"Poison!" cried she. "How can you think of such a thing, sir!"
"I tell you that to the best of my belief these children have both died from some irritant poison," a.s.serted Duffham, coolly imperative. "I ask what you have been giving them?"
"They have not been well this three or four days past," replied she, wandering from the point; not evasively, but in her mind"s bewilderment.
"It must have been their teeth, sir; I thought they were cutting "em with fever."
"Did you give them any physic?"
"Yes, sir. A pill apiece when I put "em to bed."
"Ah!" said Mr. Duffham. "What pill was it?"
"One of Abel Crew"s."
This answer surprised him. Allowing that his suspicion of poison was correct, he a.s.sumed that these pills must have contained it; and he had never had cause to suppose that Abel Crew"s pills were otherwise than innocent.
Mrs. Reed, her voice broken by sobs, explained further in answer to his questions, telling him how she had procured these pills from Abel Crew some time before, and had given one of the said pills to each of the babies. Duffham stood against the dresser, taking it all in with a solemn face, his cane held up to his chin.
"Let me see this box of pills, Mrs. Reed."
She went upstairs to get it. A tidy woman in her ways, she had put the box in its place again on the top of the press. Duffham took off the lid, and examined the pills.
"Do you happen to have a bit of sealing-wax in the house, Reed?" he asked presently.
George Reed, who had stood like a man bewildered, looking first on one, then on the other of his dead little ones, answered that he had not. But the eldest child, Annie, spoke up, saying that there was a piece in her little work-box; Cathy had given it her last week when she was at home.
It was produced--part of a small stick of fancy wax, green and gold.
Duffham wrapped the pill-box up in the back of a letter that he took from his pocket, and sealed it with a seal that hung to his watch-chain.
He put the parcel into the hand of George Reed.
"Take care of it," he said. "This will be wanted."
"There could not have been poison in them pills, sir," burst out Mrs.
Reed, her distress increasing at the possibility that he might be right.
"If there had been, they"d ha" poisoned me. One night I took three of "em."
Duffham did not answer. He was nodding his head in answer to his own thoughts.
"And who ever heard of Abel Crew mixing up poison in his pills?" went on Mrs. Reed. "If you please, sir, I don"t think he could do it."
"Well, that part of it puzzles me--how he came to do it," acknowledged Duffham. "I like old Abel, and shall be sorry if it is proved that his pills have done the mischief."
Mrs. Reed shook her head. She had more faith than that in Abel Crew.
Ever so many years before--for it was in the time of Sir Peter Chava.s.se--there appeared one day a wanderer at Church d.y.k.ely. It was hot weather, and he seemed to think nothing of camping out in the fields by night, under the summer stars. Who he was, or what he was, or why he had come, or why he stayed, n.o.body knew. He was evidently not a tramp, or a gipsy, or a travelling tinker--quite superior to it all; a slender, young, and silent man, with a pale and gentle face.
At one corner of the common, spreading itself between the village and Chava.s.se Grange, there stood a covered wooden shed, formerly used to impound stray cattle, but left to itself since the square s.p.a.ce for the new pound had been railed round. By-and-by it was found that the wanderer had taken to this shed to sleep in. Next, his name leaked out--"Abel Crew."
He lived how he could, and as simply as a hermit. Buying a penny loaf at the baker"s, and making his dinner of it with a handful of sorrel plucked from the fields, and a drink from the rivulet that ran through the wilderness outside the Chava.s.se grounds. His days were spent in examining roots and wild herbs, now and then in digging one up; and his nights chiefly in studying the stars. Sir Peter struck up a sort of speaking acquaintanceship with him, and, it was said, was surprised at his stock of knowledge and the extent of his travels; for he knew personally many foreign places where even Sir Peter himself had never been. That may have caused Sir Peter--who was lord of the manor and of the common included--to tolerate in him what it was supposed he would not in others. Anyway, when Abel Crew began to dig the ground about his shed, and plant roots and herbs in it, Sir Peter let him do it and never interfered. It was quite the opposite; for Sir Peter would sometimes stand to watch him at his work, talking the while.
In the course of time there was quite an extensive garden round the shed--comparatively speaking, you know, for we do not expect to see a shed garden as large as that of a mansion. It was fenced in with a hedge and wooden palings, all the work of Abel Crew"s hands. Sir Peter was dead then; but Lady Chava.s.se, guardian to the young heir, Sir Geoffrey, extended to him the same favour that her husband had, and, if she did not absolutely sanction what he was doing, she at any rate did not oppose it. Abel Crew filled his garden with rare and choice and useful field herbs, the valuable properties of which he alone understood; and of ordinary sweet flowers, such as bees love to suck. He set up bee-hives and sold the honey; he distilled lavender and bergamot for perfumes; he converted his herbs and roots into medicines, which he supplied to the poor people around, charging so small a price for them that it could scarcely more than cover the cost of making, and not charging at all the very poor. At the end of about ten years from his first appearance, he took down the old shed, and built up a more convenient cottage in its place, doing it all with his own pair of hands. And the years went on and on, and Abel Crew and his cottage, and his herbs, and his flowers, and his bees, and his medicines, were just as much of an inst.i.tution in the parish as was the Grange itself.
He and I became good friends. I liked him. You have heard how I take likes and dislikes to faces, and I rarely saw a face that I liked as I liked Abel Crew"s. Not for its beauty, though it really was beautiful, with its perfect shape and delicately carved features; but for its unmistakable look of goodness and its innate refinement: perhaps also for the deep, far-seeing, and often _sad_ expression that sat in the earnest eyes. He was old now--sixty, I dare say; tall, slender, and very upright still; his white hair brushed back from his forehead and worn rather long. What his original condition of life might have been did not transpire; he never talked of it. More than once I had seen him reading Latin books; and though he fell into the diction of the country people around when talking with them, he changed his tones and language when conversing with his betters. A character, no doubt, he was, but a man to be respected; a man of religion, too--attending church regularly twice on a Sunday, wet or dry, and carrying his religion into the little things of everyday life.
His style of dress was old-fashioned and peculiar. So far as I saw, it never varied. A stout coat, waistcoat, and breeches every day, all of one colour--drab; with leathern gaiters b.u.t.toned nearly to the knee. On Sundays he wore a suit of black silk velvet, and a frilled shirt of fine cambric. His breeches were tied at the knee with black ribbon, in which was a plain, glistening steel buckle; buckles to match shone in his shoes. His stockings were black, and in the winter he wore black-cloth gaiters. In short, on Sundays Abel Crew looked like a fine old-fashioned English gentleman, and would have been taken for one. The woman who got up his linen declared he was more particular over his shirt-frills than Sir Peter himself.
Strangers in the place would sometimes ask what he was. The answer was not easy to give. He was a botanist and herbalist, and made pills, and mixtures, and perfumes, and sold honey, and had built his cottage and planted out his garden, and lived alone, cooking his food and waiting on himself; doing all in fact with his own hands, and was very modest always. On the other side, he had travelled in his youth, he understood paintings, studied the stars, read his store of Latin and cla.s.sical books, and now and then bought more, and was as good a doctor as Duffham himself. Some people said a better one. Certain it was, that more than once when legitimate medical nostrums had failed--calomel and blisters and bleeding--Abel Crew"s simple decoctions and leaves had worked a cure. Look at young Mrs. Sterling at the Court. When that first baby of hers 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 b.u.t.ter, 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. Pa.s.sing 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?"
"a.r.s.enic, 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 a.s.sisted 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 ap.r.o.n, 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!"