The Baronet assumed the look of intense profundity political males generally wear in the presence of womankind, suggesting magazines of thought beyond their shallow comprehension. "Some—very—funny—questions," he said, in judicial instalments, "will arise if that Bill becomes Law. Ve-ry funny ones." But apparently too complex or too delicate for discussion with one's daughters. So the Bart. shut them into his soul with the closed lips of discretion, and looked responsible.
Perhaps Judith saw her way to quenching any suspicions anent herself and Challis by parading her unreluctance to talk about him. "I don't know," said she, "that a little trouble is necessarily bad for Challis, with all this success going on. It may save him from becoming odious. Besides, of course, Marianne means to come back to him in the end."
This was about the time of Sibyl's wedding, shortly after the production of "Aminta Torrington." So convincing was Judith's attitude of her detachment from Challis, helped always by his leaving England immediately afterwards, that all suspicion had vanished from the mind of her parents by the time he made his appearance at Mentone; and at that time Sibyl was honeymooning. There had never been anything that could be called a split. And discretion, for some reason, must have been carefully observed by Challis and Judith during this visit, for gossip never mentioned them in the same breath. And the lady's father, in our opinion, was righteously shocked when it came to his knowledge that his daughter and this gentleman, who had been accepting his hospitality as a married man, were to all intents and purposes plighted lovers, and free to wed without let or hindrance. Except, indeed, on the lady's side, an almost solid phalanx of family opposition; and on the gentleman's a previous marriage which was no legal wedlock at all, but which he could not be said to have been disloyal to, for he had never either refused to play the husband nor been guilty of any legal infidelity. It was entirely Marianne who had refused to play the wife.
Lord Felixthorpe, Sibyl's coronet, was the only dissentient in the family circle. "It certainly seems to me," said he, as deliberately as ever, "that either our Legal Acumen, or our Boasted Civilization, or our Moral Sense, or the Marvellous Elasticity of our Political System, or Convocation, or the Higher Socialism, or something equally impressive, must be in a sense defective, when any person not convicted of crime is under compulsion to live single, as long as there is a lady willing to marry him. I say nothing of the case of a friend of ours (whom I do not name for obvious reasons) who says that no lady will accept him. If he were to endeavour to drag an unwilling bride to the altar, the police should be instructed to interpose. But in the case of Challis—if I am rightly informed—my fascinating sister-in-law is ready to accept the situation. Now, although, under the existing Law, one's own Deceased Wife's Sister is excluded from the questionable advantage of becoming one's Legitimate Wife, the most stringent morality has never enrolled someone else's Live Wife's Sister among prohibited degrees of consanguinity...."
"Do say what you mean, Frank, instead of going out of your way to make fun of Will, and talking nonsense!"
"I mean, dearest, that it's too much to expect of any fellow that he's to stand his wife bolting on the plea that the wedding-knot wasn't tied, and lugging away his kids, and refusing to see him, and him not be allowed to marry somebody else."
But William Rufus, who had been slighted by an American beauty, and was gloomy in consequence, shook his head and said: "Can't see it—never shall!" And Sibyl settled the matter. "If he wants to marry anybody else's husband's Live Wife's Sister, let him! Only not mine!"
So it had come about that discord reigned in Grosvenor Square when the Family returned from Mentone. But the outer world knew nothing about it. Mr. Elphinstone and Mrs. Protheroe talked of what they heard to each other, and nothing reached the lower stratum of the household. Conjecture must supply a motive for delay on the part of this betrothed couple: for they must be called so. If they intended to ignore Marianne and defy public opinion, why not do so at once? Was it because no certainty existed that Challis's marriage was invalid? No legal means of dissolving a marriage not recognized by Law seems to exist. It was impossible to make a clean slate and start fair. Who could say that time would be sufficient to calm the family tempest and put the ship in commission so as to be sure of sailing before that Bill was brought forward in the Commons? Suppose it was rushed through, and overtook the wedding! Was Judith's thirst for wedlock intense enough to run such a risk? Was it not, rather, common prudence to wait for the rejection of the Bill, and have a cool year to turn the matter over? Our own impression is that the young lady was not in love enough to say yes to the first question, or no to the second.
Whether Challis's arrangement of his affairs and his whereabouts—always favouring what Harmood would have called "keeping company," while thrusting himself as little as possible on the Family—was in consequence of a definite plan of campaign, arranged with Judith, is not known to this story. There is a suspicion that the attack of influenza that laid him up at Marseilles on November 6 was made the most of, in order that he might shirk the receipt of knighthood in person on the 9th. There is his name among the Birthday Honours of the year; and, as we all know, he is now Sir Alfred Challis. He was able, somehow, to get enough degrees of fever certified to make his presence at the Palace impossible; but whether he knelt to receive them subsequently, or whether they reached him through the æther, like a Marconigraph, we do not know. He had certainly shaken off the "flu" very completely when he came to England after Christmas.
The story is a bit hazy on many points at this period. What made Challis, with all his impatience with what he called the "performing classes," accept a knighthood? One theory—a plausible one—is that Judith ordered him to do so. Not from any idea that her parents or Sibyl would soften towards Challis on that account—much they cared for knighthoods! But she was woman enough to wish to have the World on her side. It might be a snobbish world; but what a big one it is! And what a lot of power one's elbow gets from the sympathy of it! Anyhow, to our thought, Challis, having accepted the honour at Judith's bidding, ought to have overcome his reluctance to conform to usages, and not run his temperature up to 103. As it was, the little thermometer had its way.
He remained abroad, then, until the Easter holiday—which coincided, you see, very nearly with the return of the Family to Grosvenor Square—when he came to Wimbledon for some more Bob. All we want to know about him at this time, and for a little time yet, is that his correspondence with Judith continued, and that during the season in London the two of them contrived to meet very frequently. It was a wonder they managed to steer clear of gossip as cleverly as they did.
But an anxious time was approaching. Suppose that Bill passed!...
Did Challis ever say to himself, to put a finishing-touch on the oddity of his position, "What would it matter? If it did put a barrier between me and Judith, would it not give me back my old home and the kids?" The story can conceive his doing so, and also that his mind would then wander back on his old days ... not always perfect; but still!... and then would shudder at its own brutality, for never asking what of Judith, in that case? What would be left for her? For Challis, though he had speculated a good deal in his writings on the many ways of loving that there are, had scarcely applied his conclusions to himself. Some theorists will have it that no man ever has the slightest consideration for the woman he loves—in one of the ways, mind you!—suppose we say the volcanic way! They hold that it is himself he loves all the time.
However, the Bishop said it was impossible that Bill should pass. And he ought to have known.
CHAPTER XL
HOW MISS FOSSETT WENT TO ROYD. ON SUSPENSION OF OPINION. ANXIETY ABOUT LIZARANN. A VISIT TO JIM, AND A RETROSPECT. HOW MISS FOSSETT MADE A NICE MESS OF IT
A hot July was drawing to a close, and Athelstan Taylor and his friend Gus's sister Adeline Fossett were out early in the Rectory garden, and had many things to talk about. It was the Saturday morning of a Friday to Monday visit, which could not be prolonged, on any terms, till Tuesday.
One of the things they had to talk about was sad, as anyone could have told from their voices, without hearing a word distinctly. Because they were speaking with such very resolute cheerfulness of it; putting such a good face on it; each of them evidently thinking the other wanted an ally.
"I go by Sidrophel." It was Athelstan who said this. "Taking a man out of London to live on the south shore of the Mediterranean is like giving meat and drink after a diet of poisons. You'll see Gus's first letters will say he's well. He won't be, of course; one mustn't expect miracles. But it will seem like that—to him."
"I think that's very likely. But when I said I wished I had been able to go with him, I didn't mean that. I don't believe he'll want any coddling or looking after out there. What I was thinking of was the poor boy being so lonely, all by himself." But Athelstan laughed out at this: the idea of a pastor of a flock being lonely!—the last thing in the world! The lady admitted this, and helped it a little. "Yes—and, after all, it isn't as if we had seen each other every day when he was in London." Then she reflected a little, and added: "Besides, I couldn't have gone, anyhow, because of mother." Of whom this story can report nothing, no questions having been asked. "Mother" must have her place in it as the reason Miss Fossett could not go to Tunis.
Something came to the Rector's mind which provoked a cheerful laugh. "I suppose," he said, "poor Challis would say we were bringing an indictment against the Almighty."
"I wonder you call him 'poor Challis,' Yorick. I've no patience! I've heard all about it from the other side, you know. But what did you mean he says?" The question is asked stiffly. Challis is evidently not in favour.
"He says that resignation, as practised, always seems to be meant as an indictment against the Almighty. It's true he said he was referring to venomous resignation. We must hope ours is t'other sort."
"I won't laugh at anything Mr. Challis says, Yorick. I've no patience with a man who behaves so to his wife. My cousin Lotty knew the whole thing from the beginning, and it's quite impossible she should be mistaken.... Oh yes!—I know what you're going to say. That little bit of Latin...."
"Well!—it's a very good little bit, as far as it goes. Audi alteram partem! Nobody ever bursts from bottling up his judgment until he has heard both sides."
"My dear Yorick, I agree with you absolutely about the principle as a general rule. But in this particular case I do think you are unreasonable. How is it possible Lotty should be mistaken, when Mrs. Challis is actually living at her mother's at Tulse Hill? Oh no! I do think you're quite wrong!"
"But I'm only refusing to form an opinion. I'm not expressing one."
"Well, if you don't see that Mr. Challis must be in the wrong, you never will see it. Don't be ridiculous and paradoxical, Yorick dear, because you know perfectly well you agree. Now don't you?"
"Can't say I do." And the conversation ran for some distance on the same pair of wheels, the lady always maintaining that in this one particular case suspension of opinion, pending production of evidence, is the merest affectation, and the gentleman resolutely refusing to make any exceptions. However, Miss Fossett had not produced all her arguments.
"Besides, Yorick dear, you know Mr. Challis did tell you all his side of the story." A head-shake. "No?—well, he had the opportunity of telling you, and he didn't, which is the same thing."
"No—no, Addie, not the same thing—not the same thing! You know I had a long talk twice with him about it. I went to see him on purpose, and neither time would he say a single word in self-defence...."
"Because he couldn't!"
"Oh no—no! Indeed, you're unfair to him. When I say audi alteram partem, in this case, I really mean wait till we are certain we have heard all there is to be said on the other side. I am as sure as that I am standing here that the poor chap was tongue-tied by chivalry to his wife. I wish she would have seen me when I went...."
"You did go?"
"Oh yes—I went at once after seeing him, and only succeeded in seeing her mother, a horrid, religious old woman...."
"Yorick dear!"
"Well—you know what I mean. The old woman as good as told me I was a disgrace to my cloth, because I spoke of marriage with a deceased wife's sister as an open question. You know that question comes into Challis's affair—comes very much in...."
"I know. I know all about it. Only it's not the chief part ... a ... but you know, of course?"
"Yes—yes!—what it was—of course!" And then each nods and looks intuitive. If Charlotte Eldridge had been watching them then through a telescope, she would have been able to spot the exact moment at which a lady and gentleman—an unsanctioned brace, that is—came on the tapis.
How far can they be legitimately discussed—by us who know the lady? That's the point! Miss Fossett bites a thoughtful lip about it. Mr. Taylor utters a succession of short "hm's" and one long one; then says in a by-the-way manner that accepts a slight head-shake as an answer: "Didn't Judith Arkroyd speak to you?... Oh, I fancied she did;" adding, in a reserved tone of voice: "You know, I dare say, that she herself wrote to Mrs. Challis." And this speech seems to have the singular effect of removing a padlock from Adeline Fossett's tongue.
"Handsome Judith?" she says, oddly lighting on Marianne's term for her bête noire. "Oh, I know!—I quite understand."
"But what do you understand? Come, Addie dear, don't be ... don't be female about it. Do say what!"
The impression or suggestion that she might have married which we fancy this story referred to when she first came into it seemed to mellow and mature in Miss Fossett as she replied, "Oh, Yorick, dear old boy! What an Arcadian shepherd you are!" And then she laughed, and repeated, "Handsome Judith!"
"But she showed me the letter—she showed me the letter!" cries the Rector, in a kind of frenzy with his friend for her persistence in being female, as he calls it. "Come, Addie, what could she do more?"
The above-named suggestion seems to mature until it all but insinuates that Adeline might marry still, if she chose. The thought just reaches the Rector's mind, and leaves it as she repeats, in answer to his question, "What more, indeed? But what did she say, I should like to know?"
"Ah!—that's the point. And we think we're going to be told, do we?" The Rector laughed a big good-humoured laugh. He detects in himself, and is puzzled by it, a new-born disposition to treat Addie as if she were in her teens, entirely caused by her excursion into feminine paths hard to explain or classify.
But she unexpectedly forms square to repulse patronage; harks back, as it were, to her thirties or forties—scarcely the latter yet—and says gravely, "No, dear old boy! I won't try to pry into any confidence. Don't tell me anything."
"I would as soon tell you as anyone"—he is looking at his watch—"a ... yes ... sooner than anyone—now Gus is gone." If the last four words had not been spoken, a hearer—Mrs. Eldridge, say—might have built an interest on what had preceded them. Those four made the speech fraternal.
Miss Fossett had come to Royd Rectory to pay a visit of consolation, following close on her brother's recent departure for Tunis. But it was also a visit to Lizarann. Her affection for the child was manifest from the fact that, when she arrived last night, before ever she ate a scrap of anything, after all that long journey, she went to look at her where she was asleep. It was nurse who made this mental note, and who remarked also, when Miss Fossett left the child's bedside, that she looked that upset you quite noticed it. Also that when the visitor said, "Is she always like that?" she seemed asking to enquire, like.
"And what did you say, Ellen?" said Miss Caldecott, in nurse's confidence. "I hope you didn't frighten Miss Fossett."
"Oh no, miss! I was careful not. I said the doctor took a most favourable view, and had all along. I told what he said about perspirations, and not to take too much account of temperatures, and improving symptoms. Oh no, I wasn't likely!" And Ellen is a little wounded at the bare suggestion that she should have any such a thing—her own phrase in speech with another confidante next morning.
And yet Miss Fossett was frightened! And when the Rector's voice intercepted the above colloquy from below, saying, "Bessy, come down and tell Addie what Dr. Pordage said about Lizarann," it was because Miss Fossett had gone to her very late refection quite white, and had said, referring to her visit upstairs, "Why, my dear Yorick, the little thing's in a perfect bath of perspiration!" And then she only had a little soup, and Cook took away the things, because Rachael had gone to bed with a toothache.
However, next day in the sunshine, walking through the fields with the children to pay a visit to Lizarann's Daddy at Mrs. Fox's, she felt encouraged when she saw the little person running about in the highest spirits, gathering blackberries, with a beautiful faith that her Daddy would appreciate them.
"That wasn't a coft at all, Teacher," said Lizarann, when taxed with coughing. "I didited it myself."
"Then that was!"
"Only because I very nearly stumbled down," said Lizarann. She had a high colour in her cheeks, and her eyes looked very large, and her face wasn't thin—only her fingers. But her spirits were all that could be desired; so Miss Fossett had to be content with hoping all would go well, if she was stuffed with preparations of malt, and syrup of hypophosphites, and so on. But how about the winter? Was there no possible Tunis? For Miss Fossett's affection for the small waif went any lengths in projected antidotes to phthisis. If it was money that was the difficulty—well!—Yorick would have to get it from Sir Murgatroyd; none of his conscientious nonsense!
However, it might be all unnecessary. Just look at the child tearing down the hill with Phœbe, to get to her Daddy three minutes sooner, and shouting out "Pi-lot!" in defiance of orders. And such an accolade as she gave her father did not look, at this distance, at least, like either extract of malt or hypophosphites.
Miss Fossett intended to make use of this visit to Jim to get from him, if she could, some information about the medical record of Lizarann's family. She had the old-fashioned faith that consumption is hereditary. It would be very nice to hear that it had never shown itself among her little protégée's ancestors. She had herself seen very little—almost nothing—of the blind man, and was curious to make his acquaintance, after hearing so much of him from the Rector.
Jim was not in the summer-house, but in Mrs. Fox's kitchen that opens on the garden. It is lucky none of the party is six-foot-six. But there is plenty of room, laterally.
Jim has to remind Lizarann of her social duties. "Ye'll have to name the good lady for me to know, little lass." And Lizarann shouts out "Teacher!" vehemently.
"Miss Fossett, at the school, you know, Mr. Coupland," says the owner of the name. "Lizarann's one of my best pupils, and she's going to get quite strong." There was an error in tact here: she should have recollected that Jim would be a stranger to the medical discussions over his child's lungs. A slight misgiving crossed her mind.
"Quite strong—the lassie? Aye, to be sure!" says Jim in a puzzled sort of way. But the lassie herself supersedes the point, doing violence to the conversation. "So's Daddy's leg," she says, wrenching in a topic of greater importance. "Daddy's going to walk on it, quite strong, more than free miles, and no scrutches. Yass!"
Certainly no conversation such as Miss Fossett wished for would be possible as long as the children were here. Consultation with Mrs. Fox developed a scheme for their temporary suppression.
Suppose the two young ladies and Lizarann—the distinction is always nicely marked—were to go with her just three minutes' walk up at the back of the house to see the swarm of bees in Clyst's orchard. The supposition is entertained, and they go.
Miss Fossett admits to Jim that she has covertly sanctioned and encouraged this move, that tranquillity should ensue. But she nearly repented, she says, when she heard of the bees, lest they should sting. She hopes it's all right? Oh yes, Lard bless her, that's all right enough! Jim will go bail for the bees. Look, he says, at the many a chance they've had to get a turn at him in his summer-house—he seems to have appropriated it—and never gave him a thought! Besides, Jarge would be there, and he'd say a word to the bees and tell them.
"Ye see, mistress," Jim continued, "it's a trade with Jarge. He's a bee-master—so they call him—or you might say a bee-doctor; the folk round about send for him, miles."
"I want to talk about Lizarann directly," said Miss Fossett. "But tell me about George and the bees."
"Ah, Lizarann!... But I can tell about the bees, and soon done with. It was martal queer about George, when he was a youngster. The bees nigh stung him to death, for pinching of 'em inside the deep flowers when he got a chance. They were making a mistake, though; for it wasn't he did it, but another young shaver of his inches. So they cast about for to make him some amends."
"You don't mean they found out their mistake?"
"Ah, but I do! They're a sly race, and full of knowledge. How they did it between them I can't say, but there it is!—they've come to the understanding. And what's the queerer is that George himself don't above half-understand what's said to him by a Christian. It's only bees he can tackle!... What was you kindly going to say about Lizarann?"
Miss Fossett, rendered cautious by the lapse she had so nearly made, saw no way of approaching the subject she was curious about. So she chatted on about Lizarann, hoping it might come into their talk accidentally. Jim was eloquent about his gratitude for all that had been done for himself and his child. "But for you and the master," said he, "I'd have been selling matches in the streets still. That was before my accident. But you won't say anything of that to my lassie." His hearer understood him. No—she would say nothing of his begging days to Lizarann. He thanked her again. "But," he added, "I wish you and the Rector-gentleman could have seen me eight year agone—no!—barely seven year. I might have been grateful to some kind of purpose then. I'm little use now!" Pride without a trace of vanity was in his voice as he added: "There was a fine man in my place in those days, and you'd ha' said so, lady." The waste remnant was speaking of its former self.
Adeline Fossett succeeded in none of the things she tried to say. It did not matter. He would be sure to talk of the past, and she would glean all she wanted. He took for granted, as part of the conversation in the interim, the fact of his wife's death.
"That was it, ye see: her mother died. She would have been the eldest."
"I understand. The little one herself told me of your accident, and how you came back...."
"Aha!—my little lass! In coorse she would tell it! And she told about the Flying Dutchman, I'll go bail." Jim laughed joyously at the image his mind formed of Lizarann telling her inherited legend dramatically. As to the incredulity, he knew it would exist in some minds; so let it pass! "I came back, lady," he continued, "and I found Lizarann. But I was all in the dark, and no sight of my wife's face. And there was no hiding it from her about my eyes—no chance! I never ought to have gone a-nigh the house. But she might have died, too...."
"You mean she would not have recovered, perhaps, if you had stopped away."
"Ah—if I had, ever so! But I was mazed with the longing to hear my girl's voice again, and maybe I never gave her the thought I should have done. I was a bad young man in those days, and suited myself when I might have done others a turn, many's the time. It's over and done with now." And his old self had vanished with it; so completely that the voice of its derelict, now speaking, had no consciousness in it of the way his narrative affected his hearers, as he continued, replying to a word of inquiry from her: "My accident—ye'll have heard all that from the lassie? My mates, they got me off to the Hospital, and the doctor there, he dressed my face. And, do ye know, mistress, it wasn't till the dressings and strappings was removed I knew that I was blind. Nor my mates. And they had to tell me—mind you!—that the last strap was off. I couldn't have guessed it. I was thinking I should see. But it was all dark, and the doctor, he says: 'Sorry for you, my lad, but the sight's gone. Ask 'em in London; they'll tell you the same.' So my mates, they brought me away; and there was the sun, by the heat. But I could only see black, and I judged the doctor would be in the right of it, in the end. My mate Peter Cortright, he says, 'Never you fret, Jim; it'll all come right. Give 'em a week or so, and wear a pair o' blue spectacles a while, and you'll soon be forgetting all about it.' So I says to him, 'What did old Sam Nuttall say ten days a-gone?'"
"What did Peter say?" asked Miss Fossett.
"Well, ye see, Peter, he knew! My ship's owners, out at Cape Town, they were sorry, but in course no responsibility lay with them. I'd myself to blame. They gave me my passage home, and home I came, in the dark! Aboard of an old screw-collier from Liverpool, one o' the sart they call 'tramps.' Not fit for sarvice, and underhanded. And on to that dysentery, and half the crew down in their berths, doctorin' each other the best they might. Well!—I'll tell ye." Jim seems amused at this narration. "I was passing the time nigh to the binnacle, where the master and a young man with a fractured arm were steering at the wheel; for the rudder-chains, they'd fouled and got jammed, and there was nothing for it but to run a file through 'em and free the rudder, so they could work the starn-wheel, kept as a resarve. Ye see?... Well!—the master, he'd been thirty-eight hours at it, and he just gave out. So I made bold to suggest he should go to his berth, and I should put a bit of force on the handles, and young O'Keeffe—that was the young man's name—had a pair of eyes in his head, and we'd make it out between the two of us. 'Keep her off two points when you see the flashlight,' says the master, and off he goes to his berth. And from then on, mistress, ye'll believe I did a stroke of work at that wheel, just clapping on at the given word. But that's the last bit of work, to call work, ever I did, or ever I shall do this side o' the grave." Jim's voice rang its saddest note till now, over the dire knowledge that had come to him that the joy of work could never be his again.
Miss Fossett thought, in the silence that followed, that Jim was dwelling on thoughts of old times brought back by his old story. The fact was that her unfortunate reference to Lizarann "getting quite strong" had been slowly gathering force in a mind that found it hard to receive, and was beginning to call aloud for explanation. He began uneasily: "When you mentioned, lady, just now...." and stopped.
She saw what he meant, and saved him further words. "About Lizarann's health?" she said.
"Ah! Is anything amiss?"
"Oh no—nothing amiss!" She had begun too confidently. She had to retract somewhat. But there was nothing to cause the least uneasiness. A fatal word that! She saw its marked effect on Jim, and, though she felt about for some reassuring phrase that would not suggest the question, "Why reassure?" she found nothing she felt confident of getting to the end of successfully. When she did begin, Jim cut her short:
"Are ye keeping something back from me, lady?" His voice was firm and collected.
Adeline Fossett saw that it would have to be told in the end, and Jim would have to bear it. Better to rely on his manhood, but make the least of it. She replied with what was effectively an admission that something had been kept back. She said that the Rector had wanted to tell Jim the whole story at once, and exactly what the doctor had said, but Miss Caldecott had dissuaded him. What the doctor had said came to no more than this—that the child would want a good deal of care while she was growing. This phrase, which she had invented for the occasion, seemed good to her; it implied such confidence that Lizarann would grow. She decided against repeating the doctor's exact phrase, "She'll outgrow it with care—oh yes!" as it seemed to her somehow weaker, as a hopeful expression.
Jim was very silent over it, and Miss Fossett felt that nothing would be gained by fragmentary attempts to soften her main fact. Having said it, best leave it to be looked in the face. If it could be safely diluted, the Rector's testimony could be relied on to do that later. Rather than dwell on the subject, she preferred to wonder why the bee-inspection was so long on hand.
"I'm thinking maybe the young folk are too many for the old mother," said Jim. "But I doubt we shall hear the lassie sing out one o' these minutes." Then he went on quietly asking questions about Lizarann; as how long had the "uneasiness" been felt; to which the true answer, which was not given, would have been, "from the beginning." For Dr. Ferris's stethoscope had not given an absolutely clean bill to the child's left lung. Then, what did the Rector himself really think? "Would he be minded to tell me himself, if I made bold to ask him?" said Jim.
"Tell you at once, of course!" said Miss Fossett. "He would have talked about it before, only he didn't want to alarm you. Next time you see him, ask him." This was much the best line to go on. But it was rather a relief when the bee-party came back, elevated by natural history, and anxious to impart new discoveries. "I never did shouted out 'Pi-lot,'" said Lizarann, "because Teacher said not to." And she was rather offensively vainglorious over this achievement, referring to it more than once.
When Miss Fossett returned to the Rectory, she said to Athelstan Taylor: "A nice mess I've made of it, Yorick!"
Said Yorick then, laughing: "What's the rumpus?"
"I've told Jim Coupland about Lizarann's chest."
"Hm-hm-hm! Ah well!—he's got to know. How did he take it?"
"Very well—but...."
"But, of course! Never mind, Addie. Don't you fret. I'm going round that way after lunch, and I'll call and see Jim."
This was about a month after Challis and his wife parted. But is it necessary to synchronize the events of the story so closely?
CHAPTER XLI
HOW JIM FOUND A MISSION IN LIFE, AND LIZARANN MOVED TO MRS. FORKS'S COTTAGE. OF A FINE AUTUMN, AND HOW ALL WAS RIGHT TILL SOMETHING WENT WRONG. OF A SEASIDE SCHEME, AND ITS EFFECTS ON JIM
If you stand up at the rifle-butts when they are not shooting, and look away from Royd village towards the Hall, you will see a sharp curve in the road, maybe a mile from Mrs. Fox's cottage on your left. You will identify that by the little shop built out from it towards the road, and the covered arbour where Jim smoked his pipe, over a year ago now at the date of the story. He continues to do so when not professionally employed. For Jim found an employment, strange to say, shortly after he talked to Adeline Fossett about Lizarann's health, and got his first scare about his little lass.
It is just within that curve of the road that his vocation is plied. Not for gain—nothing so low as that! His is an official appointment, in the gift of the Rector of Royd, and there is a parish fund of ij shillings a month, with the additional emolument of a fat capon at Christmas, for the man at the well-head. The Charity Commissioners have never found it out; and the Rector has long since appropriated the fund, and turned it into four shillings, with appendices and addenda; while a composition has been effected in the matter of the capon, the holder of the office receiving instead as much barker as is good for him, all the year round, whether actively employed or not. For the employment Jim had the luck to step into is one that may have to be suspended during hard winter weather, being, in fact, the turning of the well-handle whenever applicants come for water.
It was through Miss Fossett hearing that tale of Jim's, about how his blind strength had come in so mighty handy in that steerage business aboard of the undermanned coal-tramp. She recollected it when, on the afternoon of next day, it came out that the office of water-drawer was vacant, the last man at the well-head having retired at eighty-seven years of age. Not that he had turned the handle himself for a long time past. He had only given official sanction to the efforts of customers; who, when very small, had to way-ut till soombody else coom for t' wa-ater. Obviously, Jim was made for the place, and the place for Jim. And he—poor chap!—for whom all personal life had merged in solid gloom and hampered movement, felt like the prisoner in solitary confinement whom the boy threw his pegtop and string to, through the bars.
It is hardly a fair comparison, though, for the lonely gaol-bird had to spin his top with never a soul to speak to, day or night, and Jim had constant intercourse with his species; for as soon as the cottagers round became alive to the fact that they could send little Mary or Sally with a pail to t' wa'all, with a reasonable chance of return in half-an-hour, his services were in constant requisition. Royd village is at least five hundred feet higher than Grime; and the light soil, though good for the beech-woods, is bad for the water-supply. That is why the Abbey Well, so-called, has a clear bucket-shoot of fifty fathoms before it strikes the water. So, even in answer to Jim's effective appeals, the supply came slowly; and there was plenty of time, before the responsible bucket came in sight, to hear family history from Mary or Sally, or the latest news from seniors with two large pails stirruped on a shoulder-saddle.
Besides, there was Jim's chief resource, to which all these were as nothing. There was his little lass. Whenever she was not complying with the Education Act, and whenever the weather permitted, the child was pretty sure to be with her father in the little semi-enclosure, half-hidden by hawthorns, where the well with its interesting parclose—some of it as old as the thirteenth century, if you choose—tempts the passing excursionist to stop and be antiquarian for five minutes; and to put a little jewel of a memory in some close corner of his brain, to be found there on a winter's night in the days to come, when all the excursions are over and the merry year is dead.
The fine warm months that followed Jim's entry on his duties were surely the halcyon months of his broken life. Because for all that he and Lizarann, with a sort of ex-post-facto optimism, had decided to construct an image of a glorious past from their memories of Bladen Street and Tallack Street, misgiving of the soundness of its materials would creep into his mind, at least; never to the child's. That image was all beaten gold and ivory to her. Tallack Street, that would have seemed to you and me a sordid avenue of hovels, grudgingly complying with a Building Act, and enclosing imperfectly a rich atmosphere of Lower Middle Class families, was to Lizarann an illuminated stage on which moved the majestic figures of the heroes of her past, into which flitted at intervals visions of delights now extinct: organs with a monkey, that played slow, not to tax the nervous system of their obsessor; organs without, that played quick, so you could dance to it—played music-hall airs that had three phases apiece, and lent themselves to being done over and over again, and nobody any fault to find; the man with the drum that couldn't raise his voice to holler, and potatoes he run out of unless you looked sharp; and, above all, that pre-Wagnerian contrivance without a name, that you could set on and go round for a halfpenny all through the tune, and no cheating—so "Home, Sweet Home" was more popular than the National Anthem, along of the hextry at the end. And the highroad itself, that took two policemen to get them children safe acrost after Board-School! What a scene of maddening—more than Parisian—gaiety it was Saturday nights! And what a mysterious antechamber to some Institution undefined, but with a flavour of Trinity House or the Vatican, was that corner where it was wrote up, "Vatted Rum, fivepence-halfpenny!"
Jim lent himself, you may be sure, to gilding these remnants of bygone glory, whatever doubts he may have felt about them himself. Through that happy season when Lizarann could be so frequently his companion—for Dr. Sidrophel said the child couldn't be too much in the air: it would do her good rather than otherwise—recollections of Tallack Street and Vatted Rum Corner rang the changes on tales of the high-seas and the Flying Dutchman. Lizarann had never seen the sea! Wouldn't she just like to it! Patience! Lizarann was to see the sea in time.
Her domicile at the Rectory came to an end a week or so after her Daddy got his appointment. It had begun with what was intended to be a stay long enough to get rid of that bad inflammatory cold caught in London; had been prolonged at the petition of Phœbe and Joan till that half-a-mile-off tea-party at Royd Park. After this it consisted of postponements, due to reluctance that she should run risks from moving till quite strong again, but growing shorter and shorter as Dr. Pordage laid more and more stress on the definite character of the chest-delicacy, and the modern belief in its communicability. And the fact was that Aunt Bessy, and, indeed, the Rector, were not a little ill at ease about the constant association of the children. The Rector tried to fence with his own uneasiness, and made but a poor show.
"I don't know!" said he to his sister-in-law. "Only a few years since doctors were treating the idea with derision. Now it's all the other way. You never know where to have 'em—never!"
"Do as you like, Athel! But I'm for being on the safe side, if you ask me." And the Rector was obliged to admit to himself that accepting the advice that enjoins caution is a very different thing from running a risk on permission given. The doctor said that if all disorders were accounted infectious until the contrary was shown to be the case, it would be a good thing for the public, but a bad one for the profession and the bacilli. A man must live. So must a bacillus, from his point of view.
Discussion was afoot at one time about the possibility of sending Lizarann to Tunis, where the ex-incumbent of St. Vulgate's would take her in hand and look after her. He was sending highly-coloured reports of his own progress. But these schemes never fructified. The fact, though it was admitted, that it would have been an excessive interpretation of Samaritan good-nature had less to do with their rejection than the inevitable separation of the child from her father. "She'll never come back to England if she goes," said Dr. Sidrophel; meaning that she would only be safe in Africa if she did outgrow her symptoms. But would she be sure to outgrow them?—said Athelstan Taylor, Miss Fossett, and Miss Caldecott, all at once. "That's more than I would swear to," said the doctor. It was a relief, because you know what a stiff job this sending patients abroad is. Most of us do.
But, short of sending Lizarann to be nursed in an antitubercular climate, everything was done for her that could have been done in Samaria itself, with additions up-to-date, such as ozone, peptone, hypophosphites, and several other "ites" and "ones."
So dexterously was her removal to Mrs. Fox's cottage brought about that neither she nor her Daddy ever had a suspicion of the truth. Obviously, so everyone thought, the reason was that she should guide her Daddy to the well-head every morning before going to school, and bring him back in the evening. Lizarann's rejoicing over her importance made up to her for her separation from Phœbe and Joan. The whole manœuvre was executed without a mishap, and Lizarann started in the summer weather to install her Daddy in safety, and to return for him in the course of the afternoon, duly calling out "Pi-lot!" at a chosen point. Phœbe and Joan gave her up with reluctance, but acknowledged the force of the reasons for the change. They were plausible.
Mrs. Fox put her to sleep in a sweet little room under the thatch, with a lattice-window you could stand open and hear the wind in the trees all night. And a bed with a white tester and a fringe, and a white vallance all round underneath. Only the curtains were chintz, with roses done on them, shiny-like; and the counterpane was made of pieces of everything sewn together. Wherever anyone could have got 'em all from Lizarann couldn't think.
From underneath which counterpane the occupant of that bed continued an early riser throughout those three satisfactory months. Because Lizarann had nothing the matter with her. Ridiculous! Why shouldn't she cough if she chose? That was her view. And why shouldn't she go to the window to see how the sunflower was getting on! The sunflower grew on a giant plant that had shot up flush with the roof—a record in growth. Lizarann looked out at it every morning, and wondered how big ever was it going to get. She didn't know which she liked best, the back or the front of that sunflower. Sunflower-backs are very fascinating.
She had a little triumph over her Daddy and Mrs. Forks about that window. For they belonged to the old school of nursing, which went for suffocation, and had told her not to go to the window at six in the morning in her nightgown. Dr. Sidrophel, when appealed to, said: "Hurt you to go to the open window? Not a bit of it! More open windows the better!" So Lizarann kept on looking out at it until the rime frostis come in October; and then Jarge coot it off for her, not too high up to the coop, and Lizarann's prevision that it would be as big as her head was shown to be very, very far short of truth.
"There, now, Daddy," said the convalescent, on her way to the well, with her convoy in tow, after Dr. Sidrophel had endorsed the views of the new school so vigorously. "Dr. Spiderophel said I was-s-s-s-S quite well!" The climax of a prolonged sibilant, crescendo, burst like a shell against the coming initial, and stung its adverb to vigorous action.
"Who said you warn't, lassie?" said her father, affecting indignation.
"Phœbe and Jones. And Mr. Yorick, he's always for asking what did the doctor said."
"Vary right and proper, little lass! Wouldn't ye have him know? Nay-tur-ally, such a good gentleman likes to know you're well. That's where the enquiring comes in. He'd be martal sorry to hear the lassie was ill. What do ye make out the young ladies said?" Jim's tactics of raising false issues were compatible with an attempt at a side-light on public opinion.
"Phœbe and Jones said—nurse said—Dr. Spiderophel said"—here concentration became necessary—"that simpsons was favourable, but to continue the medicine two stable-spoonfuls free times a day." She then corrected herself, as though the pronunciation might vitiate the treatment. "No!—three times a day." And added corroboratively, "Yass!"
Jim knew that the sky-sign of an engineering firm in the neighbourhood of Tallack Street was responsible for a confusion of the little lass's ideas, or at least speech. He accepted the name, to escape discussion, saying: "If Simpson's is favourable, and the medecine's nice, what more can a lassie want? In coorse you're quite well, with such like medecine. When little lass's medecine's nasty, that's when they're ill."
Optimism in any form was welcome on such an autumn morning, with such a many larks afloat in the blue above the shorn stubble-fields—more songs than Lizarann could count, in token of a million more unheard—and the Royd church-bell striking seven a mile off, and some sheepbells making it difficult to hear if it struck right; and the same bees as last month making the same noise about an entirely new supply of honey. Besides, Daddy had to be guided through the sheep, who were filling up the road on ahead, and repeating themselves sadly, though in a variety of keys. Sheep ought never to come in the opposite direction, because no dog can influence them to leave other people space to pass. This time they would have been enough alone to knock medical discussion on the head, even if there had been no other distracting combinations.
During just that fine perfect autumn time no one who was not in the confidence of that useless implement of Dr. Sidrophel's, that you could neither play on nor see through, would have picked out Lizarann as a patient at all. The change came with the chill of the year. Not the first morning frost of all; that, when it scatters diamond drift, every speck of which means to be a mirror to the great sun it knows is coming—coming from beyond the Eastern red, to quench the glow of the Morning Star—is but a fall of temperature, with repentance to follow. It is all right again after breakfast. But the real chill of the year comes soon—too soon! And then there is sunshine at Westminster; and it's going to snow, and does it. And you have fires, and catch cold.
It all happened just as usual that year. Only something had gone wrong with Lizarann. She was no longer the Lizarann of Tallack Street, to whom the first frost that meant business, the first fog that meant to interrupt it, the first fire we did without and the first we didn't—a day or five minutes later, according to our powers of endurance—were one and all mere annual incidents, fraught with holly and mistletoe and intensification of butchers. In those days Lizarann's greeting to winter was to go out in the snow and avail herself of it as ammunition, or develope it as slides. In these, as often as not it was doubtful whether she would be allowed out at all. And even if it was only to the little schoolroom near the church, not unless she was wropt up real careful, and her red woollen comforter round and round and round, like that. The way was never so in Tallack Street.
Lizarann herself confused between cause and effect. She ascribed her cough to mixtures, and a place in her chest, that prevented her coughing and done with it, to its location by that malign little stethoscope. It was either that or the linseed meal of Teacher's careful slow poulticing that had done it all. She considered that the linseed meal had penetrated through that vermilion disc on the area she called her chest, which had afforded her such unmixed amusement seen in Miss Fossett's little hand-mirror. She was haunted by the flavour of that linseed meal; was convinced it had got through and stuck. But these were views she kept to herself. She tolerated the strange scientific fancies and fallacies of the grown-up world, recognizing in them the benevolence of its intentions.
But the something that had gone wrong never made any real concession. It seemed to have made up its mind which direction it would take, and jogged on without remorse. Now and again it may have sat down by the roadside, and set the credulous a-thinking that it might turn back and start again and go right; but it always went on again refreshed in the end. Sometimes it travelled slowly—came to a hill, perhaps? But the road was a give-and-take road, only just a little more downhill than up. It always is, in this complaint.
Dr. Sidrophel gave the Rector very little hope of any real success. He did not say the child would die. Nobody ever says that. He only said she would never make old bones. He probably thought her skeleton would not reach its teens. He continued the treatment; was in favour of plenty of air, plenty of nourishment, the last new chemical elixir vitæ—wasn't it called "Maltozone," and didn't every teaspoonful contain an ox from Argentina?—and so on. The cottage smelt of iodine; and dear old Mrs. Fox's lozenges, which had been active in the early stages of the complaint, had to die away before the new agencies and real prescriptions that had to go to the village apothecary to be made up. Even so the parish engine, that the fire took no notice of, has to give way to the brigade from the nearest station. If only the metaphor would hold good a little farther! If only the parallel could be found for the efficiency of the waterblast that comes so swiftly on the heels of their arrival—steam at high-pressure panting to show its elasticity to advantage—blood-horses that have touched the last speed-record—serpent-coils of hose that mean salvation; if only the latest rescue-powers of Science were on all fours with these! But.... Well!—we must hope.
When Sir Rhyscombe Edison, the great London physician, paid a visit to the Hall just before the Family started to go abroad—no one was ill there: it was the head of Thanes Castle he was summoned to consult about—Lady Arkroyd begged him to overhaul a little patient she and the Rector were interested in. He made as careful an examination of Lizarann as he had done of the Duke; was as encouraging to the one patient about her chest as he had been to the other about his hemiplegia; and was nearly as explicit in his second verdict to her ladyship and the Rector as he had been in his first to the family at Thanes. It was a well-marked characteristic case, but one lung was free, so far; and as long as that was so the duration—by which he meant the duration of the patient—was a thing the ablest pathologist in the world could not pronounce upon. The little thing might live to be an old woman—at Davos. He instanced cases of one-lung life in the high Alps going on to old age. But in England, no!... Still, she might go on for a year or so. Sea-air would be the best thing. Anywhere on the south coast.
Do not suppose that any means were left undiscussed that could be reasonably entertained of sending Lizarann to live by the sea. The higher Alps did not come into practical politics. But there were sea-possibilities. Inquiry discovered nursing homes, havens of convalescence, where a very moderate payment would obtain sea-breezes and good food and medical supervision for a patient either curable or doomed—either would do. But the separation of the child from her father would have been almost inevitable. The thing worked out so; all details would want too much telling. Besides, Lizarann's friends flinched from sending her to live among "cases" confessed and palpable. It had too much of the character of surrender. How could the truth be softened to her father, if it came to that?
It had come out through Mrs. Fox, who held a roving commission to tell Jim things gradually, that a scheme was under consideration for packing off both together, father and daughter, to a cottage by the seaside. It had been pronounced quixotic, and condemned, before Mrs. Fox had an opportunity to report its effect on Jim; so what she told of had no influence in procuring its rejection. But it made its impracticability less to be regretted.
"It would just be like to carry on, Mr. Coupland." So the old woman, extenuating absence from Royd in any form. "It might be a bit lonesome, and I would miss your pipe of an evenings—so I tell 'ee! But what is three months, after all, when you come to name it?" Mrs. Fox, with true tact, ignored the main evil, the cause of the whole, and chose her own loss as the thing to dwell upon.
"It's not a big turnover of time," said Jim. A moment after he said, referring back: "That's very kind of ye, mother, about the pipe. Thank ye kindly!"
"You've no need to thank me, Mr. Coupland. All the fill-out of the smoke's away up the big chimney in the thoroughdraft, when there's a bit of flare to help it. I like to watch it find its way. Summer-time the gap of the little window scarcely favours the letting of it out. More by token, too, I can mind the many that's gone, by the very smell. My husband, he would always have a yard o' clay ... ah!—that name he gave it...."
"I know 'em, mother. Churchwa'ardens they call 'em."
"That sort. And my Daniel, he'd none of 'em, but just a cherry-wood. I can hear the voices of them now, in the smoke."
"Thank ye, mother, for leave given, too! But I'd bring ye back the little lass, safe and sound. Afore the end o' January would be the time."
"'Tis nothing to speak of. But this I do tell 'ee, Mr. Coupland: I shall have a fair miss of the little maid, with her clack."
"Ah—the little lass! But she'll have the more to tell ye, mother, when she comes again in the spring-time. All set up and hearty, hay?"
It was then that the dear old thing, with the best of intentions, made a mistake. She must needs refer—bless her!—to the length of time that had passed since ever Jim had seen the sea. Then, concerned at the sound of the blind man's "Ah, mother!" she misinterpreted her mistake, conceiving it to have been in the reference to sight. Poor old lady! How hurt she was when she found it out!
Jim was equally concerned on her account. He understood what her thought had been almost before she had begun to explain. "Oh no, no, no, mother!" he cried out, filling the little cottage with his big voice. "Never you think it was that! Where should we be if I couldn't bide to hear a word about my own bad luck? It don't make it neither more nor less, ye know! And it might just as easy have been anybody else." Jim's meaning was that the sum of human misery had been arranged, and this tribulation had to be borne by someone, to balance. If he had it, someone else escaped. "No, no," he continued; "that's not to be thought on, mother!"
But there had been a something, very distinct; and it was equally clear that Mrs. Fox would like to know what, without asking intrusively. Besides, Jim wanted to make that wrong guess a thing of the past. He would try to explain why he was so moved. "It's none so easy, mother, now and again, to say just what you have an inklin' to say. Not if the other party's to understand, mind you! But ... did ye never see the sea, mother?" No—Mrs. Fox had never seen the sea. But she had been in Worcestershire, to her uncle's, many was the time. Jim declined Worcestershire, but gently, not to seem scornful. "It might be a far-off sight," he said. "Not like seafaring folk see it, from sun-up to sun-up; just a fair offing all round ye, and the sky overhead." However, Worcestershire had only been referred to that the old lady might not seem quite untravelled. So Jim returned to his explanation. "It was just a queer feel I had," said he, "about the sound of it again, after such a many years."
Mrs. Fox's slip of the tongue had given her a fright, and she sat silent. A log tumbled on the great open hearth, and a shower of sparks went up the chimney to whirl away in the wind that was roaring down it about the cold white drift of the winter night. Jim sat and thought of his watches out upon the sea, and the same wind whistling through the shrouds, and his strong arm and keen eyesight in the days gone by. All gone—for ever! Nights by the galley-fire, or in some warm corner of a steamer's 'tween-decks, welcome in the spells of look-out duty, when the look-out was for icebergs in the Atlantic—the sort that wait till a ship is well alongside, and choose a clever moment to turn turtle and catch her in the nick. Nights in sailing traders—there are some left still—on a still sea in the tropics, with not a breath of wind below, and strange activity of meteors in an unresponsive universe of stars above. Nights of battle with the storm-fiend—of whirling spray-drench and decks swept by the torrent of the crested seas, all vanished in the past, with that little wicked reason in between that lay in ambush for Jim's eyes on the quay at Cape Town, in the bunghole of an oil-cask.
And then the broken sailor said to his heart: "Can we bear it, you and I?—we that have borne so much; we that must live perforce in dread of so much more still left to bear; we that may even have to say good-bye to the little voice that has been the stronger half of our strength till now? But this—oh, this!—to stand again in hearing of the sea; to know it as of old by the endless intermittent rush of the shoaling beach in its caress, by the music of the curling ridge of its wavelets, nearer, nearer to the shore; to breathe the scent of it in the landward wind—and then!... What then? Just to go mad in an aching void of darkness, and cry out in agony for but one glimmer of the daylight that has been once and shall never be again, just one momentary image of the living world that void can never know."
Presently Mrs. Fox rose, saying quietly, "It's the remindin' brings it back," and busied herself to get some toddy for her tenant. She condemned a lemon-scrap as too dry; her stimulated pity for poor Jim suggested a new one from "the shop," and she disappeared to get it. Jim sat on in the glimmering firelight he did not know from sunshine, thinking of the sea. He did not put his consolatory pipe down; it was something, if not much, against thoughts that ran close on the lines the story guessed for them, if not word for word. But it could not stop the tears that would come from the eyes that were good now for nothing else but to shed them.
CHAPTER XLII
HOW A NAUGHTY LITTLE GIRL CAME OUT IN THE COLD AND TALKED TO HER DADDY. AND HOW WINTER MADE HER WORSE. OF A TALK BETWEEN THE RECTOR AND MISS FOSSETT, AND A SUGGESTION SHE MADE TO HIM
A little bare foot came stealing down the twisted oak stair at the far end of the room, which leads straight up to Lizarann's eyrie where Jarge got the sunflower through the window for her not three months ago. The little white figure in a nightgown is taller than the Lizarann whom we saw, also in her nightgown, rushing out into the snow last winter to summon the police to Uncle Bob. But the robust look of childhood has given place to what is at least an entire unfitness to be out of bed in the cold. If Mrs. Fox had not been lemon-hunting in the shop, she would have sent the delinquent back in double-quick time. Jim's sharp ears caught the patter of the shoeless feet.
"That's the lassie, I lay," said he. And Lizarann, who didn't care, was on his knee before he had got a proper reproach ready. All he could say was, "A little lass out of her bed in the middle of the night! Where's the police, hay?" He affected inability to deal with the case in the absence of the civil authority.
"I come down because it wasn't cold," said Lizarann. "I come down because the stackace is mide of wood. I come down for to kiss my daddy very often." She did so.
Jim called to Mrs. Fox, without. "Mother! Ahoy! Here's a young charackter come out of her bed in the cold."
Mrs. Fox testified to her horror and surprise, saying substantially that, even in the most depraved circles she had mixed with, such a thing as a little girl coming out of bed in the middle of the night was quite outside her experience. Jim suggested that a blanket would be useful as protection, inside which Lizarann could watch him through his toddy, after assisting in its preparation. Mrs. Fox went for the blanket.
"'Tin't cold," said Lizarann. "And there hin't any cold wind outside in the road. Only in the chimbley.... I'm thicker than I was, Daddy." This last was in response to Jim's explorations about her small limbs in search of flesh. Dr. Sidrophel had been a little hopeful about the possible effect of the ones and ites, if persevered in.
"Where's the flesh you was going to put on, the doctor said? Hey, lassie? Sure you haven't put it on some other little lass?"
Lizarann seemed very uncertain—perhaps didn't understand the question. "Old Mrs. Willoughby, lives near the Spost-Office," she says, "medgers eighteen inches round, and her son Gabriel does the horse-shoes." This is not irrelevance; its object is to show that fat is not always an advantage. Jim misunderstands its drift, and conceives that Mrs. Willoughby is brought forward as an example of slimness and its robust consequences.
"That's no great shakes, anyhow," says he; "for round an old lady's waist...."
But Lizarann interrupts. "I didn't sye wyste," she says. "Round her arms with string above the elber. She hin't got a wyste. She's all one piece. Yass!" Then Mrs. Fox returns, and throws a light on old Mrs. Willoughby. She is her cousin Catharine, and is dropsical. What set the child off on her, she asks?
Jim explains. "The lassie wasn't so far out, mother," he says. "You may have too much of a good thing. Only...." But he doesn't finish.
And Mrs. Fox, when she afterwards told Athelstan Taylor things about Jim, recalled how, at this interview, she could see him always feeling, feeling gently, about the little feet and hands that came out of the blanket she had wrapped about the child. "I did all I could to give him heart," she said then. "But I couldn't say too much about looks, because he could see with his finger-tips, as you might say."
In fact, old Mrs. Fox could offer very little in the way of reassurance, and had to fall back upon a resource that had already been freely drawn upon—the growth of little girls and the attenuation that was alleged to accompany it, though really an appeal was being made to conditions of development that belong to growing children over eight years old. Probably Jim saw through all this. But he did not want to discourage those who wished to give him hope. What though it were to be hope against hope—by which one means hope against fear, with despair in the bush—was not their goodwill as good, whatever foes were in league against him?
But, except it were just this once, Jim never allowed his fears to leak out. He could lock them up in his own bosom, and endure life to the end. If he lost his little lass, why!—that was the end of things. He looked forward to it, if it was to be, as a believer in the possibility of his own extinction may look forward to the guillotine. Only, the knife-edge of this guillotine of Jim's was to touch his neck and spring back, then do the same again, then just draw blood and spare him—a guillotine-cat at play with a human heart. But as for showing his fears to the little lass—no more of that!
This was in January. The child was then still enjoying life, with the drawback of that nasty cough. It was only a few weeks since she had been up in the early morning to see her Daddy to his field of operations. Why was that stopped, and why was Lizarann so ready to surrender, and even to remain in bed till the day got warm and she could go out? It was all put down to the winter days. But who ever gave a thought to the winter days in Tallack Street? She firmly believed in her heart that, if only the medicine-bottles were flung on a dust-heap, and she and Daddy were to go back to their old lives, she would still be able to wait his coming in the cold, and perhaps tell all about the Flying Dutchman again to old Mother Groves, and hear more of the strange experiences of the Turk. She identified her old health with her surroundings at that time, and credited them with claims for gratitude really due to it.
However, the exhilarating bygone time had disappeared. Perhaps it was the healthy, bracing influence of Aunt Stingy that she missed, and the occasional stimulus, when Jim was afar, of a strap or a slipper? Perhaps it was Uncle Bob? Perhaps it was The Boys? If she and Bridgetticks were shouting defiances to them—now this moment, through the snow—would it make her cough? She scouted the idea. It never used to it. Indeed, she did not feel sure that Bridgetticks might not prove, if fairly tried, worth quarts of Chloric Ether. A dream hung about her waking consciousness of Bridgetticks and the Turk, mysteriously visitors to relatives in the neighbourhood of Royd, and of a wild escapade to the highest ridge of a hill in the neighbourhood, in the snow. At the end of that dream an imaginary self passed through the mind of the little pale dreamer, a robust young self and a rosy, that broke in upon an image of Daddy at his hour for leaving the well-head, with, "Me and this boy and Bridgetticks, we been right up atop of Crumwen, and I haven't coftited not wuntst, the whole time!" A little of that sort of thing would set her up. But she wasn't going to say so. She loved the big Rector and Phœbe and Jones, and Mrs. Forks, and even poor Dr. Spiderophel, with his scientific delusions, far too much to hint that they could be mistaken. They should have it all their way, they should!
Athelstan Taylor became quite hopeful about the little girl during that January and February. He paid Lizarann a visit at intervals—very short ones when her absences from school were frequent. According to the reports he carried to Miss Caldecott and his own little girls, the patient took a decided turn for the better so often that a very few weeks should have sufficed to qualify her to practise as an Amazon. Phœbe and Joan were quite satisfied that when papa and aunty took them up to town in autumn Lizarann would come too, and then they would all go to see Madame Tussaud's, Westminster Abbey, and Tallack Street. Especially the last. But this expedition never came off.
When Teacher from London came again about Easter time she was disappointed. She did not find what she had been led to suppose she would; not by any conscious exaggeration of the Rector's, but by his genuine over-hopefulness, backed by groundless mis-statements of fact from the little woman herself contained in very well-written letters enclosing hieroglyphs that meant kisses. Adeline Fossett took the first opportunity of finding out whether the patient was still a self-acting Turkish Bath in the small hours, or dry. Her observations were not satisfactory. But there!—you know all about cases of this sort; at least, we expect you do, though we hope you don't.
"I wish we could get her to the seaside," said she. "Any of those places would do. You know, Yorick, you are just as anxious to save the little person as I am. Every bit!"
"My dear Addie!—of course I am. The idea! But we mustn't talk of saving her, yet. I should say losing her, perhaps; but you know what I mean. We can talk to Sidrophel—see what he says."
So the doctor was referred to, and his opinion amounted to this: that if the child went away by herself to any sort of hospital or home, she would either have to be indoors with the other patients, or exposed to all the windy gusts of spring on the sea-beach, or perhaps in a shelter with a fine sea-view. People were always hunting climates that didn't exist, and inflicting horrible hardships on themselves in the chase. When summer by the sea was a certainty, send her, by all means. After midsummer, he should say; no sooner!
This was in early April, just when a misleading rush of crocuses into a treacherous few days of sunshine had set folk off hoping for a real spring this year; like when we were young—like Chaucer—like Spenser. Some mistaken nightingales arrived, and must have felt foolish. Infatuated orchards promised themselves a crop of pears; it even went as far as that!
"We may be thankful for one thing, at any rate," said the Rev. Athelstan to Miss Fossett two or three weeks after. "We did not pack off that little wench to the seaside. In weather like this she's best where she is, on the whole. Sidrophel's right. He often is."
"He was right this time. Just look at it!" Sleet was the thing referred to.
"Werry bad state the roads are in, sir," says a third party in this conversation. "Bad alike for 'orse and man. Thankee, sir!" He was a cabman, and he had just driven this lady and gentleman over five miles, so he knew. He departs with the postscript sixpence his last words procured, as an extra concession after an over-liberal fare, and his late tenants pass in at the door of the little house that is part of the school-building where Lizarann developed that first inflammatory cold months ago. The story is back for the moment on the Cazenove Estate, and the Rector is going presently to walk over to the new incumbent at St. Vulgate's, who will house him to-night, and tell of his few sheep and many goats. He can stay for a cup of tea now, and get there by seven.
"Yes, the doctor was right. She's just as well off under Mrs. Fox's thatch. Better! When the warm weather comes we'll send her for six weeks to Chalk Cliff, and give her a good set-up!" But his hearer only sees her way to silence on this point.
The story has told, but very slightly, the strange rapport between these two, that had lasted through so many years. For over twenty they had elected to pose as brother and sister. During all that time the mind of each had referred to the other as in some sense the principal person; that is the only way to express their thought. When Athelstan first adored the fascinating Sophia Caldecott, he really could hardly have said which he wanted most, that young person herself, or Gus's sister's sympathy about her. But so blind was he at the time, so blind had he remained through all the years of his married life, that he never conceived that, midmost among all her memories of the past, a lurid star outshining all the others, was the record of that hour when the young man she thought and spoke of as a boy, remembered so well, came to her father's house intoxicated with a new-found joy, to tell her chiefly and above all others that he was affianced to—well!—to the wrong sister; not the friend she had set her heart on!