CONVALESCENCE
The voice of Pasco was heard shouting up the stairs to his wife. Mrs.
Pepperill, glad to escape the lecture, went to the door and called down,
“Don’t make such a noise, when the girl is ill.”
“Come, will you, Zerah; there’s some one wants to have a say with you.”
With a curt excuse to the parson, Mrs. Pepperill descended. She found
her husband at the foot of the stairs, with his hand on the banister.
“Pasco,” said she, “what do’y think now? The parson has been accusing me
of murdering Kate. If she dies, he says he’ll have me up to Exeter
Assizes and hung for it. I’ll never set foot in church again,
never--I’ll join the Primitive Methodists.”
“As you please,” said her husband. “But go to the door at once. There is
John Pooke waiting, and won’t be satisfied till he has had a talk with
you about Kate. He wants to know all about Kitty--how she’s doing,
whether she’s in danger, if she wants anything that the Pookes can
supply. He’s hanging about the door like what they call a morbid fly.
He’s in a terrible taking, and won’t be put off with what I can tell.”
“Well, now,” exclaimed Zerah, “here’s an idea! Something may come of
that night on a mud-bank after all, and more than she deserves. Oh my!
if my Wilmot was alive, and Jan Pooke were to inquire after her! Go up,
Pasco, and send that parson away. I won’t speak to him again--abusing of
me and calling me names shameful, and he an ordained minister. What in
the world are we coming to?”
When the doctor arrived, he pronounced that he would pull Kate through.
Presently the delirium passed away, and on the following morning the
light of intelligence returned to her eyes.
“They are still there,” she said eagerly, raising her head and
listening.
“What are still there?” asked her aunt.
“The gulls.”
In fact, these animated foam-flakes of the ocean were about in vast
numbers, uttering their peculiar cries as they hovered over the mud.
“Of course they are there--why not?”
“Father said he was going to make ladies’ waistcoats of them, and I’ve
been fretting and crying--and then, the daffodils”--
“Oh, bother the daffodils and the gulls! They may wait a long while
before waistcoats are made of them.”
“It is not of daffodils father was going to make waistcoats. He said he
would have all the gulls shot.”
“Never worrit your head about that. The birds can take care of
themselves and fly away to sea.”
“But the daffodils cannot get away. He was going to have a scythe and
mow them all down and sell them.”
“Wait till folk are fools enough to buy.”
There was much to be done in the house. Mrs. Pepperill was unable to be
always in the room with her niece. It was too early in the year for
pleasure parties to come up the river in boats for tea or coffee,
winkles and cockles, in the open air, but the house itself exacted
attention--the cooking, the washing, had to be done. Now that Zerah was
deprived of the assistance of her niece, perhaps for the first time did
she realise how useful the girl had been to her. By night Kate was left
alone; there was no space in the attic chamber for a second bed, nor did
her condition require imperatively that some one should be with her all
night.
When her consciousness returned, Kate woke in the long darkness, and
watched the circular spots of light that danced on the walls and
careered over the floor, as the rushlight flickered in the draught
between window and door. Above, on the low ceiling, was the circle of
light, broad and yellow as the moon, cast by the candle, its rays
unimpeded in that direction, but all round was the perforated rim, and
through that the rays shot and painted stars--stars at times moving,
wheeling, glinting; and Kate, in a half-torpid condition, thought she
could make out among them the Plough with its curved tail, and wondered
whether it were turning. Then she passed into dreamland, and woke and
saw in the spots of light the white pearls of her uncle’s neckcloth, and
was puzzled why they did not remain stationary. Whilst vexing her mind
with this question she slid away into unconsciousness again, and when
next her eyes opened, it was to see an orchard surrounding her, in which
were daffodils that flickered, and she marvelled what that great one was
above on the ceiling, so much larger than all the rest. Always, whenever
with the ebb the gulls came up the river in thousands, and their laugh
rang into the little room, it was to Kate as though a waft of sea-air
blew over her hot face; and she laughed also, and said to herself, “They
are not yet made into waistcoats.”
Occasionally she heard under her window a whistle piping, “There was a
frog lived in a well,” and she once asked her aunt if that were father,
and why he did not come upstairs to see her.
“Your father is on Dartmoor,” answered Zerah. Then, with a twinkle in
her eye, she added, “I reckon it is Jan Pooke. He has taken on terribly
about you. He comes every day to inquire.”
Whenever Mrs. Pepperill had a little spare time, she clambered up the
steep staircase to see that her niece lacked nothing, to give her food,
to make her take medicine, to shake up her bed. And every time that she
thus mounted, she muttered, “So, I am killing her with cruelty! The only
suitable quarters for me is Exeter gaol; the proper end for me is the
gallows! I have put her into one of the atmospheric engine-towers and
have pumped the life out of her! And yet, I’m blessed if I’m not run off
my legs going up and down these stairs! If I ain’t a ministering angel
to her; if she doesn’t cost me pounds in doctor’s bills; I don’t
begrudge it--but I’m a murderess all the same!”
Certain persons are mentally incapable of understanding a simile; a good
many are morally unwilling to apply one to themselves. Whether, when it
was spoken, Mrs. Pepperill comprehended or not the bearing of the
rector’s simile relative to the exhausting engine, in the sequel she
came to entirely misconceive it, and to distort it into something quite
different from what the speaker intended. That was easily effected. She
was quite aware that much that the parson had said was true; her
conscience tingled under his gentle reproof; but no sooner was that
unfortunate simile uttered, than her opportunity came for evading the
cogency of his reproach, and for working herself up into resentment
against him for having charged her falsely. That is one of the dangers
that lurk in the employment of hyperbole, and one of the advantages
hyperbole gives to those addressed in reprimand with it. Zerah had
sufficient readiness of wit to seize on the opportunity, and use her
occasion against the speaker, and in self-vindication.
The rector had not said that Zerah was depriving her niece of vital air;
that mattered not--he had said that she was depriving her of what was as
essential to life as vital air.
“It is my own blessed self that I am killing,” said Mrs. Pepperill;
“running up these stairs ten hundred times in the day, my heart jumping
furiously, and pumping all the vital air out of my lungs. I’m sure I
can’t breathe when I get up into Kate’s room. And he don’t call that
love! He ought to be unfrocked by the bishop.”
She came into the girl’s chamber red in the face and puffing, and went
direct to her.
“There, now; I’m bothered if something does not come of it to your
advantage and mine, Kate, for I’m tired of having to care about you. Jan
Pooke has been here again. That’s the second time to-day; of course
asking after you. There is no one in the family but Jan and his sister,
and she is about to be married. The Pookes have a fine farm and money in
the bank. If you manage matters well, you’ll cut out that conceited
minx, Rose, who has marked him down. Come, you are a precious!”
She stooped to kiss Kate, but the girl suddenly turned her face with a
flaming cheek to the wall.
Zerah tossed her head and said to herself, “Love? she won’t love! I was
about to kiss her, and she would not have it.”
Then she got her needlework and seated herself at the window. Kate
turned round at once to look at her. She had shrunk from her aunt
involuntarily; not from her kiss, but from her words, which wounded her.
A strange child Kate was. If not asking questions with her lips, she was
seeking solutions to problems with her eyes. She had fixed her great
solemn orbs on her aunt, and they remained on her, not withdrawn for a
moment, till Zerah Pepperill became uneasy, fidgeted in her seat, and
said sharply, “Am I a murderess or an atmospheric pump that you stare at
me? Can’t you find something else to look at?”
Kate made no reply, but averted her face. Ten minutes later,
nevertheless, Zerah felt again that the eyes were on her, studying her
features, her expression, noting everything about her, seeming to probe
her mind and search out every thought that passed in her head.
“Really, if this is going on, I cannot stay,” she said, rose and folded
up the sheet she was hemming. “There’s such a thing as manners. I hate
to be looked at--it is as if slugs were crawling over me.”
As Zerah descended, she muttered, “The girl is certainly born without a
heart. I would have kissed her but that she turned from me. I wish the
parson had seen that!”
The weather changed, the edge was taken off the east wind, the sun had
gained power. The rooks were in excitement repairing their nests and
wasting sticks about the ground under the trees, making a mess and
disorder of untidiness. The labourers begged a day from their masters,
that they might set their potatoes; after work hours on the farms they
were busy in their gardens.
In spring the sap of health rises in young arteries as in plants, and
Kate recovered, not perhaps rapidly, but nevertheless steadily. She
continued to be pale, with eyes preternaturally large.
She was able to leave her chamber, and after a day or two assist in
light housework.