Farm. Since that hunt last autumn Mr. and Mrs. Vale often invited us.
There was no evening service, and we went into the hay-field, and began
throwing the hay at one another. It was rare fun; they might almost have
heard our shouts at Worcester House: and I don't believe but that every
one of us forgot it was Sunday.
What with the sultry weather and the hay, some of us got into a
tolerable heat. The river wore a tempting look; and Tod and Sanker,
without so much as a thought, undressed themselves behind the trees,
and plunged in. It was twilight then; the air had began to wear its
weird silence; the shadows were putting on their ghastliness; the
moon, well up, sailed along under white clouds.
I and Vale were walking slowly back towards the Farm, when a great cry
broke over the water,--a cry as of something in pain; but whether from
anything more than a night-bird, was uncertain. Vale stopped and turned
his head.
A second cry: louder, longer, more distinct, and full of agony. It
came from one of those two in the water. Vale flew back with his fleet
foot--fleeter than any fellow's in the school, except Tod's and Snepp's.
As I followed, a startling recollection came over me, and I wondered
how it was that all of us had been so senseless as to forget it: that
one particular spot on the river was known to be dangerous.
"Bear up; I'm coming," shouted Vale. "Don't lose your heads."
A foot-passenger walking on the other side the fence, saw something
was wrong: if he did not hear Vale's words, he heard the cry, and came
cutting across the field, scattering the hay with his feet. And then I
saw it was Baked Pie; which meant our mathematical master, Mr. Blair.
They had given him at baptism the name of "Pyefinch," after some old
uncle who had money to leave; no second name, nothing but that: and the
school had converted him into "Baked Pie." But I don't think fathers and
mothers have any right to put odd names upon helpless babies and send
them out to be a laughing-stock to the world.
Blair was not a bad fellow, setting his name aside, and had gone in for
honours at Cambridge. We reached the place together.
"What is amiss, Ludlow?"
"I don't know, sir. Todhetley and Sanker are in the water; and we've
heard cries."
"In the water to-night! And _there_!"
Vale, already in the middle of the river, was swimming back, holding up
Sanker. But Tod was nowhere to be seen. Mr. Blair looked up and down;
and an awful fear came over me. The current led down to Mr. Charles
Vale's mill--Vale's uncle. More than one man had found his death there.
"Oh, Mr. Blair! where is he? What has become of him?"
"Hush!" breathed Blair. He was quietly slipping off some of his things,
his eyes fixed on a particular part of the river. In he went, striking
out without more splash than he could help, and reached it just as Tod's
head appeared above water. _The third time of rising._ I did not go in
for such a girl's trick as to faint; but I never afterwards could trace
the minutes as they had passed until Tod was lying on the grass under
the trees. _That_ I remember always. The scene is before my eyes now as
plainly as it was then, though more time has since gone by than perhaps
you'd think for: the treacherous river flowing on calmly, the quivering
leaves overhead, through which the moon was glittering, and Tod lying
there white and motionless. Mr. Blair had saved his life; there could be
no question about that, saved it only by a minute of time; and I thought
to myself I'd never call him Baked Pie again.
"Instead of standing moonstruck, Ludlow, suppose you make a run to the
Farm and see what help you can get," spoke Mr. Blair. "Todhetley must be
carried there, and put between hot blankets."
Help was found. Sanker walked to the Farm, Tod was carried; and a
regular bustle set in when they arrived there. Both were put to bed; Tod
had come-to then. Mrs. Vale and the servants ran up and down like wild
Indians; and the good old lady with the white hair insisted upon sitting
up by Tod's bedside all night.
"No, mother," said Mr. Vale; "some of us will do that."
"My son, I tell you that I shall watch by him myself," returned the old
lady; and, as they deferred to her always, she did.
When explanation of the accident was given--as much of it as ever could
be given--it sounded rather strange. _Both_ of them had been taken with
cramp, and the river was not in fault, after all. Tod said that he had
been in the water two or three minutes, when he was seized with what he
supposed to be cramp in the legs, though he never had it before. He was
turning to strike out for the bank, when he found himself seized by
Sanker. They loosed each other in a minute, but Tod was helpless, and he
sank.
Sanker's story was very much the same. He was seized with cramp, and
in his fear caught hold of Tod for protection. Tod was an excellent
swimmer, Sanker a poor one; but while Sanker's cramp grew better, Tod's
disabled him. Most likely, as we decided when we heard this, Sanker, who
never went down at all, would have got out of the water without help;
Tod would have been drowned but for Blair. He had sunk twice when the
rescue came. Mr. Featherston, the man of pills who attended the school,
said it was all through their having jumped into the water when they
were in a white heat; the cold had struck to them. While Mrs. Hall, with
her grave face, thought it was through their having gone bathing on a
Sunday.
Whatever it was through, old Frost made a commotion. He was not severe
in general, but he raised noise enough over this. What with one thing
and another, the school, he declared, was being everlastingly upset.
Tod and Sanker came back from Mr. Vale's the next day; Monday. The
Doctor ordered them into his study, and sat there with his cane in
his hand while he talked, rapping the table with it now and again as
fiercely as if it had been their backs. And the backs would surely have
had it but for having just escaped coffins.
All this would not have been much, but it was to lead to a great deal
more. To quite a chain of events, as I have said; and to trouble and
sorrow in the far-off ending. Hannah, at home, was fond of repeating to
Lena what she called the sayings of poor Richard: "For want of a nail
the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a
horse the rider was lost; and all for the want of a little care about a
horse-shoe nail." The horse-shoe nail and the man's loss seemed a great
deal nearer each other than that Sunday night's accident, and what was
eventually to come of it. A small mustard-seed, dropped into the ground,
shoots forth and becomes in the end a great tree.
On the Wednesday, who should come over but the Squire, clasping Pyefinch
Blair's hand in his, and saying with tears in his good old eyes that he
had saved his son's life. Old Frost, you see, had written the news to
Dyke Manor. Tod, strong and healthy in constitution, was all right
again, not a hair of his head the worse for it; but Sanker had not
escaped so well.
As early as the Monday night, the first night of his return home from
Vale Farm, it began to come on; and the next morning the boys, sleeping
in the same room, told a tale of Sanker's having been delirious. He
had sat up in bed and woke them all up with his cries, thinking he was
trying to swim out of deep water, and could not. Next he said he wanted
some water to drink; they gave him one draught after another till the
big water-jug was emptied, but his thirst kept on saying "More! more!"
Sanker did not seem to remember any of this. He came down with the rest
in the morning, his face very white, except for a pinkish spot in the
middle of his cheeks, and he thought the fellows must be chaffing him.
The fellows told him they were not; and one, it was Bill Whitney, said
they would not think of chaffing him just after his having been so
nearly drowned.
It went on to the afternoon. Sanker ate no dinner, for I looked to see;
he was but one amidst the many, and it was not noticed by the masters.
And if it had been, they'd have thought that the ducking had taken away
his appetite. The drawing-master, Wilson, followed suit with Hall, and
said he was not surprised at their being nearly drowned, after making
hay on the Sunday. But, about four o'clock, when the first-class were
before Dr. Frost with their Greek books, Sanker suddenly let his fall.
Instead of stooping for it, his eyes took a far-off look, as if they
were seeking for it round the walls of the room.
"Lay hold of him," said Dr. Frost.
He did not faint, but seemed dull: it looked as much like a lazy fit
as anything; and he was sensible. They put him to sit on one of the
benches, and then he began to tremble.
"He must be got to bed," said the Doctor. "Mr. Blair, kindly see Mrs.
Hall, will you. Tell her to warm it. Stay. Wait a moment."
Dr. Frost followed Mr. Blair from the hall. It was to say that Sanker
had better go at once to the blue-room. If the bed there was not aired,
or otherwise ready, Sanker's own bedding could be taken to it. "I'll
give Mrs. Hall the orders myself," said the Doctor.
The blue-room--called so from its blue-stained walls--was the one used
on emergencies. When we found Sanker had been taken there, we made up
our minds that he was going to have an illness. Featherston came and
thought the same.
The next day, Wednesday, he was in a sort of fever, rambling every other
minute. The Squire said he should like to see him, and Blair took him
upstairs. Sanker lay with the same pink hue on his cheeks, only deeper;
and his eyes were bright and glistening. Hall, who was addicted to
putting in her word on all occasions when it could tell against us boys,
said if he had stayed two or three days in bed at Vale Farm, where he
was first put, he'd have had nothing of this. Perhaps Hall was right. It
had been Sanker's own doings to get up. When Mrs. Vale saw him coming
downstairs, she wanted to send him back to bed again, but he told her he
was quite well, and came off to school.
Sanker knew the Squire, and put out his hand. The Squire took it without
saying a word. He told us later that to him Sanker's face looked as if
it had death in it. When he would have spoken, Sanker's eyes had grown
wild again, and he was talking nonsense about his class-books.
"Johnny, boy, you sit in this room a bit at times; you are patient and
not rough," said the Squire, when he went out to his carriage, for he
had driven over. "I have asked them to let you be up there as much as
they can. The poor boy is very ill, and has no relatives near him."
Dwarf Giles, touching his hat to Tod and me, was at the horses' heads,
Bob and Blister. The cattle knew us: I'm sure of it. They had had
several hours' rest in old Frost's stables while the Squire went on foot
about the neighbourhood to call on people. Dr. Frost, standing out with
us, admired the fine dark horses very much; at which Giles was prouder
than if the Doctor had admired _him_. He cared for nothing in the world
so much as those two animals, and groomed them with a will.
"You'll take care that he wants for nothing, Doctor," I heard the Squire
say as he shook hands. "Don't spare any care and expense to get him well
again; I wish to look upon this illness as my charge. It seems something
like an injustice, you see, that my boy should come off without damage,
and this poor fellow be lying there."
He took the reins and stepped up to his seat, Giles getting up beside
him. As we watched the horses step off with the high step that the
Squire loved, he looked back and nodded to us. And it struck me that, in
this care for Sanker, the Pater was trying to make some recompense for
the suspicion cast on him a year before at Dyke Manor.
It was a sharp, short illness, the fever raging, though not infectious;
I had never been with any one in anything like it before, and I did not
wish to be again. To hear how Sanker's mind rambled, was marvellous; but
some of us shivered when it came to raving. Very often he'd be making
hay; fighting against numbers that were throwing cocks at him, while
he could not throw back at them. Then he'd be in the water, buffeting
with high waves, and shrieking out that he was drowning, and throwing
his thin hot arms aloft in agony. Sometimes the trouble would be his
lessons, hammering at Latin derivations and Greek roots; and next he was
toiling through a problem in Euclid. One night when he was at the worst,
old Featherston lost his head, and the next day Mr. Carden came posting
from Worcester in his carriage.
There were medical men of renown nearer; but somehow in extremity we all
turned to him. And his skill did not fail here. Whether it might be any
special relief he was enabled to give, or that the disease had reached
its crisis, I cannot tell, but from the moment Mr. Carden stood at his
bedside, Sanker began to mend. Featherston said the next day that the
worst of the danger had passed. It seemed to us that it had just set in;
no rat was ever so weak as Sanker.
The holidays came then, and the boys went home: all but me. Sanker
couldn't lift a hand, but he could smile at us and understand, and he
said he should like to have me stay a bit with him; so they sent word
from home I might. Mr. Blair stayed also; Dr. Frost wished it. The
Doctor was subpoenaed to give evidence on a trial at Westminster, and
had to hasten up to London. Blair had no relatives at all, and did not
care to go anywhere. He told me in confidence that his staying there
saved his pocket. Blair was strict in school, but over Sanker's bed
he got as friendly with me as possible. I liked him; he was always
gentlemanly; and I grew to dislike their calling him Baked Pie as much
as he disliked it himself.
"You go out and get some air, Ludlow," he said to me the day after the
school broke up, "or we may have you ill next."
Upon that I demanded what I wanted with air. I had taken precious long
walks with the fellows up to the day before yesterday.
"You go," said he, curtly.
"Go, Johnny," said Sanker, in his poor weak voice, which couldn't raise
itself above a whisper. "I'm getting well, you know."
My way of taking the air was to sit down at one of the schoolroom desks
and write to Tod. In about five minutes some one walked round the house
as if looking for an entrance, and then stopped at the side-door.
Putting my head out of the window, I took a look at her. It was a young
lady in a plain grey dress and straw bonnet, with a cloak over her arm,
and an umbrella put up against the sun. The back regions were turned
inside out, for they had begun the summer cleaning that morning, and the
cook came clanking along in pattens to answer the knock.
"This is Dr. Frost's, I believe. Can I see him?"
It was a sweet, calm, gentle voice. The cook, who had no notion of
visitors arriving at the cleaning season, when the boys were just got
rid of, and the Doctor had gone away, stared at her for a moment, and
then asked in her surly manner whether she had business with Dr. Frost.
That cook and old Molly at home might have run in a curricle, they were
such a match in temper.
"Business!--oh, certainly. I must see him, if you please."
The cook shook off her pattens, and went up the back stairs, leaving the
young lady outside. As it was business, she supposed she must call Mr.
Blair.
"Somebody wants Dr. Frost," was her announcement to him. "A girl at the
side door."
Which of course caused Blair to suppose it might be a child from one
of the cottages come to ask for help of some sort; as they did come
sometimes. He thought Hall might have been called to her, but he went
down at once; without his coat, and his invalid-room slippers on.
Naturally, when he saw the young lady, it took him aback.
"I beg your pardon, sir; I hope you will not deem me an intruder. I have
just arrived here."
Blair stared almost as much as the cook had done. The face was so
pleasant, the voice so refined, that he inwardly called himself a fool
for showing himself to her in that trim. For once, speech failed him; a
thing Blair had never done at mathematics, I can tell you; he had not
the smallest notion who she was or what she wanted. And the silence
seemed to frighten her.
"Am I too late?" she asked, her face growing white. "Has the--the worse
happened?"
"Happened to what?" questioned Blair, for he never once thought of the
sick fellow above, and was all at sea. "Pardon me, young lady, but I do
not know what you are speaking of."
"Of my brother, Edward Sanker. Oh, sir! is he dead?"
"Miss Sanker! Truly I beg your pardon for my stupidity. He is out of
danger; is getting well."
She sat down for a minute on the old stone bench beyond the door,
roughed with the crowd of boys' names cut in it. Her lips were trembling
just a little, and the soft brown eyes had tears in them; but the face
was breaking into a happy smile.
"Oh, Dr. Frost, thank you, thank you! Somehow I never thought of him as
dead until this moment, and it startled me."
Fancy her taking him for Frost! Blair was a good-looking fellow under
thirty, slender and well made. The Doctor stood out an old guy of fifty,
with a stern face and black knee-breeches.
"My mother had your letter, sir, but she was not able to come. My father
is very ill, needing her attention every moment; she strove to see on
which side her duty lay--to stay with him, or to come to Edward; and she
thought it must lie in remaining with papa. So she sent me. I left Wales
last night."
"Is Mr. Sanker's a fever, too?" asked Blair, in wonder.
"No, an accident. He was hurt in the mine."
It was odd that it should be so; the two illnesses occurring at the same
time! Mr. Sanker, it appeared, fell from the shaft; his leg was broken,
and there were other injuries. At first they were afraid for him.
Blair fell into a dilemma. He wouldn't have minded Mrs. Sanker; but he
did not know much about young ladies, not being accustomed to them. She
got up from the bench.
"Mamma bade me say to you, Dr. Frost----"
"I beg your pardon," interrupted Blair again. "I am not Dr. Frost;
the Doctor went to London this morning. My name is Blair--one of the
masters. Will you walk in?"
He shut her into the parlour on his way to call Hall, and to put on his
boots and coat. Seeing me, he turned into the schoolroom.
"Ludlow, are not the Sankers connections of yours?"
"Not of mine. Of Mrs. Todhetley's."
"It's all the same. You go in and talk to her. I don't know what on
earth to do. She has come to be with Sanker, but she won't like to
stay here with only you and me. If the Doctor were at home it would be
different."
"She seems an uncommon nice girl, Mr. Blair."
"Good gracious!" went on Blair in his dilemma. "The Doctor told me he
had written to Wales some time ago; but he supposed Mrs. Sanker could
not make it convenient to come; and yesterday he wrote again, saying
there was no necessity for it, as Sanker was out of danger. I don't
know what on earth to do with her," repeated Blair, who had a habit of
getting hopelessly bewildered on occasions. "Hall! Where's Mrs. Hall?"
As he went calling out down the flagged passage, a boy came whistling to
the door, carrying a carpet-bag: Miss Sanker's luggage. The coach she
had had to take on leaving the rail put her down half-a-mile away, and
she walked up in the sun, leaving her bag to be brought after her.
It seemed that we were going in for mistakes. When I went to her, and
began to say who I was, she mistook me for Tod. It made me laugh.
"Tod is a great, strong fellow, as tall as Mr. Blair, Miss Sanker. I am
only Johnny Ludlow."
"Edward has told me all about you both," she said, taking my hand, and
looking into my face with her sweet eyes. "Tod's proud and overbearing,
though generous; but you have ever been pleasant with him. I am afraid I
shall begin to call you 'Johnny' at once."
"No one ever calls me anything else; except the masters here."
"You must have heard of me--Mary?"
"But you are not Mary?"
"Yes, I am."
That she was telling truth any fellow might see, and yet at first I
hardly believed her. Sanker had told us his sister Mary was beautiful as
an angel. _Her_ face had no beauty in it, so to say; it was only kind,
nice, and loving. People called Mrs. Parrifer a beautiful woman; perhaps
I had taken my notions of beauty from her; she had a Roman nose, and
great big eyes that rolled about, had a gruff voice, and a lovely
peach-and-white complexion (but people said it was paint), and looked
three parts a fool. Mary Sanker was just the opposite to all this, and
her cheeks were dimpled. But still she had not what people call beauty.
"May I go up and see Edward?"
"I should think so. Mr. Blair, I suppose, will be back directly. He is
looking very ill: you will not be frightened at him?"
"After picturing him in my mind as dead, he will not frighten me,
however ill he may look."
"I should say the young lady had better take off her bonnet afore going
in. Young Mr. Sanker haven't seen bonnets of late, and might be scared."
The interruption came from Hall; we turned, and saw her standing there.
She spoke resentfully, as if Miss Sanker had offended her; and no doubt
she had, by coming when the house was not in company order, and had
nothing better to send in for dinner but cold mutton and half a rhubarb
pie. Hall would have to get the mutton hashed now, which she would never
have done for me and Blair.
"Yes, if you please; I should much like to take my bonnet off," said
Miss Sanker, going up to Hall with a smile. "I think you must be Mrs.
Hall. My brother has talked of you."
Hall took her to a room, and presently she came forth all fresh and
nice, the travel dust gone, and her bright brown hair smooth and glossy.
Her grey dress was soft, one that would not disturb a sick-room; it had
a bit of white lace at the throat and wrists, and a little pearl brooch
in front. She was twenty-one last birthday, but did not look as much.
Blair had been in to prepare Sanker, and his great eyes (only great
since his illness) were staring for her with a wild expectation. You
never saw brother and sister less alike; the one so nice, the other ugly
enough to frighten the crows. Sanker had my hand clasped tight in his,
when she stooped to kiss him. I don't think he knew it; but I could not
get away. In that moment I saw how fond they were of each other.
"Could not the mother come, Mary?"
"No, papa is--is not well," she said, for of course she would not tell
him yet of any accident. "Papa wanted her there, and you wanted her
here; she thought her duty lay at home, and she was not afraid but that
God would raise up friends to take care of you."
"What is the matter with him?"
"Some complicated illness or other," Mary Sanker answered, in careless
tones. "He was a little better when I came away. You have been very ill,
Edward."
He held up his wasted hand as proof, with a half smile; but it fell
again.
"I don't believe I should have pulled through it all, Mary, but for
Blair."
"That's the gentleman I saw. The one without a coat. Has he nursed you?"
Sanker motioned with his white lips. "Right well, too. He, and Hall, and
Johnny here. Old Hall is as good as gold when any of us are ill."
"And pays herself out by being tarter than ever when we are well," I
could not help saying: for it was the truth.
"Blair saved Todhetley's life," Sanker went on. "We used to call him
Baked Pie before, and give him all the trouble we could."
"Ought you to talk, Edward?"
"It is your coming that seems to give me strength for it," he answered.
"I did not know that Frost had written home."
"There was a delay with the letters, or I might have been here three
days ago," said Miss Sanker, speaking in penitent tones, as if she were
in the habit of taking other people's faults upon herself. "While papa
is not well, the clerk down at the mine opens the business letters.
Seeing one directed to papa privately, he neither spoke of it nor sent
it up, and for three days it lay unopened."
Sanker had gone off into one of his weak fits before she finished
speaking: lying with his eyes and mouth wide open, between sleeping and
waking. Hall came in and said with a tone that snapped Miss Sanker up,
_it wouldn't do_: if people could not be there without talking, they
must not be there at all. I don't say but that she was a capable nurse,
or that when a fellow was downright ill, she spared the wine in the
arrowroot, and the sugar in the tea. Mary Sanker sat down by the
bedside, her finger on her lips to show that she meant to keep silence.