CHAPTER XXXII.
THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH.
Briarmains being nearer than the Hollow, Mr. Yorke had conveyed hisyoung comrade there. He had seen him laid in the best bed of the house,as carefully as if he had been one of his own sons. The sight of hisblood, welling from the treacherously inflicted wound, made him indeedthe son of the Yorkshire gentleman's heart. The spectacle of the suddenevent, of the tall, straight shape prostrated in its pride across theroad, of the fine southern head laid low in the dust, of that youth inprime flung at once before him pallid, lifeless, helpless--this was thevery combination of circumstances to win for the victim Mr. Yorke'sliveliest interest.
No other hand was there to raise--to aid, no other voice to questionkindly, no other brain to concert measures; he had to do it all himself.This utter dependence of the speechless, bleeding youth (as a youth heregarded him) on his benevolence secured that benevolence mosteffectually. Well did Mr. Yorke like to have power, and to use it. Hehad now between his hands power over a fellow-creature's life. It suitedhim.
No less perfectly did it suit his saturnine better half. The incidentwas quite in her way and to her taste. Some women would have beenterror-struck to see a gory man brought in over their threshold, andlaid down in their hall in the "howe of the night." There, you wouldsuppose, was subject-matter for hysterics. No. Mrs. Yorke went intohysterics when Jessie would not leave the garden to come to herknitting, or when Martin proposed starting for Australia, with a view torealize freedom and escape the tyranny of Matthew; but an attemptedmurder near her door--a half-murdered man in her best bed--set herstraight, cheered her spirits, gave her cap the dash of a turban.
Mrs. Yorke was just the woman who, while rendering miserable thedrudging life of a simple maid-servant, would nurse like a heroine ahospital full of plague patients. She almost loved Moore. Her toughheart almost yearned towards him when she found him committed to hercharge--left in her arms, as dependent on her as her youngest-born inthe cradle. Had she seen a domestic or one of her daughters give him adraught of water or smooth his pillow, she would have boxed theintruder's ears. She chased Jessie and Rose from the upper realm of thehouse; she forbade the housemaids to set their foot in it.
Now, if the accident had happened at the rectory gates, and old Helstonehad taken in the martyr, neither Yorke nor his wife would have pitiedhim. They would have adjudged him right served for his tyranny andmeddling. As it was, he became, for the present, the apple of their eye.
Strange! Louis Moore was permitted to come--to sit down on the edge ofthe bed and lean over the pillow; to hold his brother's hand, and presshis pale forehead with his fraternal lips; and Mrs. Yorke bore it well.She suffered him to stay half the day there; she once suffered him tosit up all night in the chamber; she rose herself at five o'clock of awet November morning, and with her own hands lit the kitchen fire, andmade the brothers a breakfast, and served it to them herself.Majestically arrayed in a boundless flannel wrapper, a shawl, and hernightcap, she sat and watched them eat, as complacently as a hen beholdsher chickens feed. Yet she gave the cook warning that day for venturingto make and carry up to Mr. Moore a basin of sago-gruel; and thehousemaid lost her favour because, when Mr. Louis was departing, shebrought him his surtout aired from the kitchen, and, like a "forwardpiece" as she was, helped him on with it, and accepted in return asmile, a "Thank you, my girl," and a shilling. Two ladies called oneday, pale and anxious, and begged earnestly, humbly, to be allowed tosee Mr. Moore one instant. Mrs. Yorke hardened her heart, and sent thempacking--not without opprobrium.
But how was it when Hortense Moore came? Not so bad as might have beenexpected. The whole family of the Moores really seemed to suit Mrs.Yorke so as no other family had ever suited her. Hortense and shepossessed an exhaustless mutual theme of conversation in the corruptpropensities of servants. Their views of this class were similar; theywatched them with the same suspicion, and judged them with the sameseverity. Hortense, too, from the very first showed no manner ofjealousy of Mrs. Yorke's attentions to Robert--she let her keep the postof nurse with little interference; and, for herself, found ceaselessoccupation in fidgeting about the house, holding the kitchen undersurveillance, reporting what passed there, and, in short, making herselfgenerally useful. Visitors they both of them agreed in excludingsedulously from the sickroom. They held the young mill-owner captive,and hardly let the air breathe or the sun shine on him.
Mr. MacTurk, the surgeon to whom Moore's case had been committed,pronounced his wound of a dangerous, but, he trusted, not of a hopelesscharacter. At first he wished to place with him a nurse of his ownselection; but this neither Mrs. Yorke nor Hortense would hear of. Theypromised faithful observance of directions. He was left, therefore, forthe present in their hands.
Doubtless they executed the trust to the best of their ability; butsomething got wrong. The bandages were displaced or tampered with; greatloss of blood followed. MacTurk, being summoned, came with steed afoam.He was one of those surgeons whom it is dangerous to vex--abrupt in hisbest moods, in his worst savage. On seeing Moore's state he relieved hisfeelings by a little flowery language, with which it is not necessary tostrew the present page. A bouquet or two of the choicest blossoms fellon the unperturbed head of one Mr. Graves, a stony young assistant heusually carried about with him; with a second nosegay he gifted anotheryoung gentleman in his train--an interesting fac-simile of himself,being indeed his own son; but the full _corbeille_ of blushing bloomfell to the lot of meddling womankind, _en masse_.
For the best part of one winter night himself and satellites were busiedabout Moore. There at his bedside, shut up alone with him in hischamber, they wrought and wrangled over his exhausted frame. They threewere on one side of the bed, and Death on the other. The conflict wassharp; it lasted till day broke, when the balance between thebelligerents seemed so equal that both parties might have claimed thevictory.
At dawn Graves and young MacTurk were left in charge of the patient,while the senior went himself in search of additional strength, andsecured it in the person of Mrs. Horsfall, the best nurse on his staff.To this woman he gave Moore in charge, with the sternest injunctionsrespecting the responsibility laid on her shoulders. She took thisresponsibility stolidly, as she did also the easy-chair at the bedhead.That moment she began her reign.
Mrs. Horsfall had one virtue--orders received from MacTurk she obeyed tothe letter. The ten commandments were less binding in her eyes than hersurgeon's dictum. In other respects she was no woman, but a dragon.Hortense Moore fell effaced before her; Mrs. Yorke withdrew--crushed;yet both these women were personages of some dignity in their ownestimation, and of some bulk in the estimation of others. Perfectlycowed by the breadth, the height, the bone, and the brawn of Mrs.Horsfall, they retreated to the back parlour. She, for her part, satupstairs when she liked, and downstairs when she preferred it. She tookher dram three times a day, and her pipe of tobacco four times.
As to Moore, no one now ventured to inquire about him. Mrs. Horsfall hadhim at dry-nurse. It was she who was to do for him, and the generalconjecture now ran that she did for him accordingly.
Morning and evening MacTurk came to see him. His case, thus complicatedby a new mischance, was become one of interest in the surgeon's eyes. Heregarded him as a damaged piece of clockwork, which it would becreditable to his skill to set agoing again. Graves and youngMacTurk--Moore's sole other visitors--contemplated him in the light inwhich they were wont to contemplate the occupant for the time being ofthe dissecting-room at Stilbro' Infirmary.
Robert Moore had a pleasant time of it--in pain, in danger, too weak tomove, almost too weak to speak, a sort of giantess his keeper, the threesurgeons his sole society. Thus he lay through the diminishing days andlengthening nights of the whole drear month of November.
In the commencement of his captivity Moore used feebly to resist Mrs.Horsfall. He hated the sight of her rough bulk, and dreaded the contactof her hard hands; but she taught him docility in a trice. She made noacc
ount whatever of his six feet, his manly thews and sinews; she turnedhim in his bed as another woman would have turned a babe in its cradle.When he was good she addressed him as "my dear" and "honey," and when hewas bad she sometimes shook him. Did he attempt to speak when MacTurkwas there, she lifted her hand and bade him "Hush!" like a nursechecking a forward child. If she had not smoked, if she had not takengin, it would have been better, he thought; but she did both. Once, inher absence, he intimated to MacTurk that "that woman was adram-drinker."
"Pooh! my dear sir, they are all so," was the reply he got for hispains. "But Horsfall has this virtue," added the surgeon--"drunk orsober, she always remembers to obey _me_."
* * * * *
At length the latter autumn passed; its fogs, its rains withdrew fromEngland their mourning and their tears; its winds swept on to sigh overlands far away. Behind November came deep winter--clearness, stillness,frost accompanying.
A calm day had settled into a crystalline evening. The world wore aNorth Pole colouring; all its lights and tints looked like the_reflets_[A] of white, or violet, or pale green gems. The hills wore alilac blue; the setting sun had purple in its red; the sky was ice, allsilvered azure; when the stars rose, they were of white crystal, notgold; gray, or cerulean, or faint emerald hues--cool, pure, andtransparent--tinged the mass of the landscape.
[A] Find me an English word as good, reader, and I will gladly dispense with the French word. "Reflections" won't do.
What is this by itself in a wood no longer green, no longer even russet,a wood neutral tint--this dark blue moving object? Why, it is aschoolboy--a Briarfield grammar-school boy--who has left his companions,now trudging home by the highroad, and is seeking a certain tree, with acertain mossy mound at its root, convenient as a seat. Why is helingering here? The air is cold and the time wears late. He sits down.What is he thinking about? Does he feel the chaste charm Nature wearsto-night? A pearl-white moon smiles through the gray trees; does he carefor her smile?
Impossible to say; for he is silent, and his countenance does not speak.As yet it is no mirror to reflect sensation, but rather a mask toconceal it. This boy is a stripling of fifteen--slight, and tall of hisyears. In his face there is as little of amenity as of servility, hiseye seems prepared to note any incipient attempt to control or overreachhim, and the rest of his features indicate faculties alert forresistance. Wise ushers avoid unnecessary interference with that lad.To break him in by severity would be a useless attempt; to win him byflattery would be an effort worse than useless. He is best let alone.Time will educate and experience train him.
Professedly Martin Yorke (it is a young Yorke, of course) tramples onthe name of poetry. Talk sentiment to him, and you would be answered bysarcasm. Here he is, wandering alone, waiting duteously on Nature, whileshe unfolds a page of stern, of silent, and of solemn poetry beneath hisattentive gaze.
Being seated, he takes from his satchel a book--not the Latin grammar,but a contraband volume of fairy tales. There will be light enough yetfor an hour to serve his keen young vision. Besides, the moon waits onhim; her beam, dim and vague as yet, fills the glade where he sits.
He reads. He is led into a solitary mountain region; all round him isrude and desolate, shapeless, and almost colourless. He hears bellstinkle on the wind. Forth-riding from the formless folds of the mistdawns on him the brightest vision--a green-robed lady, on a snow-whitepalfrey. He sees her dress, her gems, and her steed. She arrests himwith some mysterious question. He is spell-bound, and must follow herinto fairyland.
A second legend bears him to the sea-shore. There tumbles in a strongtide, boiling at the base of dizzy cliffs. It rains and blows. A reef ofrocks, black and rough, stretches far into the sea. All along, andamong, and above these crags dash and flash, sweep and leap, swells,wreaths, drifts of snowy spray. Some lone wanderer is out on theserocks, treading with cautious step the wet, wild seaweed; glancing downinto hollows where the brine lies fathoms deep and emerald clear, andseeing there wilder and stranger and huger vegetation than is found onland, with treasure of shells--some green, some purple, somepearly--clustered in the curls of the snaky plants. He hears a cry.Looking up and forward, he sees, at the bleak point of the reef, a tall,pale thing--shaped like man, but made of spray--transparent, tremulous,awful. It stands not alone. They are all human figures that wanton inthe rocks--a crowd of foam-women--a band of white, evanescent Nereids.
Hush! Shut the book; hide it in the satchel. Martin hears a tread. Helistens. No--yes. Once more the dead leaves, lightly crushed, rustle onthe wood path. Martin watches; the trees part, and a woman issuesforth.
She is a lady dressed in dark silk, a veil covering her face. Martinnever met a lady in this wood before--nor any female, save, now andthen, a village girl come to gather nuts. To-night the apparition doesnot displease him. He observes, as she approaches, that she is neitherold nor plain, but, on the contrary, very youthful; and, but that he nowrecognizes her for one whom he has often wilfully pronounced ugly, hewould deem that he discovered traits of beauty behind the thin gauze ofthat veil.
She passes him and says nothing. He knew she would. All women are proudmonkeys, and he knows no more conceited doll than that CarolineHelstone. The thought is hardly hatched in his mind when the ladyretraces those two steps she had got beyond him, and raising her veil,reposes her glance on his face, while she softly asks, "Are you one ofMr. Yorke's sons?"
No human evidence would ever have been able to persuade Martin Yorkethat he blushed when thus addressed; yet blush he did, to the ears.
"I am," he said bluntly, and encouraged himself to wonder,superciliously, what would come next.
"You are Martin, I think?" was the observation that followed.
It could not have been more felicitous. It was a simple sentence--veryartlessly, a little timidly, pronounced; but it chimed in harmony to theyouth's nature. It stilled him like a note of music.
Martin had a keen sense of his personality; he felt it right andsensible that the girl should discriminate him from his brothers. Likehis father, he hated ceremony. It was acceptable to hear a lady addresshim as "Martin," and not Mr. Martin or Master Martin, which form wouldhave lost her his good graces for ever. Worse, if possible, thanceremony was the other extreme of slipshod familiarity. The slight toneof bashfulness, the scarcely perceptible hesitation, was consideredperfectly in place.
"I am Martin," he said.
"Are your father and mother well?" (it was lucky she did not say _papa_and _mamma_; that would have undone all); "and Rose and Jessie?"
"I suppose so."
"My cousin Hortense is still at Briarmains?"
"Oh yes."
Martin gave a comic half-smile and demi-groan. The half-smile wasresponded to by the lady, who could guess in what sort of odour Hortensewas likely to be held by the young Yorkes.
"Does your mother like her?"
"They suit so well about the servants they can't help liking eachother."
"It is cold to-night."
"Why are you out so late?"
"I lost my way in this wood."
Now, indeed, Martin allowed himself a refreshing laugh of scorn.
"Lost your way in the mighty forest of Briarmains! You deserve nevermore to find it."
"I never was here before, and I believe I am trespassing now. You mightinform against me if you chose, Martin, and have me fined. It is yourfather's wood."
"I should think I knew that. But since you are so simple as to lose yourway, I will guide you out."
"You need not. I have got into the track now. I shall be right. Martin"(a little quickly), "how is Mr. Moore?"
Martin had heard certain rumours; it struck him that it might be amusingto make an experiment.
"Going to die. Nothing can save him. All hope flung overboard!"
She put her veil aside. She looked into his eyes, and said, "To die!"
"To die. All along of the women, my mother and the rest. They didsomething about his
bandages that finished everything. He would have gotbetter but for them. I am sure they should be arrested, cribbed, tried,and brought in for Botany Bay, at the very least."
The questioner, perhaps, did nor hear this judgment. She stoodmotionless. In two minutes, without another word, she moved forwards; nogood-night, no further inquiry. This was not amusing, nor what Martinhad calculated on. He expected something dramatic and demonstrative. Itwas hardly worth while to frighten the girl if she would not entertainhim in return. He called, "Miss Helstone!"
She did not hear or turn. He hastened after and overtook her.
"Come; are you uneasy about what I said?"
"You know nothing about death, Martin; you are too young for me to talkto concerning such a thing."
"Did you believe me? It's all flummery! Moore eats like three men. Theyare always making sago or tapioca or something good for him. I never gointo the kitchen but there is a saucepan on the fire, cooking him somedainty. I think I will play the old soldier, and be fed on the fat ofthe land like him."
"Martin! Martin!" Here her voice trembled, and she stopped.
"It is exceedingly wrong of you, Martin. You have almost killed me."
Again she stopped. She leaned against a tree, trembling, shuddering, andas pale as death.
Martin contemplated her with inexpressible curiosity. In one sense itwas, as he would have expressed it, "nuts" to him to see this. It toldhim so much, and he was beginning to have a great relish for discoveringsecrets. In another sense it reminded him of what he had once felt whenhe had heard a blackbird lamenting for her nestlings, which Matthew hadcrushed with a stone, and that was not a pleasant feeling. Unable tofind anything very appropriate to _say_ in order to comfort her, hebegan to cast about in his mind what he could _do_. He smiled. The lad'ssmile gave wondrous transparency to his physiognomy.
"Eureka!" he cried. "I'll set all straight by-and-by. You are betternow, Miss Caroline. Walk forward," he urged.
Not reflecting that it would be more difficult for Miss Helstone thanfor himself to climb a wall or penetrate a hedge, he piloted her by ashort cut which led to no gate. The consequence was he had to help herover some formidable obstacles, and while he railed at her forhelplessness, he perfectly liked to feel himself of use.
"Martin, before we separate, assure me seriously, and on your word ofhonour, that Mr. Moore is better."
"How very much you think of that Moore!"
"No--but--many of his friends may ask me, and I wish to be able to givean authentic answer."
"You may tell them he is well enough, only idle. You may tell them thathe takes mutton chops for dinner, and the best of arrowroot for supper.I intercepted a basin myself one night on its way upstairs, and ate halfof it."
"And who waits on him, Martin? who nurses him?"
"Nurses him? The great baby! Why, a woman as round and big as ourlargest water-butt--a rough, hard-favoured old girl. I make no doubtshe leads him a rich life. Nobody else is let near him. He is chiefly inthe dark. It is my belief she knocks him about terribly in that chamber.I listen at the wall sometimes when I am in bed, and I think I hear herthumping him. You should see her fist. She could hold half a dozen handslike yours in her one palm. After all, notwithstanding the chops andjellies he gets, I would not be in his shoes. In fact, it is my privateopinion that she eats most of what goes up on the tray to Mr. Moore. Iwish she may not be starving him."
Profound silence and meditation on Caroline's part, and a slywatchfulness on Martin's.
"You never see him, I suppose, Martin?"
"I? No. I don't care to see him, for my own part."
Silence again.
"Did not you come to our house once with Mrs. Pryor, about five weekssince, to ask after him?" again inquired Martin.
"Yes."
"I dare say you wished to be shown upstairs?"
"We _did_ wish it. We entreated it; but your mother declined."
"Ay! she declined. I heard it all. She treated you as it is her pleasureto treat visitors now and then. She behaved to you rudely and harshly."
"She was not kind; for you know, Martin, we are relations, and it isnatural we should take an interest in Mr. Moore. But here we must part;we are at your father's gate."
"Very well, what of that? I shall walk home with you."
"They will miss you, and wonder where you are."
"Let them. I can take care of myself, I suppose."
Martin knew that he had already incurred the penalty of a lecture, anddry bread for his tea. No matter; the evening had furnished him with anadventure. It was better than muffins and toast.
He walked home with Caroline. On the way he promised to see Mr. Moore,in spite of the dragon who guarded his chamber, and appointed an hour onthe next day when Caroline was to come to Briarmains Wood and gettidings of him. He would meet her at a certain tree. The scheme led tonothing; still he liked it.
Having reached home, the dry bread and the lecture were dulyadministered to him, and he was dismissed to bed at an early hour. Heaccepted his punishment with the toughest stoicism.
Ere ascending to his chamber he paid a secret visit to the dining-room,a still, cold, stately apartment, seldom used, for the familycustomarily dined in the back parlour. He stood before the mantelpiece,and lifted his candle to two pictures hung above--female heads: one, atype of serene beauty, happy and innocent; the other, more lovely, butforlorn and desperate.
"She looked like _that_," he said, gazing on the latter sketch, "whenshe sobbed, turned white, and leaned against the tree."
"I suppose," he pursued, when he was in his room, and seated on the edgeof his pallet-bed--"I suppose she is what they call '_in love_'--yes,_in love_ with that long thing in the next chamber. Whisht! is thatHorsfall clattering him? I wonder he does not yell out. It really soundsas if she had fallen on him tooth and nail; but I suppose she is makingthe bed. I saw her at it once. She hit into the mattresses as if she wasboxing. It is queer, Zillah (they call her Zillah)--Zillah Horsfall is awoman, and Caroline Helstone is a woman; they are two individuals of thesame species--not much alike though. Is she a pretty girl, thatCaroline? I suspect she is; very nice to look at--something so clear inher face, so soft in her eyes. I approve of her looking at me; it doesme good. She has long eyelashes. Their shadow seems to rest where shegazes, and to instil peace and thought. If she behaves well, andcontinues to suit me as she has suited me to-day, I may do her a goodturn. I rather relish the notion of circumventing my mother and thatogress old Horsfall. Not that I like humouring Moore; but whatever I doI'll be paid for, and in coin of my own choosing. I know what reward Iwill claim--one displeasing to Moore, and agreeable to myself."
He turned into bed.