by Ellen Wood
AN ACCIDENT.
The drawing-room floor at Lennard’s made very comfortable quarters for Tom Heriot, and his removal from the room in Southwark had been accomplished without difficulty. Mrs. Lennard, a patient, mild, weak woman, who could never have been strong-minded, made him an excellent nurse, her more practical and very capable daughter, Charlotte, aiding her when necessary.
A safer refuge could not have been found in London. The Lennards were so often under a cloud themselves as regarded pecuniary matters, so beset at times by their unwelcome creditors — the butcher, baker and grocer — that the chain of their front door was kept habitually fastened, and no one was admitted within its portals without being first of all subjected to a comprehensive survey. Had some kind friend made a rush to the perambulating policeman of the district, to inform him that the domicile of those Lennards was again in a state of siege, he would simply have speculated upon whether the enemy was this time the landlord or the Queen’s taxes. It chanced to be neither; but it was well for the besieged to favour the impression that it was one or the other, or both. Policemen do not wage war with unfortunate debtors, and Mr. Lennard’s house was as safe as a remote castle.
“Mr. Brown” Tom was called there; none of the household, with the exception of its master, having any idea that it was not his true name. “One of the gentlemen clerks in Essex Street, who has no home in London; I have undertaken to receive him while he is ill,” Mr. Lennard had carelessly remarked to his wife and daughters before introducing Tom. They had unsuspecting minds, except as regarded their own creditors, those ladies — ladies always, though fallen from their former state — and never thought to question the statement, or to be at all surprised that Mr. Strange himself took an interest in his clerk’s illness, and paid an evening visit to him now and then. The doctor who was called in, a hard-worked practitioner named Purfleet, did his best for “Mr. Brown,” but had no time to spare for curiosity about him in any other way, or to give so much as a thought to his antecedents.
And just at first, after being settled at Lennard’s, Tom Heriot seemed to be taking a turn for the better. The warmth of the comfortable rooms, the care given to him, the strengthening diet, and perhaps a feeling that he was in a safer asylum than he had yet found, all had their effect upon him for good.
* * * * *
“Hatch!” called out Mrs. Brightman.
Hatch ran in from the next room. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Let Perry go and tell the gardener to cut some of his best grapes, white and purple, and do you arrange them in a basket. I shall go up to Essex Street and see my daughter this afternoon, and will take them to her. Order the carriage for half-past two o’clock.”
“Miss Annabel will be finely pleased to see you, ma’am!” remarked Hatch.
“Possibly so. But she is no longer Miss Annabel. Go and see about the grapes.”
When Mrs. Brightman’s tones were cold and haughty, and they sounded especially so just now, she brooked no dilatoriness in those who had to obey her behests. Hatch turned away immediately, and went along talking to herself.
“She’s getting cross and restless again. I’m certain of it. In a week’s time from this we shall have her as bad as before. And for ever so many weeks now she has been as cautious and sober as a judge! Hang the drink, then! Doctors may well call it a disease when it comes to this stage with people. Here — I say, Perry!”
The butler, passing along the hall, heard Hatch’s call, and stopped. She gave her cap-strings a fling backwards as she advanced to him.
“You are to go and tell Church to cut a basket of grapes, and to mix ‘em, white and black. The very best and ripest that is in the greenhouse; they be for Miss Annabel.”
“All right, I’ll go at once,” answered Perry. “But you need not snap a man’s nose off, Hatch, or look as if you were going to eat him. What has put you out?”
“Enough has put me out; and you might know that, old Perry, if you had any sense,” retorted Hatch. “When do I snap people’s noses off — which it’s my tone, I take it, that you mean — except I’m that bothered and worried I can’t speak sweet?”
“Well, what’s amiss?” asked Perry.
They were standing close together, and Hatch lowered her voice to a whisper. “The missis is going off again; I be certain sure on’t.”
“No!” cried Perry, full of dismay. “But, look here, Hatch” — suddenly diving into one of his jackets— “she can’t have done it; here’s the cellar-key. I can be upon my word that there’s not a drain of anything out.”
“You always did have the brains of a turkey, you know, Perry,” was Hatch’s gracious rejoinder; “and I’m tired of reminding you of it. Who said missis had took anything? Not me. She haven’t — yet. As you observe, there’s nothing up for her to take. But she’ll be ordering you to bring something up before to-morrow’s over; perhaps before to-day is.”
“Dear, dear!” lamented the faithful servant. “Don’t you think you may be mistaken, Hatch? What do you judge by?”
“I judge by herself. I’ve not lived with my missis all these years without learning to notice signs and tokens. Her manner to-day and her restlessness is just as plain as the sun in the sky. I know what it means, and you’ll know it too, as soon as she gives you her orders to unlock the cellar.”
“Can nothing be done?” cried the unhappy Perry. “Could I lose the key of the cellar, do you think, Hatch? Would that be of any good?”
“It would hold good just as long as you’d be in getting a hammer and poker to break it open with; you’ve not got to deal with a pack of schoolboys that’s under control,” was Hatch’s sarcastic reproof. “But I think there’s one thing we might try, Perry, and that is, run round to Mr. Close and tell him about it. Perhaps he could give her something to stop the craving.”
“I’ll go,” said Perry. “I’ll slip round when I’ve told Church about the grapes.”
“And the carriage is ordered early — half-past two; so mind you are in readiness,” concluded Hatch.
Perry went to the surgeon’s, after delivering his orders to the gardener. But Mr. Close was not at home, and the man came away again without leaving any message; he did not choose to enter upon the subject with Mr. Dunn, the assistant. The latter inquired who was ill, and Perry replied that nobody was; he had only come to speak a private word to Mr. Close, which could wait. In point of fact, he meant to call later.
But the curiosity of Mr. Dunn, who was a very inquisitive young man, fonder of attending to other people’s business than of doing his own, had been aroused by this. He considered Perry’s manner rather mysterious, as well as the suppression of the message, and he enlarged upon the account to Mr. Close when he came in. Mr. Close made no particular rejoinder; but in his own mind he felt little doubt that Mrs. Brightman was breaking out again, and determined to go and see her when he had had his dinner.
Perry returned home, and waited on his mistress at luncheon, quaking inwardly all the time, as he subsequently confessed to Hatch, lest she should ask him for something that was not upon the table. However, she did not do so; but she was very restless, as Perry observed; ate little, drank no water, and told Perry to bring her a cup of coffee.
At half-past two the carriage stood at the gate, the silver on the horses’ harness glittering in the sun. Quickly enough appeared the procession from the house. Mrs. Brightman, upright and impassive, walking with stately step; Hatch, a shawl or two upon her arm, holding an umbrella over her mistress to shade her from the sun; Perry in the background, carrying the basket of grapes. Perry would attend his mistress in her drive, as usual, but not Hatch.
The servants were placing the shawls and the grapes in the carriage, and Mrs. Brightman, who hated anything to be done after she had taken her seat, was waiting to enter it, when Mr. Close, the surgeon, came bustling up.
“Going for a drive this fine day!” he exclaimed, as he shook hands with Mrs. Brightman. “I’m glad of that. I had been thinking that p
erhaps you were not well.”
“Why should you think so?” asked she.
“Well, Perry was round at my place this morning, and left a message that he wanted to see me. I — —”
Mr. Close suppressed the remainder of his speech as his gaze suddenly fell on Perry’s startled face. The man had turned from the carriage, and was looking at him in helpless, beseeching terror. A faithful retainer was Perry, an honest butler; but at a pinch his brains were no better than what Hatch had compared them with — those of a turkey.
Mrs. Brightman, her countenance taking its very haughtiest expression, gazed first at the doctor, then at Perry, as if demanding what this might mean; possibly, poor lady, she had a suspicion of it. But Hatch, ready Hatch, was equal to the occasion: she never lost her presence of mind.
“I told Perry he might just as well have asked young Mr. Dunn for ‘em, when he came back without the drops,” said she, facing the surgeon and speaking carelessly. “Your not being in didn’t matter. It was some cough-drops I sent him for; the same as those you’ve let us have before, Mr. Close. Our cook’s cough is that bad, she can’t sleep at night, nor let anybody else sleep that’s within earshot of her room.”
“Well, I came round in a hurry, thinking some of you might be suffering from this complaint that’s going about,” said Mr. Close, taking up the clue in an easy manner.
“That there spasadic cholera,” assented Hatch.
“Cholera! It’s not cholera. There’s nothing of that sort about,” said the surgeon. “But there’s a good bit of influenza; I have half a dozen patients suffering from it. A spell of bright weather such as this, though, will soon drive it away. And I’ll send you some of the drops when I get back, Hatch.”
Mrs. Brightman advanced to the carriage; the surgeon was at hand to assist her in. Perry stood on the other side his mistress. Hatch had retreated to the gate and was looking on.
Suddenly a yell, as of something unearthly, startled their ears. A fierce-looking bull, frightened probably by the passers-by on the road, and the prods given to it by the formidable stick of its driver, had dashed behind the carriage on to the foot-path, and set up that terrible roar. Mr. Close looked round, Perry did the same; whilst Mrs. Brightman, who was in the very act of getting into her carriage, and whose nerves were more sensitive than theirs, turned sharply round also and screamed.
Again Hatch came to the rescue. She had closed the umbrella and lodged it against the pillar of the gate, for here they were under the shade of trees. Seizing the umbrella now, she opened it with a great dash and noise, and rushed towards the bull, pointing it menacingly. The animal, no doubt more startled than they were, tore away and gained the highroad again. Then everyone had leisure to see that Mrs. Brightman was lying on the ground partly under the carriage.
She must have fallen in turning round, partly from fright, partly from the moving of the carriage. The horses had also been somewhat startled by the bull’s noise, and one of them began to prance. The coachman had his horses well in hand, and soon quieted them; but he had not been able to prevent the movement, which had no doubt chiefly caused his mistress to fall.
They quickly drew her from under the carriage and attempted to raise her; but she cried out with such tones of agony that the surgeon feared she was seriously injured. As soon as possible she was conveyed indoors on a mattress. Another surgeon joined Mr. Close, and it was found that her leg was broken near the ankle.
When it had been set and the commotion was subsiding, Perry was despatched to Essex Street with the carriage and the bad news — the carriage to bring back Annabel.
“What was it you really came to my surgery for, Perry?” Mr. Close took an opportunity of asking him before he started.
“It was about my mistress, sir,” answered the man. “Hatch felt quite sure, by signs and tokens, that Mrs. Brightman was going to — to — be ill again. She sent me to tell you, sir, and to ask if you couldn’t give her something to stop it.”
“Ah, I thought as much. But when I saw you all out there, your mistress looking well and about to take a drive, I concluded I had been mistaken,” said the surgeon.
* * * * *
I had run upstairs during the afternoon to ask a question of Annabel, and was standing beside her at the drawing-room window, where she sat at work, when a carriage came swiftly down the street, and stopped at the door.
“Why, it is mamma’s!” exclaimed Annabel, looking out.
“But I don’t see her in it,” I rejoined.
“Oh, she must be in it, Charles. Perry is on the box.”
Perry was getting down, but was not quite so quick in his movements as a slim young footman would be. He rang the door-bell, and I was fetched down to him. In two minutes afterwards I had disclosed the news to my wife, and brought Perry upstairs that she might herself question him. The tears were coursing down her cheeks.
“Don’t take on, Miss Annabel,” said the man, feeling quite too much lost in the bad tidings to remember Annabel’s new title. “There’s not the least bit of danger, ma’am; Mr. Close bade me say it; all is sure to go on well.”
“Did you bring the carriage for me, Perry?”
“Yes, ma’am, I did. And it was my mistress herself thought of it. When Mr. Close, or Hatch — one of ’em it was, I don’t know which — told her they were going to send me for you, she said, ‘Let Perry take the carriage.’ Oh, ma’am, indeed she is fully as well as she could be: it was only at first that she seemed faintish like.”
Annabel went back in the carriage at once. I promised to follow her as early in the evening as I could get away. Relying upon the butler’s assurance that Mrs. Brightman was not in the slightest danger; that, on the contrary, it would be an illness of weeks, if not of months, there was no necessity for accompanying Annabel at an inconvenient moment.
“It is, in one sense, the luckiest thing that could have happened to her,” Mr. Close remarked to me that evening when we were conversing together.
“Lucky! How do you mean?”
“Well, she must be under our control now,” he answered in significant tones, “and we were fearing, only to-day, that she was on the point of breaking out again. A long spell of enforced abstinence, such as this, may effect wonders.”
Of course, looking at it in that light, the accident might be called fortunate. “There’s a silver lining to every cloud.”
Annabel took up her abode temporarily at her mother’s: Mrs. Brightman requested it. I went down there of an evening — though not every evening — returning to Essex Street in the morning. Tom’s increasing illness kept me in town occasionally, for I could not help going to see him, and he was growing weaker day by day. The closing features of consumption were gaining upon him rapidly. To add to our difficulties, Mr. Policeman Wren, who seemed to follow Tom’s changes of domicile in a very ominous and remarkable manner, had now transferred his beat from Southwark, and might be seen pacing before Lennard’s door ten times a day.
One morning when I had come up from Clapham and was seated in my own room opening letters, Lennard entered. He closed the door with a quiet, cautious movement, and waited, without speaking.
“Anything particular, Lennard?”
“Yes, sir; I’ve brought rather bad news,” he said. “Captain Heriot is worse.”
“Worse? In what way? But he is not Captain Heriot, Lennard; he is Mr. Brown. Be careful.”
“We cannot be overheard,” he answered, glancing at the closed door. “He appeared so exceedingly weak last night that I thought I would sit up with him for an hour or two, and then lie down on his sofa for the rest of the night. About five o’clock this morning he had a violent fit of coughing and broke a blood-vessel.”
“What did you do?”
“I know a little of the treatment necessary in such cases, and we got the doctor to him as soon as possible. Mr. Purfleet does not give the slightest hope now. In fact, he thinks that a very few days more will bring the ending.”
I sat back
in my chair. Poor Tom! Poor Tom!
“It is the best for him, Mr. Charles,” spoke Lennard, with some emotion. “Better, infinitely, than that of which he has been running the risk. When a man’s life is marred as he has marred his, heaven must seem like a haven of refuge to him.”
“Has he any idea of his critical state?”
“Yes; and, I feel sure, is quite reconciled to it. He remarked this morning how much he should like to see Blanche: meaning, I presume, Lady Level.”
“Ah, but there are difficulties in the way, Lennard. I will come to him myself, but not until evening. There’s no immediate danger, you tell me, and I do not care to be seen entering your house during the day while he is in it. The big policeman might be on the watch, and ask me what I wanted there.”
Lennard left the room and I returned to my letters. The next I took up was a note from Blanche. Lord Level was not yet back from Marshdale, she told me in it; he kept writing miserable scraps of notes in which he put her off with excuses from day to day, always assuring her he hoped to be up on the morrow. But she could see she was being played with; and the patience which, in obedience to me and Major Carlen, she had been exercising, was very nearly exhausted. She wrote this, she concluded by saying, to warn me that it was so.
Truth to say, I did wonder what was keeping Level at Marshdale. He had been there more than a week now.
CHAPTER IX.
LAST DAYS.
Tom Heriot lay on his sofa in his bedroom, the firelight flickering on his faded face. This was Monday, the third day since the attack spoken of by Lennard, and there had not been any return of it. His voice was stronger this evening; he seemed better altogether, and was jesting, as he loved to do. Leah had been to see him during the day, and he was recounting one or two of their passages-at-arms, with much glee.
“Charley, old fellow, you look as solemn as a judge.”
Most likely I did. I sat on the other side the hearthrug, gazing as I listened to him; and I thought I saw in his face the grayness that frequently precedes death.