_The benefits of being soused in a horse-trough.--Some farther specimens
of Miss Sowersoft's moral excellence.--An unlooked-for discovery is
partially made, which materially concerns Miss Fanny Woodruff and Dr.
Rowel._
On the following morning Palethorpe arose, and finding Colin still
asleep, was proceeding, whip in hand, to help him up according to
custom, when, as he turned down the clothes that almost enveloped the
child's head, the unusual appearance of his countenance arrested the
man's attention as well as his hand. His veins were swollen with rapid
bounding blood, and his heart thumped audibly in its place, and with
doubly accelerated motion, as though eagerly hastening to beat out its
appointed number of pulsations, and leave the little harassed life it
contained again free from the pains and vexations of this lower world.
Something like remorse passed for a moment over the man's dark
countenance as he gazed. What had they done to him?--what was amiss?
He covered the boy carefully up again, and hastened down stairs to
communicate the news to Miss Sowersoft.
“Oh,--it's all nonsense!” she exclaimed, on hearing all that Mr.
Palethorpe had to say about it. “The lad's got a bit of a cold,--that's
all. I 'll make him a basin of milk, with a little of that nice feverfew
out of the garden boiled in it, and then if you wake him up, and let
him take that, it will stick to his ribs, and do him an amazing deal of
good.”
But as there was no hurry about such a matter, Miss Sowersoft very
leisurely took her own breakfast before she set about carrying her very
charitable project into execution. When the milk, with some sprigs of
feverfew boiled in it, was ready, Sally was sent up stairs with it.
She found Colin awake, but weak and ill; and, much to her surprise, on
presenting him with a lump of bread and the basin of milk, which more
closely resembled a light green wash for stencilling walls, than any
true Christian dish, he could neither touch nor bear the sight of
either.
“La!” cried Sally, “why, I never heard anything like it, as neither to
eat nor drink! Come, cram a bit down your throat with your finger, and
see if it will not get you an appetite. Why, _I_ can eat and drink very
well, and why shouldn't you? Come, come, don't be soft, and refuse what
Gor-amighty sends you, while it lies in your power to get it. I'm sure
this milk is very nice, indeed.”
In corroboration of her statement she took a sip. But Colin shook his
head feebly and heavily, and declared it would do him no good. He could
take nothing,--he wanted nothing, but to be left alone, that he might
think and wish, and weep as he thought and wished that he were but once
more at home, or that his mother or Fanny were but with him.
Shortly after Sally had returned below stairs, and communicated the
astounding intelligence that Colin would take neither bit nor sup, Miss
Sowersoft herself crept up stairs. She assured him he had plenty of
colour in his face; that there could not be anything particularly amiss
with him; advised him against putting on pretences of sickness, lest he
should be struck with sickness in reality as a judgment on him, like the
children that mocked the prophet Elijah, and were eaten up by bears; and
concluded by insinuating, that if he were tickled with a whip-thong, he
would in all probability be a great deal better directly.
“Send me home!” bitterly ejaculated Colin, bursting into tears. “Put
me in a cart, and send me home!--I want to go home!--I must go
home!--Mother'!--Fanny!--Oh, come to me!--I shall die--I shall die!”
Miss Sowersoft felt rather alarmed; but reflecting that there was
nothing like showing a little spirit and resolution when young folks
took such whims as those into their heads, she severely taunted him with
being home-sick and mother-sick; told him that neither she nor Fanny, if
they were present, could do more for him than she could; and threatened
that, if he did not leave off that hideous noise, which was disgraceful
to a great lad of his age, she would tie a stocking round his mouth, and
stop him that way. There being no great consolation in all this, it is
not surprising that our hero made such slight application of it, that,
for the matter of any difference it made in him, Miss Sowersoft might
just as well have tied her stocking across her own mouth, or stuffed it
in, which ever she might prefer, as have given utterance to it. She was
therefore constrained to submit to the lad's own way, and to confess in
her own mind that there really was something more amiss with him than at
first she had believed.
By mid-day he had become a great deal worse; and in the afternoon, as
his disorder still rapidly increased, Mr. Palethorpe was despatched on
horseback to Bramleigh, for the purpose of consulting Dr. Rowel.
About six o'clock in the evening he returned home, bringing with him a
packet of white powders in little blue papers, tied together much in
the fashion of that little pyrotechnic engine of mischief usually
denominated a cracker.
Certain fears which had by this time crept over the mind of Miss
Sowersoft caused her to be more than usually charitable and eager in her
inquiries after the doctor's opinion about Colin: but the answers she
received were neither very conclusive nor very satisfactory. She was, in
fact, obliged to seek for consolation, for the present, in the belief,
which she struggled hard to impress firmly upon herself, that the boy's
illness had arisen wholly in consequence of his sitting on the ground so
late in the evening to write his letter; and that his subsequent sousing
in the horse-trough had no connexion whatever with it; as he might very
easily have fallen accidentally into a river instead, and received no
more harm from it than he had from the aforesaid pumping.
Daring several subsequent days the boy continued in such a state as
filled his mistress with continual apprehensions lest her house should
eventually be troubled with his corpse. About his death, considering
that event solely by itself, she cared very little; he might live or
die, just as his constitution inclined him, for aught she would choose
between the two; only, in case he should not survive, it would annoy
her very much indeed to have all the trouble of getting another body's
corpse prepared for the ground, without in all likelihood ever receiving
from Mrs. Clink a single halfpenny in return for it. She mentioned
her apprehensions to Mr. Palethorpe, who replied that it was all silly
childishness to allow herself to be imposed on by her own good feelings,
and that to talk about humanity would never do for folks so far north
as they were. On this unquestioned authority Miss Sowersoft would
inevitably have acted that very day, and removed our hero, at any risk,
to Bramleigh, in order to give him a chance of dying comfortably at
home, had not fortune so ordered it, that, while preparations were being
made for taking him from a bed of fever into an open cart which stood
ready in the yard, Dr. Rowel chanced to ride up, and at once put his
veto upon their proceedings. Not that the doctor would by any means have
purposely ridden half the distance for the sake of such a patient; but
as chance not unfrequently favours those whom their own species despise,
it happened that his professional assistance had that afternoon been
required in the case of a wealthy old lady in the neighbourhood; and,
as the doctor's humanity was not, at all events, so very short-legged
as not to be able to carry him one quarter of a mile when it lay in his
way, he took Snitterton Lodge in his circuit, for the sake of seeing
Master Colin.
It will readily be supposed that during these few days, (as the boy had
not made his appearance at home on the previous Sunday, according to
conditional promise,) both his mother and Fanny had almost hourly been
expecting to hear from him. Nor had various discussions on the cause of
his silence been by any means omitted. Mrs. Clink attributed it to
the fact of his having found everything so very pleasant at Snitterton
Lodge, that he really had had neither time nor inclination to wean
himself for a few short hours from the delights with which he was
surrounded; but Fanny, whose mind had been dwelling ever since his
departure upon the dismal forebodings with which Miss Sowersoft's
appearance had filled it, expressed to Mrs. Clink her full belief that
something had happened to Colin, or he would never have neglected either
to come himself, or to write, as he had promised.
“I am sure,” she continued, very pensively, “it has made me so uneasy
all this last week, that I have dreamed about him almost every night.
Something has happened to him, I am as certain as if I had seen it; for
I can trust to Colin's word just as well as though he had taken his oath
about it. However, I will walk over this afternoon and see; for I shall
never rest until I know for a certainty.”
“Walk, fiddlesticks!” exclaimed Mrs. Clink. “If you go over there in
that suspicious manner, as though you fancied they had murdered him, it
is a hundred to one but you will affront Miss Sowersoft, and get Colin
turned out of a situation that may be the making of him. Stay where you
are--do; and if you cannot make anything, do not mar it by interfering
in a matter that you know nothing about. I have had trouble enough with
him one way or another, without his being brought back on my hands, when
he is as comfortable, I dare say, as he possibly can be.”
Though the latter remark was evidently intended to apply to Fanny's
supposed injudicious solicitude for Colin's welfare, the girl passed it
by without observation. She hurried her day's work forwards, in order to
gain the necessary time for making her projected visit; and at about
the middle of the afternoon suddenly disappeared from the eyes of
Mrs. Clink, without informing her previously touching her place of
destination.
While Dr. Rowel was yet in attendance on Colin, Fanny arrived and
introduced herself to Miss Sowersoft, as she was employing herself in
picking the pips off a handful of cowslips which lay in her lap. On
seeing Fanny thus unexpectedly, and under circumstances which she
felt would require some very ingenious explanation or evasion, her
countenance seemed to darken as though a positive shadow had been cast
upon it. A struggle between her real feelings and her consciousness of
the necessity to disguise them ensued; and in the course of a few brief
seconds the darkness of her countenance passed away, and she affected to
salute her unwelcome visitor with much cordiality.
In reply to Fanny's inquiry respecting Colin, Miss Sowersoft stated that
he was improving very nicely under Mr. Palethorpe's tuition, although
they had had some trouble to make him do as he was bid; that he had
enjoyed the most extraordinary good health until a few days ago, when he
took a little cold, which had made him rather poorly.
“There!--I was sure of it!” cried Fanny, interrupting her; “I said so to
his mother before I came away. I knew there was something amiss, or he
would have written to us before now. And how did he take such a cold,
Miss Sowersoft?”
“Take cold!--why, you know there are a hundred different ways of taking
cold, and it is impossible sometimes for even a person himself to say
how he took it. I am sure Palethorpe gets tremendous colds sometimes,
and how he gets them is a perfect miracle. But, on my word, cold is so
insinuating, that really, as I say sometimes, there is not a part but it
will find its way to at one time or another.”
“Yes--but where is Colin now?--because I shall want to see him before I
go back.”
“Oh, he is somewhere about the house,” replied Miss Sowersoft, with an
unprecedented degree of effrontery; “but your seeing him is not of the
least consequence. It cannot cure his cold; and as for anything else, it
would very likely make him all the more discontented when you were gone
again. If you take my advice, you would not see him, especially when I
can tell you everything just the same as though you saw it yourself.”
At this moment the foot of the doctor, as he groped his way down stairs,
was overheard by the speaker. She started up instantly, and endeavoured
to hurry Fanny out of the room before that professional gentleman should
enter it; but her manoeuvre failed, and before Miss Sowersoft could
caution him to be silent the doctor remarked, in a sufficiently loud
tone to be heard distinctly by both, that unless the boy was taken great
care of, there was little chance left of his recovery.
“What boy?” exclaimed Fanny, rushing forward. “What _is_ he so ill as
that? For God's sake let me see him!”
Concluding from the direction in which the doctor had come that Colin
was somewhere in the regions above, she flew rather than walked up
stairs, without waiting for an invitation or a conductor, and soon threw
her arms in an ecstasy of grief upon his neck.
“Oh, Colin! God has sent me on purpose to save you! _Do_ be better, and
you shall go home again very soon.”
But Colin could only put up his pallid arms in an imploring action, and
cry for very joy, as he gazed in the face of one of those only two
who had occupied his das and night thoughts, and been the unconscious
subjects of his unceasing and most anxious wishes.
The trouble of this first meeting being over, some more quiet
conversation ensued; and, although almost too ill and weak to be allowed
to talk, Colin persisted in stating briefly to the horror-stricken Fanny
the kind of reception he had met with on his arrival, his treatment
afterwards, the taking of his letter from him, and the brutal conduct
which had caused his present illness. The girl stood silent, merely
because she knew not what to think, what to believe, what to doubt; and
was besides utterly lost for words to express properly her strangely
mingled thoughts. It was almost impossible--incredible! Why could they
do it? There was no cause for it--there _could_ be no cause for it.
Human nature, and especially human nature in the shape of woman, was
incapable of anything so infamous. Yet Colin was sensible--he had told
an intelligible tale; and, most true of all, there he lay, a mere vision
of what he was so brief a time ago,--a warranty plain and palpable
that grievous wrong had been endured. Her brain was absolutely
bewildered--she looked like one hovering on the doubtful boundary
between sense and insanity. She cast her eyes around for surety--on the
bed--at _him_, A burst of tears, as of a spring that for the first time
breaks its bounds, succeeded,--and then another and another, as she fell
on her knees and buried her face in the clothes that covered him.
By and by, the doctor and Miss Sowersoft were present in the room with
her. Fanny raised her head and beheld Colin's mistress attempting, in
the presence of the doctor, to do the attentive, by adjusting the sheet
about the boy's neck to keep off the external air.
“Do not touch him!” exclaimed Fanny, springing to her feet; “he shall
have nothing from your hands!”
“Ay!” cried the doctor: “young woman, what now, what now?”
“What now? Sir, you may well say _what now!_ I have heard all about
it--Colin has told me all. Miss Sowersoft has nearly killed him, and now
wants to show, because _you_ are here, how kind and good she is!”
So saying, Fanny resolutely set about making the arrangement which Miss
Sowersoft had contemplated with her own hands.
“Why--what--who is this young woman?” asked the doctor, somewhat
astonished at the unexpected scene which had just passed before him.
“Nobody!” replied Miss Sowersoft; “she is only Mrs. Clink's servant, and
a pert impudent hussy, too, as you have heard.”
At the same time she looked in the doctor's face, and endeavoured to
smile contemptuously, though it “came off” in such a manner as would
inevitably have frightened anybody less accustomed than was Dr. Rowel to
witness the agonies of the human countenance.
“Yes, sir,” added Fanny, “I am only a servant; but I am a _woman_,
whether servant or mistress. I nursed this lad when I was but six years
old myself, and have taken care of him ever since. She shall not drown
him, though she thinks she will!”
“_Me_ drown him!” exclaimed Miss Sowersoft in feigned amazement.
“Yes,” replied Fanny, “_you_ drown him. If you had not half murdered him
in that trough, he would never have been here now.”
“_Do_ let us go down stairs, doctor,” observed Miss Sowersoft; “such
rubbish as this is not worth hearing.” And she made her way towards the
door.
“Where is that letter?” cried Fanny eagerly, fearful lest the lady to
whom she addressed herself should escape.
“Pshaw! nonsense! don't catechise me!” replied Miss Sowersoft, as
she tripped down stairs; while the doctor, half in soliloquy and half
addressing Miss Sowersoft, remarked, in allusion to Fanny, “She's a
damsel of some spirit too!” Then addressing the girl herself, “Are you
the little girl I saw at Mrs. Clink's when this boy was born?”
“Yes, sir, I am,” answered Fanny, as her passion sunk almost to nothing,
and she blushed to be so questioned.
“Ah, indeed!” cried Doctor Rowel. “Well, I should not have thought it.
Why, you are quite a fine young woman now. Dear-a-me! I had quite lost
sight of you. I could not have believed it. Humph!” And the doctor
surveyed her fair proportions with something of astonishment, and a
great deal of satisfaction. To think that from such a little pale,
half-fed, unhappy thing of work and thought beyond her years as she then
was, there should have sprung up the full-sized, the pretty featured,
and naturally genteel-looking girl now before him! But then, he had
not that benefit which the reader enjoys, of reflecting how worldly
circumstances, how poverty and plenty, sway the tempers of mankind; and
that, as Mistress Clink's circumstances improved, so had Fanny improved
likewise; and from seven or eight years old upwards, Fanny had enjoyed a
much more comfortable home than, on his first introduction to her, might
reasonably have been expected.
Doctor Rowel resumed his conversation.
“And how came you to be put to service so very early? for you had not,
if I remember rightly, either health or strength to recommend you.”
Colin's eyes as he lay were fixed, as it might have been the eyes of a
picture, on the doctor's countenance.
“I don't know, I'm sure, sir,” replied Fanny: but after a few moments'
hesitation, added, “I suppose it was because I had no friends.”
“No friends!” the doctor repeated,--“why, where's your father and
mother?”
“I never knew them, sir.”
“Indeed! never knew them!”
“No, sir!” and Fanny sobbed at the very recollection of her childhood's
helplessness.
“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor; “you scarcely seem to have been born for
a servant. Where did Mrs. Clink find you?”
“I do not know, sir. She never told me.”
“Ah!--oh! oh!--well! It's odd she never told you. So you do not know
either who your father, or your mother, or your friends were?”
“No, sir,--I do not. But I remember------”
“Well,--go on,--you remember,--what do you remember? where did you come
from? Do you know that?”
“I think, from Leeds, sir.”
“Leeds!” exclaimed the doctor; “and what else do you remember?”
“I can remember, sir,--though I can but just remember it,--that my
father was taken away from me once, and I never saw him again.”
“And, what's your name?” continued the doctor in evident excitement.
“Fanny Woodruff,” she replied.
The doctor's features became pale and rigid, and his eyes were fixed
upon her almost immoveably.
“God bless my soul!” he slowly ejaculated, as he rose to leave the room;
“she should have been lost, or dead!”
But he turned again when at the head of the stairs.
“Now, young woman,--if you can keep a secret,--tell nobody, not even
your mistress, what has passed. Take no notice; and perhaps I may do
something for you. But I thought we had seen the last of your face
seventeen years ago!”
Fanny and Colin were left alone.
“He knows something about me!” was the first thought that arose in
Fanny's mind. But she did not utter it, and only asked very softly, if
Colin had heard what the doctor said.
“Yes,” he replied, “and I shall never forget it.”
“But, say nothing,” added the girl: “he promised to do something for me.
I wonder what it is!”
“So do I,” added Colin; “something worth having, I dare say.”
Thus they talked till evening. Colin said how much better he felt since
she had been with him; and Fanny declared she would not leave him again
for another day, until he was well; and, when he was well, then she
would get him away from such unfeeling people, even though she had to go
down on her knees to beg another situation for him elsewhere.
When, some little time afterwards, Fanny went down stairs, and informed
the mistress of the house of her resolution to stay and attend on Colin
until he was better, that amiable creature replied, “I think you won't
then. We have not any room to spare. As if I was going to keep beds at
liberty, to accommodate any trunnion that may think fit to cram herself
into my house! We've plenty of work on our hands without having to wait
on other people's servants. What do you say, Palethorpe?”
“Well, I don't know, meesis,” replied Mr. Palethorpe; “it seems as if
Mr. Rowel was understood to say he was very bad, and must be waited on
pretty constantly.”
“I'm sure _I_ sha'n't wait on him neither constantly nor inconstantly!”
very pertly exclaimed Miss Sowersoft; and certainly giving a very
ingenious turn to her own views, as soon as she found which way her
lover's needle pointed; “_I_'m not going to trot up and down stairs a
thousand times a day for the sake of such a thing as a plough-lad.
Them may wait on him that likes him, if he is to be waited on; but I'm
positive _I_ shan't, nor anybody else that belongs to me!”
This conclusion left, without another word, the field wholly open to
Fanny; and as Miss Sowersoft, on concluding her speech, bounced off into
the dairy, not another word was needed.
Whatever might be the views entertained by the lady of the house
touching the treatment most proper for Colin, there still were
individuals amongst that rude community whose feelings were of a
somewhat more catholic kind than those of their mistress; so that Fanny
found no difficulty in procuring a volunteer, in the person of Abel,
to go over to Bramleigh for the purpose of informing Mistress Clink how
affairs stood, and of bringing back such few needful articles as Fanny
might require during her stay at the farm.
All that night she passed a sleepless watch by the side of Colin's bed,
beguiling the hours not devoted to immediate attendance on him, partly
by looking over the little books which had come from home in his
box, but more by employing her mind in the creation of every possible
description of fanciful supposition touching her own origin, her
history, her parents, and the knowledge which the doctor appeared to
have of her earliest life. What was it?--what could it be? and, what
could he mean by enjoining her to mention nothing of all this to any
second person? In her he had unexpectedly found one whom he had known a
baby, and had believed to be dead, or lost in the vast crowds of poverty
long ago. Had she been born to better things than surrounded her now?
Had she been defrauded of her rights? And, did the doctor bid her be
silent because he might have to employ stratagem in order to recover
them again? Perhaps she was born--nay! she knew not what she was born;
nor dare she trust herself to think, scarcely; though, certain it is
that a visionary world of ladies and gentlemen, and fine things, and
wealth to set Colin up in the world and to make his mother comfortable,
and to exalt herself over all the petty enemies by whom they were now
surrounded, passed in pleasant state before her prolific imagination:
while, it is equally certain, that--blushing, though unseen and in
secret, at the very consciousness--a prouder feeling sprung up in her
bosom, and she began to feel as though she must be more genteel, and
more particular, and less like a common servant, than she had hitherto
been.
Such were the golden fancies, and the pretty resolves that crowded round
her brain that night. Neither, as a honest chronicler of human nature,
would I take upon me to assert that she did not once or twice during
these reveries rise to contemplate her features in the glass, and to
adjust her hair more fancifully, and wonder--if it should be so--what
kind of looking lady she should make. Truly, it was a pretty face that
met her eyes in the mirror. As Colin woke up from a partial slumber, and
raised his head slightly from the pillow, to ascertain what had become
of his guardian, the reflection of her countenance as she was “looking
the lady,” chanced to catch his eye: and, though he smiled as he gently
sunk down again, he thought that that face would never again pass from
before him.