HOW FARES THE CHILD?
Dr. Willett called 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 it _be_ the
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.”
“I _will_ go 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 summat _hid_--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 was _not_ worse.
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 it
_was_ a 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.