Gray Taken to the Hospital--Bill and the Baby--Mrs Gray Home
Again--Edith, Come Home!
It was near the end of September that John Gray broke his leg. They
were thrashing out a wheat-rick at Farmer Benson's, and somehow he
tumbled from the top of the rick, and fell with his leg bent under him,
and found that he could not stand when he tried to struggle up to his
feet.
They ran to tell 'his missus,' who came straight off from the washtub,
with the soapsuds still about her skinny red elbows, catching up Zoe
from the cradle as she passed, at sight of whom Gray, in spite of the
pain and the deadly faintness that was dimming his eyes and clutching
his breath, made an effort to chirrup and snap his fingers at the
little one.
'It's his innerds as is hurted,' explained one of the bystanders, with
that wonderful openness and way of making the worst of everything that
is found in that class.
'The spine of his back most like,' said another, 'like poor Johnson,
over to Stokeley, as never walked another step arter his fall.'
'Ay, he do look mortal bad! 'Tis a terrible bad job!'
'Cut off like a flower!' sighed one of the women. 'There, bear up, my
dear,' to Mrs Gray, with whom she had not been on speaking terms for
some weeks, owing to a few words about her cat's thieving propensities,
'Dontee take on! I knows well enough what you feels, as is only three
weeks since father was took with his fit.'
'Don't be skeered, old gal,' sounded Gray's voice, odd and unnatural to
the ears of the hearers, and far away and independent to himself, 'I
ain't so bad as that comes to'----
And then mercifully he became unconscious, for to go six miles with a
broken leg in a cart without springs on the way to the hospital is not
a joke, and the neighbours' kindly attempts to bring him round were
happily unsuccessful. The worst part of that drive fell to the share
of his wife, who sat holding his head on her lap as they jolted along,
trying to keep the jars and bumps from jerking his leg, though all the
time she firmly believed he was dead, and was already, in her dulled
mind, making pitiful little arrangements about mourning and the
funeral, and contemplating, with dreary equanimity, a widowed existence
with three-and-sixpence a week for her and Tom and Bill and Zoe to live
upon. She never left Zoe out of the calculation, even when it became
most difficult to adjust the number of mouths to be fed with the amount
of food to be put into them, and over this dark future fell the darker
shadow of the workhouse, which closes the vista of life to most of the
poor. No wonder they live entirely in the present, and shut their eyes
persistently to the future!
There was not much going back into the past when she was a girl and the
'master' a lad, and they went courting of a Sunday afternoon along the
green lanes. Life had been too matter-of-fact and full of hard work to
leave much sentiment even in memory.
Mr Robins heard of the accident in the evening, and went up to the
cottage, where he found Bill taking care of Zoe, who was having a fine
time of it, having soon discovered that she had only to cry for
anything that evening to get it, and that it was an occasion for
displaying a will of her own in the matter of going to bed, and being
preternaturally wide awake and inclined for a game, when on other
nights she was quite content to be laid down in the wooden cradle,
which was rapidly becoming too small for her increasing size.
Poor Bill had been at school when the accident happened, and, of
course, the neighbours had made the very worst of the matter, so the
poor boy hardly knew what part of his father had not been crushed or
injured, or if he had been killed on the spot, or had been taken barely
alive to the hospital. The baby had been pushed into his arms, so that
he could not go up to the farm, nor find Tom to learn the rights of the
matter; so that, when Mr Robins came into the cottage, he found both
Bill and the baby crying together, the fire out, and the kettle upset
into the fender.
'Give me the child,' the organist said. And Bill obeyed, as he did at
the choir practice when he was told to pass a hymn-book, and too
miserable to wonder much at this new aspect of his master, and at
seeing him take the baby as if he knew all about it, and sit down in
father's arm-chair.
'See if you can't make the fire burn up,' he went on; 'the child's
cold.'
Zoe seemed well content with her new nurse, and left off crying, and
sat blinking gravely at the fire, which Bill, much relieved at having
something definite to do, soon roused up to a sparkling, crackling
blaze with some dry sticks; while Mr Robins warmed her small, pink feet.
Bill would certainly have been surprised if he could have seen what was
passing in the organist's mind, a proposal ripening into a firm resolve
that he would take the child home that very night and tell Jane who she
was. Let the village talk as it might, he did not mind; let them say
what they pleased.
He knew enough of village reports to guess that Gray was not as badly
hurt as every one declared; but still, even a trifling accident meant,
at any rate, a week or two of very short commons at the cottage,
perhaps less milk for the baby, or economy over fuel, and the September
days were growing cold and raw, and there had been more than one frost
in the mornings, and the baby's little toes were cold to his warm hand.
Mrs Gray, too, would be occupied and taken up with her husband, and
little Zoe would be pushed about from one to another, and he had heard
that there was scarlatina about, and the relieving officer had been
telling him that very morning how careless the people were about
infection.
The cottage looked quite different in the blazing firelight, and Bill,
encouraged by the organist's presence, tidied up the place, where the
washtub stood just as Mrs Gray had left it; and he set the kettle on to
boil, so that when Mrs Gray and Tom came in it presented quite a
comfortable appearance.
Mrs Gray came in tired and tearful, but decidedly hopeful, having left
Gray comfortably in bed with his leg set, and having received
reassuring opinions from nurse and doctor: and the first alarm and
apprehension being removed, there was a certain feeling of importance
in her position as wife of the injured man, and excitement at a visit
to the country town, both ways in a cart, which does not happen often
in a life-time.
The baby, thanks to the warmth and Mr Robins's nursing, had fallen
asleep in his arms. Mrs Gray was so much confused and bewildered by
the events of the day, that she would hardly have been surprised to see
the Queen with the crown on her head sitting there in the master's
arm-chair, quite at home like, and holding the baby on one arm and the
sceptre on the other; and Tom was of too phlegmatic a disposition to be
surprised at anything. So they made no remark, and Mr Robins laid the
baby, still asleep, in Bill's arms, and went away.
Such a beautiful, quiet September night, with great, soft stars
overhead, and the scent of fallen leaves in the air; the path beneath
his feet was soft with them, and as he passed under the elms which by
daylight were a blaze of sunny gold, some leaves dropped gently on his
head.
'To-morrow,' he said, 'I will bring little Zoe home, and I will let her
mother--I will let Edith know that the child is with me, and that if
she likes'---- It needed but a word, he felt sure, to bring the mother
to the baby, the daughter to her father.
He stood for a moment by the church-yard gate, close to the spot where
that bitter, cruel parting had been, and fancied what the meeting would
be. After all, what was his feeling for little Zoe, and his
imagination of what his little grandchild would be to him in the
future, to the delight of having Edith's arms round his neck and
holding her to his heart once more?
'Edith,' he whispered softly, as he turned away; 'Edith, come home!'
'I wonder,' he said to Jane Sands that night; 'I wonder if you could
find out an address for me?'
She was folding up the tablecloth, and she stopped with a puzzled look.
'An address? Whose?'
'Well,' he said, without looking at her, 'I fancy there are still some
of the Blakes, (the word came out with a certain effort) 'living at
Bilton, and perhaps you could find out from them the address I want;
or, perhaps,' he added quickly, for she understood now, and eager words
were on her lips, 'perhaps you know. There! never mind now; if you
know, you can tell me to-morrow.'