sir, and made the men do their duty.”
“That’s the man for my money,” said Harry. “Will ye be ready for Noulton Farm by the middle o’ next month?”
“Yes, sir, I expect.”
“I’ll settle that for ye, then, and the pay and the commonage. I’ll settle that wi’ my father to-morrow, and we’ll get the writings drawn.”
“I thank you, sir.”
“And, wait a bit. I told you,” said Harry, perhaps a very little embarrassed, “there’s another little thing you must manage for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
He almost wished Mr. Archdale to ask questions and raise difficulties. This icy surface, beneath which he saw nothing, began to embarrass him.
“Every fellow’s a fool once or twice in his life, you know, Archdale; and that’s the way rogues makes money, and honest chaps is sold—
‘No fools at the fair,No sale for bad ware,’
‘No fools at the fair,No sale for bad ware,’
‘No fools at the fair,
No sale for bad ware,’
you know?”
He looked for sympathy in the face of the Sergeant-Major, but he found there neither sympathy nor ridicule, but a serene, dignified, supercilious composure.
“Well, I’m not married, and more’s the pity,” he said, affecting a kind of jocularity, uneasily; “but among ’em they’ve made me a present of a brat they calls my son, and I must just put him to nurse and provide for him, I do suppose; and keep all quiet, and ye’ll look out some decent poor body that lives lonely and won’t ask no questions nor give no trouble, but be content wi’ a trifle, and I’ll gi’e’t to you every quarter for her, and she’ll never hear my name, mind, nor be the wiser who owns it or where it came from. I’d rayther she thought ’twas a poor body’s—if they think a fellow’s well-to-do it makes ’em unreasonable, and that’s the reason I pitched on you, Archdale, because ye’re a man o’ sense, and won’t be talkin’ like the pratin’ fools that’s goin’—and is it settled? is it a bargain?”
“Yes, sir, I thank you, quite,” said Archdale.
“Well, then, ye shall hear from me by the end o’ the week, and not a word, mind—till all’s signed and sealed—about Noulton Farm, and about t’other thing—never. The stars is comin’ out bright, and the sunset did ye mind; we’ll ’a frost to-night; it’s come dark very sudden; sharp air.”
He paused, but the non-commissioned officer did not venture a kindred remark, even an acquiescence in these meteorological speculations.
“And I heard the other day you made an organ for Mr. Arden. Is it true?” said Harry, suddenly.
“Just a small thing, three stops, sir—diapason, principal, and dulciana.”
“Well, I don’t know nothing myself about such gear, except to hear the old organ o’ Wyvern o’ Sundays. But it’s clever o’ you. How did ye learn?”
“’Prenticed, sir, two years to an organ builder in Westminster—Mr. Lomas—and he died, and I was put to the army,” said Archdale.
“Well, I may give ye a lift that way, too. They were talkin’ of an organ for Warhampton Church. We’ll see. I’ll not forget.”
“I thank you, sir,” repeated Archdale. “Any more commands for me, sir?”
Mr. Archdale stood stiffly at the gate, drawn up, as it were, at right angles to Harry Fairfield.
“No, nothing, Archdale. I’m glad the thing suits you, and it may lie in my way yet to make them better than you think for. Good-night, Archdale; good-night, Sergeant-Major.”
“Good-night, sir.”
And Archdale wheeled to his left, and with his back toward the village of Wyvern, marched away at so stiff and regular a quick march that you could have fancied the accompaniment of the drums and fifes.
Harry stood at the iron gate, one half of which was open, and he kicked a stone listlessly into the road, and, leaning on the old iron arabesques, he looked long after that portly figure receding in distance and melting in twilight.
“Night’s the mother o’ thought, I’ve heard say,” said Harry, rousing himself, and swinging the great valve into its place with a clang. “But thought won’t do to dine on. Hollo! Gate! gate! Jorrocks, any one,” he shouted. “Lock the gate, some of you, and make all sure for the night.”
And with these orders to Jorrocks, he marched back under the ancestral trees to the old hall of Wyvern. Who was to keep the hearth of the Fairfields aglow? The light of the old Squire’s life was flaring low in the socket, a tiny taper was just lighted in darksome Carwell, and Harry Fairfield—was he ever to take his turn and illuminate the Wyvern world?
Harryproved how hungry he was by eating a huge dinner. He had the old dining-room to himself, and sipped his brandy and water there by a pleasant fire of coal and spluttering wood. With a button or two undone, he gazed drowsily into the fire, with his head thrown back and his eyes nearly closed; and the warmth of the fire and the glow of the alcohol flushed his cheeks and his nose and his forehead to a brilliant crimson.
Harry had had a hard day’s riding. Some agitations, great variety of air, and now, as we have seen, a hearty dinner and many glasses of brandy and water, and a hot fire before him. Naturally he fell asleep.
He dreamed that the old Squire was dead and buried. He forgot all about the little boy at Carwell, and fancied that he, Harry Fairfield, draped in the black mantle with which the demure undertaker hangs the mourners in chief, had returned from the funeral, and was seated in the old “oak parlour,” just in all other respects as he actually was. As he sat there, Master of Wyvern at last, and listening, he thought, to the rough tick of the old clock in the hall, old Tom Ward seemed to him to bounce in, his mulberry-coloured face turned the colour of custard, his mouth agape, and his eyes starting out of their sockets. “Get up, Master Harry,” the old servant seemed to say, in a woundy tremor, “for may the devil fetch me if here baint the old master back again, and he’s in the blue room callin’ for ye.”
“Ye lie!” gasped Harry, waking up in a horror.
“Come, ye, quick, Master Harry, for when the Squire calls it’s ill tarrying,” said now the real voice of Tom Ward.
“Where?”
“In the blue chamber.”
“Where—where am I?” said Harry, now on his feet and looking at Tom Ward. “By jingo, Tom, I believe I was dreaming. You gave me a hell of a fright, and is he there really? Very well.”
And Harry walked in and found the old Squire of Wyvern standing with his back to the fire, tall, gaunt, and flushed, and his eyes looking large with the glassy sheen of age.
“Well, why didn’t ye tell me the news, ye fool?” said the Squire, as he entered. “D——n ye, if it hadn’t a bin for Tom Ward I shouldn’t a heerd nout o’ the matter. So there’s a brat down in Carwell Grange—ha, ha!—marriage is honourable, I’ve heerd tell, but housekeepin’s costly. ’Tis the old tune on the bagpipe. That’s the way to beggar’s bush. When marriage gets into the saddle repentance gets up at the crupper. Why the devil didn’t ye tell me the news? Why didn’t ye tell me, ye d——d wether-head?”
“So I would ’a told ye to-night, but I fell asleep after dinner. It’s true enough, though, and there’s doctors, and nurses, and caudles, and all sorts.”
“Well for Charlie he’s out of the way—dead mice feels no cold, you know, and she’s a bad un—Alice Maybell’s a bad un. The vicar was a thankless loon, and she’s took after him. She went her own gait, and much good it did her. Sweetheart and honey bird keeps no house, and the devil’s bread is half bran. She’ll learn a lesson now. I was too good to that huzzy. Put another man’s child in your bosom, they say, and he’ll creep out at your sleeves. She’s never a friend now. She’s lost Charlie and she’s lost me. Well might the cat wink when both her eyes were out. She’d like well enough to be back here again in Wyvern—d——n her. She knows who was her best friend by this time. Right well pleased wi’ herself, I’ll be bound, the day she gi’ed us the slip and ran off with the fool Charlie—down in the mouth, I warrant her now, the jade. I dare say the parson’s down at the Grange every day to pray wi’ my lady and talk o’ resignation. When all their rogueries breaks down they take to cantin’ and psalm singin’, and turns up their eyes, the limmers, and cries the Lord’s will be done. Welcome death, quoth the rat, when the trap fell. Much thanks to ’em for takin’ what they can’t help. Well, she’s a bad un—a black-hearted, treacherous lass she proved, and Charlie was a soft fellow and a mad fellow, and so his day’s over, and I was just a daft old fool, and treated accordin’. But time and thought tames all, and we shall all lie alike in our graves.”
“And what’s the boy like?” the old man resumed. “Is he like Charlie?”
“He was asleep, and the room dark, so there was no good trying to see him,” said Harry, inventing an excuse.
“Not a bit, dark or light, not a bit; he’s Ally’s son, and good won’t grow from that stock—never. As the old bird crows, so crows the young, and that foreign madam, I hear, swears she was married first to poor Charlie, and what’s that to me?—not that spoonful of punch. She’s up in limbo, and if her story be true, why then that boy of Ally’s ain’t in the runnin’, and his mother, bless her heart, needn’t trouble her head about Wyvern, nor be wishin’ the old Squire, that was good to her, under the sod, to make way for her son, and then there’s you to step in and claim my shoes, and my chair, and cellar key, and then Madam—what’s her name—Van Trump, or something, will out wi’ a bantling, I take it, and you’ll all fight it out, up and down—kick, throttle, and bite—in the Court of Chancery, or where ye can, and what is’t to me who wins or who loses? Not that bit o’ lemon-peel, and if you think I’m a going to spend a handful o’ money in law to clear up a matter that don’t concern me, no more than the cat’s whisker, you’re a long way out in your reckonin’—be me soul ye are, for I’ll not back none o’ ye, and I won’t sport a shillin’—and I don’t care a d——n. Ye’ll fight the battle o’er my grave, and ye’ll take Wyvern who can, and ’twill cost ye all round a pretty penny. Ye’ll be sellin’ your shirts and your smocks, and ye’re pretty well in for it, and ye can’t draw back. Well lathered is half shaved, and it won’t break my heart, I promise you.”
And the old man chuckled and hooted, and wagged his head fiercely as he declaimed, in his own way, upon the row that was coming.
“Don’t ye spare one another for my sake. Take Wyvern who can. I’ll keep my hands in my pockets, I promise ye. What have I to do wi’ other folks’ windmills?”
So the old Squire stormed on more serenely than he had done for a long time.
“Make another tankard o’ that thing, Tom; make a big one, and brew it well, and fetch a rummer for yourself, lad.”
“Beggar’s breed for rich men to feed,” resumed the Squire. “A son at the Grange o’ Carwell, no less! Well, I ’a taken enough, and too much, on my shoulders in my day, and ’tis often the least boy carries the biggest fiddle. She’s a sly lass—Alice. She’ll find fools enough to help her. I ’a done wi’ her—she’s a bad un. Look at that harpsichord thing there she used to play on,” he pointed to the piano. “I got that down from Lunnon for her to jingle tunes at as long as she liked, and I’d a had it smashed up and pitched in the river, only ’twould a made her think I cared enough about her to take that trouble about her lumber. She turned her back on me when she liked, and I’ll not turn my face on her when she lists. A graceless huzzy she was and is, and grace lasts but beauty blasts, and so let it be for me. That’s enough. I take it there’s no more to tell. So take ye a candle if ye’re sleepy, man, no use dawdlin’ sluggard’s guise, loath to bed, and loath to rise,” and so, with a gruff nod, he dismissed him, and in came Tom Ward with the punch before very long.
“That’s good, Tom; that’ll warm yer ribs. How long a’ you been here? Wyvern always, but a long time in the house, Tom, a long time wi’ the family. ’Tis sixty years ago, Tom. I remember you in our livery, Isabel and Blue—them’s the old colours. They don’t know the name now—salmon, they calls it. We ’a seen Christmas pretty often in the old house. We’ll not see many more, I’m thinking. The tale’s nigh done. ’Twasn’t bad times wi’ ye here, Tom; we can’t complain; we ’a had our share, and after cheese comes nothing, as the old folks used to say. Take the rummer and sit ye down by the door, Tom. There’s Master Harry. I’d rather ha’ a glass wi’ you, Tom, than a dozen wi’ him, a d——d pippin’-squeezing rascal. Tom, ain’t he a sneak, and no Fairfield, Tom, ain’t he, ain’t he, d—— ye?”
“I won’t say that all out, sir. He’s a tall, handsome lad, and Master Harry can sit down and drink his share like a man.”
“Like a beast, ye mean. He never tells ye a pleasant story, nor laughs like a man, and what liquor he swallows, it goes into a bad skin, Tom. He’s not hot and hearty in his cups, like a Fairfield; he has no good nature, Tom; he’s so close-fisted and cunnin’. I hate them fellows that can’t buy at the market and sell at the fair, and drink when he’s drinkin’; d—— him, he’s always a watching todoye, just like his mother; a screw she was, and her son’s like her, crooked to sell, and crooked to buy. I hate him sober, Tom, and I hate him drunk. Bring your glass here, old lad; a choice mug-full ye’ve brewed to-night. Hold it straight, you fool!
“What was I sayin’? The old things is out o’ date, Tom; the world’s changin’, and ’tain’t in nature, Tom, to teach old dogs tricks. I do suppose there’s fun goin’, though I don’t see it, and the old folks beginning to be in the way, as they were always, and things won’t change for us. We were brave lads, we Fairfields, but there’s no one to come now. There won’t be no one after me in Wyvern house. To the wrestlin’ on Wyvern Fair Green when I was a boy, I mind the time when lords and ladies id come ridin’ down for twenty miles round, and all the old stock o’ the country, some on horseback, and some in coaches, and silks and satins, to see the belt played for and singlestick and quarter-staves. They were manly times, Tom, and a Fairfield ever first in the field, and—what year is this? ay, I was twenty the week before that day—’tis sixty-four years ago—when I threw Dick Dutton over my shoulder and broke his collar-bone, and Dutton was counted the best man they ever brought down here, and Meg Weeks—ye’ll mind Meg Weeks wi’ the hazel eyes—was lookin’ on; and the wrestlin’s gone, and not a man left in the country round that could tell a quarter-staff from a flail; and when I’m gone to my place in the churchyard, there’s not a Fairfield in Wyvern no longer, for I don’t count Harry one, he’s not a Fairfield, by no chance, and never was. Charlie had it in him, handsome Charlie. I seen many a turn in him like me, I did; and that Captain Jolliffe’s died only t’other day that he shot in the arm at Tewkesbury only twenty years ago for sayin’ a wry word o’ me; old Morton read it yesterday, he says, in the Lun’on paper. But it’s all over wi’ Charlie, and—stand up, Tom, and fill yer glass, and we’ll drink to him.”
Old Tom Ward was the first to speak after.
“Hot blood and proud, sir, and a bit wild, when he was young; more than that, there’s nout to be said by any. A brave lad, sir, and the good-naturedest I ever see. He shouldn’t be buried where he is, alone. I don’t like that, nohow. He wouldn’t a done so by you, Squire; he liked ye well; he liked every one that was ever kind to him. I mind how he cried after poor Master Willie. They two was very like and loving. Master Willie was tall, like him, and handsome.”
“Don’t ye be talkin’ o’ them at all, ye fool,” broke in the Squire, violently, “stop that, and hold your tongue, Tom. D—— you, do you think I’m foolish? Light my candle, and get ye to bed, the tankard’s out; get ye to bed, ye d——d old fool,” and he shook the old servant hard by the hand as he spoke.
A fewdays later Harry Fairfield rode from Wyvern into the picturesque little town of Wykeford, and passing the steep, narrow bridge, pulled up near the church, at the door of Dr. Willett. Harry had something to say to the doctor, but, like a good diplomatist, that shrewd dealer in horses preferred letting the doctor talk a bit on his own account first.
He found him in slippers and dressing-gown, clipping the evergreens that grew in front of his house, the hour of his forenoon excursion not having yet arrived.
“Woodman, spare that tree,” said Harry, quoting a popular song, facetiously.
The doctor looked up.
“And how is Doctor Willett this morning?” said Harry.
“Oh! oh! Is that you?” said the doctor, straightening his back with a little effort, for he had been stooping to his task, and old backs don’t unbend in a moment.
“Quite well, thank you—so are you, I see.”
“Can’t complain.”
“And how’s the old Squire?” said the doctor.
“How’s the old house?” answered Harry; “staunch and straight, and like to stand for ever. I see no change in him. And all well over at Carwell?”
“Far from it,” said the doctor.
“And who’s sick?”
“The poor young mother—very ill indeed,” said he—“nervous, low, and feverish, she has been, and yesterday, when I saw her, it was plainly fever—quite declared.”
“What sort of fever?” asked Harry.
“Well, the nerves are very much engaged,” began the doctor—
“Take care it ain’t typhus,” said Harry. “The baby ha’n’t got it, I hope?”
“No, the child’s all safe.”
“There’s typhus down at Gryce’s mill, and a child in scarlatina in the glen, I hear.”
“Is there? ha! It has been going a good deal at that side, I’m told,” said Dr. Willett. “There’s Lady Wyndale at Oulton—very good-natured she seems to be—wouldn’t she take the child and nurse it for a while? It’s a nice place, well enclosed, and lies high—not likely to get in there. I attended a patient there in dropsy, once, when it was let, and the Wyndales away in India.”
“Ay, she’s good-natured; she’d have the mother and child together, with a welcome, but she says she won’t take no one’s babby to nurse away from its people, and she’s right, I think, so the young chap must stand his ground, and bide the fortune o’ war, you know. What time shall you be there to-day?” he inquired.
“Three o’clock.”
“Very well, then, I’ll be passin’ at the mill end o’ the glen about that time, and I’ll ride up, and look in, just to hear what you have to say, and I’ll get home by Cressley Common. It will do me as well as t’other way. I turned aside a bit to reach you, and hear the news, and I must be joggin’ again. Good-bye, doctor. Is your church clock right?” said Harry, looking up at the old tower and pulling out his watch to compare.
“‘The clock goes as it pleaseth the clerk,’ the old saw tells us, but we all go by the clock here, and it does keep right good time,” said old Dr. Willett, with his hand over his eyes, reading its golden hands and figures, as Harry was.
“Well, then, doctor, good-bye, and God bless ye,” said Harry, and away he rode, without hearing the doctor’s farewell.
At Carwell Grange, at three o’clock, there was the gloom and silence of a sick house.
The tiptoe tread of old Dulcibella, and her whisperings at the door, were scarcely audible, and now and then a weary moan was heard in the darkened room, and the wail and squall of a little child from another room not far off.
Old Mildred Tarnley had undertaken the charge of the child, while Dulcibella, with the aid of a neighbour brought in for the occasion, took charge of the sick lady.
Before three o’clock came, to the surprise of this sad household, Harry Fairfield arrived. He did not come riding; he arrived in a tax-cart. He had got through more real work that day than many men who were earning their bread by their labour.
“Give this one a feed, Tom; and how’s all here?” said he, throwing the apron off and jumping down.
“Bad enough, I’m afraid, sir.”
“Worse?”
“I don’t know, sir, till the doctor comes; but can’t be no better, for I heard Mrs. Crane say she didn’t close an eye all night.”
“I hope they’re not forgetting the child in the hurry?” said Harry.
“Mrs. Tarnley and Lilly Dogger looks after it, turn about.”
“That wouldn’t do nohow, you know,” said Harry—“and give her a good feed, Tom, good dog, good bone. She came at a good lick, I can tell you, up the glen. The doctor will be here soon.”
“Ay, sir.”
“Well, I’ll stay till I hear what he says; and there’s sickness in Carwell Glen here, I’m told.”
“I dessay, sir, there’s a good deal going, I hear.”
“Ye needn’t take her out of the shafts, Tom. Fix her head in a halter by the gate—in the ring there, if ye have a nose-bag at hand—and come in here. She’s as quiet as a lamb; I want to talk to you a bit. I’m goin’ to buy two or three fillies, and think of any you may have seen down about here. Old Tarnley’s in the kitchen now, is she?”
“I think she is, sir.”
“Well, think of them fillies if you can; there’s business to be done if I can get ’em to suit.”
So in marched Harry, and tapped at the kitchen window, and nodded and smiled to Mrs. Tarnley.
“So you’re all sick down here, I’m told; but sickness is better than sadness. That’s all I can say, lass,” said Harry, pacing, much in his usual way, into the kitchen, and clapping his big hand down on Mildred’s shoulder.
“Sick, sore, andsorrywe be, sir. Your brother’s not that long buried that there should be no sadness in the Grange, his own house that was, and his widow’s that is—sickness may well be better than sadness, but ’taint turn about wi’ them here, but one and t’other, both together. And that slut upstairs, Miss Dogger, if you please, out of the scullery into the bed-chamber, she’s no more use to me than the cock at the top o’ Carwell steeple. I never knew such times in Carwell Grange; I’m wore off my old feet—I can’t stan’ it long, and I wish twenty times in a day I was quiet at last in my grave.”
“A gruntin’ horse and a grumblin’ wife, they say, lasts long. Never you fear, you won’t die this time, old girl, and I wouldn’t know the Grange ifyouwasn’t here. ’Twill all be right again soon, I warrant—no wind blows long at the highest, ye know, and we’ll hear what the doctor says just now.”
“Hoot! what can the doctor say but just the old thing? The leech to the physic and God to the cure, and death will do as God allows, and sickness shows us what we are, and all fears the grave as the child does the dark. I don’t know much good he’s doin’, or much he did for Master Charles—not but he’s as good as another, and better than many a one, maybe—but he costs a deal o’ money, and only Lady Wyndale came over here yesterday—poorly though she is, and not able to get out o’ her coach—and saw Mrs. Crane, and lent a fifty-pun note to keep all straight till the young lady, please God, may be able to look about her, and see after ’em herself, we’d a bin at a sore pinch before the week was out. Pity’s good, but help’s better. ’Tis well in this miserly world there’s a kind one left here and there, that wouldn’t let kindred want in the midst of plenty. There’s Squire Harry o’ Wyvern and his own little grandson lyin’ up in the cradle there, and look at you, Master Harry. I wonder you hadn’t the thought.”
Harry laughed, perhaps, the least degree awkwardly.
“Why, chick-a-biddy——” began Harry.
“I’m none o’ yer chick-a-biddies. I’m old Mildred Tarnley, o’ the Grange o’ Carwell, that’s in the service o’ the family—her and hers—many a long year, and I speaks my mind, and I shouldn’t like the family to be talked of as it will for meanness. If there’s a want o’ money here in times of sickness, ’tis a shame!”
“Well, ye know there’s no want, but the Governor’s riled just now, and he’ll come round again; and as for me, I’m as poor a dog as is in the parish. Take me and turn me round and round, and what more am I than just a poor devil that lives by horses, and not always the price of a pot o’ stout in my pocket—
‘Four farthings and a thimbleMakes the tailor’s pocket jingle.’
‘Four farthings and a thimbleMakes the tailor’s pocket jingle.’
‘Four farthings and a thimble
Makes the tailor’s pocket jingle.’
Your tongue’s a bit too hard, Mildred; but ye mean well, and there’s kindness at the bottom o’ the mug, though the brew be bitter.”
“I think I hear the doctor,” said Mildred, placing her palm behind her ear and listening.
“Ay,” said Harry; “I hear him talkin’.”
And forth he strode to meet him.
Before he went up, Harry and the doctor talked together for a little in the panelled sitting-room, with which we are familiar.
“I’m sure to see you here, eh?”
“Before I go? Yes. I shall look in here.”
“All right,” said Harry, and the doctor walked up the stairs on his exploration.
Inless than ten minutes the doctor came down.
“Well?” said Harry, over his shoulder, turning briskly from the window.
“No material change,” replied the doctor. “It’s not a case in which medicine can do much. The most cheering thing about it is that her strength has not given way, but you know it is an anxious case—averyanxious case.”
“I hope they are taking care of the child. Old Dulcibella Crane would be a deal better for that sort of thing than that dry old cake, Mildred Tarnley. But then Ally would half break her heart if ye took old Dulcibella from her, always used to her, you know. And what’s best to be done? It would be bad enough to lose poor Ally, but it would be worse to lose the boy, for though I’m willing to take my share of work for the family, there’s one thing I won’t do, and that’s to marry. I’m past the time, and d—— me if I’d take half England to do it. I’d like to manage and nurse the estate for him, and be paid, of course, like other fellows, and that’s what would fit my knuckle. But, by Jove, if they kill that boy among them there will be no one to maintain the old name of Wyvern; and kill him they will, if they leave him in the hard hands of that wiry old girl, Mildred Tarnley. She’s a cast-iron old maid, with the devil’s temper, and she has a dozen other things to mind beside, and I know the child will die, and I don’t know anything to advise, d—— me if I do.”
“The house is in confusion, and very little attention for the child, certainly,” said Doctor Willett.
“And that d——d scarlatina, beyond a doubt, is in the glen there.”
The old doctor shrugged and shook his head.
“I talked to the Governor a bit,” said Harry, “thinking he might have the child over to Wyvern, where it would be safe and well looked after, but he hates the whole lot. You know it was a stolen match, and it’s no use trying in that quarter. You’re going now, and I’ll walk a little bit beside you; maybe you’ll think of something, and I haven’t no money, ye may guess, to throw away; but rather than the child shouldn’t thrive I’d make out what would answer.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir,” said Doctor Willett, looking at him, admiringly. “They certainly have their hands pretty full here, and a little neglect sometimes goes a long way with a child.”
So they walked out together, talking, and when the doctor got on his horse Harry walked beside him part of the way towards Cressley Common.
When he came back to the Grange, Harry asked to see old Dulcibella, and he told her, standing on the lobby and talking in whispers—
“The doctor says she’s not able to understand anything as she is at present.”
“Well, ye know she’s wanderin’ just now, but she may clear up a bit for a while, by-and-by.”
“Well, the doctor says she’s not to be told a word that can fret her, and particularly about the child, for he says this is no place for it, and he won’t be answerable for its life if it’s left longer here, and there’s scarlatina and fever all round, and ye have as much as ye can well manage here already, so few as there is, without nursing children; and Doctor Willett says he’ll have it well attended to by a person near Wykeford, and I’ll bring old Mildred over with it to the place this evening, and we’ll get it out o’ reach o’ the sickness that’s goin’.”
“Please God!” said Dulcibella, after a pause.
“Amen,” added Harry, and walked down, whistling low, with his hands in his pockets, to tell the same story to old Mildred Tarnley.
“’Tis a pity,” she said, darkly, “the child should be sent away from its home.”
“Especially with scarlet fever and typhus all round,” said Harry.
“And away from its mother,” she continued.
“Much good its mother is to it.”
“Just now she mayn’t be able to do much.”
“Oh! but she can though,” interrupted Harry; “she may give it the fever she’s got, whatever that is.”
“Well, I can’t say nothin’ else but it’s a pity the child should be took away from its natural home, and its own mother,” repeated Mrs. Tarnley.
“And who’s takin’ care o’tnow?” demanded Harry.
“Lilly Dogger,” answered she.
“Lilly Dogger! just so; the slut! you said yourself, to-day, you wouldn’t trust a kitten with!”
Mrs. Tarnley couldn’t deny it. She sniffed and tossed up her chin a little.
“Ye forget, lass, ’twas never a Wyvern fashion nursin’ the babbies at home.Iwasn’t, nor Charlie, poor fellow! nor Willie, nor none of us. ’Twas a sayin’ with the old folk, and often ye heered it, ‘one year a nurse, and seven years the worse;’ and we all was tall, well-thriven lads, and lives long, without fever or broken bones or the like, floors us untimely; and, anyhow, the doctor says, so it must be. There’s no one here, wi’ all this sickness in the house, has time to look after it, and the child will just come to grief unless his orders be followed. So stick on your bonnet and roll up the young chap in blankets, and I’ll drive ye over to the place he says. It brings me a bit out o’ my way, but kith and kin, ye know; and I told the doctor if he went to any expense, I’d be answerable to him myself, and I’ll gi’e ye a pound for good luck. So ye see I’m not sich a screw all out as ye took me for.”
“I thank you, Master Harry, and I’ll not deny but ’twas always the way wi’ the family to send out the children to nurse.”
“And what Mr. Charles would ’a done himself if he was alive, as every one of us knows; and for that reason what the lady upstairs would ’a done if she had ’a bin able to talk about anything. I’m sorry I have to drive ye over, but I’ll bring ye back to-night, and ye know I couldn’t drive and manage the babby, and the folk would be wonderin’ when the child set up the pipes in the tax-cart, and I’d soon have the hue-and-cry behind me.”
“Hoot! I wouldn’t allow no such thing as let the poor little thing be druv so, all alone, like a parcel o’ shop goods. No, no. The family’s not come to that yet a bit, I hope,” cried Mrs. Tarnley.
“Gi’e me a lump o’ bread and cheese and a mug o’ beer. I don’t think I ever was here before without a bit and a sup, and it wouldn’t be lucky, ye know, to go without enough to swear by, anyhow; but there’s no hurry, mind—ye needn’t be ready for a good hour to come, for Willett won’t have no nurse there sooner.”
Harry went out and had a talk with Tom Clinton, and smoked his pipe for half an hour; and Tom thought that the young Squire was dull and queerish, and perhaps he was not very well, for he did not eat his bread and cheese, but drank a deal more beer than usual instead.
“Bring a lot o’ lolly-pops and milk, or whatever it likes best, wi’ ye, to keep it quiet. I can’t abide the bawlin’ o’ children.”
Lilly Dogger, with red eyes and an inflamed nose, blubbered heart-broken, and murmured to the baby—lest old Mildred should overhear and blow her up—her leave-takings and endearments, as she held it close in her arms.
Beautiful though to us men, utterly mysterious is the feminine love of babies. Lilly Dogger had led a serene, if not a very cheerful life, at Carwell Grange up to this. But now came this parting, and her peace was shivered.
Old Mildred had now got up, with her threadbare brown cloak, and her grizzly old bonnet, and had arranged the child on her lap; so, at last, all being ready, the tax-cart was in motion.
It was late in the autumn now. The long days were over. They had dawdled away a longer time than they supposed before starting. It turned out a long drive, much longer than Mildred Tarnley had expected. The moon rose, and they had got into a part of the country with which she was not familiar.
They had driven fourteen miles or upward through a lonely and somewhat melancholy country. It was, I suppose, little better than moor, but detached groups of trees, possibly the broken and disappearing fragments of what had once been a forest, gave it a sad sort of picturesqueness.
Mildred Tarnley was not a garrulous person, and had not spent her life at Carwell Grange without learning the accomplishment of taciturnity, but she remarked and resented the gloomy silence of Master Harry, who had never once addressed a word to her since they started.
Toward the close of their journey she observed that Harry Fairfield looked frequently at his watch, and hurried the pace of the mare, and altogether seemed to grow more and more anxious. They had been obliged to pull up twice to enable her to feed the baby, who was now fast asleep.
“’Tis right,” she thought, “he should look ahead and mind his driving, while we’re getting on, though a word now and then would not have troubled him much. But when we stopped to feed the child there was no excuse. He got down and settled the buckle at the horse’s head. He got up again, and drew the rug over his knees, and he leaned on his elbow back upon the cushion, and he never so much as asked was me or the baby alive!”
They now reached a gentle hollow, in which a shallow brook crossed the road, and some four or five habitations of an humble sort stood at either side; one under the shade of two gigantic ash trees, had a sign depending in front, being a wayside inn of the humblest dimensions.
A village this could hardly be termed; and at the near end Harry pulled up before a building a little above the rank of a cottage, old and quaint, with a large-leafed plant that, in the moonlight, looked like a vine, growing over the prop of a sort of porch that opened under the gable.
If the mare was quiet at the Grange, you may be sure that her run to Twyford had not made her less so.
Harry helped old Tarnley down, with her little charge in her arms, and led her silently into the neat little room, with tiers of delf ornaments, in brilliant colours, on the cupboard, and a Dutch clock ticking in the nook by the fire where some faggots crackled, and a candle was burning on the table in a bright brass candlestick.
Mrs. Tarnley’s experienced eye surveyed the room and its belongings. She descried, moreover, a ladder stair which mounted to a loft, from whose dormant window, as she looked from her seat in the tax-cart, she had observed the light of a candle.
Very humble it undoubtedly was, but nothing could be more scrupulously clean. It had an air of decency, too, that was reassuring. There was a woman there in a cloak and bonnet, who rose as they entered and courtesied.
Harry set a lumbering arm-chair by the fire, and beckoned Tarnley to occupy it. Then he asked:
“How soon is the Warhampton ’bus expected?”
“Twenty-five minutes, please, sir,” answered the woman, with another courtesy and a glance at the clock.
“That woman from Willett’s is coming by the ’bus,” he said gruffly, to Mildred. “’Tis a snug little place this, and as clean as a bone after a hungry dog. Would you mind,” he continued, addressing the stranger or hostess, whichsoever she might be, “tellin’ Archdale, if he’s here, I want a word wi’ him at the door?”
“He’s over the way, I think, sir, with the horse. I’ll call him, please, sir.”
So off she went.
“This is where poor Charles said he’d like to have his child nursed—Twyford; ’tis sweet air about here, considered. He was expectin’ a babby, poor fellow, and he talked a deal wi’ me about it the day he was took. Wouldn’t ye like a bit to eat and a glass of beer, or somethin’? They have lots over the way, for as poor as it looks; and here’s the pound I promised ye, lass, for luck, ye know, when we was leaving the Grange.”
He drew forth the hand with which he had been fumbling in his pocket and placed the piece of gold in hers.
“Thank you, Master Harry,” she said, making a little instinctive effort to rise for the purpose of executing a courtesy. But Harry, with his hand on her shoulder, repressed it.
“Sit ye quiet, and rest yourself, after joggin’ all this way; and what’s that bundle?”
“The baby’s things, sir.”
“All right. Well, and what will ye have?”
“I feel a bit queerish, Master Harry, I thank ye. I’d rather not eat nothin’ till I gets home, and I’ll get my cup o’ tea then.”
“Not eat!”
“Nothin’, sir, I thank ye, Master Harry.”
“Well,” said Harry, so far forth relieved, but resolved, cost what it might, to make Mildred happy on this particular occasion, “if ye won’t eat, I’m hanged but ye shall drink some. I tell ye what it shall be, a jug of sherry negus. Come, ye must.”
“Well, Master Harry, as so ye will have it, I’ll not say ye nay,” consented Mildred, graciously.
Harry went himself to the little pot-house over the way, and saw this nectar brewed, and brought it over in his own hand—the tankard in one hand and the glass in the other.
“Devilish good stuff it is, Mildred, and I’m glad, old lass, I thought of it. I remember you liked that brew long ago, and much good may it do you, girl.”
He was trying to be kind.
He had set it down on the table, and now, as he spoke, he laid his hand on her shoulder, and she thought she might have wronged Master Harry with his rough jests, and shrewd ways, and that he had more of the Fairfield in his nature than she had always given him credit for.
Out he went again, and talked with Archdale, who was in plain clothes, and a round hat, with a great coat buttoned up to his smooth blue chin, and a gig-whip in his hand. Archdale, as usual, was severely placid and brief, and as Harry talked with him outside, Mildred Tarnley thought she heard a step in the loft over her head, and another sound that excited her curiosity. She listened, but all was quiet again.
Harry returned in comparatively high spirits.
“Well, Mrs. Tarnley,” said he, “the ’bus is a bit late, I’m thinkin’, but anyhow, he can’t wait,” and he pointed over his shoulder at Mr. Archdale who stood at the door; “he’ll drive you back again, and he knows the road as far as Cressley Common, and you can show him the rest,—and you’ll want to be back again with poor Alice,—and the doctor will look in here, often in the week—almost every day—and tell you how the little chap’s going on. And see, here’s a very respectable woman—what’s her name?—she was here this minute, and she won’t be leaving till after the ’bus comes in, and you leave her the baby, and I’ll wait here till I see it in charge of the nurse that’s coming from Wykeford. Come in, will ye?—notyou—the woman, I mean. Now, Mildred, give her the baby.”
The woman had a gentle, cheerful, and honest face; and looked down with the angelic light of a woman’s tenderness on the sleeping face of the little baby.
“Lord love it,” she murmured, smiling. “What a darling little face!”
Mildred Tarnley looked down on it, too. She said nothing. She bit her lips hard, and her old eyes filled up with tears that welled over as she surrendered the baby, without a word, and then hastily she went out, mounted to her seat in the tax-cart, and was driven swiftly away by a companion as silent as he who had conveyed her there.
Dr. Willettcalled regularly at the Grange, and kind Lady Wyndale was daily there, taking the doctor’s directions about jellies, wines, and such other good things as the depressed state of the patient called for, notwithstanding her fever.
In a few days more he changed this treatment. The patient, in fact, could not be got to swallow these things. Dr. Willett became more perplexed. It was not exactly gastric fever, but he thought it more resembled that flickering treacherous fire than any other fever with which he was acquainted.
There are sicknesses that will not be cured through the body. The mind diseased, which is the parent of these impracticable maladies, of which, when people die, they are said to have died of a broken heart—disdains the apothecary’s boxes and bottles—knows nothing of them. The heart-ache, of which it is no more than an unusually protracted fit, has its seat in that which no apothecary can hear, see, feel, or understand. When the immortal, and in this life, inscrutable, spirit, which is the unseen lodger, the master, of the body, sickens, all sickens. In its pain all below it writhe and wither, and the body, its ultimate expression, reflects but cannot mitigate its torment.
Dr. Willett, too, complained that the child was ill, and that it must have been ill before it left the Grange.
On this point he and Mildred Tarnley had a sharp battle.
When both parties had cooled a little he admitted that possibly the symptoms might not have been sufficiently developed to have excited the attention of an uninstructed observer.
The Grange was growing all this time more awful. Death seemed to have made his abode there, and the shadow of the hearse plumes seemed to rest upon the windows. Courage flagged, despair supervened, and Mrs. Tarnley’s temper grew all but insupportable. A day in such situations seems very long, and many had passed since the baby had made his journey to Twyford. The doctor seemed desponding, and stood longer silent by his patient’s bed this day than usual. His questions were briefer, and he was less communicative than usual when he was going.
Mildred Tarnley was making up her mind that the blow was inevitable, and was secretly wishing it might come soon, since come it must.
The father buried but two months since, the mother sinking into an untimely grave, and the poor little baby also dying! Was this family accursed? What a blight was this!
The doctor had said that he would return by Gryce’s mill. It had been dark some time, and was now about seven o’clock. Tom was down at the forge, Dulcibella and Lilly Dogger both upstairs, and she quite alone in the kitchen. She was more uncomfortable than she had ever been before about Alice that night.
She had seen in the doctor’s countenance that day, as he told her he would look in again on his return up the glen, that which had profoundly alarmed her, and now, sitting alone in this dark kitchen, she was infested by gloomy forebodings and terrible fancies.
She went upstairs to the sick lady’s door. At that hour no amendment was probable, and there certainly was none. Down again she went. The idea had got into her head that the patient would die that night, and she grew nervous, and tired of listening for death-watches, and picking incipient winding-sheets off the candle. “I wonder Master Harry doesn’t come here, if ’twas only to ask whether his sister was dead or alive, and why old Willett don’t come. Smelt out a good supper somewhere, and he’s stuffin’ his gut, I’ll warrant, while the poor lady’s takin’ the rattles.”
Mildred Tarnley could stand this no longer, and she went out and down the dark road that leads to the Glen of Carwell, close by, down which, with the uselessness of impatience, she went to look for a sight of the absent doctor, and listen for the tread of his horse.
Nothing cheered by that darksome walk, and the solemn and solitary view down the Carwell road, she stood gazing down toward distant Gryce’s mill, until she tired of that too, and in dismay and bitterness retraced her steps toward the Grange.
On entering the yard, she saw a man’s figure approaching her from the kitchen door. She thought it was the doctor’s, for a moment, but it was not, and with a “Lord! who’s that?” gasped in fear that sounded like fury, she stood fixed as the old pump.
“Bah! don’t you know me, woman?” said Harry Fairfield, surlily; “I have only a few minutes. Ye’ll have to come wi’ me in the morning over to Twyford.”
“To Twyford?”
“Ay, to Twyford; and why the devil do ye leave the yard-door open; I walked into the kitchen and right up the stairs, lookin’ for ye, and knocked at Ally’s door. I think ye’re cracked.”
“And what’s to fear here, down in the Grange? Hoot! If ’tweren’t for form’s sake we need never draw bolt from one Christmas to another.”
“There was a woman found with her throat cut by the Three Pollards, between this and Hatherton, on Tuesday. If you likes it down here, ’tis little to me. I’ll come here at eight o’clock in the morning to fetch ye.”
“Is the child sick?”
“Not it. It was, but it’s gettin’ all right; that is, if itbethe child.”
“What the de’il d’ye mean, Master Harry?”
“I was lookin’ at the child this mornin’, and d—— me, if I think it’s the same child we left there!” said Harry.
“Why, sir—Mr. Harry, what’s this?”
“I say I misdoubt it’s not the same child, and ye must come over and look at it. Don’t ye say a word o’ the matter to no one; no more did I; if you do we’ll never come to the bottom of it.”
“My good Lord!” exclaimed old Mildred, turning paler, and frowning very hard.
“I won’t stop. I won’t eat anything. I can’t delay to-night; my nag’s by the bridle, there, beside the scales, and—any message to Wykeford? I’ll be passing Willett’s house.”
“Well! well!” repeated Mildred, gaping at him still, with scarcely a breath left her, “sin is sin, be it seen or no; judgment follows. God has feet o’ wool and hands o’ iron.”
“Sweep before your own door, lass; ye’re a bit daft, bain’t ye?” said Harry, with a sudden glare in his face.
“God forgive us all!”
“Amen,” said Harry.
And there came a pause.
“Women and fools will be meddlin’,” he resumed. “Lord love ye! For mad words, deaf ears, they say. ’Pon my soul! ’twould make a cow laugh, and if ye don’t mind ye may run yer head against the wall.”
“Iwillgo to-morrow and look at the child,” said Mildred, with sullen emphasis, clapping one lean hand down on the other.
“That’s all I want ye. Come, what mischief can ye make o’ that? Clear yer head!”
“There’s two things shouldn’t anger ye: what ye can help and what ye can’t,” said Mildred. “I’ll go wi’ ye in the mornin’, Master Harry.”
“That’s the least we can do and the most. How’s Ally?”
“Dyin’, I think; she’ll be gone before daybreak, I’m thinkin’.”
“That’s bad,” said Harry.
“Good hap or ill hap, as God awards. I know nout against her.”
“Poor little thing!” said Harry.
“I blame myself; but what could I do? If aught’s gone wrong wi’ the child, poor lady! ’tis well she were gone too.”
“There’s many a fellow’d knock ye on the head for less,” replied Harry, with a very black look; “you women has a hintin’ funkin’ way wi’ ye. Ye like to ladle the drippin’ over a fellow’s legs, and say ye meant the mutton. Can’t ye speak out and say what ye mean, and get it off yer stomach, and let me know, and I’ll answer it straight like a man and a Fairfield, d—— me!”
“I’ll go wi’ ye to-morrow; and I take it that’s what ye want.”
“Well, this I’ll say. If ye suppose I’d hurt that poor baby to the value of a pin’s point, you’re a stupider and a wickeder witch than I took ye for, and I wish poor Ally could hear me, and I’d swear to her on my knees, at her dying bed, by the Creator that made me, that I’ll work for that boy as if he was my own, till I make him safe in Wyvern. And can’t ye see, woman, d—— ye, that I can have but the boy’s good in my mind when I ask ye to come over on such an errand to Twyford?”
“Well, I do suppose—I do suppose. Eight o’clock, and there’s two feet will be cold ere then, I’m afeard.”
“Don’t be a fool no more, and I forgive ye, Mildred,” said he, extending his hand; “and don’t ye mind a lick wi’ the rough side o’ my tongue—’tis a way wi’ us Fairfields—and there wasn’t many on ’em would ’a stood to let ye rile them as ye did me. And bolt yer doors, mind; and, poor Ally! I hope she may do yet, and mind ye—eight o’clock sharp.”
So Harry departed.
Mildred stood and looked after him for a time.
“There’s nothin’ ever goes right at the Grange,” she said with a short hard sigh; “nor never did, nor never will.”
And after a pause, with another sigh, she said—
“No, no; I won’t think it—I couldn’t think it—’taint in one o’ them. They might be fickle wi’ a lass, or hot tempered wi’ a man, and a bit too hard wi’ tongue or hand, but the like o’ that—I can’t believe it—never, and I wish I hadn’t a’ heard that. I’m most sure I heard the child cry in the loft there; I’m sorry I didn’t say so then. I don’t know why, and I don’t know now, what it should be no more than another, but I didn’t like it. It looked like summathid—I can’t say. But my heart misgave me.”
Old Mildred walked into the house. She had other thoughts now than the poor lady upstairs. They were remorseful, though she could hardly say for what she could blame herself. Perhaps she overrated her authority, and fancied she could have prevented the baby’s being taken away.
But it might be all quite right—men were so stupid about babies. A pretty hand a Fairfield man would make of a nursery! At all events the morrow would clear a great deal up.
The morning came. The doctor had looked in, and, as often happened, had surprised the lookers-on by pronouncing positively, that the patient wasnotworse.
With a qualm at her heart, Mildred asked him when he had seen the child: and watched his face hard while he answered quite frankly that he had seen it the day before—that it was decidedly better, and might possibly do well.
When should he see it again?
There was nothing alarming, probably to-morrow; certainly not later than the next day. There was nothing urgent—the chances were rather in favour of its recovery, but, of course, there were the risks, and we weren’t to hollo till we were out of the wood.
With this cheer Mildred was much comforted, so much reassured that when eight o’clock came next morning and brought no Harry Fairfield, she felt rather relieved of a bore than disappointed.
Two days later Dr. Willett reported more favourably than he had yet done on Alice. His account of the boy, however, was by no means so cheery.
Harry looked in still later, and talked the matter over with Mildred.
“I thought, ye see, I might just be makin’ a fool o’ myself—and another o’ you, so I went over there quietly next day, and I’m sure itwasa mistake. The child’s thinner a deal, and its colour gone, and it was dark a’most when I saw it, and she held the candle too low and cast a shadow from its nose, by Jove, across its face. You never see so queer a monkey as it looked, and so I held my tongue, but made over here to put our heads together and make sure o’ the matter. But when I went next day and saw it in the daylight, by Jove it was all right—the child and no mistake. But it is grown awful thin and wry-faced, only you couldn’t take it for any other, and the doctor sees it every second day, and I’m glad to hear that poor little Alice is getting on so well. She’ll be on her legs again in no time, I’m thinking.”
After Harry had gone, Dr. Willett arrived with a very ill account of the baby.
“Dying, poor little thing. Its heart wrong, and all the organs; but you mustn’t tell poor Mrs. Fairfield. It may cost her her life, if she begins to fret about it, and just tell her it’s quite well, for it’s true, you know—it’s nearer heaven, and best of all when it gets there. So tell her, when she asks, that it was sent in charge of careful people to get it out of the reach of the infection that is in the neighbourhood, and keep her mind quiet.”
A few days later the news of its death arrived in the kitchen, and Lilly Dogger, who was afraid to give way to her emotions before Mrs. Tarnley, abruptly rose, and ran out, and throwing her apron over her head, broke into absolute screams of crying under the great old trees that stand by the scales.
Here there was a sad secret to disclose when the time came, and poor Alice was strong enough to bear the story.
In the meantime Harry Fairfield came and had a stormy interview with old Mildred. The doctor, he swore, didn’t know his business. The women at Twyford had neglected the child. He’d see to it. He’d be a devil among the tailors. He’d open their eyes for them. He had often got fifty pounds for a less neglect of a filly. They should smoke all round for it. And there now was Wyvern without an heir, for, d——n him if he’d ever marry; he wouldn’t for Saint Peter. It wouldn’t do—it couldn’t be, at no price; and there was old Wyvern, and never a Fairfield to see tankard filled or faggot fired in the old house.
Harry was not married, although he had insinuated some matrimonial ambiguities in his talk with old Mildred. But I believe he swore truly when he vowed that he never would marry. He had quite made up his mind on that point for some time.
For the rest, his threatenings ended in the noise they began in. In truth there was no ground for complaint, and both nurse and doctor had done their duty.
Alice recovered. I do not attempt to describe the long mourning that followed, the sweet, the bitter, and the terrible recollections that ever after tinted the image of Carwell Grange in her memory.
As soon as she could bear removal to her kind kinswoman, Lady Wyndale insisted on taking her to Oulton. After a time they travelled, and finally returned to Oulton, where they lived on together in the happiness of great and tried affection.
A difference of five-and-thirty years did not separate them any more than the interval of a generation did Naomi and Ruth. Lady Wyndale, being one of those gifted women in whom the girlish spirit burns high and bright so long as life itself continues, full of sympathy and gaiety, with a strong vein of romance, and a pleasant sense of the ridiculous, and also fine immovable affections, was to one who had suffered calamities so dire as had befallen Alice Fairfield, a more delightful companion than any of her own age could have been. For when it was needed, there was the graver charm of a long and sad experience, and there were also the grander teachings of religion, and these were not obtruded or vaunted in anywise, but rather toned her thoughts and feelings, with their peculiar sublime and melancholy lights, in which all things are subdued and also glorified.