POOR LALLY.
Time and tide, we are assured, wait for no man; which, though a truth,
is but a portion of one, since happy would we be if, in this world, time
and tide were the only things that refused to delay their departure for
our convenience.
There are many circumstances of our daily lives against which it would
be as vain to appeal—to which it would serve quite as good a purpose to
cry aloud for mercy, as the typical hour and tide.
For the first time in his life, Alick Dudley realised this fact, when he
found he must depart for London, and leave Heather in the very midst of
her trouble, with no one at hand to “see after her,” so the lad
expressed himself.
“I will,” said Agnes, reassuringly.
“Yes; but you are not a man, Aggy,” he answered; “that is the worst of
it.” And though, in some respects, Agnes was almost as good as a man,
still she sighed deeply, feeling her inferiority.
What was there a man could not do? A man could lift heavy weights, and
think nothing about them; a man could fling a saddle on a horse, and put
a bridle in his mouth, and gallop off for a doctor, without first going
about the house wondering whom he could send; a man could jump into the
mill-pond and bring Lally out, holding her suspended in mid-air, as a
cat does its kitten; a man could go out in all weathers, he could
undertake to break bad news; the very sound of his voice in the house
was a reassurance; his very tone of command a trumpet which recalled the
scattered senses of a tribe of frightened females. Without Alick—boy
though he almost was—what would Berrie Down be? a camp without a chief.
Even if Arthur were back, they would all miss Alick. He was so prompt,
he was so daring, he was so utterly unfeminine in every respect.
Now, many feminine qualities were possessed by Arthur; and, therefore,
even if the Squire had been at home, he could never have proved of the
same use in the house as his much younger brother Alick.
There has been a great deal written of late years about masculine women.
It seems rather one-sided for no one to preach against feminine men; for
if a woman be objectionable in so far as she resemble a man, a man must
surely be objectionable in so far as he is dependent, and weak, and
timid, and faint-hearted, and undecided, and variable, and impulsive,
and easily influenced, and speedily depressed, and equally speedily
rejoiced, and governed by the opinions of others, and dependent on
external influences, like a woman.
I lift my hand in supplications, and cry earnestly for mercy, ladies, as
I finish this sentence, which I believe to be true as sorrow and pain.
There is another cry which is popular now-a-days, and the man or the
woman who raises an opposition shout is likely to find small favour in
the crowd; but the opposition shout is none the worse for that.
A man is a divine institution, even in a domestic point of view. He may
not be charming pottering about a house, counting the camellias, and
instituting inquiries into the items of a grocer’s bill; but he is at a
premium when a gun wants cleaning, or a troublesome tramp grows
insolent.
In precise proportion as he fails to load his pistols, or face a danger,
whether moral or physical, as he is lazy, self-indulgent, wanting in
energy, his merits fall below par; and the man, spite of his sex, in
point of usefulness is at a discount.
Never at a discount Alick Dudley was likely to be; and that truth, even
while she sighed, Agnes dimly grasped. She did not know, she really
could not imagine, what they were all to do without her brother; more
especially at that juncture, when there was terrible sickness in the
house—when, more than ever before in her life, Heather wanted help, and
consolation, and encouragement. And yet Alick must go; the laws of the
Medes and Persians were as likely to be reversed as the rules hung up in
the clerks’ office in the great warehouse of Messrs. Elser, Wire, Hook,
and Elser, Wood Street, City.
Time and tide would about as probably wait the convenience of mankind,
or humour the whims of womankind, as those gentlemen accept as apology
for Alick’s non-appearance the fact of his niece being ill, and his
sister-in-law in trouble.
According to the mood in which the firm chanced to be, the members
composing it would have intimated to Alick, either that it was a matter
of the supremest indifference to them if the whole of his relations were
dead and buried, or suggested that he had made a mistake in applying to
them for a situation, since it was evidently a nurse’s berth he wanted
at one of the hospitals.
But, in whatever form of words they had couched their rejection, that
rejection would have certainly been inevitable. No blame to the Messrs.
Elser and Co. Of course the world cannot stand still because children
fall ill, and women like to have their male relations near them in times
of trouble.
Heather, indeed, would have been the first to recognise this truth, had
there arisen any question concerning it; but in that quiet Hertfordshire
home it never occurred to a single soul within its walls that there
could be a moment’s hesitation in the matter.
Alick had to go; and, accordingly, he packed up his clothes, bade
good-bye to “the mother,” not without tears, kissed all his sisters,
received quite a volume of maternal advice from Mrs. Piggott, together
with a box of sandwiches, prepared, apparently, under an impression that
he was going to the Canary Isles, and had not the remotest chance of
getting anything to eat till he arrived there; and, in the grey dawn,
drove over in the pony cart to Palinsbridge, where he caught the eight
o’clock up express, and entered the office of Messrs. Elser, Wire, Hook,
and Elser, at ten—the hour at which he had been bidden to put in his
first appearance.
On the same day two letters were posted at Fifield: one to Arthur from
Agnes—written in defiance of Heather’s wishes—telling the Squire of
Lally’s accident, not lightly, as Heather had done, but fully and
circumstantially, and informing him how ill, how very ill the child had
remained ever since; and another, which having been penned with a great
expenditure both of thought and ink, it may be as well to print it _in
extenso_, for the information of my readers:
At “bury-donne yollow
“fiefield
“arforshyre,”
it purported to be written, and the date was Monday, —— 18—:—
“dere mis”—it began—“this coms with my dewtey hopeing yu ayre in good
helth az it leves mee at preasant.
“dere mis, i hope yu will pardon the libberty i tayke in riting, but az
wee are all in grate distres i thought praphs az yu mite like toe no.
“it’s along of mis laly, who was nere drownded last Weak and who as layd
almost for Ded yver since. dere mis it was al along of mastar marresden
Which is az yu no a very bade Buoy, tha was al down at the mil, and miss
laly She were a-standin cloze up to the brinck, wich were rong in she,
but the Pore darelying new no Beter, when mastar marresden he sais to
mastar lenarde—goe and giv her A Pusche and soe he Pusched hur inn, and
she Was for Yver and Yver soe long in the Watter for the tew others was
soe frytenned thay colde doe nothyng but schream, and at Laste the
myler’s yf—She herde the crise and mr. scrotor he Mayde noe more addoo
than intoe the Watter after hur, and Shee has bene verry bade yver sinc
and Pore mrs. duddeley is like wun broaken Harted. She Wente of wen shee
yerd the Knus, and it was a Long time befor shee comed too agen. mis
laly is rowled up in franell and cryse a gode diel and dere mis i doant
no wot is the mater with shee, but I Am Afraide it is hur death. mrs.
duddeley she sais her Pore chylde is beter too-nite but i think it is
Only a temporeairy feling. mrs. pigot sais shee thinks mrs. duddeley
would be beter if her concert wuz at whome, but mrs. duddeley woan’t hav
him rote for, were i think she is rong. but dere mis i rite to yu
without askhing noboddy’s lefe, and i hop as you will Xuse the libberty.
i have knot seen yu no whu sinc yu Went—and ples mis knot to sai az i
have rote, becaus mrs. duddeley mite think az i had took to Mutch on
mee, but i beleav yu augt to noe, and so hopeaing i have don rite i
remain dere miss, with dewty,
“Yur yver afeckshionate thoe umble
serveant
prishila dobin.”
Without photographing the original document, which cost Miss Dobbin
quite as much mental anxiety as an official dispatch, it would be vain
to hope to give an idea of the sort of manuscript through which Bessie
Ormson at length arrived at the fact of Lally’s serious illness.
It was blotted all over by accident and design. If by chance Priscilla
spelt a word rightly, so surely she rubbed her finger through it, and
wrote in another as unlike what it ought to have been as can well be
imagined.
She had not a capital letter in its proper place from first to last, and
it was many a day, in fact, before Bessie fully mastered the contents of
that epistle.
But she gathered enough, almost in a first perusal, to convince her
something was very wrong at the Hollow; and, although she had no
invitation from Heather to do so, still she instantly resolved to start
for Berrie Down.
With Bessie, as a rule, to resolve was to perform; and, accordingly,
that very same evening, she astonished the Dudley household by walking
coolly in amongst her cousins as they were sitting down to tea.
“Well, and what is this about Lally?” she asked, after she had kissed
the girls, and inquired for Heather; “what is the matter with her?”
“Did Alick not tell you?” answered the assembled Dudleys in chorus.
“Alick,” repeated Miss Ormson. “I have not seen Alick. I only heard a
vague rumour this morning about something wonderful having occurred, and
so I thought that I would come down and learn the certainties of the
matter for myself. One of you girls, I think, might have written to tell
me; but I suppose it is with you as with the rest of the world—out of
sight, out of mind.”
“Heather would not let us write to any one,” said Agnes.
“Then Heather ought not to have had her own way,” retorted Bessie; “and
then, I suppose, she has been up with that child night after night,
taking no rest, eating nothing, fretting herself to death.”
“We all wanted to sit up,” exclaimed Lucy Dudley, “but she would trust
no person.”
“Precisely what I expected,” said Bessie, who had by this time divested
herself of cloak and bonnet, and now stood beside the fire looking as
trim and pretty as though she had just stepped out of her dressing-room.
“And so Lally is very bad?”
“That is precisely what she says herself,” answered Laura. “Whenever the
pain leaves her for a minute or two, she settles down a little in the
bed and whispers, ‘Poor Lally’s very bad.’”
“Is she in danger?” asked Bessie.
“I do not know; the doctor will not tell us.”
“Is Arthur at home?”
“No; Heather would not let him know how ill Lally was,” answered Agnes;
“but I wrote yesterday—not that I suppose he could do any good, if he
were here.”
“She fell into the mill-pond?”—this was interrogative.
“She was pushed in,” answered Cuthbert, with a vicious look towards
Harry, who sat at the farthest corner of the table with his legs tucked
up under his chair, a great slice of bread and butter and honey in one
hand, and a huge cup of tea in the other.
“I didn’t push her in,” remarked that young gentleman.
“No, but you told Leonard to shove her,” said Cuthbert, shaking his hand
at his brother menacingly.
“Well, how was I to know she would topple over like that?” persisted
Harry. “If she was loose on her perch, that wasn’t my fault, was it? and
it’s not right of you to go on like that at me. Mrs. Dudley said you
wasn’t to do it; she came and she talked to me, she did, and said she
believed me, if nobody else didn’t.”
“She must have great faith,” remarked Bessie, meditatively. “If I had
been here, Harry, I should have taken you down to the pond and given you
a ducking on my own responsibility.”
“I shouldn’t have cared if you had drowned me, then,” retorted Harry.
“There was not one of them would speak to me, and Alick would not let
even Leonard come and say a word to me; and I was so miserable, I often
thought of going out at night and throwing myself into the water, and
that I knew would vex them all—only I was afraid of crossing the fields
by myself in the dark;” and at the bare recollection of his fear and
trouble, Harry began to whimper.
“If you had done that, you know,” said Bessie, coolly, “you would have
been buried at the four cross-roads on the way to South Kemms, with a
stake through your body.”
“I should not have minded what was done to me when once I was dead,”
said Harry, philosophically.
“If you do not mind what you are about while you are living,” answered
Bessie, “you will come to the gallows.”
“No more likely to come to the gallows than you, Miss Impudence, for all
your red-and-white face and shiny hair, that you think so much of;” and
Harry put out his tongue as far as he could thrust it at Bessie, who,
without “more ado,” to appropriate an expression from Priscilla’s
letter, walked round the table, and would have boxed the offender’s ears
but that he disappeared from his chair and dived among the feet of the
four Dudleys, one of whom, Cuthbert, was not slow about availing himself
of the tempting opportunity thus offered.
“You’re a coward,” said the boy, reappearing on the other side with a
very red face, and his hair all in a tangle, looking, as Laura said,
like one of those things chimneys are swept with. “You’re a coward, to
kick a man when he’s down. Come on, and fight it out.”
“You had better behave yourself, Harry,” answered Cuthbert, “or I will
give you toko for yam,” which mysterious threat evidently conveyed some
definite idea to Master Marsden’s mind, for he answered:—
“You could not, nor two like you.”
“Shall I try?” asked Cuthbert, rising; but Harry fled towards the door,
and Agnes ended the quarrel by bringing the boy back to the table and
seating him in his place, and warning both him and Cuthbert that they
must not make a noise—that the doctor had said the house was to be kept
as still and quiet as possible. “So, Harry,” continued his sister, “do
be good for once in your life; finish your tea and go to bed.”
“Yes, that’s the way,” grumbled Harry, his mouth full of bread, and his
lips smeary and sticky with honey—“that’s the way; finish, and go to
bed; finish, and go into the garden; finish, and see what the men are
doing; it is always go, go, go, from morning till night.”
“Will you be quiet, and let other people hear themselves talking?” said
Bessie, sharply.
“There are not many that would care to hear you talk, at any rate,”
retorted Master Marsden; “it is gab—gab—gab; bub—a bub—a bub—wherever
you are, just like a meat-fly, or a wasp, or a mosquito.”
“I declare, Harry, I will write to your papa,” averred Bessie, solemnly.
“Write—who cares—and send somebody to read it, will you? We always call
yours fat writing at home, and pa says if there was many hands like it,
ink could not be made fast enough to supply people. Writing, do you call
it? I could write as well with a paste-brush.”
“Are you going to be quiet, Harry, or are you not?” asked Bessie, taking
a step towards him; “for, if you make another saucy speech, I will box
your ears, as sure as my name is Bessie Ormson.”
“Who gave you that name?” mocked the boy; whereupon Bessie proved as
good as her word, and, seizing him, was about to administer condign
punishment, when Harry cried out—
“If you do—if you do—I’ll make a noise, and then Mrs. Dudley will come
down to know what is the matter, and then I’ll tell her, and then she’ll
be angry with you, for she said nobody was to speak crossly to me while
I stayed in the house.”
“It is quite true,” Agnes said, in answer to Bessie’s look of inquiry.
“She thought we were not kind to him, and scolded him about Lally; and
in the middle of all her own trouble, of course, she had time to
consider Harry. You see the result.”
“And pray, Harry, how long are you going to stay in the house?” inquired
Bessie.
“As long as I like—as long as I find it convenient,” replied the boy;
“but now, I tell you what; I am quiet mostly, not because I care a
button for all their threats, but because I promised Mrs. Dudley I
would—there now!”
“You are a curiosity,” remarked Bessie.
“Not so much of one as you are. I don’t wear frizzle-gigs of things in
my hair; I don’t live in a steel cage; I don’t screw myself in round the
waist and walk this way,” added Master Marsden, marching up and down the
room in a style which he firmly believed to be an exact imitation of
Bessie. “I don’t look from under my parasol—so! and make up my face when
anybody is in the room I want to think well of me; I don’t wear kicking
straps and dress improvers to make my petticoats stick out—like that;”
and Master Marsden pulled out his knickerbockers to their fullest width,
and treated society to another representation of Bessie “sailing across
a room.”
If every one belonging to her had been dying at that moment, Bessie
could not have refrained from laughing; and in this mirth her cousins
joined.
“I suppose Harry thinks that is holding the mirror up to nature,” said
Lucy Dudley, at length.
“No, Harry does not,” retorted the young gentleman; “he thinks it is
holding the mirror up to art.”
“I am art, then, am I?” inquired Bessie; and Harry nodded assent.
“Well,” she said, “since it seems you have engaged this room for your
performances, I will go upstairs and see Heather.”
“Had not I better go up first, and tell her?” suggested Agnes.
“Oh no,” answered Bessie; “good wine, you know, needs no bush;” and with
that she left the apartment, and ascended to the sick chamber, at the
threshold of which she paused for a moment irresolute.
The door stood wide open, and across the entrance was hung a curtain, so
that the watchers could pass in and out noiselessly.
Lightly Bessie lifted this curtain, and looked in. On the bed lay Lally,
quiet enough to have satisfied all Mrs. Ormson’s requirements—quiet
enough and changed enough—a mere shadow of the Lally Bessie had scolded
and teazed, and loved and petted in the glorious summer weather—a poor
wasted little Lally—a Lally who was, as she herself said, “very bad
indeed.”
And beside the bed sat Heather, looking so pale and worn that it might
well have been supposed she also had passed through very grievous
sickness. The blue-veined lids were closed over the weary, aching eyes,
when Bessie first lifted the curtain; but she had scarcely time to
glance at the child and her mother, before Heather, feeling there was
some one standing in the doorway, awoke and recognised her visitor with
a start of glad surprise.
Making a sign for Bessie not to make a noise, she rose and came across
the room.
“I only heard this morning,” the girl whispered, “and I could not rest.
How is she?”
“Better, I trust,” Heather answered. They were by this time in Bessie’s
old apartment, which looked as though she had only left it about an hour
previously. That was the beauty of the Hollow—any one could drop into
his accustomed place there, even after long absence, in five minutes.
“Heather dear, you have suffered dreadfully.”
“Yes; but God has been very merciful,” Mrs. Dudley answered. “Oh!
Bessie, if she had died without my seeing her, I could not have borne
it; there is no use in saying I could, for my heart must have broken.
She has been frightfully ill. She was so long in the water, and then
lying in her wet clothes while they carried her here. It was this side
of the pond, you know, Bessie; and though Mr. Scrotter’s house might
have been nearer, still it could not have made much difference in her
recovery, and it has made all the difference to me having her at home.
Fortunately, there were good fires in the house, and plenty of hot
water. If there had been any longer delay, we cannot tell how it might
have turned out. The girls and Mrs. Piggott, Doctor Williams says,
really saved her life; but I do not know—it seems to me everybody did
what was possible. The worst of it was her being so long in the water,
and so warm when she fell in—they had been racing, it appears; but if we
can get her over this—and, please God, she will get over it—Doctor
Williams assures me there is no reason why she should not be as strong
as ever.”
“I have come down to help you nurse her,” said Bessie. “Now, don’t begin
making objections, Heather, because I know every sentence you would
speak, and all I intend to reply is, that I mean to do my share of the
watching, or else let Agnes take it in turns with you, and I will try
and see to things about the house—only I am resolved you shall not kill
yourself. What will Arthur say when he comes home, and sees you looking
like a ghost? I declare, if I met you in the dark you would frighten me.
Now, you shall lie down on the sofa to-night, and I will sit beside
Lally.”
“But you will be completely knocked up.”
“You do not know much about my constitution, evidently,” answered
Bessie, smiling: and thus the difficult matter was arranged, and thus
once again Bessie Ormson became an inmate of the Hollow, where Arthur
arrived on the following day, greatly to Heather’s vexation; for she had
tried to keep this trouble from him, not wishing, poor soul, to “spoil
his holiday.”
But Agnes’ letter was so imperative, that the moment he read it he
packed his portmanteau, asked his cousin to let him have the dog-cart as
far as Foldam Station, and travelled by various circuitous routes from
that out-of-the-world-place to Hertford, where he thanked Heaven when he
exchanged the Eastern Counties line of rail for the Great Northern.
“That Copt Hall is the most cursed place in England to get either to or
from,” he remarked to Bessie.
“I have heard some ignorant people remark that Berrie Down Hollow is not
the most accessible spot on earth; and I know I thought it rather out of
the way the other evening,” answered Miss Ormson.
“It is next door to everywhere in comparison to Copt Hall,” he
replied.—“So you really think,” he went on to say, “there is no fear for
Lally now—little monkey! Heather looks bad, though, does not she? I
declare, Bessie, it was very kind indeed of you to come down, and I am
greatly obliged to you for it.”
“Thank you, Arthur,” answered Bessie, demurely; “it is a happiness to
know that my poor endeavours to give satisfaction have found favour in
your eyes.” But although Miss Ormson replied to his gracious speech with
so little appearance of astonishment, still she was secretly greatly
surprised at the increased urbanity of his manners. “Arthur is growing
like other people,” she said to Agnes Dudley. “Saul is coming among the
Prophets. I wonder if the Protector Bread Company have had any share in
effecting this great change; if so, success to it, say I; may its career
be happy and glorious—may its dividends prove satisfactory, and my uncle
grow more prosperous, and more like a Puffin than ever!” And then she
returned to her watch beside Lally, who crept out of absolute danger,
surely though slowly, and at length grew strong enough to sit up in bed,
supported by pillows, and toss over scraps of coloured ribbons and bits
of silk that Bessie would spread out over the coverlet for her.
After a minute or two, however, she would get weary of this game; the
red and the blue would begin to dazzle her eyes; the little hands would
grow too weak to toy among the bright trifles; the head would get tired
with trying to raise itself over the edge of the sheet; and when all
these things came to pass, Lally would drop the latest scrap of
silk—heave a heavy sigh—look piteously at Bessie, and declare “Lally’s
very bad aden.”
“No, you are not,” Bessie invariably answered; “you are scheming—you
like being in bed this cold weather, and having nice things to eat, and
being made much of; but wait a little. Some fine morning I will rout you
up, and chase you about the lawn, and run you to earth in the Hollow.
Won’t I; do you think I won’t?” and the lovely face was laid on the
pillow beside the child, and Lally made nests for herself in Bessie’s
hair, and was fain to fall asleep holding on by her pretty nurse’s gown,
or sleeve, or collar.
“Oh Lor, Miss, ain’t she like wax-work!” remarked Priscilla Dobbin, the
first time she beheld Lally sitting up on Miss Ormson’s lap—held in Miss
Ormson’s arms.
“She is much more like bone-work to my mind,” answered Bessie, kissing
the little white arms; “but we are going to feed her up, and send her to
market next time her papa goes to London—are not we, Lally?”
And Lally, complaisant as ever, answered, while busily engaged in
counting over the buttons on Bessie’s dress, “Iss.”