Johnny Ludlow, Second Series. Mrs. Henry Wood
came to town—and a fine squalling young brat he was, with a mouth like a crocodile’s!—gatherings arose in her chest or somewhere, one after another; it was said the agony was awful. Duffham’s skill seemed to have gone a blackberrying, the other doctor’s also, for neither of the two could do anything for her, and the Court thought she would have died of it. Upon that, some relation of old Sterling’s was summoned from London—a great physician in great practice. He came in answer, and was liberal with his advice, telling them to try this and to try the other. But it did no good; and she only grew worse. When they were all in despair, seeing her increasing weakness and the prolonged pain, the woman who nursed her spoke of old Abel Crew; she had known him cure in these cases when the doctor could not; and the poor young lady, willing to catch at a straw, told them to send for Abel Crew. Abel Crew took a prepared plaster of herbs with him, green leaves of some sort, and applied it. That night the patient slept more easily than she had for weeks; and in a short time was well again.
But, skilful though he seemed to be in the science of herbs, as remedies for sickness and sores, Abel Crew never obtruded himself upon the ailing, or took money for his advice, or willingly interfered with the province of Duffham; he never would do it unless compelled in the interests of humanity. The patients he chiefly treated were the poor, those who could not have paid Duffham a coin worth thinking about. Duffham knew this. And, instead of being jealous of him, as some medical men might have been, or ridiculing him for a quack, Duffham liked and respected old Abel Crew. He was simple in his habits still: living chiefly upon bread and butter, with radishes or mustard and cress for a relish, cooking vegetables for his dinner, but rarely meat: and his drink was tea or spring water.
So that Abel Crew was rather a notable character amongst us; and when it was known abroad that two of his pills had caused the death of Mrs. Reed’s twins, there arose no end of a commotion.
It chanced that the same night this occurred, just about the time in fact that the unfortunate infants were taking down the pills under the superintendence of their mother and the blacksmith’s wife, Abel Crew met with an accident; though it was curious enough that it should be so. In taking a pan of boiling herbs off the fire, he let one of the handles slip out of his fingers; it sent the pan down on that side, spilled a lot of the stuff, and scalded his left foot on the instep. Therefore he was about the last person to hear of the calamity; for his door was not open as usual the following morning, and no one knocked to tell him of it.
Duffham was the first. Passing by on his morning rounds, the doctor heard the comments of the people, and it arrested him. It was so unusual a thing for Abel Crew not to be about, and for his door to be closed, that some of them had been arriving at a sensible conclusion—Abel Crew, knowing the mischief his pills had done, was shutting himself up within the house, unable to face his neighbours.
“Rubbish!” said Duffham. And he strode up the garden-path, knocked at the door with his cane, and entered. Abel had dressed, but was lying down on the bed again to rest his lame foot.
Duffham would have asked to look at it, but that he knew Abel Crew was as good at burns and scalds as he himself was. It had been doctored at once, and was now wrapped up in a handkerchief.
“The fire is nearly out of it,” said Abel, “but it must have rest; by to-night I shall be able to dress it with my healing-salve. I am much obliged to you for coming in, sir: though in truth I don’t know how you could have heard of the accident.”
“Ah! news flies,” said Duffham, evasively, knowing that he had not heard of the foot, or the neighbours either, and had come in for something altogether different. “What is this about the pills?”
“About the pills?” repeated Abel Crew, who had got up out of respect, and was putting on his coat. “What pills, sir?”
The doctor told him what had happened. Hester Reed had given one of his pills to each of her babies, and both had died of it. Abel Crew listened quietly; his face and his eyes fixed on Duffham.
“The children cannot have died of the pills,” said he, speaking as gently as you please. “Something else must have killed them.”
“According to Hester Reed’s account, nothing can have done it but the pills,” said Duffham. “The children had only taken their ordinary food throughout the day, and very little of that. George Reed came running to me in the night, but it was too late; one was dead before I got there. There could be no mistaking the children’s symptoms—that both were poisoned.”
“This is very strange,” exclaimed Abel, looking troubled. “By what kind of poison?”
“Arsenic, I think. I——”
But here they were interrupted. Dovey, the blacksmith, hearing of the calamity, together with the fact that it was his wife who had assisted in administering the suspected doses, deemed it his duty to look into the affair a little, and to resent it. He had left his forge and a bar of iron red-hot in it, and come tearing along in his leather apron, his shirt-sleeves stripped up to the elbow, and his arms grimy. A dark-eyed, good-natured little man in general, was Dovey, but exploding with rage at the present moment.
“Now then, Abel Crew, what do you mean by selling pills to poison people?” demanded he, pushing back the door with a bang, and stepping in fiercely. Duffham, foreseeing there was going to be a contest, and having no time to waste, took his departure.
“I have not sold pills to poison people,” replied Abel.
“Look here,” said Dovey, folding his black arms. “Be you going to eat them pills, or be you not? Come!”
“What do you mean, Dovey?”
“What do I mean! Ain’t my meaning plain? Do you own to having selled a box of pills to Hester Reed last winter?—be you thinking to eat that there fact, and deny of it? Come, Abel Crew!”
“I remember it well,” readily spoke up Abel. “Mrs. Reed came here one day, complaining that her head ached continually, and her side often had a dull pain in it, and asked me to give her something. I did so; I gave her a box of pills. It was early in January, I think. I know there was ice on the ground.”
“Then do you own to them pills,” returned Dovey, more quietly, his fierceness subdued by Abel’s civility. “It were you that furnished ’em?”
“I furnished the box of pills I speak of, that Hester Reed had from me in the winter. There’s no mistake about that.”
“And made ’em too?”
“Yes, and made them.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you say that; and now don’t you go for to eat your words later, Abel Crew. Our Ann, my wife, helped to give them there two pills to the children; and I’m not a-going to let her get into trouble over it. You’ve confessed to the pills, and I’m a witness.”
“My pills did not kill the children, Dovey,” said Abel, in a pleasant tone, resting his lame foot upon an opposite chair.
“Not kill ’em?”
“No, that they did not. I’ve not made pills all these years to poison children at last.”
“But what done it if the pills didn’t?”
“How can I say? ’Twasn’t my pills.”
“Dr. Duffham says it was the pills. And he——”
“Dr. Duffham says it was?”
“Reed telled me that the doctor asked outright, all in a flurry, what his wife had gave the babies, and she said she had gave ’em nothing but them there two pills of Abel Crew’s. Duffham said the pills must have had poison in ’em, and he asked for the box; and Hester Reed, she give him the box, and he sealed it up afore their eyes with his own seal.”
Abel nodded. He knew that any suspected medicine must in such a case be sealed up.
“And now that I’ve got that there word from ye, I’ll say good-day to ye, neighbour,