"I ain"t particular," said d.i.c.kie, who supposed himself to be listening to an offer of a choice of police-stations.
There were whispers--two small and soft voices. They made a sleepy music.
"He"s more yours than mine," said one.
"You"re more his than I am," said the other.
"You"re older than I am," said the first.
"You"re stronger than I am," said the second.
"Let"s spin for it," said the first voice, and there was a humming sound ending in a little tinkling fall.
"That settles it," said the second voice--"here?"
"And when?"
"Three"s a good number."
Then everything was very quiet, and sleep wrapped d.i.c.kie like a soft cloak. When he awoke his eyelids no longer felt heavy, so he opened them. "That was a rum dream," he told himself, as he blinked in broad daylight.
He lay in bed--a big, strange bed--in a room that he had never seen before. The windows were low and long, with small panes, and the light was broken by upright stone divisions. The floor was of dark wood, strewn strangely with flowers and green herbs, and the bed was a four-post bed like the one he had slept in at Talbot House; and in the green curtains was woven a white pattern, very like the thing that was engraved on Tinkler and on the white seal. On the coverlet lavender and other herbs were laid. And the wall was hung with pictures done in needlework--tapestry, in fact, though d.i.c.kie did not know that this was its name. All the furniture was heavily built of wood heavily carved. An enormous dark cupboard or wardrobe loomed against one wall. High-backed chairs with tapestry seats were ranged in a row against another. The third wall was almost all window, and in the fourth wall the fireplace was set with a high-hooded chimney and wide, open hearth.
Near the bed stood a stool, or table, with cups and bottles on it, and on the necks of the bottles parchment labels were tied that stuck out stiffly. A stout woman in very full skirts sat in a large armchair at the foot of the bed. She wore a queer white cap, the like of which d.i.c.kie had never seen, and round her neck was a ruff which reminded him of the cut-paper frills in the ham and beef shops in the New Cross Road.
"What a curious dream!" said d.i.c.kie.
The woman looked at him.
"So thou"st found thy tongue," she said; "folk must look to have curious dreams who fall sick of the fever. But thou"st found thy tongue at last--thine own tongue, not the wandering tongue that has wagged so fast these last days."
"But I thought I was in the front room at----" d.i.c.kie began.
"Thou"rt here," said she; "the other is the dream. Forget it. And do not talk of it. To talk of such dreams brings misfortune. And "tis time for thy posset."
She took a pipkin from the hearth, where a small fire burned, though it was summer weather, as d.i.c.kie could see by the green tree-tops that swayed and moved outside in the sun, poured some gruel out of it into a silver basin. It had wrought roses on it and "Drink me and drink again"
in queer letters round the rim; but this d.i.c.kie only noticed later. She poured white wine into the gruel, and, having stirred it with a silver spoon, fed d.i.c.kie as one feeds a baby, blowing on each spoonful to cool it. The gruel was very sweet and pleasant. d.i.c.kie stretched in the downy bed, felt extremely comfortable, and fell asleep again.
Next time he awoke it was with many questions. "How"d I come "ere? "Ave I bin run over agen? Is it a hospital? Who are you?"
"Now don"t you begin to wander again," said the woman in the cap.
"You"re here at home in the best bed in your father"s house at Deptford.
And you"ve had the plague-fever. And you"re better. Or ought to be. But if you don"t know your own old nurse----"
"I never "ad no nurse," said d.i.c.kie, "old nor new. So there. You"re a-takin" me for some other chap, that"s what it is. Where did you get hold of me? I never bin here before."
"Don"t wander, I tell you," repeated the nurse briskly. "You lie still and think, and you"ll see you"ll remember me very well. Forget your old nurse--why, you will tell me next that you"ve forgotten your own name."
"No, I haven"t," said d.i.c.kie.
"What is it, then?" the nurse asked, laughing a fat, comfortable laugh.
d.i.c.kie"s reply was naturally "d.i.c.kie Harding."
"Why," said the nurse, opening wide eyes at him under gray brows, "you _have_ forgotten it. They do say that the fever hurts the memory, but this beats all. Dost mean to tell me the fever has mazed thy poor brains till thou don"t know that thy name"s Richard ----?" And d.i.c.kie heard her name a name that did not sound to him at all like Harding.
"Is that my name?" he asked.
"It is indeed," she answered.
d.i.c.kie felt an odd sensation of fixedness. He had expected when he went to sleep that the dream would, in sleep, end, and that he would wake to find himself alone in the empty house at New Cross. But he had wakened to the same dream once more, and now he began to wonder whether he really belonged here, and whether this were the real life, and the other--the old, sordid, dirty New Cross life--merely a horrid dream, the consequence of his fever. He lay and thought, and looked at the rich, pleasant room, the kind, clear face of the nurse, the green, green branches of the trees, the tapestry and the rushes. At last he spoke.
"Nurse," said he.
"Ah! I thought you"d come to yourself," she said. "What is it, my dearie?"
"If I am really the name you said, I"ve forgotten it. Tell me all about myself, will you, Nurse?"
"I thought as much," she muttered, and then began to tell him wonderful things.
She told him how his father was Sir Richard--the King had made him a knight only last year--and how this place where they now were was his father"s country house. "It lies," said the nurse, "among the pleasant fields and orchards of Deptford." And how he, d.i.c.kie, had been very sick of the pestilential fever, but was now, thanks to the blessing and to the ministrations of good Dr. Carey, on the highroad to health.
"And when you are strong enough," said she, "and the house purged of the contagion, your cousins from Suss.e.x shall come and stay a while here with you, and afterwards you shall go with them to their town house, and see the sights of London. And now," she added, looking out of the window, "I spy the good doctor a-coming. Make the best of thyself, dear heart, lest he bleed thee and drench thee yet again, which I know in my heart thou"rt too weak for it. But what do these doctors know of babes?
Their medicines are for strong men."
The idea of bleeding was not pleasant to d.i.c.kie, though he did not at all know what it meant. He sat up in bed, and was surprised to find that he was not nearly so tired as he thought. The excitement of all these happenings had brought a pink flush to his face, and when the doctor, in a full black robe and black stockings and a pointed hat, stood by his bedside and felt his pulse, the doctor had to own that d.i.c.kie was almost well.
"We have wrought a cure, Goody," he said; "thou and I, we have wrought a cure. Now kitchen physic it is that he needs--good broth and gruel and panada, and wine, the Rhenish and the French, and the juice of the orange and the lemon, or, failing those, fresh apple-juice squeezed from the fruit when you shall have brayed it in a mortar. Ha, my cure pleases thee? Well, smell to it, then. "Tis many a day since thou hadst the heart to."
He reached the gold k.n.o.b of his cane to d.i.c.kie"s nose, and d.i.c.kie was surprised to find that it smelled sweet and strong, something like grocers" shops and something like a chemist"s. There were little holes in the gold k.n.o.b, such as you see in the tops of pepper castors, and the scent seemed to come through them.
"What is it?" d.i.c.kie asked.
"He has forgotten everything," said the nurse quickly; ""tis the good doctor"s pomander, with spices and perfumes in it to avert contagion."
"As it warms in the hand the perfumes give forth," said the doctor. "Now the fever is past there must be a fumigatory. Make a good brew, Goody, make a good brew--amber and nitre and wormwood--vinegar and quinces and myrrh--with wormwood, camphor, and the fresh flowers of the camomile.
And musk--forget not musk--a strong thing against contagion. Let the vapor of it pa.s.s to and fro through the chamber, burn the herbs from the floor and all sweepings on this hearth; strew fresh herbs and flowers, and set all clean and in order, and give thanks that you are not setting all in order for a burying."
With which agreeable words the black-gowned doctor nodded and smiled at the little patient, and went out.
And now d.i.c.kie literally did not know where he was. It was all so difficult. Was he d.i.c.kie Harding who had lived at New Cross, and sown the Artistic Parrot Seed, and taken the open road with Mr. Beale? Or was he that boy with the other name whose father was a knight, and who lived in a house in Deptford with green trees outside the windows? He could not remember any house in Deptford that had green trees in its garden. And the nurse had said something about the pleasant fields and orchards. Those, at any rate, were not in the Deptford he knew. Perhaps there were two Deptfords. He knew there were two Bromptons and two Richmonds (one in Yorkshire). There was something about the way things happened at this place that reminded him of that nice Lady Talbot who had wanted him to stay and be her little boy. Perhaps this new boy whose place he seemed to have taken had a real mother of his own, as nice as that nice lady.
The nurse had dropped all sorts of things into an iron pot with three legs, and had set it to boil in the hot ashes. Now it had boiled, and two maids were carrying it to and fro in the room, as the doctor had said. Puffs of sweet, strong, spicy steam rose out of it as they jerked it this way and that.
"Nurse," d.i.c.kie called; and she came quickly. "Nurse, have I got a mother?"
She hugged him. "Indeed thou hast," she said, "but she lies sick at your father"s other house. And you have a baby brother, Richard."