how Sanker was getting on; and Bill Whitney brought his mother. Mrs.
Vale told Mary Sanker that she had better sleep at the Farm, as the
Doctor was away; she'd give her a nice room and make her comfortable.
Upon that, Lady Whitney offered a spacious bed and dressing-room at
the Hall. Mary thanked them both, saying how kind they were to be so
friendly with a stranger; but thought she must go to the Farm, as it
would be within a walk night and morning. Bill spoke up, and said the
carriage could fetch and bring her; but Vale Farm was decided upon; and
when night came, I went with her to show her the way.
"That's the water they went into, Miss Sanker; and that's the very spot
behind the trees." She shivered just a little as she looked, but did not
say much. Mrs. Vale met us at the door, and the old lady kissed Mary and
told her she was a good girl to come fearlessly all the way alone from
Wales to nurse her sick brother. When Mary came back the next morning,
she said they had given her such a beautiful room, the dimity curtains
whiter than snow, and the sheets scented with lavender.
Her going out to sleep appeased Hall;--that, or something else. She was
gracious all day, and sent us in a couple of chickens for dinner. Mr.
Blair cut them up and helped us. He had written to tell Dr. Frost in
London of Miss Sanker's arrival, and while we were at table a telegram
came back, saying Mrs. Hall was to take care of Miss Sanker, and make
her comfortable.
It went on so for three or four days; Mary sleeping at the Farm, and
coming back in the morning. Sanker got well enough to be taken to a sofa
in the pretty room that poor Mrs. Frost sat in nearly to the last; and
we were all four growing very jolly, as intimate as if we'd known each
other as infants. I had taken to call her Mary, hearing Sanker do it so
often; and twice the name slipped accidentally from Mr. Blair. The news
from Wales was better and better. For visitors we had Mrs. Vale, Lady
Whitney, and Bill, and old Featherston. Some of them came every day. Dr.
Frost was detained in London. The trial did not come on so soon as it
was put down for; and when it did, it lasted a week, and the witnesses
had to stay there. He had written to Mary, telling her to make herself
quite happy, for she was in good hands. He also wrote to Mrs. Vale, and
to Hall.
Well, it was either the fourth or fifth day. I know it was on Monday;
and at five o'clock we were having tea for the first time in Sanker's
sitting-room, the table drawn near the sofa, and Mary pouring it out. It
was the hottest of hot weather, the window was up as high as it would
go, but not a breath of air came in. Therefore, to see Blair begin to
shake as if he were taken with an ague, was something inexplicable. His
face looked grey, his ears and hands had turned a sort of bluish white.
"Halloa!" said Sanker, who was the first to notice him. "What's the
matter, sir?"
Blair got up, and sat down again, his limbs shaking, his teeth
chattering. Mary Sanker hastily put some of the hot tea into a saucer,
and held it to his lips. His teeth rattled against the china; I thought
they would bite a piece out of it; and in trying to take the saucer from
Miss Sanker, the tea was spilt on the carpet.
"Just call Mrs. Hall, Johnny," said Sanker, who had propped himself up
on his elbow to stare.
Hall came, and Mr. Featherston came; but they could not make anything
out of it except that Blair had had a shaking-fit. He was soon all right
again (except for a burning heat); but the surgeon, given naturally
to croak (or he wouldn't have got so frightened about Sanker when Mr.
Carden was telegraphed for), said he hoped the mathematical master had
not set in for fever.
He had set in for something. That was clear. The shaking-fits took him
now and again, giving place to spells of low fever. Featherston was
not sure whether it had not a "typhoid character," he said; but the
suspicion was quite enough, and our visitors fell off. Mrs. Vale was the
only one who came; she laughed at supposing she could be afraid of it.
So there we still were, we four; prisoners, as may be said; with some
fever amongst us that perhaps might be of a typhoid character. Mr.
Featherston said (or Hall, I forget which) that it must have been
smouldering within him ever since the Sunday night when he jumped into
the river, and Blair thought so himself.
Do not imagine he was as ill as Sanker had been. Nothing of the sort. He
got up every morning, and was in Mrs. Frost's sitting-room with us until
evening: but he grew nearly as weak as Sanker, and wanted pretty nearly
as much waiting on. Sometimes his hands were like a burning coal;
sometimes so cold that Mary would take them in hers to try and rub a
little life into them. She was the gentlest nurse possible, and did not
seem to think anything more of waiting on him than on her brother. Mrs.
Hall would stand by and say there was nothing left for her to do.
One day Lady Whitney came over, braving the typhoid suspicion, and asked
to see Miss Sanker in the great drawing-room; where she stood sniffing
at a bottle of aromatic vinegar.
"My dear," she said, when Mary went to her, "I do not think this is at
all a desirable position for you to be placed in. I should not exactly
like it for one of my own daughters. Mr. Blair is a very gentleman-like
man, and all that, with quite proper feelings no doubt; but sitting with
him in illness is altogether different from sitting with your brother.
Featherston tells me there's little or no danger of infection, and I
have come to take you back to the Hall with me."
But Mary would not go. It was not the position she should have
voluntarily chosen, but circumstances had led her into it, and she
thought her duty lay in staying where she was at present, was the
substance of her answer. Mr. Blair had nursed her brother through his
dangerous illness, and it would be cruelly ungrateful to leave him, now
that he was ill himself. It seemed a duty thrown expressly in her way,
she added; and her mother approved of what she was doing.
So Lady Whitney went away (leaving the bottle of aromatic vinegar as a
present for the sick-room) three parts convinced. Any way, when she got
home, she said that Mary Sanker was a sweet, good girl, trusty to her
fingers' ends.
I'm sure she was like sunshine in the room, and read to us out of the
Bible just as Harry Vale's fine old grandmother might have done. The
first day that Sanker took a drive in a fly, he was tired afterwards,
and went to bed and to sleep at tea-time. Towards sunset, before I
walked with her to the Farm, Mary took the Book as usual; and then
hesitated, as if in doubt whether to presume to read or not, Sanker
being away.
"Oh yes; yes, if you please," said Mr. Blair.
She began the tenth chapter of St. John. It is a passably long one, as
every one knows; and when she laid the Book down again, Blair had his
eyes shut and his head resting on the back of the easy chair where he
generally sat. His face never looked more still and white. I glanced at
Mary and she at me; we thought he was worse, and she went up to him.
"I ought not to have read so long a chapter," she gently said. "I fear
you are feeling worse."
"No; I was only thinking. Thinking what an angel you are," he added in
low, impassioned, yet reverent tones, as he bent forward to look up in
her face, and took both her hands for a moment in his.
She drew them away at once, saying, as she passed me, that she was going
to put on her bonnet, and should be ready in a minute. Of course it
might have been the reflection of the red sun-clouds, but I never saw
any face so glowing in all my life.
The next move old Featherston made, was to decide that the fever was
_not_ of a typhoid character; and visitors came about us again. It was
something like opening a public-house after a spell of closing; all
the Whitneys flocked in together, except Sir John, who was in town for
Parliament. Mrs. Hall was uncommonly short with every one. She had
said from the first there was nothing infectious in the fever, told
Featherston so to his face, and resented people's having stayed away. I
wrote home to tell them there. On the Saturday Dr. Frost arrived, and we
were glad to see him. Blair was getting rather better then.
"Well, that Sunday night's plunge in the water has had its revenge!"
remarked Dr. Frost. "It only wants Todhetley and Vale to follow suit."
But neither of them had the least intention of following suit. On the
Monday Tod arrived to surprise us, strong as ever. The Squire had
trusted him to drive the horses: you should have seen them spanking in
at the gate of Worcester House, pawing the gravel, as Tod in the high
carriage, the ribbons in his hands, and the groom beside him, brought
them up beautifully to the door. Some people called Tod ugly, saying his
features were strong; but I know he promised to be the finest man in our
two counties.
He brought an invitation for the sick and the well. When the two
invalids were able to get to Dyke Manor, Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley expected
to see them, for change of air. Mary Sanker and I were to go as soon as
we liked. Which we did in a few days, and were followed by Sanker and
Mr. Blair: both able to help themselves then, and getting well all one
way.
It did not surprise people very much to hear that the mathematical
master and Mary Sanker had fallen in love with one another. He (as Bill
Whitney's mother had put in) was gentleman-like; a good-looking fellow
to boot: and you have heard what _she_ was. The next week but one after
arriving at Dyke Manor, Blair took Mrs. Todhetley into his confidence,
though he had said nothing to Mary. They would be sure to marry in the
end, she privately told the Squire, for their likeness to each other had
struck her at first sight.
"Mary will not have a shilling, Mr. Blair; she will go to her husband
(whenever she shall marry) with even a very poor outfit," Mrs. Todhetley
explained, wishing Blair to fully understand things. "Her father, Philip
Sanker, was a gentleman bred and born, but his patrimony was small. He
was persuaded to embark it in a Welsh mine, and lost all. Report said
some roguery was at work, but I don't know that it was. It ended in his
becoming overlooker on the very same mine, at a salary so small that
they could hardly have reared their family anywhere but in Wales. Mary
does not play, or draw, you see; she has no accomplishments."
"She has what is a great deal better; she does not want them," answered
Blair, his pale face lighting up.
"In point of fact, the Sankers--as I fancy--have sacrificed the girls'
interests to the boys; they of course must have a thorough education,"
remarked Mrs. Todhetley. "They are good people, both; you could not
fail to like them. I sometimes think, Mr. Blair, that the children of
these refined men and women (and Philip Sanker and his wife are that),
compelled to live closely and to look at every sixpence before it is
spent, turn out all the better for it."
"I am sure they do," answered Blair, earnestly. "It was my own case."
Taking Mrs. Todhetley into confidence meant as to his means as well as
his love. He had saved a little money during the eight years he had been
at work for himself--about two hundred pounds. It might be possible, he
thought, to take a school with this, and set up a tent at once: he and
Mary. Mrs. Todhetley shook her head; she could make as much of small
sums as any one, but fancied this would scarcely be enough for what he
wished.
"There would be the furniture," she ventured to say with some
hesitation, not liking to damp him.
"I think that is often included in the purchase-money for the
good-will," said Blair.
He had been acting on this notion before speaking to Mrs. Todhetley, and
a friend of his in London, the Reverend Mr. Lockett, was already looking
out for any schools that might be in the market. In a few days news came
down of one to be disposed of in the neighbourhood of London. Mr.
Lockett thought it was as good an investment as Blair was likely to
find, he wrote word: only, the purchase-money, inclusive of furniture,
was four hundred pounds instead of two.
"It is of no use to think of it," said Mr. Blair, pushing his curly hair
(they used to say he was vain of it at Frost's) from his perplexed brow.
"My two hundred pounds will not go far towards that."
"It seems to me that the first step will be to go up and see the place,"
remarked Mrs. Todhetley. "If what Mr. Lockett says of the school be
true; that is, if the people who have the disposal of it are not
deceiving him; it must be a very good thing."
"I suppose you mean that half the purchase-money should remain on it as
a mortgage, to be paid off later," cried Blair, seizing the idea and
brightening up.
"No; not exactly," said Mrs. Todhetley, getting as red as a rose, for
she did not like to tell him what she did mean; it looked rather like a
conspiracy.
"Look here, Blair," cried the Squire, taking him in the garden by the
button-hole, "_I_ will see about the other two hundred. You go up and
make inquiries on the spot; and perhaps I'll go too; I should like a run
up; and if the affair is worth your while, we'll pay the money down on
the nail, and so have done with it."
It was Blair's turn to grow red now. "Do you mean, sir, that you--that
you--would advance the half of the money? But it would be too generous.
I have no claim on you----"
"No claim on me!" burst forth the Squire, in a passion, pinning him
against the wall of the pigeon-house. "No claim on me! When you saved my
son from drowning only a few weeks ago! And had an ague through it! No
claim on me! What next will you say?"
"But that was nothing, sir. Any man, with the commonest feelings
of humanity, would jump into the water if he saw a fellow-creature
sinking."
"Commonest fiddlestick!" roared the Squire. "If this school is one
likely to answer your purpose, you put down your two hundred pounds, and
I will see to the rest. There! We'll go up to-day."
"Oh, sir, I never expected this. Perhaps in a year or two I shall be
able to pay the money back again: but the goodness I can never repay."
"Don't you trouble your head about paying me back till you're asked to
do it," retorted the Squire, mortally offended at the notion. "If you
are too proud to take it and say nothing about it, I'll give it to Mary
Sanker instead of you. I will, too. Mind, sir! that half shall be your
wife's, not yours."
If you'll believe me, there were tears in old Blair's eyes. He was soft
at times. The Squire gave him another thrust, which nearly sent Blair
into the pigeon-house, and then walked off with his head up and his
nankeen coat-skirts held out behind, to watch Drew give the green meat
to the pigs. Blair got over his push, and went to find Miss Mary, his
thin cheeks alight with a spot as red as Sanker's had worn when his
illness was coming on.
They went up to London that day. The Squire had plenty of sense when he
chose to exercise it; and instead of trusting to his own investigation
and Blair's (which would have been the likeliest thing for him to do in
general) he took a lawyer to the spot.
It proved to be all right. The gentleman giving up the school had made
some money at it, and was going abroad to his friends, who had settled
in Queensland. Any efficient man, he said to the Squire, able to _keep_
pupils when once he had secured them, could not fail to do well at it.
The clergyman, Mr. Lockett, had called on one or two of the parents, who
confirmed what was asserted. Altogether it was a straightforward thing,
but they wouldn't abate a shilling of the four hundred pounds.
The Squire concluded the bargain on the spot, for other applicants were
after it, and there was danger in delay. He came back to Dyke Manor; and
the next thing he did was to accompany Mary Sanker home, and tell the
news there.
Mr. Blair stayed in London to take possession, and get things in order.
He had only time for a few days' flying visit to Mr. and Mrs. Sanker in
Wales before opening his new school. There was no opposition there:
people are apt to judge prospects according to their own circumstances;
and they seemed to think it a good offer for Mary.
There was no opposition anywhere. Dr. Frost found a new mathematical
master without trouble, and sent Blair his best wishes and a full set of
plated spoons and forks and things, engraved with the initials P. M. B.
He was wise enough to lay out the sum he wished to give in useful
things, instead of a silver tea-pot or any other grand article of that
kind, which would not be brought to light once a year.
Blair cribbed a week's holiday at Michaelmas, and went down to be
married. We saw them at the week's end as they passed through Worcester
station. Mary looked the same sweet girl as ever, in the same quiet grey
dress (or another that was related to it); and Blair was jolly. He
clasped the Squire's hands as if he wanted to take them with him. We
handed in a big basket of grapes and nectarines from Mrs. Todhetley; and
Mary's nice face smiled and nodded her thanks to the last, as the train
puffed on.
"Good luck to them!" said Tod.
Good luck to them. You will hear what luck they had.
For this is _not_ the end of that Sunday night's work, or it would have
hardly been worth relating, seeing that people get married every day,
and no one thinks cheese of it but themselves. The end has to come.
XII.
"JERRY'S GAZETTE."
The school, taken to by Mr. Blair, was in one of the suburbs of London.
It may be as well not to mention which of them; but some of the families
yet living there cannot fail to remember the circumstances when they
read this. For what I am going to tell you of is true. It did not happen
last year; nor the year before. When it did happen, is of no consequence
to any one.
When Pyefinch Blair got into the house, he found that it had some
dilapidations, which had escaped his notice, and would have to be
repaired. Not an uncommon case by any means. Mr. Blair paid the four
hundred pounds for the school, including the furniture and good-will,
and that drained him of his money. It was not a bad bargain, as bargains
go. He then had the house put into fair order, and bought a little more
furniture that seemed necessary to him, intending that his boys should
be comfortable, as well as the young wife he was soon to bring home.
The school did not profess to be one of those higher-class schools
that charge a hundred a year and extras. It was moderate in terms and
moderate in size; the pupils being chiefly sons of well-to-do tradesmen,
some of them living on the spot. At first, Blair (bringing with him his
Cambridge notions) entertained thoughts of raising the school to a
higher price and standard. But it would have been a risk; almost like
beginning a fresh venture. And when he found that the school paid well,
and masters and boys got on comfortably, he dropped the wish.
More than two years went by. One evening, early in February, Mrs. Blair
was sitting by the parlour fire after tea, with a great boy on her lap,
who was forward with his tongue, and had just begun to walk with a
totter. I don't think you could have seen much difference in _her_ from
what she was as Mary Sanker. She had the same neat sort of dress and
quiet manner, the fresh gentle face and sweet eyes, and the pretty,
smooth brown hair. Her husband told her sometimes that she would spoil
the boys with kindness. If any one fell into disgrace, she was sure to
beg him off; it was wonderful what a good mother she was to them, and
only twenty-four years old yet.
Mr. Blair was striding the carpet with his head down, as one in
perplexed thought, a scowl upon his brow. It was something unusual, for
he was always bright. He was as slender and good-looking a fellow as he
used to be. Mrs. Blair noticed him and spoke.
"Have you a headache, Pyefinch?" She had long ago got over the odd sound
of his Christian name. Habit familiarizes most things.
"No."
"What is it, then?"
He did not make any answer; seemed not to hear her. Mrs. Blair put the
boy down on the hearthrug. The child was baptized Joseph, after Squire
Todhetley, whom they persisted in calling their best friend.
"Run to papa, Joe. Ask him what the matter is."
The young gentleman went swaying across the carpet, with some
unintelligible language of his own. Mr. Blair had no resource but to
pick him up: and he carried him back to his mother.
"What is the matter, Pyefinch?" she asked again, taking his hand. "I am
sure you are not well."
"I am quite well," he said; "but I have got into a little bother lately.
What ails me this evening is, that I find I must tell you of it, and I
don't like to do so. There, Mary, send the child away."
She knew the nursemaid was busy; would not ring, but carried him out
herself. Mr. Blair was sitting down when she returned, staring into the
fire.
"I had hoped you would never know it, Mary; I had not intended that you
should. The fact is----"
Mr. Blair stopped. His wife glanced at him; a serene calm in her eyes, a
firm reliance in her loving tone.
"Do not hesitate, Pyefinch. The greater the calamity, the more need that
I should hear it."
"Nay, it is no such great mischief as to be called a calamity. When I
took to this house and school, I incurred a debt, and I am suddenly
called upon to pay it."
"Do you mean Mr. Todhetley's?"
A smile at the question crossed the schoolmaster's face. "Mr.
Todhetley's was a present; I thought you understood that, Mary. When
I would have spoken of returning it, you may remember that he went into
a passion."
"What debt is it, then?"
"I paid four hundred pounds, you know, for the school; half of it I had
saved; the other half was given by Mr. Todhetley. Well and good, so
far. But I had not thought of one thing--the money that would be wanted
for current expenses, and for the hundred and one odd things that stare
you in the face upon taking to a new concern. Repairs had to be done,
furniture to be bought in; and not a penny coming in until the end
of the quarter: not much then, for most of the boys pay half-yearly.
Lockett, who was down here most days, saw that if I could not get some
money to go on with, there would be no resource but to re-sell the
school. He bestirred himself, and got me the loan of a hundred and fifty
pounds from a friend, at only five per cent. interest. This money I am
suddenly called upon to repay."
"But why?"
"Because he from whom I had it is dead, and the executors have called it
in. It was Mr Wells."
She recognized the name as that of a gentleman with whom they had been
slightly acquainted; he had died suddenly, in the prime of life.
"Has any of it been paid off?"
"None. I could have repaid a portion every half-year as it came round,
but Mr. Wells would not let me. 'You had a great deal better use it in
improving the school and getting things comfortable about you; I am
in no hurry,' was his invariable rejoinder. Lockett thought he meant
eventually to make me a present of the money, being a wealthy man
without near relatives. Of course I never looked for anything of the
sort; but I was as easy as to the debt as though I had not contracted
it."
"Will the executors not let you have the use of the money still?"
"You should see their curt note, ordering its immediate repayment!
Lockett seems more vexed at the turn affairs have taken than even I am.
He was here to-day."
Mrs. Blair sat in silent reflection, wishing she had known of this. Many
an odd shilling that she had thought justified in spending, she would
willingly have recalled now. Not that they could have amounted to much
in the aggregate. Presently she looked at her husband.
"Pyefinch, it seems to me that there's only one thing to do. You must
borrow the sum from some one else, which of course will make us only as
much in debt as we are now; and we must pay it off by instalments as
quickly as we possibly can."
"It is what Lockett and I have decided on already as the only course.
Why, Mary, this worry has been on our minds for a fortnight past," he
added, turning quickly. "But now that it has come to borrowing again,
and not from a friend, I felt that I ought to tell you. Besides, there's
another thing."
"Go on," she said.
"We have found a man to advance the money. Lockett and I picked him out
from the _Times_ advertisements. These fellows are awful rogues, for the
most part; but this is not one of the worst. Lockett made inquiries of
a parishioner of his who understands these things, and finds Gavity
(that's his name) is tolerably fair for a professional money-lender. I
shall have to pay him higher interest. And he wants me to give him a
bill of sale on the furniture."
"A bill of sale on the furniture! What is that?"