He failed, however, to find it in any of the downstair sitting-rooms. Then he went even into the kitchen, thinking the liberty allowable under such conditions. The grate was cold and the table bare; on the one lay a drift of soot, on the other a level deposit of dust, with a few grimy implements to distribute it.
Hardenow made up his mind for the worst. He was not addicted to fiction (as haply was indicated by his good degree), but he could not help recalling certain eastern and even classic tales; and if he had come upon all the household sitting in native marble, or from the waistband downward turned into fish, or logs, or dragons, he might have been partly surprised, but must have been wholly thankful for the explanation. Failing however to discover this, and being resolved to go through with the matter, the tutor of Brasenose mounted the black oak staircase of this enchanted house. At the head of the stairs was a wide, low passage, leading right and left from a balustraded gallery. The young man chose first the passage to the right, and tightening his grip of the stick, strode on.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE FIRE-BELL
The doors of the rooms on either side were not only open but fastened back; the sashes of the windows were all thrown up; and the rain, which had followed when the east wind fell, had entered and made puddles on the sills inside. Such a draught of air rushed down the passage that Hardenow's lengthy skirts flickered out, in the orthodox fashion, behind him.
At the end of this passage he came to a small alcove, fenced off with a loose white curtain, shaking and jerking itself in the wind. He put this aside with his stick; and two doorways, leading into separate rooms, but with no doors in them, faced him. Something told him that both these rooms held human life, or human death.
First he looked in at the one on the left. He expected to see lonely death; perhaps corruption; or he knew not what. His nerves were strung or unstrung (whichever is the medical way of putting it) to such a degree that he wholly forgot, or entirely put by, everything, except his own absorbing sense of his duty, as a man in holy orders. This duty had never been practised yet in any serious way, because he had never been able to afford it. It costs so much more money than it brings in. However, in the midst of more lucrative work, he had felt that he was sacred to it – rich or poor – and he often had a special hankering after it. This leaning towards the cure of souls had a good chance now of being gratified.
In the room on the left hand he saw a little bed, laid at the foot of a fat four-poster, which with carved mouths grinned at it; and on this little bed of white (without curtain, or trimming, or tester), lay a lady, or a lady's body, cast down recklessly, in sleep or death, with the face entirely covered by a silvery cloud of hair. From the manner in which one arm was bent, Hardenow thought that the lady lived. There was nothing else to show it. Being a young man, a gentleman also, he hung back and trembled back from entering that room.
Without any power to "revolve things well," as he always directed his pupils to do, Hardenow stepped to the other doorway, and silently settled his gaze inside. His eyes were so worried that he could not trust them, until he had time to consider what they told.
They told him a tale even stranger than that which had grown upon him for an hour now, and passed from a void alarm into a terror; they showed him the loveliest girl – according to their rendering – that ever they had rested on till now; a maiden sitting in a low chair reading, silently sometimes, and sometimes in a whisper, according to some signal, perhaps, of which he saw no sign. There was no other person in the room, so far as he could see; and he strained his eyes with extreme anxiety to make out that.
The Rev. Thomas Hardenow knew (as clearly as his keen perception ever had brought any knowledge home) that he was not discharging the functions now – unless they were too catholic – of the sacerdotal office, in watching a young woman through a doorway, without either leave or notice. But though he must have been aware of this, it scarcely seemed now to occur to him; or whether it did, or did not, he went on in the same manner gazing.
The girl could not see him; it was not fair play. The width of great windows, for instance, kept up such a rattling of blinds, and such flapping of cords, and even the floor was so strewn with herbs (for the sake of their aroma), that anybody might quite come close to anybody who had cast away fear (in the vast despair of prostration), without any sense of approach until perhaps hand was laid upon shoulder. Hardenow took no more advantage of these things than about half a minute. In that half-minute, however, his outward faculties (being all alive with fear) rendered to his inward and endiathetic organs a picture, a schema, or a plasm – the proper word may be left to him – such as would remain inside, at least while the mind abode there.
The sound of low, laborious breath pervaded the sick room now and then, between the creaking noises and the sighing of the wind. In spite of all draughts, the air was heavy with the scent of herbs strewn broadcast, to prevent infection – tansy, wormwood, rue, and sage, burnt lavender and rosemary. The use of acids in malignant fevers was at that time much in vogue, and saucers of vinegar and verjuice, steeped lemon-peel, and such like, as well as dozens of medicine bottles, stood upon little tables. Still Hardenow could not see the patient; only by following the glance of the reader could he discover the direction. It was the girl herself, however, on whom his wondering eyes were bent. At first he seemed to know her face, and then he was sure that he must have been wrong. The sense of doing good, and the wonderful influence of pity, had changed the face of a pretty girl into that of a beautiful woman. Hardenow banished his first idea, and wondered what strange young lady this could be.
Although she was reading aloud, and doing it not so very badly, it was plain enough that she expected no one to listen to her. The sound of her voice, perhaps, was soothing to some one who understood no words; as people (in some of the many unknown conditions of brain) have been soothed and recovered by a thread of waterfall broken with a walking-stick. At any rate, she read on, and her reading fell like decent poetry.
Hardenow scarcely knew what he ought to do. He did not like to go forward; and it was a mean thing to go backward, rendering no help, when help seemed wanted so extremely. He peeped back into the other room; and there was the lady with the fine white hair, sleeping as soundly as a weary top driven into dreaming by extreme activity of blows.
Nothing less than a fine idea could have delivered Hardenow from this bad situation. It was suddenly borne in upon his mind that the house had a rare old fire-bell, a relic of nobler ages, hanging from a bar in a little open cot, scarcely big enough for a hen-roost; and Russel had shown him one day, with a laugh, the corner in which the rope hung. There certainly could be but very little chance of doing harm by ringing it; what could be worse than the present state of things? Some good Samaritan might come. No Levite was left to be driven away.
For Hardenow understood the situation now. The meaning of a very short paragraph in the Oxford paper of Saturday, which he had glanced at and cast by, came distinctly home to him. The careful editor had omitted name of person and of place, but had made his report quite clear to those who held a key to the reference. "How very dull-witted now I must be!" cried the poor young fellow in his lonely trouble. "I ought to have known it. But we never know the clearest things until too late." It was not only for the sake of acquitting himself of an awkward matter, but also in the hope of doing good to the few left desolate, that Hardenow moved forth his legs, from the windy white curtain away again.
He went down the passage at a very great pace, as nearly akin to a run as the practice of long steady walks permitted; and then at the head of the staircase he turned, and remembered a quiet little corner. Here, in an out-of-the-way recess, the rope of the alarm-bell hung; and he saw it, even in that niche, moving to and fro with the universal draught. Hardenow seized it, and rang such a peal as the old bell had never given tongue to before. The bell was a large one, sound and clear; and the call must have startled the neighbourhood for a mile, if it could be startled.
"Really, I do believe I have roused somebody at last!" exclaimed the ringer, as he looked through a window commanding the road to the house, and saw a man on horse-back coming. "But, surely, unless he sprang out of the ground, he must have been coming before I began."
In this strange loneliness, almost any visitor would be welcome; and Hardenow ran towards the top of the stairs to see who it was, and to meet him. But here, as he turned the corner of the balustraded gallery, a scared and hurrying young woman, almost ran into his arms.
"Oh, what is it?" she cried, drawing back, and blushing to a deeper colour than well-extracted blood can show; "there is no funeral yet! He is not dead! Who is ringing the bell so? It has startled even him, and will either kill or save him! Kill him, it will kill him, I am almost sure!"
"Esther – Miss Cripps – what a fool I am! I never thought of that – I did not know – how could I tell? I am all in the dark! Is it Russel Overshute?"
"Yes, Mr. Hardenow. Everybody knows it. Every one has taken good care to run away. Even the doctors will come no more! They say it is hopeless; and they might only infect their other patients. I fear that his mother must die too! She has taken the fever in a milder form; but walk she will, while walk she can. And at her time of life it is such a chance. But I cannot stop one moment!"
"And at your time of life is it nothing, Esther? You seem to think of everybody but yourself. Is this fair to your own hearth and home?"
While he was speaking he looked at her eyes; and her eyes were filling with deep tears – a dangerous process to contemplate.
"Oh, no, there is no fear of that," she answered misunderstanding him; "I shall take good care not to go home until I am quite sure that there is no risk."
"That is not what I mean. I mean supposing you yourself should catch it."
"If I do, they will let me stay here, I am sure. But I have no fear of it. The hand that led me here will lead me back again. But you ought not to be here. I am quite forgetting you."
Hardenow looked at her with admiration warmer than he could put into words. She had been thinking of him throughout. She thought of every one except herself. Even in the moment of first surprise she had drawn away so that she stood to leeward; and while they were speaking she took good care that the current of wind passed from him to her. Also in one hand she carried a little chafing-dish producing lively fumigation.
"Now, if you please, I must go back to him. Nothing would move him; he lay for hours, as a log lies on a stone. I could not have knowledge whether he was living, only for his breathing sometimes like a moan. The sound of the bell seemed to call him to life, for he thought it was his own funeral. His mother is with him; worn out as she is, the lady awoke at his rambling. She sent me to find out the meaning. Now, sir, please to go back round the corner; the shivering wind comes down the passage."
Hardenow was not such a coward as to obey her orders. He even wanted to shake hands with her, as in her girlhood he used to do, when he had frightened this little pupil with too much emendation. But Esther curtsied at a distance, and started away – until her retreat was cut off very suddenly.
"Why, ho girl! Ho girl; and young man in the corner! What is the meaning of all this? I have come to see things righted; my name is Worth Oglander. I find this here old house silent as a grave, and you two looking like a brace of robbers! Young woman! – young woman! – why, bless me now, if it isn't our own Etty Cripps! I did believe, and I would believe, but for knowing of your family, Etty, and your brother Cripps the Carrier, that here you are for the purpose of setting this old mansion afire!"
Esther, having been hard set to sustain what had happened already (as well as unblest with a wink of sleep since Friday night), was now unable to assert her dignity. She simply leaned against the wall, and gently blew into the embers of her disinfecting stuff. She knew that the Squire might kill himself, after all his weeks of confinement, by coming over here, in this rash manner, and working himself up so. But it was not her place to say a word; even if she could say it.
"Mr. Oglander," said Hardenow, coming forward and offering his hand, while Esther looked at them from beneath a cloud of smoke, "I know your name better than you know mine. You happened to be on the continent when I was staying in your village. My name is Thomas Hardenow. I am a priest of the Anglican Church, and have no intention of setting anything on fire."
"Lor' bless me! Lord bless me! Are you the young fellow that turned half the heads of Beckley, and made the Oxford examiners all tumble back, like dead herrings with their jaws down? Cripps was in the schools, and he told me all about it. And you were a friend of poor Overshute. I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir."
"Master Cripps has inverted the story, I fear," Hardenow answered, with a glance at Esther; while he could not, without rudeness, get his hand out of the ancient Squire's (which clung to another, in this weak time, as heartily as it used to do); "the examiners made a dry herring of me. But I am very glad to see you, sir; I have heard of – at least, I mean, I feared – that you were in weak health almost."
"Not a bit of it! I was fool enough – or rather I should say, my sister – to have a lot of doctors down; fellows worth their weight in gold, or at any rate in brass, every day of their own blessed lives; and yet with that temptation even, they cannot lengthen their own days. Of that I will tell you some other time. They kept me indoors, and they drenched me with physic – this, that, and the other. God bless you, sir, this hour of the air, with my own old good mare under me, has done me more good – but my head goes round; just a little; not anything to notice. Etty, my dear, don't you be afraid."
With these words the Squire sank down on the floor, not through any kind of fit, or even loss of consciousness; but merely because his fine old legs (being quite out of practice for so many weeks) had found it a little more than they could do to keep themselves firm in the stirrups, and then carry their master up slippery stairs, and after that have to support a good deal of excitement among the trunk parts.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THROW PHYSIC TO THE DOGS
"In all my life I never knew such a very extraordinary thing," said Squire Oglander on the following Tuesday, to his old friend Dr. Splinters. "Why, look you here, he was wholly given up by the very first man in London – that the poor young fellow was – can you deny that, Splinters?"
"Well, between you and me and the door-post, Squire," answered his learned visitor, "I am not quite so sure that Sir Anthony is quite the rose and crown of the profession. He may be a great Court card and all that, and the rage with all the nobility; but for all that, Squire, there are good men in comparatively obscure positions; men who have devoted their lives to science from the purest motives; modest men, sir, who are thankful to pocket their poor guinea; men who would scorn any handle to their name or any shabby interloping; sir, I say there are d – d good men – "
"But even you, Splinters, come now – even you gave him up – unless we are wholly misinformed."
"Not at all. That was quite a mistake. The fact was simply this. When Sir Anthony pronounced his opinion at our last consultation, it was not my place to contradict him – we never do that with a London man – but I ventured in my own mind to differ even from our brilliant light, sir. For I said to myself, 'first see the effect of the remedial agent which I myself, in the absence of this Londoner, have exhibited.' I was suddenly called away to retrieve a case of shocking blundering by a quack at Iffley. That was why you did not see me, Squire."
"Oh, yes, to be sure! I quite see now," answered Mr. Oglander, with a quiet internal wink. "And when you came you found the most wonderful effect from your remedial agent."
"That I did. Something I could scarcely have believed. Soft sweet sleep, a genial perspiration, an equable pulse, nice gentle breathing – the very conditions of hygiene which Sir Anthony's efforts could never produce. Why, my good sir, in all the records of the therapeutic art, there is no example of such rapid efficacy. I think it will henceforth be acknowledged that Dr. Splinters knows what he is about. My dear friend, you know that there is nothing I dislike so much as the appearance of vaunting. If I had only condescended to that, nobody could have stopped me, sir. But no, Squire, no; I have always been the same; and I have not an enemy, except myself."
"You may say more than that, sir – a great deal more than that. You may say that you have many friends, doctor, who admire your great abilities. But as to Russel Overshute, if the poor fellow does come round the general belief will be that he must thank the fire-bell."
"The fire-bell! My dear sir, in this age of advanced therapeutics – Oglander, you must know better than to listen to that low story!"
"Splinters, I know that foolish tales are told about almost everything. But being there myself, I thought there might be something in it."
"Nothing whatever! I never heard such nonsense! I was quite angry with Esther Cripps. What can chits of girls know? They must have their chatter."
"I suppose they must," said the Squire sadly, thinking of his own dear Grace; "still they may be right sometimes. At any rate, doctor, the fire-bell did as much good as your medicine did. Take another glass of wine. I would not hurt your feelings for the world, my dear old friend."
"Oglander," answered Dr. Splinters, putting up his great gold spectacles, so that beneath them he might see – for he never could see through them – how to pour out his fine glass of port, "Oglander, you have something or other that you are keeping in the background. Squire, whatever it is, out with it. Between you and me, sir, there should be nothing but downright yes or no, Mr. Oglander. Downright yes or no, sir."
"Of course, of course," said the Squire, relapsing into some quiet mood again; "that was how I always liked it. Splinters, you must know I did. And I never meant anything against it, by bringing this here little bottle back. It may have saved the poor boy's life; and of course it did, if you say so. But the seal is still on the cork, and the stuff all there; so it may do good again. I dare say the good came through the glass; you doctors have such devices!" Mr. Oglander took a small square bottle from his inner peculiar pocket, and gave it to the doctor, so as not to disturb his wine-glass.
"How the deuce did you get hold of this?" cried Splinters, being an angry man when taken without notice; "this is some of that girl's insolent tricks! – I call her an insolent and wicked girl!"
"I call her a good and a brave girl! – the very best girl in Beckley, since – but, my dear Splinters, you must not be vexed. She told me that you had the greatest faith in this last idea of yours; and it struck me at once that you might wish to try it in some other case; and so I brought it. You see it has not been opened."
"It doesn't matter whether it was used or not," cried Dr. Splinters vehemently; "there is the stuff, sir; and here is the result! Am I to understand, sir, that you deny the existence of Providence?"
"Far be such a thing from me!" the Squire replied, with a little indignation at such an idea; and then, remembering that Splinters was his guest, he changed the subject. "How could I help having faith in the Lord, when I see His care made manifest? Why, look at me, Splinters; I am twice the man I was last Sunday morning! Why is it so? Why, because it pleased a gracious Providence to make it my duty, as a man, to ride! – to ride, sir, a very considerable distance, on a mare who had been eating her head off. Every one vowed that I never could do it; and my good housekeeper locked me in; and when I unscrewed the lock, she sent two men after me, to pick me up. Very good, sir; here I am, enjoying my glass of port, with the full intention of having another. Yesterday I sent to our road-contractor for a three-headed and double-handed hammer; and Kale smashed up, in about two minutes, three hundred and twenty medicine bottles! They will come in for the top of the orchard wall."
"Squire," answered Splinters, with a twinkling eye, "it is not at all improbable that you may be right. There are some constitutions so perverse that to exhibit the best remedial agent is just the same thing as to reason with a pig. But it is high time for me to be jogging on my road. If Beckley and Shotover discard my extremely humble services, there are other places in the world, sir, besides Beckley and Shotover."
"There is no other place in the world for you, except Beckley, for some hours, my friend. We have known one another long enough, to allow for one another now. I would have arranged a rubber for you – but, but – well, you know what I mean – sadly selfish; but I cannot help it."
The doctor, though vain and irritable, was easily touched with softness. He thought of all his many children, and of the long pain he had felt at losing one out of a dozen; then without process of thought he felt for the loss of one; where one was all.
"Oglander, you need not say another word," he answered, putting forth his hand, to squeeze any trifle away between them. "A rubber in winter is all very well; and so it is in summer, at the proper time, but on a magnificent spring evening, to watch the sunset between one's cards is not – I mean that it is very nice indeed, but still it ought scarcely to be done, when you can help it. Now, I will just take the leastest little drop of your grand Curaçoa before I smoke; and then if you have one of those old Manillas, I am your man for a stroll in the garden."
To go into a garden in good weather soothes the temper. The freedom of getting out of doors is a gracious joy to begin with; and when the first blush of that is past, without any trouble there come forward so many things to be looked at. Even since yesterday – if we had the good hap to see them yesterday – many thousand of little things have spent the time in changing. Even with the weather scarcely different from yesterday's – though differ it must in some small points, when in its most consistent mood – even with no man to come and dig, and fork, and roll, and by all human devices harass; and even without any children dancing, plucking, pulling, trampling, and enjoying their blessed little hearts, as freely as any flower does; yet in the absence of all those local contributions towards variety, variety there will be for all who have the time to look for it.
The most observant and delightful poets of the present age, instead of being masters of nature, prefer to be nature's masters. Having obtained this power they use it with such diligence and spirit, that they make the peach and the apple bloom together, and the plum keep the kalendar of the lilac. Once in a way, such a thing does almost happen (without the poet's aid) – that is to say, when a long cold winter is broken by a genial outburst waking every dormant life; and after that, a repressive chill returns, and lasts to the May month. At such a time, when hope deferred springs anew as hope assured, and fear breaks into fluttering joy, and faith moves steadily into growth, then a truly poetic confusion arises in the works of earth.
In such a state of things the squire and the doctor walked to and fro in the garden; the Squire still looking very pale and feeble, but with the help of his favourite spud, managing to get along, and to enjoy the evening. The blush of the peach wall was not over, and yet the trellised apple-tree was softly unsheathing puckered buds, all in little clusters pointed like rosettes of coral. The petals of the plum-bloom still were hovering with their edges brown, although in a corner near a chimney, positively a lilac-bush was thrusting forth those livid jags which lift and curve themselves so swiftly into plumes of beauty. The two good gentlemen were surprised; each wanted particularly to hear what the other thought of it; but neither would deign to ask; and either feared to speak his thoughts, for fear of giving the other an advantage. Because they were rival gardeners; and so they avoided the subject.
"This is the very first cigar," said the Squire, as they turned at the end of the peach wall, over against a young Grosse Mignonne, beautifully trained on the Seymour system, and bright with the central glow of pistil, although the petals were dropping – "my very first cigar, since that – you know what I mean, of course – since I have cared whether I were in my garden, or in my grave. But the Lord supports me. Providence is good; or how could I be smoking this cigar?"
"You must not learn to look at things in that way," Dr. Splinters answered; "Oglander, you must learn to know better. You are in an uncomfortable frame of mind, or you would not have flouted me with that bottle, after all our friendship. Why, bless me! Only look around you. Badly pruned as your trees are, what a picture there is of largeness!"
"Yes, Splinters, more than you could find in yours; which you amputate into a doctor's bamboo. But now, perhaps, you may doubt it, Splinters, because your trees are so very poor – but I have not felt any pride at all, any pride at all, in one of them. What is the good of lovely trees, with only one's self to enjoy them?"
"Now, Oglander, there you are again! How often must I tell you? Your poor little Gracie is gone, of course; and a nice little thing she was, to be sure. But here you are again as well as ever, or at any rate as positive. I judge a man's state of health very much by his powers of contradiction. And yours are first-rate. Go to, go to! You are equal to another wife. Take a young one, and have more Gracies."
"Splinters, do you know what I should do," Mr. Oglander answered, with his spud uplifted, "if my powers were such as you suppose – because I smashed your bottles?"
"Yes, I dare say you would knock me down, and never beg my pardon till the wedding breakfast."
"You are right in the first part; but wrong in the second. Oh, doctor, is there no one able to share the simplest thoughts we have?"
"To minister to a mind diseased? First, he must have his own mind diseased; as all the blessed poets have. But look! The green fly – who would ever believe it, after our Siberian winter? The aphis is hatched in your young peach-shoots before they have made even half a joint. That comes of your Seymour system."
"Ridiculous!" answered the Squire; "but never mind! What matter now? Then you really do think, Splinters – now, as an old friend, try to tell me – in pure sincerity, do you think that I have altogether lost my Gracie?"
"Oglander, no! I can truly say no. We are all good Christians, I should hope. She is not lost, but gone before."
"But, my dear fellow, will you never understand that she ought to have gone, long after? It is all very well for you, who have got some baker's dozen of little ones, and lost only one in the measles – forgive me, I know it was hard upon you – I say things that I should not say – but if you could only bring your mind – however, I daresay you have tried to do it; and what right have I to ask you? Splinters, I know I am puzzle-headed; and many people think me worse than that. But you have the sense to understand me, because for many years you have been acquainted with my constitution. Now, Splinters, tell me, in three words – shall I live to see my Gracie?"
"That you will, Squire; and to see her married; and to dance on your lap her children!" So said Dr. Splinters, fearing what might happen, if he did not say it.
"Only to see her. That is all I want. And to have her in my arms once more. And to hear her tell me, with her own true tongue, that she never ran away from me. After that I shall be ready for my coffin, and know that the Lord has ordered it. Here comes more of your dust into my eyes! Splinters, will you never learn how to knock your ash off?"