Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  The first thing that Mary Layne did with some of this thousand pounds — which had been conveyed to her simultaneously with the tidings of the death — was to convey her mother to the seaside for a change, together with Baby Arthur and the nurse, Betsy. Before quitting home she held one or two interviews with James Spriggings, the house agent, builder, and decorator, and left certain orders with him. On their return, old Mrs. Layne did not know her house. It had been put into substantial repair inside and out, and was now one of the prettiest, not to say handsomest, in the village. All the old carpets were replaced by handsome new ones, and a great deal of the furniture was new. Pillars had been added to the rather small door, giving it an imposing appearance, iron outside railings had taken the place of the old ones. Mrs. Layne, I say, did not know her house again.

  “My dear, why have you done it?” cried the old lady, looking about her in amazement. “Is it not a waste of money?”

  “I think not, mother,” was the answer. “Most likely this will be my home for life. Perhaps Arthur’s home after me. At least it will be his until he shall be of an age to go out in the world.”

  Mrs. Layne said no more. She had grown of late very indifferent to outward things. Aged people do get so, and Mr. Duffham said her system was breaking up. The seaside air had done her good; they had gone to it in May, and came back in August. Mary added a third servant to the household, and things went on as before in their quiet routine.

  One afternoon in September, when they had been at home about a month, Mary went out, and took Arthur. She was going to see a poor cottager who had nursed herself, Mary, when she was a child, and who had recently lost her husband. When they came to the gates of Chavasse Grange, past which their road lay, Master Arthur made a dead standstill, and wholly declined to proceed. The child was in a black velvet tunic, the tips of his white drawers just discernible beneath it, and his legs bare, down to the white socks: boys of his age were dressed so then. As bonny a lad for his six years as could be seen anywhere, with a noble, fearless bearing. Mary wore her usual black silk, a rich one too, with a little crape on it; the mourning for Mr. McAlpin. Arthur was staring over the way through the open gates of the Grange.

  “I want to go in and see the peacock.”

  “Go in and see the peacock!” exclaimed Miss Layne, rather taken aback by the demand. “What can you mean, Arthur? The peacock is up by the house.”

  “I know it is. We can go up there and see it, Aunt Mary.”

  “Indeed we cannot, Arthur. I never heard of such a thing.”

  “Betsy lets me go.”

  The confession involved all sorts of thoughts, and a flush crossed Miss Layne’s delicate face. The family were not at the Grange, as she knew: they had gone up to London in January, when Parliament met, and had never returned since: nevertheless she did not like to hear of this intrusion into the grounds of the nurse and child. The peacock had been a recent acquisition; or, as Arthur expressed it, had just “come to live there.” When he had talked of it at home, Mary supposed he had seen it on the slopes in passing. These green slopes, dotted here and there with shrubs and flowers, came down to the boundary wall that skirted the highway. The avenue through the gates wound round abruptly, hiding itself beyond the lodge.

  “Come, my dear. It is already late.”

  “But, Aunt Mary, you must see the peacock. He has got the most splendid tail. Sometimes he drags it behind him on the grass, and sometimes it’s all spread out in a beautiful circle, like that fan you brought home from India. Do come.”

  Miss Layne did not reply for the moment. She was inwardly debating upon what plea she could forbid the child’s ever going in again to see the peacock: the interdiction would sound most arbitrary if she gave none. All at once, as if by magic, the peacock appeared in view, strutting down the slopes, its proud tail, in all its glory, spread out in the rays of the declining sun.

  It was too much for Arthur. With a shout of delight he leaped off the low foot-path, flew across the road, and in at the gates. In vain Mary called: in his glad excitement he did not so much as hear her.

  There ensued a noise as of the fleet foot of a horse, and then a crash, a man’s shout, and a child’s cry. What harm had been done? In dire fear Mary Layne ran to see, her legs trembling beneath her.

  Just at the sharp turn beyond the lodge, a group stood: Sir Geoffry Chavasse had Arthur in his arms; his horse, from which he had flung himself, being held and soothed by a mounted groom. The lodge children also had come running out to look. She understood it in a moment: Sir Geoffry must have been riding quickly down from the house, his groom behind him, when the unfortunate little intruder encountered him just at the turn, and there was no possibility of pulling up in time. In fact, the boy had run absolutely on to the horse’s legs.

  She stood, white, and faint, and sick against the wall of the lodge: not daring to look into the accident — for Mary Layne was but a true woman, timid and sensitive; as little daring to encounter Sir Geoffry Chavasse, whom she had not been close to but for a few months short of seven years. That it should have occurred! — that this untoward thing should have occurred!

  “I wonder whose child it is?” she heard Sir Geoffry say — and the well-remembered tones came home to her with a heart-thrill. “Poor little fellow! could it have been my fault, or his? Dovey” — to the groom— “ride on at once and get Mr. Duffham here. Never mind my horse; he’s all right now. You can lead him up to the house, Bill, my lad!”

  The groom touched his hat, and rode past Mary on his errand. Sir Geoffry was already carrying the child to the Grange; Bill, the eldest of the lodge children, following with the horse. All in a minute, a wailing cry burst from Arthur.

  “Aunt Mary! Aunt Mary! Oh, please let her come! I want Aunt Mary.”

  And then it struck Sir Geoffry Chavasse that a gentleman’s child, such as this one by his appearance evidently was, would not have been out without an attendant. He turned round, and saw a lady in black standing by the lodge. The wailing cry began again.

  “Aunt Mary! I want Aunt Mary.”

  There was no help for it. She came on with her agitated face, from which every drop of blood had faded. Sir Geoffry, occupied with the child, did not notice her much.

  “I am so grieved,” he began; “I trust the injury will be found not to be very serious. My horse — —”

  He had lifted his eyes then, and knew her instantly. His own face turned crimson; the words he had been about to say died unspoken on his lips. For a moment they looked in each other’s faces, and might have seen, had the time been one of less agitation, how markedly sorrow had left its traces there. The next, they remembered the present time, and what was due from them.

  “I beg your pardon: Miss Layne, I think?” said Sir Geoffry, contriving to release one hand and raise his hat.

  “Yes, sir,” she answered, and bowed in return.

  He sat down on the bank for a moment to obtain a better hold of the child. Blood was dripping from one of the little velvet sleeves. Sir Geoffry, carrying him as gently as was possible, made all haste to the house. The window of what had been the garden-parlour stood open, and he took him into it at once. Ah, how they both remembered it. It had been refurnished and embellished now: but the room was the room still. Sir Geoffry had returned home that morning. His wife and Lady Chavasse were not expected for a day or two. Scarcely any servants were as yet in the house; but the woman who had been left in charge, Hester Picker, came in with warm water. She curtsied to Miss Layne.

  “Dear little fellow!” she exclaimed, her tongue ready as of old. “How did it happen, sir?”

  “My horse knocked him down,” replied Sir Geoffry. “Get me some linen, Picker.”

  The boy lay on the sofa where he had been put, his hat off, and his pretty light brown hair falling from his face, pale now. Apparently there was no injury except to the arm. Sir Geoffry looked at Mary.

  “I am a bit of a surgeon,” he said. “Will you allow me to examine his hurt as a
surgeon would? Duffham cannot be here just yet.”

  “Oh yes, certainly,” she answered.

  “I must cut his velvet sleeve up.”

  And she bowed in acquiescence to that.

  Hester Picker came in with the linen. Before commencing to cut the sleeve, Sir Geoffry touched the arm here and there, as if testing where the damage might lie. Arthur cried out.

  “That hurts you,” said Sir Geoffry.

  “Not much,” answered the little fellow, trying to be brave. “Papa’s a soldier, and I want to be a soldier, so I won’t mind a little hurt.”

  “Your papa’s a soldier? Ah, yes, I think I remember,” said Sir Geoffry, turning to Mary. “It is the little son of Captain Layne.”

  “My papa is Major Layne now,” spoke up Arthur, before she could make any answer. “He and mamma live in India.”

  “And so you want to be a soldier, the same as papa?” said Sir Geoffry, testing the basin of water with his finger, which Picker was holding, and which had been brought in very hot.

  “Yes, I do. Aunt Mary there says No, and grandmamma says No; but — oh, what’s that?”

  He had caught sight of the blood for the first time, and broke off with a shuddering cry. Sir Geoffry was ready now, and had the scissors in his hand. But before using them he spoke to Miss Layne.

  “Will you sit here whilst I look at it?” he asked, putting a chair with its face to the open window, and its back to the sofa. And she understood the motive and thanked him: and said she would walk about outside.

  By-and-by, when she was tired of waiting, and all seemed very quiet, she looked in. Arthur had fainted. Sir Geoffry was bathing his forehead with eau-de-Cologne; Picker had run for something in a tumbler and wine stood on the table.

  “Was it the pain? — did it hurt him very badly?” asked Mary, supposing that the arm had been bathed and perhaps dressed.

  “I have not done anything to it; I preferred to leave it for Duffham,” said Sir Geoffry — and at the same moment she caught sight of the velvet sleeve laid open, and something lying on it that looked like a mass of linen. Mary turned even whiter than the child.

  “Do not be alarmed,” said Sir Geoffry. “Your little nephew is only faint from the loss of blood. Drink this,” he added, bringing her a glass of wine.

  But she would not take it. As Sir Geoffry was putting it on the table, Arthur began to revive. Young children are elastic — ill one minute, well the next; and he began to talk again.

  “Aunt Mary, are you there?”

  She moved to the sofa, and took his uninjured hand.

  “We must not tell grandmamma, Aunt Mary. It would frighten her.”

  “Bless his dear little thoughtful heart!” interjected Hester Picker. “Here comes something.”

  The something proved to be a fly, and it brought Mr. Duffham. Before the groom had reached the village, he overtook this said fly and the surgeon in it, who was then returning home from another accident. Turning round at the groom’s news— “Some little child had run against Sir Geoffry’s horse, and was hurt” — he came up to the Grange.

  When Mr. Duffham saw that it was this child, he felt curiously taken aback. Up the room and down the room looked he; then at Sir Geoffry, then at Miss Layne, then at Hester Picker, saying nothing. Last of all he walked up to the sofa and gazed at the white face lying there.

  “Well,” said he, “and what’s this? And how did it happen?”

  “It was the peacock,” Arthur answered. “I ran away from Aunt Mary to look at it, and the horse came.”

  “The dear innocent!” cried Hester Picker. “No wonder he ran. It’s a love of a peacock.”

  “Don’t you think it was very naughty, young sir, to run from your aunt?” returned Mr. Duffham.

  “Yes, very; because she had told me not to. Aunt Mary, I’ll never do it again.”

  The two gentlemen and Hester Picker remained in the room; Mary again left it. The arm was crushed rather badly; and Mr. Duffham knew it would require care and skill to cure it.

  “You must send to Worcester for its best surgeon to help you,” said the baronet, when the dressing was over. “I feel that I am responsible to Major Layne.”

  Old Duffham nearly closed his eyelids as he glanced at the speaker. “I don’t think it necessary,” he said; “no surgeon can do more than I can. However, it may be satisfactory to Major Layne that we should be on the safe side, so I’ll send.”

  When the child was ready, Mary got into the fly, which had waited, and Mr. Duffham put him to lie on her lap.

  “I hope, Miss Layne, I may be allowed to call to-morrow and see how he gets on,” said Sir Geoffry, at the same time. And she did not feel that it was possible for her to say No. Mr. Duffham mounted beside the driver; to get a sniff, he said, of the evening air.

  “How he is changed! He has suffered as I have,” murmured Mary Layne to herself, as her tears fell on Baby Arthur, asleep now. “I am very thankful that he has no suspicion.”

  The child had said, “Don’t tell grandmamma;” but to keep it from Mrs. Layne was simply impossible. With the first stopping of the fly at the door, out came the old lady; she had been marvelling what had become of them, and was wanting her tea. Mr. Duffham took her in again, and said a few words, making light of it, before he lifted out Baby Arthur.

  A skilful surgeon was at the house the next day, in conjunction with Mr. Duffham. The arm and its full use would be saved, he said; its cure effected; but the child and those about him must have patience, for it might be rather a long job. Arthur said he should like to write to his papa in India, and tell him that it was his own fault for running away from Aunt Mary; he could write letters in big text hand. The surgeon smiled, and told him he must wait until he could use both arms again.

  The doctors had not left the house many minutes when Sir Geoffry Chavasse called, having walked over from the Grange. Miss Layne sent her mother to receive him, and disappeared herself. The old lady, her perceptions a little dulled with time and age, and perhaps also her memory, felt somewhat impressed and flattered at the visit. To her it almost seemed the honour that it used to be: that one painful episode of the past seemed to be as much forgotten at the moment as though it had never had place. She took Sir Geoffry upstairs.

  Arthur was lying close to the window, in the strong light of the fine morning. It was the first clear view Sir Geoffry had obtained of him. The garden-parlour at the Grange faced the east, so that the room on the previous evening, being turned from the setting sun, had been shady at the best, and the sofa was at the far end of it. As Sir Geoffry gazed at the child now, the face struck him as being like somebody’s; he could not tell whose. The dark blue eyes especially, turned up in all their eager brightness to his, seemed quite familiar.

  “He says I must not write to papa until I get well,” said Arthur, who had begun to look on Sir Geoffry as an old acquaintance.

  “Who does?” asked the baronet.

  “The gentleman who came with Mr. Duffham.”

  “He means the doctor from Worcester, Sir Geoffry,” put in old Mrs. Layne. She was sitting in her easy-chair near, as she had been previously; her spectacles keeping the place between the leaves of the closed Bible, which she had again taken on her lap; her withered hands, in their black lace mittens and frilled white ruffles, were crossed upon the Book. Every now and then she nodded with incipient sleep.

  “I am so very sorry this should have happened,” Sir Geoffry said, turning to Mrs. Layne. “The little fellow was running up to get a look at the peacock, it seems; and I was riding rather fast. I shall never ride fast round that corner again.”

  “But, Sir Geoffry, they tell me that the child ran right against you at the corner: that it was no fault of yours at all, sir.”

  “It was my fault, grandmamma,” said Arthur. “And, Sir Geoffry, that’s why I wanted to write to papa; I want to tell him so.”

  “I think I had better write for you,” said Sir Geoffry, looking down at the boy with a smile.<
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  “Will you? Shall you tell him it was my fault?”

  “No. I shall tell him it was mine.”

  “But it was not yours. You must not write what is not true. If Aunt Mary thought I could tell a story, or write one, oh, I don’t know what she’d do. God hears all we say, you know.”

  Sir Geoffry smiled — a sad smile — at the earnest words, at the eager look in the bright eyes. Involuntarily the wish came into his mind that he had a brave, fearless-hearted, right-principled son, such as this boy evidently was.

  “Then I think I had better describe how it happened, and let Major Layne judge for himself whether it was my fast riding or your fast running that caused the mischief.”

  “You’ll tell about the peacock? It had its tail out.”

  “Of course I’ll tell about the peacock. I shall say to Major Layne that his little boy — I don’t think I have heard your name,” broke off Sir Geoffry. “What is it?”

  “It’s Arthur. Papa’s is Richard. My big brother’s is Richard too; he is at King’s College. Which name do you like best?”

  “I think I like Arthur best. It is my own name also.”

  “Yours is Sir Geoffry.”

  “And Arthur as well.”

  But at this juncture old Mrs. Layne, having started up from a nod, interposed to put a summary stop to the chatter, telling Arthur crossly that Mr. Duffham and the other doctor had forbid him to talk much. And then she begged pardon of Sir Geoffry for saying it, but thought the doctors wished the child to be kept quiet and cool. Sir Geoffry took the opportunity to say adieu to the little patient.