A DRIVE TO TWYFORD.
In less 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--a
_very_ anxious 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’t _now_?” 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. _I_ wasn’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?--not _you_--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.