Volume Two—Chapter Seven.
Starlight Doings.
It was astonishing how great the interest in the stars had now become in the neighbourhood of Brackley. Glynne was studying hard so as to learn something of the wondrous orbs of whose astounding nature Moray Alleyne loved to speak; and now Philip Oldroyd had told himself that it would be far better if he were not quite so ignorant on matters astronomical.
The result was that he had purchased a book or two giving accounts of the Royal Observatory, the peculiarities of the different instruments used, the various objects most studied; and in these works he was coaching himself up as fast as he could on the present night—having “a comfortable read” as he called it, before going to bed—when there came a bit of a novelty for him, a sudden summons to go and see a patient.
“What’s the matter?” he said, going to the door to answer the call, after a glance at his watch, to see that it was half-past twelve.
“Well, sir,” said the messenger, Caleb Kent, “it’s mate o’ mine hurt hissen like, somehow. Met of a fall, I think.”
“Fall, eh? Where is he hurt?”
“Mostlings ’bout the ’ead, sir, but he’s a bit touched all over.”
“What did he fall off—a cart?”
“No, sir, it warn’t off a cart. Hadn’t you better come and see him, sir?”
“Of course, my man, but I don’t want to go away from home, and then find I might have taken something, and saved my patient a great deal of suffering.”
“Yes, sir; quite right, sir,” said the man mysteriously; “well, you see, sir, I can’t talk about it like. It weer a fall certainly, but some one made him fall.”
“Oh, a fight, eh?”
“Yes, sir; there was a bit of a fight.”
“Well, if your mate has been fighting, is he bad enough to want a doctor?”
“He’s down bad, sir. It warn’t fisties.”
“Sticks?”
The man nodded.
“Anything worse?”
“Well, sir, I didn’t mean to speak about it, but it weer.”
“I think I have it,” thought Oldroyd. “The man has been shot in a poaching affray. Where is it?” he said aloud.
“Lars cottage through Lindham, sir. Tile roof.”
“Six miles away?”
“Yes, sir; ’bout six miles.”
As Oldroyd spoke, he was busily thrusting a case or two and some lint into his pockets, and filling a couple of small phials; after which he buttoned up his coat and put out his lamp.
“Now, then, my man, I must just call at the mill, and then I’m ready for you.”
“Going to walk, sir?” said the messenger.
“No; I’m going to get the miller’s pony. I’m sorry I can’t offer to drive you back.”
“Never you mind about me, sir. I can get over the ground,” said the man; and following Oldroyd down the lane, he stopped with him at a long low cottage, close beside the dammed up river, where a couple of sharp raps caused a casement to be opened.
“You, doctor?” said a voice; and on receiving an answer in the affirmative, there was the word “catch,” and Oldroyd cleverly caught a key attached by a string to a very large horse-chestnut. Then the casement was closed, and the two went round to the stable, where a stout pony’s slumbers were interrupted, and the patient beast saddled and bridled and led out, ready to spread its four legs as far apart as possible when the young doctor mounted as if afraid of being pulled over by his weight.
“Now, then,” said Oldroyd, relocking the door, “forward as fast as you like. When you’re tired I’ll get down.”
“Oh, I sha’n’t be tired,” said the man, quietly; and he started off at a regular dog-trot. “That there pony’ll go anywhere, sir, so I shall take the short cuts.”
“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.