Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  While they were thus employed, the vicar talked with Tom Shackles near the door.

  Tom was the parish clerk, and followed other callings too. A tall fellow, of a long and solemn face, with a somewhat golden tint, and thick blackhair streaked with white, anda verybluechin.

  “As ’twas a matter for your reverence, they sent round the corner for me. You’d say the woman was dyin’ a’most, and she calls for the sacrament. She’s down at the George, they’ve got her to bed. She says there be them on her tracks that would hurt the child, and that’s why she could not hold her peace till the babby was in charge o’ your reverence. She asked was your wife living, and when she heard so, she took heart and thanked God, and cried a bit. She did not come by the mail-coach. She got out at Scardon Hall, and took a chaise across. She thinks she’s followed, and she’s took wi’ the creepings at every stir in the hall. The doctor’s wi’ her noo. She was bad settin’ out, and she’s liggin’ in her bed now. I thought she was a bit strackle-brained, I did truly, when I saw her first. I couldn’t tell what she was drivin’ at; but she knew well enough herself. She was troubled in mind, and freated terrible about the babby, and that betwattled I ‘most thought she was daft.”

  “But she’s not mad?” asked the vicar.

  “Na, na, not a bit; only put about, and scared like.”

  “Where does she come from?”

  “South — Lonnon, I take it — a long way. She looks like death ‘most.”

  “Did she mention her name?” asked the vicar.

  “Ay, sir, I wrote it down here.”

  And he plucked a scrap of paper from his waistcoat and read, Hileria Pullen.”

  “Hileria Pullen! Dear me!” said the vicar, with the scrap of paper in his fingers, and turning to his wife, who, with Kitty Bell, was busy over the child. “Why, here’s that woman, Hileria Pullen, actually arrived at the George, and that’s the child, and the woman’s very ill. You saw her, didn’t you? What kind of person does she seem to you to be? respectable? “asked the vicar.

  “That she does, sir; yes, a decent, farrantly woman, none o’ your fussocks, you know. A thin atomy of a woman, but well dressed. Not young, nor good-lookin’.”

  “All the better, perhaps,” said the vicar.

  “Thin and white-faced; fluke-mouthed, you’d say, sir.”

  “No, Tom, not that phrase,” said the vicar.

  “And hollow in the cheeks — dish-faced, you know. But I couldn’t see very well, for the candle was little better than a pigtail-and they’s dark enough-except just where a twine of the candlelight fell.”

  “And she wants to see me? “said the vicar, lighting a bedroom candle.

  “Just so, your reverence.”

  “And the sacrament, you’re sure?”

  “Certain, sir.”

  Come in here, Tom. There is some of the port open from last Sunday. You will carry it down; the rest we shall find there.”

  And into the vicar’s study they stepped.

  There, in a corner under the secretary, the bottle stood, also the simple silver cup and the patten. These the clerk put up, while the vicar took his hat, and coat, and thick woollen gloves, and his stick.

  “I’m going, my love, to see the poor woman; down to the George; only a step,” said Doctor Jenner, with his mufflers on and his hat in his hand, extinguishing the candle he had just set down.

  “And what is to be done with this poor little thing, Hugh?

  I wish so much it might remain.”

  “Certainly, darling, whatever you like best-exactly what you think best; and I shan’t be very long away, and you shall hear all when I come back. And hadn’t I better send Mrs. Joliffe up here? she knows everything that ought to be done, and we pass her door on the way to the George.”

  “Oh, thank you, Hugh, darling-the very thing. It is so thoughtful of you. You do always think of everything.”

  And running up close to him for her farewell, she kissed him with her arms about him, on the lobby, she added, in a hurried whisper —

  “You darling, I am so delighted!”

  Smiling, the vicar ran down, and, opening the hall-door, the beautiful moonlight scene was before him. The solitary old trees in the foreground, the lake with its dark expanse and glimmering lights, and the mountains rising round like mighty shadows.

  “A beautiful night, Tom,” said the vicar, as they stood for a moment on the hard, dry ground before his door.

  “A black frost belike, sir,” answered Tom.

  “The countless watch-fires of an unseen host, Tom,” said the vicar, looking up at the glorious field of stars above him, and then down again on the beautiful lake, and across it to the huge, phantom-like mountains; and then, a little to the left, the antique George Inn close by met his view and recalled him. So with a sigh he said-

  “Let us get on, Tom; we have a serious duty before us. Poor woman! I trust we may find her better.”

  And walking on the short green grass, beneath which the frozen earth echoed to their tread, he approached the one red light that glowed from its porch.

  “Just tell Mrs. Joliffe, Tom, as we pass, that the mistress wants her at the house this moment.”

  “May God send all for the best,” murmured the vicar as, alone, he raised his eyes to heaven. “But come whatsoever his wisdom may decree, the poor little thing is welcome to share with us.”

  Hereupon he entered the door of the George, which was still open. He inquired for the sick woman.

  The doctor was still with her, and was giving her hot negus. “A very good thing, and there can’t be any fever, then, I take it,” said the vicar, relieved.

  “I’ll go upstairs, Tom, and see the doctor,” he said, addressing Shackles, who had joined him; “and I’ll take the bag in my hand,” he added, not caring that the silver vessels of the church should run a risk of accidental irreverence; “and I will call for you, Tom, as soon as you are required.”

  Tom sat down at the bar for a chat with Mrs. Winder, and the vicar mounted the stairs with a gentle and measured step.

  CHAPTER V.

  THE BABY’S FACE.

  WHILE the vicar had been talking to Tom Shackles, his wife and Kitty Bell had been equally busy about the little creature whom the girl called the “barn.”

  The first thing that struck them was the fineness and even elegance of the interior wrappings in which it was enveloped.

  “How nicely she keeps it! That must be a really conscientious woman, that Mrs. Pullen,” said the good lady. “I hope, poor thing, she may recover.”

  Perhaps she was thinking of tempting Hileria Pullen to make Golden Friars her residence, and to live at the vicarage.

  “How soundly it sleeps, poor little darling! I wonder, Kitty, whether it would matter if we unpinned the covering over its darling face? I do so long to look at it.”

  “Not it, ma’am. I would. I’d fain gie’t a smoucher, the canny darlin’.”

  “But we mustn’t kiss it yet, you know; not till it’s awake; and now that I think, we ought not to lose a moment first in getting the nursery to rights. Mary will do that, and light a very good fire; and come back when you have told her. Is the little bed in the same place exactly?”

  Ay, ma’am; it stoodens just where it did, in the nook by the fire.”

  “Yes, that’s the best place. Run, Kitty, and see to that, and come back in a moment.”

  Away ran Kitty, and good Mrs. Jenner, in the delighted importance of her vicarious maternity, carried the little bale of flannels in her arms to the fireplace, where, very cautiously, she sat down, smiling, her head already full of the future, and the air glorious with cloudy castles and grand romances, of which the heroine lay so helpless and unconscious in her lap.

  From the nursery, which good Mrs. Jenner for years had looked after, every now and then — lest, I suppose, a family should come upon them by surprise-Kitty Bell came quickly back again, with the same irrepressible grin upon her hale, honest face.

  “Well
, Kitty, a good fire in the nursery?”

  “Hoot! ma’am, a grand fire, like a Kersmas stock a’most; the room’s all alight wi’t. The folk’ll see it a gliskin’ i’ the lake, across from the fells, it gars a look so gladsome.”

  “We must not set the house on fire, though,” said her mistress, in high glee.

  “Na, na, that won’t be, ma’am. Dick Carpenter says ye couldna burn the vicarage, ’tis so well biggit, all stone and hard oak; and dear me! baint it tired, poor, weeny, winsome thing; winking still, it be, God bless it.”

  “Yes, fast asleep; but I think we might peep now, Kitty, what do you say?”

  “Surely, ma’am. Do let us, just a glent; ‘twill do us good to see the weeny face o’t.”

  And so, in eager whispers, speaking under their breath, they exchanged suggestions and cautions as they withdrew pin after pin; and at length the slumbering baby’s face was disclosed to their longing eyes.

  To say they were disappointed would be nothing-they were shocked. It was the ugliest baby they had ever seen, and looked, moreover, as if it were dying.

  “Adzooks!” gasped Kitty, after a silence of some seconds. “Dear me! Poor little thing!” said Mrs. Jenner, in a whisper of amazement. “It certainly is very plain.”

  “Did I ever see such a windered babby as that!” exclaimed Kitty.

  “It certainly is very thin,” observed the vicar’s wife to herself.

  “It looks as if ’twas just un-gone,” exclaimed Kitty.

  “All but dead indeed, poor little thing!” said the mistress, echoing Kitty’s criticism; “and I think that cheek is swollen. Oh, dear! it is such a pity.”

  “Did ye ever see sic a poor blea’ little face?” continued Kitty, employing the epithet which in that country expresses pale and livid. “Happen as ca’ad it be?”

  “No, it ain’t cold — quite warm,” said the crestfallen lady, very gently touching its cheek with her fingertips.

  “I hope it mayn’t prove a nafflin,” added Kitty.

  “No, no, no, Kitty; it’s a plain child, but I see no sign of its being foolish or weak. Heaven forbid!” said Mrs. Jenner, alarmed.

  “Whoever sid sic a barn?” repeated Kitty, that Job’s comforter, deliberately, “now that the can’le shines right down on’t. By t’ mess! What’ll the maister say when he comes back. ‘Twill be a rue-bargain wi’ him, I’m thinkin’.”

  “No, he’ll not regret it— ’twasn’t for its looks he took it. He thought it right; and he always does what he thinks right; but he will be disappointed — that can’t be helped.”

  “We may come to like it yet, ma’am,” said Kitty, to whose woman’s heart something in that helpless, ugly little face appealed.

  “I was just thinking so — I was,” said the lady. “We may love it even more if it is sickly, poor little thing; and the less beauty it has, and the more suffering, the higher right has God given it to our compassion, help, and love.”

  Her eyes filled up with gentle tears as she spoke, and she stooped down and kissed the little baby; drawing it fondly to her lips, and again and again making amends, as it were, for the cold hospitality of its reception.

  “‘Twill— ‘twill indeed— ‘twill be welcome,” said Kitty relenting also.

  And in the midst of these caresses and welcomings, the child, I suppose under the endearments of good Mrs. Jenner, awoke and began to cry.

  Its crying was not of the angry and shrilly sort. It was a low, gentle wail and sobbing, and much more moving than that higher-pitched and more energetic lamentation to which we are accustomed.

  “There, there, there,” said the women, and all kinds of hushing and soothing accompanied its sorrowing.

  “Has Mrs. Jolliffe come, I wonder?”

  Yes, she had arrived, and was in the nursery when Kitty Bell had left it.

  “Come up to the nursery, Kitty. Take the candle, and I’ll carry the child. I like carrying it, poor little thing. I feel I have been so unkind to it. I wish it could understand me, that I might beg its pardon.”

  So they trooped up to the nursery, where good Mrs. Jolliffe, tall, with a grave and kindly face, made her curtsey, and took the baby in her experienced arms; and with these movements, and sayings, and unintelligible words of power, intoned according to tradition, she tranquillised that troubled spirit in a way that Kitty, who was watching over one shoulder, admired and Mrs. Jenner, peering over the other, envied.

  “How do she and the child so delightfully understand one another?” thought the vicar’s wife. “How happy and how conceited Mrs. Joliffe must be.”

  “By Jen!” exclaimed Kitty.

  “You must not swear, Kitty,” said the vicar’s good wife.

  “No, ma’am; but, lawk! don’t ye see, ma’am? Look at its eyen! Hoot! sic a gloo it has.”

  “No, no, it does not squint,” expostulated Mrs. Jenner in a new distress. “Surely it doesn’t squint, Mrs. Joliffe?”

  “That little gloo is only the teething, ma’am; it won’t signify.”

  “Thank Heaven,” said poor Mrs. Jenner.

  “Amen,” responded Kitty. “And, oh, ma’am, doant the nursery look gladsome! Look around, ma’am, do, wi’ the fire and the candle, and the poor weeny thing in the flannels, and Mrs. Joliffe a singin’ to it. For a nursery without a baby, it does look dowley, ma’am.”

  “So it does, indeed,” said the vicar’s wife, with a kind look at the girl, that was almost as good as a kiss.

  “And when Mrs. Joliffe ain’t here, I’m to take care o’ the child, and I’ll talk and sing to it so canty all day; ain’t I, ma’am?”

  “Very likely, Kitty.”

  “Ha, ha!” said Kitty, with a broad grin.

  CHAPTER VI.

  HILERIA PULLEN.

  WHILE all this and a great deal more was going on in the nursery, in the George Inn, whose porch and sign you could see from the window in the moonlight, the vicar had walked upstairs and tapped at the door to which the chambermaid had conducted him. The doctor told him to come in.

  There was now quite a little levee in the stranger’s room. Hileria Pullen was in bed. She was, in truth, neither young nor pretty, being somewhat yellow, and very sharp of feature. She looked woefully exhausted, and thought that she was dying. She lay making a straight, narrow ridge down the centre of a rather large four-poster. At the foot stood Mr. Turnbull, of the George, grave, bald, and florid, in a vast white waistcoat, a brass-buttoned blue coat, and a big bunch of watch-seals dangling on the paunch of his drab trousers. At the end of the bolster stood short, energetic Doctor Lincote, with his fingers on Hileria’s pulse, and his watch in the palm of his other hand. The vicar glided silently to the side of the pillow opposite the doctor, who, stuffing his watch into his fob, said with decision —

  “Don’t mind your sensations, ma’am, you’re better. Glad to see you, Mr. Jenner. This is the vicar, ma’am. I hope we’ll disappoint him, ma’am. We’ll hardly ask for our viaticum yet, Mr. Vicar, ha, hey?”

  “Glad to hear you say so, doctor. You’re in very safe hands, Mrs. Pullen. How do you feel, pray?”

  “Jest gone, sir, please,” answered the patient querulously. The doctor winked across the bed to the vicar, to intimate that he was to take that announcement with a grain of allowance.

  “And you remember you told Mr. Turnbull to let nobody into his inn; but that couldn’t be, you know; so you must be more precise, and say who you mean, do you see? and if you want to talk to him, you must take a glass of sherry first for I need not tell you, you are very much exhausted. I see she does wish to speak to you, Turnbull. Hand her a glass of sherry — hold it yourself to her lips, you’d better.”

  And while the host was doing that congenial office, the doctor came round the bed and signed to the vicar, who followed him to the corner of the room next the window, and there in a whisper he said —

  “A very hysterical subject, she is; in a high state of excitement, and utterly over-fatigued and exhausted. You may guess what that
is; but there’s nothing at present to alarm.”

  “You have been giving her ether,” said the vicar; “I smell it.”

  “Very sharp — very sharp, Mr. Vicar; you know the leading medicines, and the leading cases. You have a very pretty notion of medicine; I often told you. She’s half mad with fright about some captain she says is pursuing her. By Jove! he must be a very hot-blooded fellow — eh?”

  “I’m only a poor woman,” said the female voice in a quaver from the bed; “but you are gentlemen, and you’ll consider me all the same; and Captain Torquil is coming after me on account of that child — and he’s a dangerous man.” Here the doctor winked again at the vicar. “And my life would not be safe if his anger got the better of him; and you must not let him know or guess I’m here. If you do, you’ll have all to answer for.”

  “No, my good woman, you may rely upon it. Of course, Turnbull, she may depend upon you. Make your mind quite easy, upon my honour you may,” said the doctor. And aside to the vicar he whispered —

  “Did you ever, in all your days, see a poor creature in such a terror? I really believe, if he got into the room, ‘twould either kill her outright, or put her out of her reason.”

  “Poor thing! it is most pitiable,” said the vicar.

  “And oh, sir, is the child safe?”

  “Quite, my good woman,” answered the vicar, drawing near.

  “And in your house, sir?”

  “In my house,” answered he.

  “And if you give it up, may you be judged.”

  “Now, my good woman, you must not be trying to sit up; don’t you see you’re not equal to it?” said the doctor. “Compose yourself for tonight, and in the morning you may talk as long as you like.”

  “I shan’t live to see the morning, sir. May the Lord have mercy, and forgive my sins,” she answered in an agony. “And now, sir, parson Jenner, give me the holy sacrament to my comfort, and pray for me, as you hope for mercy yourself, when you come to this dreadful hour.”