CHAPTER LXIX.
OF A SPECTRE WHOM OLD TAMAR SAW.
Little Fairy, all this while, continued, in our Church language, 'sickand weak.' The vicar was very sorry, but not afraid. His little man wasso bright and merry, that he seemed to him the very spirit of life. Hecould not dream of his dying. It was sad, to be sure, the little man somany days in his bed, too languid to care for toy or story, quite silent,except when, in the night time, those weird monologues began which showedthat the fever had reached his brain. The tones of his pleasant littlevoice, in those sad flights of memory and fancy, busy with familiarscenes and occupations, sounded wild and plaintive in his ear. And when'Wapsie' was mentioned, sometimes the vicar's eyes filled, but he smiledthrough this with a kind of gladness at the child's affection. 'It willsoon be over, my darling! You will be walking with Wapsie in a weekagain.' The sun could as soon cease from shining as little Fairy fromliving. The thought he would not allow near him.
Doctor Buddle had been six miles away that evening with a patient, andlooked in at the vicar's long after the candles were lighted.
He was not satisfied with little Fairy--not at all satisfied. He put hishand under the clothes and felt his thin, slender limbs--thinner thanever now. Dry and very hot they were--and little man babbling hisnonsense about little boys, and his 'Wapsie,' and toys, and birds, andthe mill-stream, and the church-yard--of which, with so strange afatality, children, not in romance only, but reality, so often prattle intheir feverish wanderings.
He felt his pulse. He questioned his mamma, and cross-examined the nurse,and looked grave and very much annoyed; and then bethought him ofsomething to be tried; and having given his directions to the maid, hewent home in haste, and returned in half an hour with the something in aphial--a few drops in water, and little man sat up, leaning on hisWapsie's arm, and 'took it very good,' his nurse said, approvingly; andhe looked at them all wonderingly, for two or three moments, and sotired; and they laid him down again, and then his spoken dreams beganonce more.
Doctor Buddle was dark and short in his answers to voluble little Mrs.Wylder--though, of course, quite respectful--and the vicar saw him downthe narrow stairs, and they turned into the study for a moment, and, saidBuddle, in an under tone--
'He's very ill--I can say nothing else.'
And there was a pause.
The little colour he had receded from the vicar's face, for the looks andtones of good-natured Buddle were not to be mistaken. He was readinglittle Fairy's death warrant.
'I see, doctor--I see; you think he'll die,' said the vicar, staring athim. 'Oh doctor, my little Fairy!'
The doctor knew something of the poor vicar's troubles--of course in avillage most things of the kind _are_ known--and often, in his brisk,rough way, he thought as, with a nod and a word, he passed the lankcleric, under the trees or across the common, with his bright, prattling,sunny-haired little boy by the hand--or encountered them telling storieson the stile, near the castle meadow--what a gleam of sunshine was alwaysdancing about his path, in that smiling, wayward, loving littlefellow--and now a long Icelandic winter was coming, and his path was toknow that light no more.
'With children, you know, I--I always say there's a chance--but you areright to look the thing in the face--and I'll be here the first call inthe morning; and you know where to find me, in the meantime;' and thedoctor shook hands very hard with the vicar at the hall-door, and madehis way homeward--the vicar's eyes following him till he was out ofsight.
Then William Wylder shut the hall-door, and turned about.
Little Fairy's drum was hanging from a peg on the hat-stand--the drumthat was to sound no more in the garden, or up and down the hall, withthe bright-haired little drummer's song. There would be no moreinterruption now--the vicar would write his sermons undisturbed; no moreconsolations claimed--no more broken toys to be mended--some of theinnocent little rubbish lay in the study. It should never move fromthat--nor his drum--nor that little hat and cape, hanging on their peg,with the tiny boots underneath.
No more prattling at unseasonable times--no more crying--no moresinging--no more laughing; all these interruptions were quiet now, andaltogether gone--'Little man! little Fairy! Oh, was it possible!' Butmemory would call up the vicar from his half-written sermon. He wouldmiss his troublesome little man, when the sun shone out that he used towelcome--when the birds hopped on the window-stone, to find the crumbsthat little man used to strew there; and when his own littlecanary--'Birdie' he used to call him--would sing and twitter in hiscage--and the time came to walk out on his lonely visits.
He must walk alone by the shop-doors--where the little man was soadmired--and up the mill-road, and in the castle meadow and over thestile where they used to sit.
Poor Dolly! Her Willie would not tell her yet. He kneeled down in thestudy--'Little man's' top, and some cut paper nondescripts, were lyingwhere he had left them, at his elbow--and he tried to pray, and then heremembered that his darling ought to know that he was going into thepresence of his Maker.
Yes, he would tell poor Dolly first, and then his little man. He wouldrepeat his hymn with him, and pray--and so he went up the nursery stairs.
Poor Dolly, very tired, had gone to lie down for a little. He would notdisturb her--no, let her enjoy for an hour more her happy illusion.
When he went into the nursery little Fairy was sitting up, taking hismedicine; the nurse's arm round his thin shoulders. He sat down besidehim, weeping gently, his thin face turned a little away, and his hand onthe coverlet.
Little man looked wonderingly from his tired eyes on Wapsie, and his thinfingers crept on his hand, and Wapsie turned about, drying his eyes, andsaid--
'Little man! my darling!'
'He's like himself, Sir, while he's sitting up--his little head quiteright again.'
'My head's quite right, Wapsie,' the little man whispered, sadly.
'Thank God, my darling!' said the vicar. The tears were running down hischeeks while he parted little Fairy's golden hair with his fingers.
'When I am quite well again,' whispered the little man, 'won't you bringme to the castle meadow, where the wee river is, and we'll float raceswith daisies and buttercups--the way you did on my birthday.'
'They say that little mannikin----' suddenly the vicar stopped. 'They saythat little mannikin won't get well.'
'And am I always to be sick, here in my little bed, Wapsie?' whisperedlittle Fairy, in his dreamy, earnest way, that was new to him.
'No, darling; not always sick: you'll be happier than ever--but not here;little man will be taken by his Saviour, that loves him best of all--andhe'll be in heaven--and only have a short time to wait, and maybe hispoor Wapsie will come to him, please God, and his darling mamma--andwe'll all be happy together, for ever, and never be sick or sorry anymore, my treasure--my little Fairy--my darling.'
And little man looked on him with his tired eyes, not quite understandingwhat it meant, nor why Wapsie was crying; and the nurse said--
'He'd like to be dozin', Sir, he's so tired, please.' So down the poorlittle fellow lay, his 'Wapsie' praying by his bedside.
When, in a little time, poor Dolly returned, her Willie took her roundthe waist, as on the day when she accepted him, and led her tenderly intothe other room, and told her all, and they hugged and wept together.
'Oh, Dolly, Dolly!'
'Oh, Willie, darling! Oh, Willie, our precious treasure--our only one.'
And so they walked up and down that room, his arm round her waist, and inthat sorrowful embrace, murmuring amid their sobs to one another, theirthoughts and remembrances of 'little man.' How soon the treasure grows aretrospect!
Then Dolly bethought her of her promise to Rachel.
'She made me promise to send for her if he was worse--she loved himso--everyone loved him--they could not help--oh, Willie! our brightdarling.'
'I think, Dolly, we could not live here. I'd like to go on some mission,and maybe come back in a great many years--maybe, Dolly, when we are old.I'
d like to see the place again--and--and the walks--but not, I think,for a long time. He was such a darling.'
Perhaps the vicar was thinking of the church-yard, and how he would like,when his time came, to lie beside the golden-haired little comrade of hiswalks. So Dolly despatched the messenger with a lantern, and thus it wasthere came a knocking at the door of Redman's Farm at that unseasonablehour. For some time old Tamar heard the clatter in her sleep; disturbingand mingling with her dreams. But in a while she wakened quite, and heardthe double knocks one after another in quick succession; and huddling onher clothes, and muttering to herself all the way, she got into the hall,and standing a couple of yards away from the door, answered in shrill andquerulous tones, and questioning the messenger in the same breath.
How could she tell what it might or might not portend? Her alarms quicklysubsided, however, for she knew the voice well.
So the story was soon told. Poor little Fairy; it was doubtful if he wasto see another morning; and the maid being wanted at home, old Tamarundertook the message to Brandon Hall, where her young mistress was, andsallied forth in her cloak and bonnet, under the haunted trees ofRedman's Dell.
Tamar had passed the age of ghostly terrors. There are a certain soberliterality and materialism in old age which abate the illusions of thesupernatural as effectually as those of love; and Tamar, though notwithout awe, for darkness and solitude, even were there no associationsof a fearful kind in the locality, are suggestive and dismal to the last.
Her route lay, as by this time my reader is well aware, by that narrowdefile reached from Redman's Farm by a pathway which scales a flight ofrude steps, the same which Stanley Lake and his sister had mounted on thenight of Mark Wylder's disappearance.
Tamar knew the path very well. It was on the upper level of it that shehad held that conference with Stanley Lake, which obviously referred tothat young gentleman's treatment of the vanished Mark. As she came tothis platform, round which the trees receded a little so as to admit themoonlight, the old woman was tired.
She would have gladly chosen another spot to rest in, but fatigue wasimperious; and she sat down under the gray stone which stoodperpendicularly there, on what had once been the step of a stile, leaningagainst the rude column behind her.
As she sat here she heard the clank of a step approaching measuredly fromthe Brandon side. It was twelve o'clock now; the chimes from theGylingden church-tower had proclaimed that in the distance some minutesbefore. The honest Gylingden folk seldom heard the tower chimes telleleven, and gentle and simple had, of course, been long in their beds.
The old woman had a secret hatred of this place, and the unexpectedsounds made her hold her breath. She peeped round the stone, in whoseshadow she was sitting. The steps were not those of a man walking brisklywith a purpose: they were the desultory strides of a stroller loungingout an hour's watch. The steps approached. The figure was visible--thatof a short broadish man, with a mass of cloaks, rugs, and mufflers acrosshis arm.
Carrying them with a sort of swagger, he came slowly up to the part ofthe pathway opposite to the pillar, where he dropped those draperies in aheap upon the grass; and availing himself of the clear moonlight, hestopped nearly confronting her.
It was the face of Mark Wylder--she knew it well--but grown fat andbroader, and there was--but this she could not see distinctly--a purplishscar across his eyebrow and cheek. She quivered with terror lest heshould have seen her, and might be meditating some mischief. But she wasseated close to the ground, several yards away, and in the sharp shadowof the old block of stone.
He consulted his watch, and she sat fixed and powerless as a portion ofthe block on which she leaned, staring up at this, to her, terrificapparition. Mark Wylder's return boded, she believed, somethingtremendous.
She saw the glimmer of the gold watch, and, distinctly, the great blackwhiskers, and the face pallid in the moonlight. She was afraid for aminute, during which he loitered there, that he was going to seat himselfupon the cloaks which he had just thrown upon the ground, and felt thatshe could not possibly escape detection for many seconds more. But shewas relieved; for, after a short pause, leaving these still upon theground, he turned, and walked slowly, like a policeman on his beat,toward Brandon.
With a gasp she began to recover herself; but she felt too faint and illto get up and commence a retreat towards Redman's Farm. Besides, she wassure he would return--she could not tell how soon--and although the clumpof alders hid her from view, she could not tell but that the next momentwould disclose his figure retracing his leisurely steps, and ready topursue and overtake, if by a precipitate movement she had betrayed herpresence.
In due time the same figure, passing at the same rate, did emerge again,and approached just as before, only this time he was carelessly examiningsome small but clumsy steel instrument which glittered occasionally inthe light. From Tamar's description of it, I conclude it was a revolver.
He passed the pile of cloaks but a few steps, and again turned towardBrandon. So soon as he was once more concealed by the screen ofunderwood, old Tamar, now sufficiently recovered, crept hurriedly away inthe opposite direction, half dead with terror, until she had descendedthe steps, and was buried once more in friendly darkness.
Old Tamar did not stop at Redman's Farm; she passed it and the mills, andnever stopped till she reached the Vicarage. In the hall, she felt for amoment quite overpowered, and sitting in one of the old chairs that didduty there, she uttered a deep groan, and looked with such a gaze in theface of the maid who had admitted her, that she thought the old woman wasdying.
Sick rooms, even when, palpably, doctors, nurses, friends, have allceased to hope, are not to those who stand in the _very_ nearest and mosttender relations to the patient, altogether chambers of despair. Thereare those who hover about the bed and note every gleam and glow ofsubsiding life, and will read in sunset something of the colours of thedawn, and cling wildly to these hallucinations of love; and no one hasthe heart to tear them from them.
Just now, Dolly fancied that 'little man was better--the darling! thetreasure! oh, precious little man! He was coming back!'
So, she ran down with this light of hope in her face, and saw old Tamarin the hall, and gave her a glass of the wine which Rachel had provided,and the old woman's spirit came again.
'She was glad--yes, very glad. She was thankful to hear the dear childwas better.' But there was a weight upon her soul, and a dreadful horroron her countenance still.
'Will you please, Ma'am, write a little note--my old hand shakes so, shecould hardly read my writing--to my mistress--Miss Radie, Ma'am. I seepen and ink on the table there. I was not able to go up to the Hall,Ma'am, with the message. There's something on the road I could not pass.'
'Something! What was it?' said Dolly, staring with round eyes in the oldwoman's woeful face, her curiosity aroused for a moment.
'Something, Ma'am--a person--I can't exactly tell--above the steps, inthe Blackberry path. It would cost my young mistress her life. ForHeaven's sake, Ma'am, write, and promise, if you send for her, she shallget the note.'
So, Dolly made the promise, and bringing old Tamar with her into thestudy, penned these odd lines from her dictation, merely adjusting thegrammar.
'MISS RADIE, DEAR,--If coming down to-night from Brandon, this is to tellyou, it is as much as your life is worth to pass the Blackberry walkabove the steps. My old eyes have seen him there, walking back andforward, lying at catch for some one, this night--the great enemy of man;you can suppose in what shape.
'Your dutiful and loving servant,
TAMAR.'
So, old Tamar, after a little, took her departure; and it needed a greateffort to enable her to take the turn up the dark and lonely mill-road,leading to Redman's Farm; so much did she dread the possibility of againencountering the person she had just described.
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