"It was very silly of you to come out alone or attempt to row in your state of health! It might have been your death," he presently remarked in a grandfatherly style. "Where are you putting up?"
"At Clay"s."
"I know; the old place with the boats," he replied as the _Alice_ whizzed along.
"I was aching for diversion," I said, in excuse for the rashness of my act.
"Well, I can take you for a pull now. I"ll be here for a few weeks.
Will you come to-morrow afternoon? Would three o"clock suit you?" he inquired as he moored. "The scenery is magnificent farther up the river."
"Yes, if I"m not here at three o"clock you"ll know that I"m not able to come. You are very good, Ernest, to waste time with me."
"I"m only too proud to be able to row you about and expend a little despised brute force in returning all the entertainment with brains in it you have given me in the past."
"Yes, at the cost of anything under 7s. 6d. an evening,--am I to pay you that for rowing me?"
"Put it in the hospital-box," he said with a laugh that displayed his strong white teeth between his firm bold lips. He was altogether a sight that was more than good in my eyes.
I found I was not strong enough to spring ash.o.r.e, but young Breslaw managed that and my transit up the steep bank to the house with an ease and gentleness so dear to woman"s heart, that the strength to accomplish it is the secret of an athlete being in ninety per cent of cases a woman"s ideal.
"Oh, I say," as he was leaving me at the gate, "if you mention me, speak of me as R. Ernest, as I"ve dropped the Breslaw where I"m staying. I don"t want wind of my being here to get into the papers.
I"m practising in the dark, as I"d like to give some of the cracks a surprise licking."
"Very well, I"m under an alias too, so please don"t forget. To all except a few theatre patrons I"m as dead as ditch-water; but some one might recognise the old name, and it would be very unpleasant."
"Right O! To-morrow at three, then, I"ll give you a pull," he said, doffing his cap from his heavy ruddy locks, now drying into waves and gleaming a rival hue in the setting sun, as he bounded down the bank and made his way along the river-edge to the bridge, as his place of sojourn was farther up than Clay"s and on the other side.
The excitement of thus meeting him had somewhat revived me, for here at once, as though in response to my wish, was a fitting knight to play a leading _role_ with my young lady, the desire for whose wellbeing had taken grip of me. For her sweet sake, and the sake of the fragrant manliness of the stalwart and deserving knight, I straightway resolved to enter the thankless and precarious business of matchmaking, one in which I had not had one iota of experience; but as women have to ace marriage, domesticity, and mostly all the issues of life a.s.signed them, without training, I did not give up heart. As a first effort I determined that Dawn should chaperon me when I went for my row on the morrow. As I looked at the sun sinking behind the blue hills and shedding a wonderfully mellow light over the broad valley, I thought of my own life, in which there had been none to pull a heart-easing string, and the bitterness of those to whom that for which they had fought has been won so late as to be Dead Sea fruit, took possession of me.
The doctors had several long and fee-inspiring terms for my malady, but I knew it to be an old-fashioned ailment known as heart-break--the result of disappointment, want of affection, and over-work. The old bitterness gripped the organ of life then; it brought me to my knees.
I tried to call out, but it was unavailing. Sharp, fiendish pain, and then oblivion.
EIGHT.
GRANDMA TURNS NURSE.
When I came to it was dark enough for lights, Dawn"s well-moulded hands were supporting my head, Grandma Clay"s voice was sternly engineering affairs, and Andrew was blubbering at the foot of the bed on which I was resting.
I tried to tell them there was no cause for alarm, and to beg grandma"s pardon for turning her house into a "sick hospital," but though not quite unconscious, I appeared entirely so.
"I wish you had sense to have gone for Dr Tinker when Dr Smalley wasn"t in," said the old lady, with nothing but solicitude in her voice.
The sternness in evidence when I had been trying to gain entrance to her house was entirely absent.
"I"m afraid she"s dead," said Dawn.
"Oh, she ain"t; is she, Dawn?" sobbed Andrew. "She was a decent sort of person. A pity some of those other old scotty-boots that was here in the summer didn"t die instead." And that cemented a firm friendship between the lad and myself. An individual utterly alone in the world prizes above all things a little real affection.
Presently there was a clearance in the room, effected by the doctor, who, after a short examination, p.r.o.nounced my malady a complication of heart troubles, gave a few instructions, and further remarked, "Send up for the mixture. She isn"t dead, but she may snuff out before morning. She"s bound to go at a moment"s notice, sometime. Give her plenty of air. If she has any friends she ought to be sent to them if she pulls through this."
Grandma gave the meagre details she knew concerning me, and as the pract.i.tioner, whom I took to be a veterinary surgeon called in for the emergency, went out, he said--
"If she dies to-night you can send me word in the morning; that will be soon enough; and if I don"t hear from you I"ll call again to-morrow."
"She ain"t goin" to die if I can stop her," said grandma when he had departed. "I"ll bring her to with a powltice. I ain"t given to be c.u.mflummixed by what a doctor says; many a one they give up is walking about as strong as bull-beef to-day. I never see them do no good in a serious case. They are right enough to set a bone or sew up a cut, but when you come to think of it, what could be expected of them? They know a little more than us because they"ve hacked up a few bodies an"
know how the pieces fit together, but as for knowin" what"s goin" on, they ain"t the Almighty, and ain"t to be took notice of. The way they know about the body is the same as you and Carry know the kitchen, an"
could go in the dark an" feel for anythink while all was well, but if anythink strange was there you couldn"t make it out," and setting to work, brewing potions and applying remedies of her own, the practical old lady soon brought me around so that I was able to make my apologies.
"Good Heavens! What do you take us for?" she exclaimed. "It would be a fine kind of a world if we wasn"t a little considerate to each other.
It does the young people good to learn "em a little kindness. I couldn"t be askin" people like Carry there to wait on people, but it"s Dawn"s week in the house an" she"ll look after you, an" you needn"t be wantin" to clear out to the hospital. You won"t be no better looked after there than here."
Never was more tactful kindness on shorter acquaintance.
Little Miss Flipp undertook to sit by my bed during the early watches of the night, for they could not be persuaded to leave me alone. Her eyes bore evidence of many more sleepless watches, but the poor little thing did not unburden her heart to me. Dawn appeared to relieve her at 2 A.M., and the engaging child manfully struggled against the sleep that leadened the pretty blue eyes till morning, when grandma, brisk as a cricket, took her turn.
At eleven I was interested by the doctor"s entrance. He came on tiptoe, but like a great proportion of male tiptoeing it defeated its intention and made more noise than walking. Bearing down upon grandma, he inquired in a huge whisper, "How is she?"
At this juncture I opened my eyes, so he cheerfully remarked, in a strong tw.a.n.g known by some supercilious English as the "beastly colonial accent"--
"So you didn"t peg out after all!"
This being the language applied to stock, confirmed me in the notion that he was a veterinary. I had once before heard it applied to a human being in a far bush place, where a man who lived unhappily with his wife one morning remarked to a neighbour that "The missus nearly pegged out last night," and it was considered a fitting remark for such a monster as this man was supposed to have been, but this doctor said it quite naturally.
I found him a friendly and communicative fellow, and as he gave in an hour"s gossip with grandma and me for one fee, I was willing to take it to pa.s.s away a dull morning.
"What on earth did you go rowing for?" he asked me.
"The roads are too bad to go walking."
"That"s only within range of the munic.i.p.ality. The council wants bursting up. They can"t do anything with everything mortgaged to old Dr Tinker. He holds the whole thing. It"s a pity he wouldn"t peg out one of these nights, and we might get something done. But it"s not him who has the money--it"s the old woman."
"That"s her Mrs Bray was tellin" us walloped the girl for bein"
admired by the old doctor," explained grandma.
"Money, that"s what he married her for," continued the doctor. "I don"t know where he could have picked her up. Some say she is a publican"s widow, but Jackson, the solicitor here, has a different hypothesis. He says he"s seen her running along carrying five cups and saucers of tea at once, and no one but a ship"s waitress could do that. At any rate she"s a great man of a woman; can swear like a trooper if things don"t go right. She"s got the old man completely cowed."
"Am I to infer that cowing her spouse and swearing outrageously makes her _man_-like?" I laconically inquired. But the doctor"s understanding didn"t seem to go in for small satirical detail, he conversed on a more wholesale fashion, rattling on for a good half-hour to a patient for whom quietude was necessary, lest she should "peg out."
"Ain"t he a bosker?" enthusiastically commented Andrew, coming in to see what I had thought of this doctor, who was the idol of Noonoon.
"Has he a large practice?" I cautiously inquired, seeking to discover was he really a doctor.
"My word! Nearly all the people go to him, he"s so friendly and don"t stick on the jam--speaks to you everywhere, and has jokes about everything."