"You great coward!" she cried in a rage, as, sick, faint, and heavy, and
seeing everything now as in a dream, I was lifted in her stout arms.
"Leave this room, woman!" I heard him say.
"Yes, and your house too, you wretch?" she retorted; and then I heard no
more till I seemed to wake in a heavy, dull, throbbing fashion in the
kitchen, where some one seemed to be wetting my head with water smelling
very strongly of pickles.
The place looked as if it was early morning, and the walls, with the
dresser, plates, and tureens, and the bright tin dish-covers, seemed to
be going round and round, but not regularly, for it was as if they went
up and down in a wavy billowy way, and all the time I seemed to feel
terribly sick.
"Oh, if I was a man!" I heard Mary mutter; and then more softly,
"There, don't you cry, Miss Hetty; he ain't killed. It's left off
bleeding now. You go to your mar's work-basket and get me a strip of
rag. You ain't got any sticking-plaister, have you?"
"I've got some black court-plaister, Mary."
"That'll do, chucky; go and get it. Poor boy, he has had a beating!"
she muttered as I heard Hetty's steps crossing the kitchen floor.
"I'm--I'm better now, Mary," I said faintly; and I tried to rise.
"No, you ain't better, neither; and you'll just lie quite still till
your head's done," said Mary, in her rough ungracious way. "You needn't
be afraid about him; he's gone to bed and sent for the doctor, because
he pretends he's so bad, and Mr Emmett the constable is upstairs with
him, about going to the magistrates and taking up Mr Wooster for
beating him; but he didn't say nothing about taking his self up for
beating you, a great ugly coward! Oh! here you are, are you?"
"Here's some clean soft linen and the court-plaister," I heard Hetty say
with a sob.
"Where's your mar?" said Mary.
"Upstairs in papa's room."
"Ho?" ejaculated Mary, "and I hope she'll stay there. There, don't you
begin a-crying again. Hold his hair back while I put this bit on.
There, it's not going to bleed any more, and you needn't get shuddering
like that at the sight of a little blood. That's the way. Poor boy, it
was enough to knock down a hox. Never mind the wet hair; it's only
vinegar and water. That's the way; we'll soon strap it up. I don't
want to hurt your feelings, Miss Hetty, but your par's a brute."
"Oh, Mary! I won't stop in the kitchen if you say such things," cried
Hetty, stamping her little foot.
"Then you'd better go back into the parlour, my dear, for I shall say
what I like in my own kitchen; so there now."
"It's very cruel and unkind of you, Mary."
"And it's very cruel and unkind of your par to keep this poor boy
half-starved in that orfis."
"He did not, Mary. I'm sure papa would not do such a thing."
"And that's why you go without half your dinner, and then take and put
it in Antony's desk."
"Mary!"
"Ah, you may Mary as long as you like, but I've seen you do it."
"Hush! pray don't, Mary; he'll hear you."
"Not he, my dear. Poor boy! he's dropped off asleep, and the best thing
too. You're asleep, aren't you?"
I tried to answer "No," but the faint deathly feeling came over me again
as strongly as ever, and all seemed dark and silent once more.
It was getting dark when I awoke; for, from fainting, I must have lapsed
into a heavy sleep, the result of exhaustion and the shock. My head
ached, and I was very stiff and in great pain as I tried to raise myself
from the pillow which propped me up in the great Windsor chair. Mary
was seated opposite to me, crooning some ditty in a low voice as she sat
sewing, the needle clicking against her thimble as she thrust it through
the work.
The fire was burning brightly, the tea-things on the table, the pot on
the hob, and some buttered toast upon the fender.
As I was gazing at her, and noticing the play of the flames over her red
and rugged countenance, she suddenly raised her eyes, gazed full at me,
and the harsh repulsive look passed away as she showed a set of white
teeth in a pleasant smile, and rose and came to me, bending down and
laying her hand upon my burning forehead.
"You won't want no doctor," she said; and to my utter astonishment she
bent lower, kissed me, and then softly patted my cheek. "Poor boy," she
said, "it was a shame!"
I gazed up piteously and wildly, I believe, in her face, for it was so
strange. She had always been so rough and harsh towards me, and her
frequent donations of bread and butter seemed to have been given to me
more out of spite to her employers than out of kindness to me; but now
it was plain enough that under her rugged crust she possessed a true
woman's nature, and the ill-treatment I had received had completely made
her my friend.
"I've been waiting all this time for you to wake and have tea," she
said, placing the pot and the toast on the table. "Now then, see if you
can't sit up and have some."
"I couldn't drink any, thank you," I said faintly.
"Such stuff and nonsense! It's quite fresh, and I've put in some extra
as Miss Hetty give me. Come now, sit up and try, there's a dear."
I tried to sit up, but the pain was so great that I sank back, having
hard work not to cry out; and seeing this, with a tenderness for which I
should not have given her credit, she gently raised me and backed the
pillows up, so as to support me; and then, finding that this was not
sufficient, she ran out of the kitchen, to return in a few minutes,
doubling up what I knew was her best shawl, which she now formed into a
cushion.
"There, now we shall do," she said cheerily; and, pouring out a cup of
tea, she tasted and added milk till it was to her liking, and then held
it to my lips.
It was like nectar, and I gave her a grateful look for that which seemed
to impart new life to my bruised body.
"Now, you've got to eat some toast," she said, and I stared at her in
wonder, for it seemed to be a new Mary upon whom I gazed.
"I couldn't eat a bit," I said helplessly.
"But you must," she said imperatively. "Now look here, you have had
hardly anything since breakfast, and if you don't eat, you can't get
well."
I took the toast she held to me, and managed to eat it. That done, I
had another cup of tea, and the sickly faint feeling I had had every
time I moved seemed less overpowering; and at last I lay back there,
listening helplessly to Mary as she chatted to me and washed up the
tea-things.
"Don't you trouble about them; they won't come in my kitchen. He's ill
in bed, or pretending to be, and the doctor says he ain't to move for a
week. I hope he mayn't for a month--a brute! I never see such a
cowardly trick. I wish my William had him. He's going to have the law
of Mr Wooster, so Mr Emmett the constable told me; and him and the
doctor'll make out a nice case between 'em, I know. Pah! I hate
lawyers and doctors. So you make yourself comfortable. I'll be your
doctor, and if they ain't pretty civil to me, I'll be your lawyer, too,
and go to the madgistrits, see if I don't. If I was you I wouldn't stay
with 'em a minnit after I got well. I shan't; I'm sick of 'em."
"I wish I could go, Mary," I said, "but I don't want to go now you've
been so kind."
"Kind! Stuff! It's only my way. There ain't a better-tempered girl
nowheres than I am; only when you come to live in a house where the
master's a snarling, biting, growling hound, and the missus is a
fault-finding, scolding, murmuring himidge, it's enough to put out a
hartchangel. But I say, if I was you, and could write such a lovely
hand, I should send and tell my father and mother. Oh, I am sorry,
dear--I forgot about your poor father and mother. But I would write and
tell somebody."
Mary's allusion to my lovely handwriting was consequent upon my having
copied a letter for her to one Mr William Revitts, who was a policeman
in London. She had asked me to copy it for her, and direct it "proper,"
because her hands were so dirty when she wrote that she was afraid he
might not be able to read it. All the same, Mary's hands seemed to have
been perfectly clean, though the probabilities were that the said Mr
William Revitts, "mi one dere willim," would certainly not have been
able to read the letter. In fact, I broke down over the very beginning
by mistaking "one" for the number, and had to be corrected, Mary having
meant to say _own_.
Her allusion to my parents touched a tender chord, and my face worked as
I recalled the happy times gone by. "I have nobody to write to," I said
at last--"only my uncle."
"Then I'd write and tell him, that I would."
"I am not quite sure where he lives," I said. "I never saw him till--
till he came to the funeral."
"But haven't you got nobody belonging to you--no friends at all?"
"I think not," I said helplessly. "No one who would help me."
"Well, you are a one," said Mary, pausing in the act of wiping out the
tea-tray after half filling it and pouring the dirty water off at one
corner. "Why, I've got no end o' people belonging to me; and if that
brute upstairs--as I wish he may ache bad for a week!--was to raise his
hand against me, my William would be down and serve him worse than Mr
Wooster did, I can tell him--a wretch!"
"Is that Mr William Revitts," I asked, "the policeman?"
"Yes; but he wouldn't come down here as a policeman, but as a gentleman,
and he'd soon teach Mr Blakeford what he ought to--Yes! What is it?"
This was in answer to a shrill call for Mary in Mrs Blakeford's voice,
and that lady came in immediately after, to Mary's great disgust.
"You must get hot water ready directly, Mary," she began in an ill-used
way. "I'm sure _I_ don't know what I shall do. He's very bad indeed."
"Oh, there's lots of hot water," said Mary shortly. "Biler's full, and
kettle's full, and I'll put on the great black saucepan and light the
copper if you like."
As she spoke Mary seized the big poker, and began stoking and hammering
away at the fire in a most vicious manner, as if determined to vent her
spleen upon Mr Blakeford's coals.
"Your poor master's dreadfully bad," said Mrs Blakeford again, and she
kept on looking at me in a way that seemed quite to indicate that I
alone was to blame.
"Oh, yes, mum, I dessay he is, and so's other people too, and wuss. I
dessay he'll get better again if he don't die."
Mrs Blakeford stared at Mary in a half-terrified way, and backed to the
door.
"You ring the bell when you want it, and I'll bring you a can of water
upstairs," continued Mary ungraciously.
"And couldn't you help me a little in attending upon your master, Mary?"
"No, I couldn't, mum," she said shortly, "for I'm the worst nuss as ever
was; and besides, I've got my kitchen work to do; and if you wants a
nuss, there's Mrs Jumfreys over the way would be glad to come, I
dessay, only I ain't going to have her here in my kitchen."
Mrs Blakeford hastily backed out of the kitchen and retreated upstairs,
while Mary's rough mask dropped off as soon as she had gone.
"I wasn't going to tell her as I nussed an invalid lady two years 'fore
I came here," she said, smiling. "Besides, I didn't want to have
nothing to do with him, for fear I should be tempted to give him his
lotion 'stead of his physic, he aggravates me so. Lotions is pison, you
know--outward happlication only."
That night I had a bed made up down in the kitchen, and passed a weary,
feverish time; but towards morning a pleasant feeling of drowsiness came
over me. I fell asleep to dream that I was at home once more, and all
was bright and sunshiny as I sat half asleep in the summer-house, when
my mother came and laid her hand upon my forehead, and I opened my eyes
to find it was Mary, ready to ask me whether I was better; and though
the sweet, bright dream had gone, there was something very tender in the
eyes that looked in mine.