by Ellen Wood
Miss Blake, it has been said, had hurried from dinner, to go to vespers. As she turned into the road from the Court, she saw a boy a little in advance of her on the other side, his basket on his arm. It was the doctor’s boy, Cris Lumley, against whom Miss Blake had a grievance. She crossed over and caught him up just as he rang at the Maze gate.
“Now, Cris Lumley, what have you to say for yourself? For three days you have not appeared at class.”
“‘Tain’t my fault,” said Cris Lumley, who was just as impudent as he looked; a very different boy indeed from civil-natured Tom Pepp. “It be master’s.”
“How is it your master’s?”
“What master says is this here: ‘I be to attend to him and my place; or I be to give it up, if I wants to kick up my heels all day at school.’”
“I don’t believe you,” said Miss Blake. “I shall speak to Mr. Moore.”
“Just do then,” said the independent boy.
“The fact of the case is no doubt this, Cris Lumley — that you play truant for half the day sometimes, on the plea of being all that while at school.”
“Master said another thing, he did,” resumed the young gentleman, ignoring the last accusation. “He said as if Parson Sumnor warn’t no longer good enough for me to learn religion from, he’d get another boy in my place, that he was good enough for. There! you may ask him whether he said it or not.” Declining to bandy further words with him until she should have seen the surgeon, Miss Blake was hastening on, when the fringe of her mantle caught against his medicine basket. It reminded her that some one must be ill. Battling for a moment with her curiosity, but not for long, she condescended to inquire who was ill at the Maze.
“It be the missis,” replied Cris.
“The mistress! Do you mean Mrs. Grey?”
Mr. Lumley nodded.
“What is the matter with her?”
“Got a baby,” said the boy shortly.
For the instant Miss Blake felt struck into herself, and was dumb. She did not believe it.
“He were born yesterday,” added the boy. “This be some physic for him: and this be the missis’s.”
Throwing back the lid of one end of his basket, Miss Blake saw two bottles, done up in white paper. The larger one was addressed “Mrs. Grey,” the small one “Mrs. Grey’s infant.”
She turned away without another word, feeling ready to sink with the weight of the world’s iniquity. It pressed upon her most unpleasantly throughout the evening service at St. Jerome’s, and for once Miss Blake was inattentive to the exhortations of the Rev. Guy. Looking at the matter as Miss Blake looked at it, it must be confessed that she had just cause for condemnation.
To return to Lucy. It grew dusk and more dusk; and she at length went in-doors. Karl came in, bringing Mr. Moore, whom he had overtaken near the gate: and almost close upon that, Miss Blake returned. The sight of the doctor, sitting there with Karl and Lucy, brought back all Miss Blake’s vexation. It had been at boiling-point for the last hour, and now it bubbled over. The wisest course no doubt would have been to hold her tongue: but her indignation — a perfectly righteous and proper indignation, as she deemed it — forbade that. The ill-doing of the boy, respecting which she had been about to appeal to Mr.
Moore, was quite lost sight of in this ill-doing. There could be no fear of risking Jane Shore’s sheet of penance in repeating what she had heard. It was her duty to speak: she fully believed that: her duty to open Lucy’s obtuse eyes — and who knew but Sir Karl might be brought to his senses through the speaking? The surgeon and Lucy were sitting near the window in the sweet still twilight: Karl stood back by the mantel-piece: and they were deep in some discussion about flowers. Miss Blake sat in silence, gathering her mental forces for the combat, when the present topic should have died away.
“I — I have heard some curious news,” she began then in a low, reluctant tone: and in good truth she was reluctant to enter on it. “I heard it from that boy of yours, Mr. Moore. He says there’s a baby at the Maze.”
“Yes,” readily acquiesced Mr. Moore. “A baby-boy, born yesterday.”
And Miss Blake, rising and standing at angles between the two, saw a motion of startled surprise on the part of Karl Andinnian. Lucy looked up, simply not understanding. After a pause, during which no one spoke, Miss Blake, in language softened to ambiguousness, took upon herself to intimate that, in her opinion, the Maze had no business with a baby.
Mr. Moore laughed pleasantly. “That, I imagine, is Mrs. Grey’s concern,” he said.
Lucy understood now; she felt startled almost to sickness. “Is it Mrs. Grey who has the baby?” was on the point of her tongue: but she did not speak it.
“Where is Mrs. Grey’s husband?” demanded Miss Blake, in her most uncompromising tone.
“In London, I fancy, just now,” said the doctor. “Has she one at all, Mr. Moore?”
“Good gracious, yes,” cried the hearty-natured surgeon, utterly unconscious that it could be of particular moment to anybody present whether she had or not. “I’d answer for it with my life, nearly. She’s as nice a young lady as I’d ever wish to attend; and good too.”
“For Lucy’s sake, I’ll go on; for his sake, standing there in his shame,” thought Miss Blake, in her rectitude. “Better things may come of it: otherwise I’d drop the hateful subject for ever.”
“Mr. Moore,” she continued aloud, “Why do you say the husband is in London?”
“Because Mrs. Grey said something to that effect,” he answered. “At least, I understood her words to imply as much; but she was very ill at the moment, and I did not question further. It was when I was first called in.”
“It has hitherto been represented that Mr. Grey was travelling abroad,” pursued Miss Blake, with a tone and a stress on the “Mr. Grey.”
“I know it has. But he may have returned. I am sure she said she had been up to London two or three weeks ago — and I thought she meant to imply that she went to meet her husband. It may have been a false conclusion I drew; but I certainly thought it.” Sir Karl took a step forward. “I can answer for it that Mrs. Grey did go up,” he said, “for I chanced to travel in the same carriage with her. Getting into the up-train at the station one day, I found Mrs. Grey seated there.”
Lucy glanced towards him as he spoke. There was no embarrassment in his countenance; his voice was easy and open as though he had spoken of a stranger. Her own face looked white as death.
“You did!” cried the doctor. “Did she tell you she was going up to meet Mr. Grey?”
“No, she did not. I put her into a cab at the terminus, and that’s all I know about it. It was broiling hot, I remember.”
“Well,” resumed the doctor, “whether it was to meet her husband or whether not, to London she went for a day or two in the broiling heat — as Sir Karl aptly terms it — and she managed to fatigue herself so much that she has not been able to recover it, and has been very unwell ever since. This young gentleman, who chose to take upon himself to make his appearance in the world yesterday, was not due for a good couple of months to come.”
Lucy rose and left the room, she and her white face. Karl followed her with his eyes: he had seen the whiteness.
“Is it a healthy child?” he asked.
“Quite so,” replied the surgeon; “but very small. The worst of these little monkeys is, you can’t send them back again with a whipping, when they make too much haste, and tell them to come again at proper time. Mrs. Grey’s very ill.”
“Is she?” cried Karl.
“Yes. And there’s no nurse and no anything; matters are all at sixes and sevens.”
“I hope she’ll do well!” breathed Karl.
“So do I.”
Miss Blake looked at the two speakers. The one seemed just as open as the other. She thought what a finished adept Karl Andinnian was getting to be in deception.
“I am going to the Maze now,” said the doctor: “was on my way to it when you seduced me in here, Si
r Karl. Good evening, Miss Blake.”
He took his departure hastily as he spoke. He was, as he told them, on his way to the Maze then. Karl went with him to the outer gate, and then paced the lawn in the evening twilight.
“After all, it is well it’s over,” ran his thoughts. “This expected future illness was always putting itself in view when I was planning to get away Adam. Once Rose is well again, the ground will be, so far, clear. But good heavens! how it increases the risk! Here’s Moore going in at any hour of the day or night, I suppose — and Adam so incautious! Well, I think he will take care of himself, and keep in seclusion for his own sake. And for myself — it brings more complication,” he added with a sigh. “The child is the heir now instead of me: and the whole property must eventually come to him. Poor Lucy! I saw she felt it. Oh, she may well be vexed! Does she quite comprehend, I wonder, who this baby is, and what it will take from us? — Foxwood amidst the rest? I wish I had never married! I wish a merciful heaven had interposed to prevent it.”
When Mr. Moore, some eight-and-forty hours previously, received a hurried visit from Mrs. Grey’s servant, Ann Hopley, at the dusk of evening, and heard what she had to say about her mistress, he was excessively astonished, not having had the slightest idea that his services were likely to be wanted in any such way at the Maze. It is possible that some doubts of Mrs. Grey’s position crossed his mind at the moment: but he was a good man, and he made it a rule never to think ill if he could by possibility think good; and when he came to see and converse with Mrs. Grey, he felt sure she was all she should be. The baby was born on the following morning. Since then the doctor, as Karl expressed it, had been going in at all hours: Ann Hopley invariably preceding him through the Maze, and conducting him out of it again at his departure. As he marched on to the Maze tonight after the above conversation at the Court, he wondered what Miss Blake had got in her head, and why she should betray so much anger over it.
Three or four days went on. The doctor passed in and out in the care of his patient, and never a notion entered his head that the Maze was tenanted by any save its ordinary inmates, or that one under a ban was lying there in concealment. Ann Hopley, letting her work go how it would, attended on her mistress and the baby; the old gardener was mostly busy in his garden as usual. On the fifth or sixth day from the commencement of the illness, Mr. Moore, upon paying his usual morning visit, found Mrs. Grey worse. There were rather dangerous symptoms of fever.
“Has she been exciting herself?” he privately asked of Ann Hopley.
“She did a little last night, sir,” was the incautious admission.
“What about?”
“Well, sir — chiefly talking.”
“Chiefly talking!” repeated the doctor. “But what were you about, to let her talk?” he demanded, supposing Ann Hopley to be the only other inmate of the house. “What possessed you to talk to her?”
Ann was silent. She could have said that it was not with her Mrs. Grey had talked, but with her husband.
“I must send a nurse in,” he resumed. “Not only to see that she is kept quiet, but to attend to her constantly. It is not possible that you can be with her always with your housework to do.”
But all of this Ann Hopley most strongly combated. She could attend to her mistress, and would, and did attend to her, she urged, and a nurse she would not have in the house. From the first, this question of a nurse had been a bone of contention: the doctor wanting to send one in; Ann Hopley and also Mrs. Grey strenuously objecting. So once more the doctor yielded, and let the matter drop, inwardly resolving that if his patient did not get better during the day, he should take French leave to pursue his own course.
Late in the afternoon he went in again. Mrs. Grey was worse: flushed, restless, and slightly delirious. The doctor said nothing; but when he got home, he sent a summons for Mrs. Chaffen. A skilled nurse, she; and first cousin to the Widow Jinks, both in respect to kin and to love of gossip.
That same evening, after dark, when Adam Andinnian was sitting in his wife’s room, and Ann Hopley was concocting something in a saucepan over the kitchen fire, the gate bell clanged out. It had been nothing unusual to hear it these last few days at any hour; and the woman, putting the saucepan on the hob for safety, went forth, key in hand.
No sooner had she unlocked the gate than Mr. Moore brushed past her, followed by a little thin woman with a bundle. Ann Hopley stared: but never a word said he.
“Keep close to me, and you won’t lose yourself,” cried he to the little woman; and went tearing off at a double-quick pace through the intricacies of the maze.
Ann Hopley stood like one bewildered. For one thing, she had not possessed the slightest notion that the surgeon knew his way through, for he had given no special indication of it, always having followed her. He could have told her that he had learnt the secret of the maze long before she came to Foxwood. It had been shown to him in old Mr. Throckton’s time, whom he had attended for years. And, to see a second person pass in, startled her. All she could do was to lock the gate, and follow them.
On went the doctor; the little woman keeping close to his coat tails: and they were beyond the maze in no time. Mr. Moore had no private motive for this unusual haste, except that he had another patient waiting for him, and was in a hurry. In, at the open portico, passed he, and made direct for the stairs, the woman after him. Ann Hopley, miles behind, could only pray in agony that her master might escape their view.
But he did not. The doctor had nearly reached the top of the staircase, when a gentleman, tall, and in evening dress, suddenly presented himself in front, apparently looking who it might be, coming up. He drew back instantly, strode noiselessly along the corridor, and disappeared within a door at its extreme end. It all passed in a moment of time. What with the speed, and what with the obscurity of the stairs and passages, any one, less practical than the doctor, might have questioned whether or not it had happened at all.
“That’s Mr. Grey, come down,” thought he. “But he seems to wish not to be noticed. Be it so.”
Had he cared to make any remark upon it to Mrs. Grey, he could not have done so, for she was quite delirious that night. And, as he saw no further sign of the gentleman at any subsequent visit, he merely supposed that Mr. Grey had come down for a few hours and had gone again. And the matter passed from his mind.
It did not so pass from the nurse’s. Mrs. Chaffen had distinctly seen the gentleman in evening attire looking down the stairs at her and the doctor; she saw him whisk away, as she phrased it, and go into the further room. In the obscure light, Mrs. Chaffen made him out to be a very fine-looking gentleman with beautiful white teeth. She had keen eyesight, and she saw that much: she had also a weakness for fine-looking men, and felt glad that one so fine as this should be in the house. It could not make much difference to her; but she liked gentlemen to be in a dwelling where she might be located: they made it lively, were pleasant to talk to; and were generally to be found more liberal in the offers of glasses of wine and what not than the mistresses. Like the doctor, she supposed this was Mrs. Grey’s husband, come down at last She neither saw nor heard more of the gentleman that night, though she sat up with her patient. Neither did she on the following day — and then she began to think it somewhat odd. At dusk, when Mrs. Grey and the baby were both sleeping, she went down stairs.
When Ann Hopley found the nurse installed there and that she was powerless to prevent it, she had to make the best of the unfortunate occurrence — and most unfortunate it was destined to turn out in the end. She gave the nurse certain directions. One of them was, “Ring for everything you want, and I will bring it up.” The woman’s meals also were brought to her punctually: Ann’s object of course being to prevent her going about the house. But nurses are but human. Mrs. Chaffen was longing for a word of social gossip, and downstairs she went, this night, and made her way to the kitchen. Ann Hopley was in it, ironing at a table under the window.
“What do you want?” cried she,
in a quick startled tone, as the nurse appeared.
“I thought I’d get you to give me a sup o’ beer, Mrs. Hopley,” was the answer. “I’m a’most faint, stopping so long in that there room with its smell of ether about.”
“Why could you not have rung? I’ll bring it up to you.”
In the very teeth of this plain intimation, Mrs. Chaffen sat herself down on a chair by the ironing board, and began fanning her face with a corner of her white apron. “The missis is asleep,” she said: “she’s a sight better to-night; and I shall stop here while I drink the beer for a bit of relief and change.”
Ann took a small jug that was hanging on the dresser shelves, went down in the cellar, brought up the beer and poured it into a tumbler. Mrs. Chaffen took a good draught and smacked her lips.
“That ain’t bad beer, is it, Mrs. Hopley?”
“Not at all,” said Ann Hopley. “Drink it up.”
She would not go on with her ironing, lest it might seem an excuse for the nurse to linger; she stood by the fire, waiting, and evidently wanting the nurse gone.
“Your husband’s a-taking of it easy out there!”
Ann glanced from the window, and saw the gardener seated amongst a heap of drying weeds, his back against the tool house, and a pipe in his mouth.
“He has done his work, I suppose, for the day,” she said.
“And he knows his missis’s eyes can’t be upon him just now,” added the nurse, taking another draught “He don’t hardly look strong enough to do all this here big garden.”
“You couldn’t offend Hopley worse than by telling him that. His mistress says nothing about it now, it puts him up so. Last May, when he was laid up in bed with the rheumatis, she ordered a gardener in for two or three days to clear up some of the rough work. Hopley was not at all grateful: he only grumbled at it when he got about again.”
“It’s just like them good old-fashioned servants that takes pride in their work,” said the nurse. “There’s not many of the young uns like ‘em. The less work they have to do the better it pleases them. Is that a hump now, or only a stoop of the shoulders?” continued she, ignoring good manners in her sociability.