Besides this gentle vaticination of his ultimate destiny, various were the reports that his appearance in Burrel's post-chaise produced. Nevertheless, the chaise rolled on, and, passing through the town, turned up the lane leading by the park wall towards the mansion-house, and, after proceeding about a couple of hundred yards, stopped at the door of a neat cottage, humble and small, but clean and decked with flowers.
"Stay, and let me help you out!" said Burrel to his companion, as the postilion opened the door.
"No, no!" cried the lad, rousing himself from the sort of dozing state in which he had hitherto continued. "It will frighten her.--Let me get out myself.--She has had frights enough already."
He was next the door, and he staggered down the steps with an effort; but, before his foot touched the ground, a female figure appeared at the entrance of the cottage. It was that of a woman of about forty years of age, with traces of considerable beauty, less withered apparently by time than by sorrow; for the braided hair upon her forehead was but thinly mingled with gray, the teeth were fine and white, the eye clear and undimmed. But there was many a line about the mouth which seemed to hold every smile in chains, and there was an expression of deep, habitual anxiety in the eyes, fine as they were, that can only be fixed in them by care. They seemed always asking, "What new sorrow now?" She was dressed in the garb of a widow--not deep weeds--but those habiliments which might still be worn as marks of the eternal mourning of the heart, after time and the world's changes had banished the memory of her loss from every bosom but her own. They were neat and clean, but plain and even coarse; and her appearance--and it did not belie her state--was altogether that of a person in the humbler class of life; but with a mind, and perhaps an education, in some degree superior to those of her own station.
As the young man got out of the chaise, she took two or three quick steps forward to meet him, exclaiming, with an anxious gaze at his face, "Oh, my boy! what has happened now?"
"Nothing mother, nothing!" answered the young man, "A knock on the head! That's all! Nothing at all! It will be well to-morrow;" and he strove to pass into the house, as if to hide himself from the anxious eyes which were scanning his pale face, dabbled as it was with blood.
Burrel sprang out of the chaise; and, putting his right hand under the lad's elbow, so as to support him steadily, he gently displaced his mother's hand by taking it in his own, and leading her on with them into the cottage, saying, as he did so, "Your son, my good lady, has had a severe blow on the head, from the falling of a beam, as he was aiding gallantly to extinguish the fire at Mrs. Darlington's. We have been obliged to bleed him; but, as you see, he is much better now; and I doubt not, with care and good medical advice, will soon be quite well."
By this time he had got the young man into the cottage, and seated him on a wooden chair near the door; but the words of comfort that he spoke seemed to fall meaningless on the ears of the widow, who stood and gazed upon her son's face, with an expression of anxious care which we must have all seen at some time or another, but which is hardly describable. It was not only the sorrow and the anxiety of the moment, but it was the crushed heart, prophesying many a future woe from long experience of grief,--it was the waters of bitterness, welling from the past, and mingling its gall with all things present or to come.
Her son was her first thought, but she marked Burrel's words, though she answered them not; for the next moment she said, as if speaking to herself--for distress had done away with courtesy, for the moment--"Where am I to get good medical advice?"
"That shall not be wanting, my good lady," replied Burrel kindly. "Come, come, the matter is not so bad as you think it. Get your son to bed, and as soon as Mr. Tomkins the surgeon returns, he shall have my orders to give him every attention. He will soon be better, so set your mind at ease."