Chapter Nineteen.
For the better part of two days Pierce Leigh went about like one who had received some terrible mental shock; and Jenny’s pleasant little rounded cheeks told the tale of the anxiety from which she suffered, while her eyes followed him wistfully, and she seemed never weary of trying to perform little offices for him which would distract his attention from the thoughts which were sapping his vitality.
The life at the quiet little cottage home was entirely changed, for brother and sister were playing parts for which they were quite unsuited in a melancholy farce of real life, wearing masks, and trying to hide their sufferings from each other, with a miserable want of success.
And all the time Leigh was longing to open his heart to the loving, affectionate little thing who had been his companion from a child, his confidante over all his hopes, and counsellor in every movement or plan. She had read and studied with him, helped him to puzzle out abstruse questions, and for years they had gone on together leading a life full of happiness, and ready to laugh lightly over money troubles connected with the disappointment over the purchase of the Northwood practice through a swindling, or grossly ignorant, agent.
“Don’t worry about it, Pierce dear,” Jenny had said, “it is only the loss of some money, and as it’s in the country we can live on less, and wear out our old clothes over again. I do wish I could cut up and turn your coats and trousers. You men laugh at us and our fashions, but we women can laugh at you and yours. Granted that our hats and dresses are flimsy, see how we can re-trim and unpick, and make them look new again, while your stupid things get worn and shiny, and then they’re good for nothing. They’re quite hopeless, for I daren’t try to make you a new coat out of two old ones.”
There was many a merry laugh over such matters, Jenny’s spirits rising, as the country life brought back the bloom of health that had been failing in Westminster; and existence, in spite of the want of patients, was a very happy one, till the change came. This change to a certain extent resembled that in the yard of the amateur who was bitten by the fancy for keeping and showing those great lumbering fowls—the Brahmas, so popular years ago.
He had a pen of half-a-dozen cockerels, the result of the hatching of a clutch of eggs laid by a feathered princess of the blood royal; and as he watched them through their infancy it was with high hopes of winning prizes—silver cups and vases, at all the crack poultry shows. And how he tended and pampered his pets, watching them through the various stages passed by this kind of fowl—one can hardly say feathered fowl in the earlier stages of their existence, for through their early boyhood, so to speak, they run about in a raw unclad condition that is pitiful to see, for they are almost “birds of a feather” in the Dundreary idea of the singularity of plumage; and it is not until they have arrived pretty well at full growth that they assume the heavy massive plumage that makes their skeleton lanky forms look so huge. These six young Brahmas masculine grew and throve in their pen, innocent, happy, and at peace, till one morning their owner gazed upon them in pride, for they were all that a Brahma fancier could wish to see—small of comb, heavy of hackle, tail slightly developed, broad in the beam, short-legged, and without a trace of vulture hock. “First prize for one of them,” said the owner, and after feeding them he went to town, and came back to find his hopes ruined, his cockerels six panting, ragged, bleeding wrecks, squatting about in the pen, half dead, too much exhausted to spur and peck again.
For there had been battle royal in that pen, the young birds engaging in a furious melée. For what reason? Because, as good old Doctor Watts said, “It is their nature to.” They did not know it till that morning, but there was the great passion in each one’s breast, waiting to be evoked, and transform them from pacific pecking and scratching birds into perfect demons of discord.
There was wire netting spread all over the top of their carefully sanded pen, and till then they had never seen others of their kind. It was their world, and as far as they knew there was neither fowl nor chicken save themselves. The memory of the mother beneath whose plumage they had nestled had passed away, for the gallinaceous brain cavity is small.
That morning, a stray, pert-looking, elegantly spangled, golden Hambro’ pullet appeared upon the wall, looked down for a moment on the pen of full-grown, innocent young Brahmas, uttered the monosyllables “Took, took!” and flew away.
For a brief space, the long necks of the cockerels were strained in the direction where that vision of loveliness had appeared for a brief instant; the fire of jealous love blazed out, and they turned and fought almost to the death. It would have been quite, had there been strength.
The owner of these six cripples did not take a prize.
So at Northwood, women, save as sister or friend, had been non-existent to Pierce Leigh. Now the desire to rend his human brother was upon him strong.
Jenny knew it, and for more than one reason she trembled for the time that must come when Pierce should first meet Claud Wilton, for it had rapidly dawned upon her that the long-deferred grand passion of her brother was the stronger for its sudden growth.
In her anxiety, she went out during those two days a great deal for the benefit of her health, but really on the qui vive for the news that she felt must soon come of Claud’s proceedings with his cousin; and twice over she had started the subject of their projected leaving, making Leigh raise his eyebrows slightly in wonder at the sudden change in his sister’s ideas. But it was not till nearly evening that, during her brother’s temporary absence, she heard the news for which she was waiting.
One of Leigh’s poor patients called to see him—one of the class suffered by most young doctors, who go through life believing they are very ill, and that it is the duty of a medical man to pay extra attention to their ailments, and lavish upon them knowledge and medicine to the fullest extent, without a thought of payment entering their heads.
Betsy Bray was the lady in question, and as was her custom, Jenny saw the woman, ready to hear her last grievance, and tell her brother when he returned.
Betsy was fifty-five, and possessed of the strong constitution which bears a great deal of ease; but in her own estimation she was very bad. From frequenting surgeries, she had picked up a few medical terms, and larded her discourse with them and others of a religious tendency, her attendance at church dole-giving, and other charitable distributions being of the most regular description.
“Doctor at home, miss?” she said, plaintively, as she slowly and plumply subsided upon the little couch in the surgery, the said piece of furniture groaning in all its springs, for Betsy possessed weight.
“No, Mrs Bray. He has gone to call on the Dudges, at West Gale.”
“Ah, he always is calling on somebody when I’ve managed to drag my weary bones all this way up from the village.”
“I am very sorry. What is the matter now?” said Jenny, soothingly.
“Matter, miss? What’s allus the matter with me? It’s my chronics. Not a wink of sleep have I had all the blessed night.”
“Well, I must give you something.”
“Nay, nay, my dear; you don’t understand my troubles. It’s the absorption is all wrong; and you’d be giving me something out of the wrong bottles. You just give me a taste of sperrits to give me strength to get home again, and beg and pray o’ the doctor to come on and see me as soon as he comes home, if you don’t want me to be laid out stark and cold afore another day’s done.”
“But I have no spirits, Mrs Bray.”
“Got none? Well, I dessay a glass o’ wine might do. Keep me alive p’raps till I’d crawled home to die.”
“But we have no wine.”
“Dear, dear, dear, think o’ that,” said the woman fretfully. “The old doctor always had some, and a drop o’ sperrits, too. Ah, it’s a hard thing to be old and poor and in bad health, carrying your grey hairs in sorrow to the grave; and all about you rich and well and happy, rolling in money, and marrying and giving in marriage and wearing their wedding garments, one and all. You’ve heard about the doings up at the Manor House?”
“Yes, yes, something about them, Mrs Bray; but I’ll tell my brother, and he will, I know, come and see you.”
“Yes, you tell him; not as I believe in him much, but poor people must take what they can get—He’s come back, you know?”
“My brother? No; he would have come straight in here.”
“Your brother? Tchah, no!” cried the woman, forgetting her “chronics” in the interest she felt in the fresh subject. “You’re always thinking about your brother, and if’s time you began to think of a husband. I meant him at the Manor—young Claud Wilton. He’s come back.”
“Come back?” cried Jenny excitedly.
“Yes; but I hear he arn’t brought his young missus with him. Nice goings on, running away, them two, to get married. But I arn’t surprised; he fell out with the parson long enough ago about Sally Deal, down the village, and parson give it him well for not marrying her. Wouldn’t be married here out o’ spite, I suppose. Well, I must go. You’re sure you haven’t got a drop o’ gin in the house?”
“Quite sure,” said Jenny quickly; “and I’ll be sure and tell my brother to come.”
“Ay, do; and tell him I say it’s a shame he lives so far out of the village. I feel sometimes that I shall die in one of the ditches before I get here, it’s so far. There, don’t hurry me so; I don’t want to be took ill here. I know, doctors aren’t above helping people out of the world when they get tired of them.”
“Gone!” cried Jenny at last, with a sigh of relief; and then, with the tears rising to her eyes, “Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do? If they meet—if he ever gets to know!”
She hurried upstairs, put on her hat and jacket, and came down looking pale and excited, but without any very definite plans. One idea was foremost in her mind; but as she reached the door she caught sight of her brother coming with rapid strides from the direction opposite to that taken by the old woman who had just gone.
“Too late!” she said, with a piteous sigh; and she ran upstairs hurriedly, and threw off her things.
She had hardly re-arranged her hair when she heard her brother’s voice calling her.
“Yes, dear,” she said, and she ran down, to find him looking ghastly.
“Who was that went away from here?” he said huskily.
She told him, but not of her promise to send him over.
“I’ll go to her at once,” he said.
“No, no, Pierce, dear; she is not ill. Pray stay at home; there is really no need.”
“Why should I stay at home?” he said, looking at her suspiciously.
“I—I am not very well, dear. You have been so dull, it has upset me. I wish you would stay in with me this evening; I feel so nervous and lonely.”
“Yes, I will,” he said; “but I must go there first.”
“No, no, dear; don’t, please, don’t go,” she pleaded, as she caught his arm. “Please stay. She is not in the least ill, and I want you to stop. There, I’ll make some tea directly, and we’ll sit over it and have a long cosy chat, and it will do us both good, dear.”
“Jenny,” he cried harshly, “you want to keep me at home.”
“Yes, dear, I told you so; but don’t speak in that harsh way; you frighten me.”
“I’m not blind,” he cried. “Don’t deny it. You’ve heard from that old woman what I have just found out. He has come back.”
“Pierce!” she cried; and she shrank away from him, and covered her face with her hands.
“Yes,” he said wildly, and there was a look in his ghastly face which she had never seen before. “I knew it; and you are afraid that I shall meet him and wring his miserable neck.”
“Oh, Pierce, Pierce,” she cried piteously, as she threw herself at his feet; “don’t, don’t, pray don’t talk in this mad way.”
“Why not?” he said, with a mocking laugh. “It is consistent. There, get up; don’t kneel there praying to a madman.”
She sprang up quickly and seized him by the shoulder, and then threw herself across his knees and her arms about his neck.
“It is not true,” she cried passionately. “You are not mad; you are only horribly angry, and I am frightened to death for fear that you should meet and be violent.”
“Violent! I could kill him!” he muttered, with a hard look in his eyes. “Good God, what a profanation! He marry her! She must have been mad, or there has been some cruel act of violence. Jenny, girl, I will see him and take him by the throat and make him tell me all. I have fought against it. I have told myself that she is unworthy of a second thought, but my heart tells me that it is not so. There has been some horrible trick played upon her; she would not—as you have said—she could not have gone off of her own will with that miserable little hound.”
“Yes, yes, that is what I think,” she said, hysterically. “So wait patiently, dear, and we shall know the truth some day.”
“Wait!” he cried, with a mocking laugh. “Wait! With my brain feeling as if it were on fire. No, I have waited too long; I ought to have gone off after him at once, and learned the truth.”
“No, no, dear; you two must not meet. Now then, listen to me.”
“Some day, little bird,” he said, lifting her from his knee, as he rose; then kissing her tenderly he extricated himself from her clinging hands as gently as he could, and rushed out.
“O, Pierce, Pierce!” she cried. “Stay, stay!”
But the only answer to her call as she ran to the door was the heavy beat of his feet in the gloom of the misty evening.
“And if they meet he’ll find out all,” she wailed piteously. She paused, waiting for a few moments, and then searched in her pocket and brought out a tiny silver whistle, which she placed in the bosom of her dress, after flinging the ribbon which was in its ring over her head.
A minute later, with her cloak thrown on and hood drawn over her head, she had slipped out of the cottage, and was running down the by-lane in the direction of the Manor House.