“Mind the boggy bits, my man.”
“You needn’t be skeard about them, sir; that there pony wouldn’t near one if you tried to make him.”
Oldroyd nodded, and the man trotted to the front, the pony following, and, in spite of two or three proposals that they should change places, the guide kept on in the same untiring manner.
Here and there, though, when they had passed the common, and were ascending the hills, the man took hold of the pony’s mane, and trudged by the side; and during these times Oldroyd learned all about the fight in the fir wood.
“Whose place was it at?” said Oldroyd at last.
“Sir John Day’s, sir.”
After that they proceeded in silence till they reached the first houses of a long, straggling hamlet, when a thought occurred to Oldroyd to which he at once gave utterance.
“I say, my man, why didn’t you go to Doctor Blunt? He was two miles nearer to you than I am.”
Caleb laughed hoarsely, and shook his head.
Oldroyd checked his willing little mount at a long, low cottage beside the road, and went down the strip of garden. Three men were at the door, and they made way for him, touching their hats in a surly fashion as he came up.
“Know how he is?” said Oldroyd, sharply.
“Bout gone, sir. Glad you’ve come,” said one of the men; and Oldroyd raised the latch and went into the low-ceiled kitchen, where a tallow candle was burning in a lantern, but there was no one there.
“Here’s the doctor, miss,” said the man who had before spoken, crossing to a doorway opening at once upon a staircase, when a frightened-looking girl, with red eyes and a scared look upon her countenance, came hurrying downstairs.
“Would you please to come up, sir,” she said. “Oh. I am so glad you’ve come.”
Oldroyd followed her up the creaking staircase, and had to stoop to enter the sloping-ceiled room, where, with another pale, scared woman kneeling beside the bed, and a long, snuffed candle upon an old chest of drawers, giving a doleful, ghastly light, lay a big, black-whiskered, shaggy-haired man, his face pinched and white, and plenty of tokens about of the terrible wound he had received.
Oldroyd went at once to the bed, made a hurried examination, took out his case, and for the next half hour he was busy trying to staunch the bleeding, and place some effectual bandages upon the wound.
All this time the man never opened his eyes, but lay with his teeth clenched, and lips nipped so closely together, that they seemed to form a thin line across the lower part of his face. Oldroyd knew that he must be giving the man terrible pain, but he did not shrink, bearing it all stoically, if he was conscious, though there were times when his attendant thought he must be perfectly insensible to what was going on.
The women obeyed the slightest hint, and worked hard; but all the while Oldroyd felt that he had been called upon too late, and that the man must sink from utter exhaustion.
To his surprise, however, just as he finished his task, and was bending over his patient counting the pulsation in the wrist, the man unclosed his eyes, and looked up at him.
“Well, doctor,” he said, coolly; “what’s it to be – go or stay?”
“Life, I hope,” replied Oldroyd, as he read the energy and determination of the man’s nature. This was not one who would give up without a struggle, for his bearing during the past half hour had been heroic.
“Glad of it,” sighed the wounded man. “I haven’t done yet; and to-night’s work has given me a fresh job on hand.”
“Now, keep perfectly still and do not speak,” said Oldroyd, sternly. “Everything depends upon your being at rest. Sleep if you can. I will stop till morning to see that the bleeding does not break out again.”
“Thankye, doctor,” said the man gruffly; and just then a pair of warm lips were pressed upon Oldroyd’s hand, and he turned sharply.
“Hallo!” he said. “I’ve been so busy that I did not notice you. I’ve seen your face before.”
“Yes, sir; I met you once near The Warren – Mrs Rolph’s.”
“Thought I’d seen you. But you – are you his wife?”
“No,” said the girl, smiling faintly. “This is my father.”
“What an absurd blunder. Why, of course, I remember now. I did not know him again. It’s Mrs Rolph’s keeper.”
The flush that came into the girl’s face was visible even by the faint light of the miserable tallow candle, as Oldroyd went on in a low voice, —
“Poor fellow! I misjudged him. I took him for a poacher, and its the other way on. The scoundrels! No, no, don’t give way,” whispered Oldroyd, as the girl let her face fall into her hands and began to sob convulsively. “There, there: cheer up. We won’t let him die. You and I will pull him through, please God. Hush! quietness is everything. Go and tell those men to be still, and say I shall not want the pony till six or seven o’clock. One of them must be ready, though, in case I want a messenger to run to the town.”
Oldroyd’s words had their effect, for a dead silence fell upon the place, and the injured man soon slept quietly, lying so still, that Judith, after her return, sought the young doctor’s eyes from time to time, asking dumbly whether he was sure that something terrible had not occurred.
At such times Oldroyd rose, bent over his patient and satisfied himself that all was going well before turning to his fellow-watcher and giving her an encouraging smile.
Then there would be a weary sigh, that told of relief from an anxiety full of dread, and the night wore on.
For a time, Oldroyd, as he sat there in that dreary room, glancing occasionally at the dull, unsnuffed candle, fancied that the men had stolen away, but he would soon know that he was wrong, for the faint odour of their bad tobacco came stealing up through the window, and he knew as well as if he were present that they were sitting about on the fence or lounging against the walls of the cottage.
Between three and four, the critical time of the twenty-four hours, when life is at its lowest ebb, a sigh came from the bed, and the sufferer grew restless to a degree that made Oldroyd begin to be doubtful, but the little uneasy fit passed off, and there was utter silence once again.
Philip Oldroyd’s thoughts wandered far during this time of watching; now his imagination raised for his mental gaze the scene of the desperate encounter, and he seemed to see the blows struck, hear the oaths and fierce cries, succeeded by the report of the gun, and the groan of the injured man as he fell.
Then that scene seemed to pass away, and the room at The Firs came into sight, with its grim, blank look, the stiff figure of Mrs Alleyne; calm, deeply absorbed Alleyne; and the sunshine of the whole place, Lucy, who seemed to turn what was blank and repulsive into all that was bright and gay.
As he thought on of Lucy all the gloom and ghastliness of that wretched cottage garret faded away, a pleasant glow of satisfaction came over him, and he sat there building dreamy castles of a bright and prosperous kind, and putting Lucy in each, forgetting for the time the poverty of his practice, his own comparatively hopeless state, and the chances that she, whom he now owned that he worshipped, would be carried off by some one more successful in the world.
Did he love Lucy? Yes, he told himself, he was afraid he did – afraid, for it seemed so hopeless an affair. Did she love him? No, he dared not think that, but at one time, during the most weary portion of the watching, he could not help wishing that she might fall ill, and the duty be his to bring her back to health and strength.
He was angry with himself directly after, though he owned that such a trouble might fill her with gratitude towards him, and gratitude was a step towards love.
In the midst of these thoughts Oldroyd made himself more angry still, for he inadvertently sighed, with the effect of making the women start, and Judith gaze at him wonderingly. To take off their attention he softly shifted his seat, and began once more to think of his patient and his chances of life.
The poor fellow was sleeping easily, and so far there were no signs of the feverish symptoms that follow wounds.
The night wore on; the candle burned down in the socket, and was replaced by another, which in its turn burned out, and its successor was growing short when the twitterings of the birds were heard, and the ghostly dawn came stealing into that cheerless, whitewashed room, whose occupants’ faces seemed to have taken their hue from the ceiling.
The injured man still slept, and his breathing was low and regular, encouraged by which the countenances of the women were beginning to lose their despairing, scared aspect, as they glanced from doctor to patient, and back again.
At last the cold and pallid light of the room gave place to a warm red glow, and Oldroyd went softly to the window to see the rising sun, thinking the while what a dreary life was his, called from his comfortable home to come some six miles in the dead of the night to such a ghastly scene as this, and then to sit and watch, his payment probably the thanks of the poor people he had served.
The east was one glow of orange and gold, and the beauty of the scene, with the dewy grass and trees glittering in the morning light, chased away the mental shadows of the night.
“Not so bad a life after all,” he said to himself. “Money’s very nice, but a man can’t devote his life to greed. What a glorious morning, and how I should like a cup of tea.”
He turned to look at his patient, and found that the woman had gone, while Judith now asked him in an imploring whisper if there was any hope.
“Hope? Yes,” he replied, “it would have killed some men, but look at your father’s physique. Why, he is as strong as a horse. Take care of him and keep him quiet. Let him sleep all he can.”
Judith glanced at the wounded man, and then at Oldroyd, to whisper at last piteously, and after a good deal of hesitation, —
“The police, sir: if they come, they mustn’t take him away, must they?”
“Take him away?” said Oldroyd, wonderingly, “certainly not. I say he must not be moved. Here, I’ll write it down for you. It would be his death.”
He drew out his pocket-book to write a certificate as to the man’s state, and Judith took it, with an air approaching veneration, to fold it and place it in her bosom.
Just then the woman returned, and, after a whispering with Judith, asked Oldroyd to come down.
He glanced once more at his patient, and then followed the girl downstairs, where, in a rough but cleanly way, a cup of tea had been prepared and some bread and butter.
These proved to be so good that, feeling better for the refreshment, Oldroyd could not help noticing that, but for the traces of violent grief, Judith would have been extremely pretty.
“Will father get better, sir?” said the girl, pleadingly.
“Better? Yes, my girl,” said Oldroyd, wondering at the rustic maiden’s good looks. “There, there, don’t be foolish,” he continued, as the girl caught his hand to kiss it.
She shrank away, and coloured a little, when Oldroyd hastened to add more pleasantly, —
“I think he’ll soon be better.”
She gave him a bright, grateful look through her tears, and then hurriedly shrank away.
“Hah! that’s better,” he said to himself, as he went on with his simple meal. “A cup of tea, and a little sunshine, what a difference they do make in a man’s sensations. Humph! past six. No bed for me till to-night,” he exclaimed, as he glanced at his watch; and rising, he went softly upstairs once more, to find that his patient was still sleeping, with Judith watching by his pillow.
Oldroyd just nodded to her, and made a motion with one finger that she should come to his side.
“I’ll ride over in the afternoon,” he whispered; and then he went quietly down, said “good-morning” to the woman waiting, and with the sensation upon him that the night’s work did not seem so horrible now that the sun had risen, he stepped out.
Volume Two – Chapter Eight.
Why the Slugs Ate Lucy’s Mushrooms
Three men, one of whom was the last night’s messenger, Caleb Kent, a stranger to Oldroyd, were lounging about by the cottage gate as the doctor stepped out, and their looks asked the question they longed to have answered.
“I think he’ll get over it, my men,” said Oldroyd. “It’s a narrow escape for him, though, if he does pull through.”
The men exchanged glances.
“I suppose you’ll have the police over before long, and – What’s the matter?”
The men were looking sharply down the road.
“I mean they’ll want to question him about the scoundrels who did this work.”
“It warn’t no scoundrels, did it, doctor,” said Caleb Kent, with a vicious snarl.
“But I took it that the keeper had been shot by poachers.”
“It were Cap’n Rolph shot him,” said Caleb, fiercely.
“Dear me! What a sad accident.”
“Accident?” cried Caleb Kent, with an ugly laugh. “Why, I see him lift his gun and take aim. It was just as I was going to hit at him.”
“Nonsense, my lad: his own master.”
“Arn’t no master of his’n now. Sacked nigh three months ago.”
Oldroyd stared.
“Here, I’m getting confused, my man. That poor fellow upstairs is a keeper, isn’t he?”
“Was, sir,” said Caleb Kent, with a grin; “but he arn’t now. He was out with us after the fezzans last night.”
“Hold your tongue,” growled one of the other men.
“Sha’n’t. What for? Doctor won’t tell on us.”
“Then it is as I thought. You are a gang of poachers, and the man upstairs is hand and glove with you.”
“Well, why not, sir. They sacked him, and no one wouldn’t have him, because he used once to do a bit o’ nights hisself ’fore he turned keeper. Man can’t starve when there’s hares and fezzans about.”
“Went a bit like out o’ spite,” said Caleb. “Hadn’t been out with us before.”
“Humph! and you come and fetch me and tell me this,” said Oldroyd. “How do you know that I shall not go and give notice to the police?”
“Cause we know’d better. Caleb here was going to fetch old Blunt from the town; but I says if you fetch him, he’ll go back and tell the police.”
“And how do you know that I shall not?” said Oldroyd, tartly.
“Gent as goes out of his way to tent a poor labrer’s wife when her chap’s out o’ work, and does so much for the old folks, arn’t likely to do such a dirty trick as that. Eh, mates?”
“Humph! you seem to have a pretty good opinion of me,” said Oldroyd.
“Yes, sir, we knows a gen’leman when we sees one. We’ll pay you, sir, all right. You won’t let out on us, seeing how bad the poor fellow is.”
Oldroyd was silent and thoughtful for a few moments, and then he turned sharply upon Caleb Kent.
“Look here, sir,” he said; “you’ve got a tongue and it runs rather too fast. You made an ugly charge against that man’s late master.”
“I said I see him shute him,” said Caleb.
“And you did not see anything of the kind.”
“You gents allus stick up for each other,” muttered Caleb.
“You could not see what took place in the darkness and excitement of a fight, so hold your tongue. Such a charge would make endless mischief, and it must be a mistake.”
“All right, sir,” said Caleb.
“It would upset that poor girl, too, if she heard such a thing.”
“Yes, it would upset her sure enough if she heard,” said Caleb, with a peculiar smile, and he walked away.
“I ought to give you fellows a lecture on the danger of night poaching,” continued Oldroyd.
“Don’t, sir, please,” said one of the men, with a laugh, “for it wouldn’t do no good. ’Sides; we might want to hing a brace o’ fezzans or a hare up agin your door now and then.”
“Here, don’t you do anything of the kind, my lads,” cried Oldroyd. “I forbid it, mind. Now get me my pony.”
“All right, sir; we’ll mind what you says,” said the man who had spoken, looking mirthfully round at his companions, one of whom at once accompanied him to a low shed where the pony was munching some hay. The willing little beast was saddled while Oldroyd walked up and down the path with an abundance of sweet-scented and gay old-fashioned flowers on either side. Carnations and scarlet lychnis, and many-headed sun flowers and the like, were bright in the morning sunshine, for all seemed to have been well tended; but, all at once, he came upon a terrible tell-tale bit of evidence of the last night’s work upon the red bricks that formed the path – one that made him scrape off a little mould from the bed with his foot, and spread it over the ugly patch.
“The cottage looks simple and innocent enough, with its roses, to be the home of peace,” he muttered. “Ah! how man does spoil his life for the sake of coin. Thank you, my lad – that’s right,” he added, as his last night’s messenger brought the pony to the gate.
He mounted, and thrust a coin, that he could not spare, into his temporary ostler’s hand.
“Let him go. Fine morning, isn’t it?”
But Caleb held on sturdily by the pony’s bridle, and thrust the piece back with an air of sturdy independence.
“No, thankye, sir,” he said. “Me and my mates don’t want paying by a gentleman as comes to help one of us. ’Sides which, we’re a-going to pay you; aren’t we, lads?”
“Ay, that’s so,” growled the others. “Don’t take it.”
With the cleverness of a pickpocket, but the reverse action – say of a negative and not a positive pickpocket – the florin was thrust into Oldroyd’s vest, and the man drew back, leaving the doctor to pursue his way.
“Poachers even are not so black as they are painted,” he said to himself as he cantered along, and then he fell to thinking of the girl he had seen that morning. “They’ve better daughters than you would have suspected, more affectionate wives, the best of neighbours, and companions as honest and faithful as one could wish; and, all the while, they are a set of confounded scoundrels and thieves, for it’s just as dishonest to shoot and steal a man’s carefully-raised foreign birds – his pheasants – as it is to break into a hen-roost. As to partridges and hares, of course they are wild things; but, so long as they lived and bred on one’s land, they must be as genuine property as the apples and pears that grow upon a fellow’s trees. Yes, poachers are thieves; and I daresay my friend there, with the shot-hole in his body, is as great a scoundrel as the worst.”
He laughed as he cantered along the soft green beside the road.
“My practice is improving. I shall have my connection amongst the rogues and vagabonds mightily increased, for I certainly shall not go and inform the police: not my business to do that. They’re punished enough, even if I pull him through. And I shall,” he said aloud. “I must and will, for the sake of his pretty daughter. I wonder whether they’ll pay me after all,” he went on, as the pony ambled over the grass, and the naturally sordid ideas of the man often pressed for money and struggling for his income, came uppermost. “When people are in the first throes of excitement and gratitude for the help Doctor Bolus has rendered them, they almost worship him, and they’ll give, or rather they will promise, anything; but when time has had his turn, and the gratitude has begun to cool, it’s a different thing altogether; and, last of all, when the bill goes in – oh dear, for poor human nature, if the case had been left alone, A, B, C, or D would have got better without help.
“Well, never mind,” he said merrily, for the refreshment and the delicious morning air were telling upon his spirits, “the world goes round and round all the same, and human nature is one of the things that cannot be changed.”
He had to turn the pony out on to the road here, for the long green strands of the brambles were hanging right out over the grass, and catching at his legs as he cantered by. The soft mists were floating away as he began to descend the hilly slope, still at his feet the landscape seemed to be half hidden by clouds, through which hillocks, and hedge, and trees were visible, with here and there a house or a brown patch of the rough common land; and right away on the other side, stood up, grim and depressing of aspect, the ugly brick house upon the big hillock of sand, with the various and grim-looking edifices that Moray Alleyne had raised. Forming a background were the sombre fir trees with the column-topped slope and hill; and, even at that distance, he could make out, here and there, portions of the sandy lane that skirted the pine slope, which formed so striking an object in the surrounding landscape.
So beautiful was the scene in the early morning, so varied the tints, that Oldroyd checked his pony, and told himself that he could not do better than pause and admire the landscape. But somehow his eyes lit upon the ugliest object there, focused themselves so as to get the most photographic idea upon the polished plate of his memory, and there they stayed, for he saw nothing else but Mrs Alleyne’s gloomy house.
This, however, is not quite the fact, for in a most absurd way – for a young medical man who had been telling himself a hundred times over that it would be insanity for him to think of marrying – he furnished that gloomy picture with one figure that seemed to him to turn the whole place into a palace of beauty, of whose aspect he could never tire.
“Go along!” he exclaimed aloud at last, as if to himself for his absurd thoughts; but the pony took the order as being applied to the beast of burden present, and went off at once in a good canter, one that gained spirit from the fact that he knew the way and that way was homewards.
So absorbed was Oldroyd that he left the sturdy little animal to itself, and it went pretty swiftly over the driest bits of close, velvety turf, cleverly avoiding the bigger furze clumps, and reaching at last the lighter ground where the fir trees grew. Then it snorted and would have increased its pace, but there were awkward stumps here and there, and slippery places, such as the cleverest pony could not avoid, so the rider drew rein, and let the little steed amble gently along.
All at once Philip Oldroyd’s heart seemed to stand still, and he checked the pony suddenly, sitting breathless and half stunned, gazing straight before him at a couple of figures passing along the road.
He drew a long breath that hissed between his closed teeth; and even a pearl diver might have envied his power of retaining that breath, so long was it before he exhaled it again.
Then he turned his pony’s head, bent down his darkened face till his chin rested upon his breast, and rode forward again; but the pony began to resist a change which suggested going right away from home. He drummed its ribs fiercely with his heels, and pressed it on, but only to turn its head directly after, forcing himself into a state of composure as he rode quietly by Lucy Alleyne and Rolph, and saluted them as he passed.
It was hard work to ride on like that, without looking back, but he mastered himself and went quickly on for some distance before drawing rein, and sitting like a statue upon the pony, which began to graze, and only lifted its head and gave a momentary glance at Lucy, when, sobbing as if she would break her heart, the little lady nearly ran up against the waiting rider and his steed.
“Mr Oldroyd!” cried Lucy, after giving vent to that astonished, frightened “Oh!”
“Yes, Miss Alleyne,” he said coldly, “Mr Oldroyd.”
“Why – why are you stopping me like that? Oh, I beg your pardon; good-morning!” she cried hastily, and in a quick, furtive way she swept the tears from her eyes, and wiped her pretty little nose, which crying was turning of a pinky hue.
“Was I stopping you?” he said, speaking mechanically, and glancing straight before him. “I have been out all night with a patient six miles away.”
“Indeed!” said Lucy, hastily; “yes, it is a beautiful morning.”
She went by him without trusting herself to look in his face.
“If I did so, I should burst out sobbing,” she said to herself.
But by the time Lucy had gone half a score yards, Oldroyd was by her side, the pony keeping step with her, pace for pace, while the little woman’s breast was heaving with love, sorrow and despair.
“What will he think? what will he think?” she kept saying to herself as she longed to lay her hands in his, and to tell him that it was no fault of hers, but an accident that Captain Rolph had met her during her walk.
But she could not tell him – she dared not. It was like a confession that she cared for his opinion more than for that of anybody in the world. It would be unmaidenly, and degrading, and strange; and there was nothing for her to do but assume anger and annoyance, and treat Oldroyd as if he had been playing the part of spy.
