Johnny Ludlow, Second Series. Mrs. Henry Wood
news came up to Crabb Cot that Mr. Rymer lay dying. Robert Ashton, riding back from the hunt in his scarlet coat and white cords on his fine grey horse (the whole a mass of splashes with the thaw) pulled up at the door to say How d’ye do? and mentioned it amidst other items. It was just a shock to the Squire, and nothing less.
“Goodness preserve us!—and all through that miserable five-pound note, Johnny!” he cried in a wild flurry. “Where’s my hat and top-coat?”
Away to Timberdale by the short cut through the Ravine, never heeding the ghost—although its traditional time of appearing, the dusk of evening, was drawing on—went the Squire. He thought Rymer must be ill through fear of him; and he accused me of having done my errand of peace badly.
It was quite true—Thomas Rymer lay dying. Darbyshire was coming out of the house as the Squire reached it, and said so. Instead of being sorry, he flew in a passion and attacked the doctor.
“Now look you here, Darbyshire—this won’t do. We can’t have people dying off like this for nothing. If you don’t cure him, you had better give up doctoring.”
“How d’you mean for nothing?” asked Darbyshire, who knew the Squire well.
“It can’t be for much: don’t be insolent. Because a man gets a bit of anxiety on his mind, is he to be let die?”
“I’ve heard nothing about anxiety,” said Darbyshire. “He caught a chill through going out that day of the snow-storm, and it settled on a vital part. That’s what ails him, Squire.”
“And you can’t cure the chill! Don’t tell me.”
“Before this time to-morrow, Thomas Rymer will be where there’s neither killing nor curing,” was the answer. “I told them yesterday to send for the son: but they don’t know where he is.”
The Squire made a rush through the shop and up to the bedroom, hardly saying, “With your leave,” or, “By your leave.” Thomas Rymer lay in bed at the far end; his white face whiter than the pillow; his eyes sunken; his hands plucking at the counterpane. Margaret left the room when the Squire went in. He gave one look; and knew that he saw death there.
“Rymer, I’d almost have given my own life to save you from this,” cried he, in the shock. “Oh, my goodness! what’s to be done?”
“I seem to have been waiting for it all along; to have seen the exposure coming,” said Thomas Rymer, his faint fingers resting in the Squire’s strong ones. “And now that it’s here, I can’t battle with it.”
“Now, Rymer, my poor fellow, couldn’t you—couldn’t you make a bit of an effort to live? To please me: I knew your father, mind. It can’t be right that you should die.”
“It must be right; perhaps it is well. I can truly say with old Jacob that few and evil have the days of my life been. Nothing but disappointment has been my lot here; struggle upon struggle, pain upon pain, sorrow upon sorrow. I think my merciful Father will remember it in the last great account.”
He died at five o’clock in the morning. Lee told us of it when he brought up the letters at breakfast-time. The Squire let fall his knife and fork.
“It’s a shame and a sin, though, Johnny, that sons should inflict this cruel sorrow upon their parents,” he said later. “Rymer has been brought down to the grave by his son before his hair was grey. I wonder how their accounts will stand at the great reckoning?”
III.
HESTER REED’S PILLS.
We were at our other and chief home, Dyke Manor: and Tod and I were there for the short Easter holidays, which were shorter in those days than they are in these.
It was Easter Tuesday. The Squire had gone riding over to old Jacobson’s with Tod. I, having nothing else to do, got the mater to come with me for a practice on the church organ; and we were taking the round home again through the village, Church Dykely.
Easter was very late that year. It was getting towards the end of April: and to judge by the weather, it might have been the end of May, the days were so warm and glorious.
In passing the gate of George Reed’s cottage, Mrs. Todhetley stopped.
“How are the babies, Hester?”
Hester Reed, sunning her white cap and clean cotton gown in the garden, the three elder children around, watering the beds with a doll’s watering-pot, and a baby hiding its face on her shoulder, dropped a curtsy as she answered—
“They be but poorly, ma’am, thank you. Look up, Susy,” turning the baby’s face upwards to show it: and a pale mite of a face it was, with sleepy eyes. “For a day or two past they’ve not seemed the thing; and they be both cross.”
“I should think their teeth are troubling them, Hester.”
“Maybe, ma’am. I shouldn’t wonder. Hetty, she seems worse than Susy. She’s a-lying there in the basket indoors. Would you please spare a minute to step in and look at her, ma’am?”
Mrs. Todhetley opened the gate. “I may as well go in and see, Johnny,” she said to me in an undertone: “I fear both the children are rather sickly.”
The other baby, “Hetty,” lay in the kitchen in a clothes-basket. It had just the same sort of puny white face as its sister. These two were twins, and about a year old. When they were born, Church Dykely went on finely at Hester Reed, asking her if she would not have had enough with one new child but she must go and set up two.
“It does seem very poorly,” remarked Mrs. Todhetley, stooping over the young mortal (which was not cross just now, but very still and quiet), and letting it clasp its little fist round one of her fingers. “No doubt it is the teeth. If the children do not get better soon, I think, were I you, Hester, I should speak to Mr. Duffham.”
The advice seemed to strike Hester Reed all of a heap. “Speak to Dr. Duffham!” she exclaimed. “Why, ma’am, they must both be a good deal worse than they be, afore we does that. I’ll give ’em a dose o’ mild physic apiece. I dare say that’ll bring ’em round.”
“I should think it would not hurt them,” assented Mrs. Todhetley. “They both seem feverish; this one especially. I hear you have had Cathy over,” she went on, passing to another subject.
“Sure enough us have,” said Mrs. Reed. “She come over yesterday was a week and stayed till Friday night.”
“And what is she doing now?”
“Well, ma’am, Cathy’s keeping herself; and that’s something. She has got a place at Tewkesbury to serve in some shop; is quite in clover there, by all accounts. Two good gownds she brought over to her back; and she’s pretty nigh as lighthearted as she was afore she went off to enter on her first troubles.”
“Hannah told me she was not looking well.”
“She have had a nasty attack of—what was it?—neuralgy, I think she called it, and been obliged to go to a doctor,” answered Hester Reed. “That’s why they gave her the holiday. She was very well while she was here.”
I had stood at the door, talking to the little ones with their watering-pot. As the mater was taking her final word with Mrs. Reed, I went on to open the gate for her, when some woman whisked round the corner from Piefinch Lane, and in at the gate.
“Thank ye, sir,” said she to me: as if I had been holding it open for her especial benefit.
It was Ann Dovey, the blacksmith’s wife down Piefinch Cut: a smart young woman, fond of fine gowns and caps. Mrs. Todhetley came away, and Ann Dovey went in. And this is what passed at Reed’s—as it leaked out to the world afterwards.