by Lucy Langton
Martha flew around to the other side of her daughter’s head and examined the bump. “Oh, good heavens!” she cried. “However will they get that back inside your head?”
Louisa turned and faced her mother. “Get ... get it back inside my head?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Martha said, “that is a bit of your brain protruding, is it not?”
Louisa shook her head slowly. “N ...no, Mama,” she replied. “That would be a far more serious injury. This is just some swelling on my head caused by the fall.”
“Oh,” Martha said, sounding utterly relieved. “Well, in that case, that isn’t bad at all! Glad you’re home still, though, love, there’s lots of work to be done.”
Martha wandered away humming to herself and waving her arms in time with whatever music she had playing in her head. She went into the master bedroom and closed the door behind her, obviously not even attempting to attend to all of the work that she proclaimed had to be done. Louisa could do nothing but sigh, shake her head and then retreat to her own room for a moment’s reprieve before launching into her chores.
Over the next few days, Louisa’s life returned to what it had been before Isaac had entered it. She tended to the things that needed doing around the house with Sophie, assisted her father with trying to sell the house, and generally kept her mother under control. She was mildly disappointed that she did not hear from Isaac again during this time, but she figured that if they were meant to meet again, it would happen.
Unfortunately for the family, however, there were not many people, or rather any people who were interested in buying their home. Louisa and Archie knew that this was because of the family’s reputation in town, but they had hoped that an individual outside of town might seize the opportunity to move here. When this did not happen, however, the Pelhams were left with only one offer of purchase: Isaac Quince.
While he was not conversing directly with Louisa, she was aware that he was keeping in touch with her father about the purchase of the house. Archie seemed altogether very pleased with both the way Isaac was handling himself and the process of agreeing to his offer for the house.
Finally, one morning Archie seemed to be in a far better mood than usual. “Well, my darling,” he said to Louisa when she was working in the garden, “it seems that our dream of leaving town and selling house is about to come true. And it is all thanks to that young man, Isaac Quince. He has offered me a more than fair price for the house, and as we do not have any other interested parties, I have decided that I am going to accept it.”
Louisa’s face lit up. “That is wonderful news, Papa!” she cried, setting down her hoe and wrapping her arms around him. Archie, however, was not the hugging type, and so he just patted Louisa’s back uncomfortably until she stepped away. “I am so glad that Mr Quince has made such a wonderful impression on you and that he will be the one buying our lot.”
“I am as well,” Archie replied. Then, he took off the glasses he had been using to peruse the agreement he held in his hands and looked at Louisa more sharply. “I know that I am not one to usually say something like this ... but I would not end your association with him, Lulu. I know that the chances are very slim because of your sister’s foolish decision, but maybe, just maybe...”
Archie trailed off, and Louisa couldn’t stop herself from beaming. “I shall certainly not end my association with Mr Quince, Papa,” she assured him. “He is a very kind gentleman, and I would very much enjoy the opportunity to get to know him better.”
Archie gave his daughter an encouraging look, patted her twice upon the shoulder, and then said, “I shall be in my study if your mother is looking for me. She’s gone out for one of her walks, so I don’t suspect that she shall return until after sunset, but in case she has forgotten where I am, please tell her.”
Louisa nodded knowingly, understanding that her father had probably already told her mother five times this morning where he would be, but that she often got so lost in her thoughts on her walks that she never remembered where he was.
What made the situation funnier was that the Pelham house was roughly the size of a shoebox, and so if Martha had any wits about her, she could have just shouted out for him, and he would have heard her from wherever she was standing. But, as she always came and sought Louisa out instead of doing that, she knew that she would be the one to inform her mother.
Louisa spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon happily weeding the garden, fantasizing about the next time that she and Isaac would meet. She knew that the family was moving out of town, but she hoped that when he bought their house, that would afford her enough of an excuse to come and visit him, under the guise of seeing her old home.
However, she then remembered that Isaac would, of course, not be living at their house, as he was just buying it as an investment property. But still, Louisa thought, I could keep in touch with him about how the upkeep of the property is going, and perhaps offer him a few tips that Papa and I have learned over the years. I should hope that he would enjoy hearing from me, and perhaps he would continue writing to me, even after we’ve finished discussing the house.
When Louisa had her fill thinking about her and Isaac, she put away her gardening instruments and went inside the house. Sophie was working on the laundry on the other end of the property, leaving Louisa the only other person outside of her father in the area. When she had finished cleaning up from her gardening and was about to walk down to the stream where she and Isaac had encountered one another, she suddenly realized how hungry she was.
I shall go and see if Papa has had lunch yet, for I know that he tends to forget to eat when he is busy, she thought. Louisa entered the house through the back door and crossed through the sitting room to get to her father’s study. “Papa,” she said when she saw him, “would you fancy something to eat?”
Archie, however, did not answer her. He looked up at her from his desk with the oddest look on his face. He moved his lips, but no sound came out, and Louisa began to worry. “Papa?” she asked, “whatever is the matter? Did something happen while I was outside?”
As Louisa watched, Archie stood and then collapsed into his chair with a panicked expression. “Papa!” she cried, running to his side.
Archie was breathing very heavily, and when Louisa crouched beside him, she saw that the left side of his face was drooping for some reason. Her heart nearly stopped. “Feel ... Feels ...” Archie stammered, his speech slurring as though he’d had one too many drinks. “Can’t feel ... right side.”
Louisa looked down at Archie’s right arm and saw, to her horror, that it was hanging limply as well. I do believe he’s becoming apoplectic, Louisa realized, and suddenly sprung into action. “Everything will be fine, Papa,” she said calmly, maintaining eye contact with her father. “I will call Sophie to fetch the doctor, and I shall not leave your side until he arrives.”
But no matter what Louisa said, her father looked positively terrified. All she could do was pray that the doctor arrived soon enough that he would survive the attack that he was fighting through.
Chapter 9
“I’m afraid I do not have any concrete answers to your very valid questions, Miss Louisa,” Doctor Franklin said three days later when he came to follow up about her father’s condition. “Every case of apoplexy is unique, and the way one patient recovers is never the same for another.”
Louisa looked down at her father, who was currently dozing with his eyes closed. He was still as sharp as a tack and heard as well as registered everything that was going on around him.
However, he was almost entirely paralyzed on his left side now, and his right side seemed unable to compensate for the loss. Louisa had been tending to him almost non-stop since his attack had happened, and he had shown almost no improvement in his condition.
“I understand that well, Doctor,” Louisa replied, dabbing the thin line of drool that was cascading out of her father’s mouth on the left side. “But I’
m certain that there must be some things that we can do to try and assist him as best we can? Even if they do not work, they would be better than simply sitting by his bedside fretting about him.”
Doctor Franklin rose from his chair on the other side of her father’s bed. He came around to Louisa and placed a condescending hand upon her shoulder. “That is a lovely sentiment, Miss Louisa. I’m afraid, however, that if you wanted your father to have that sort of recovery, he would need to enter into a specialized hospital where men could attend to his needs far better than a little thing could. And unfortunately, I happen to know that such an institution would be far too expensive for a family such as yours, so I we shall just pray that your father makes some sort of a recovery ... if only for the sake of you and your mother.”
Doctor Franklin collected his medical bag and left the room, and for a long time, Louisa was so appalled by how he had spoken to her that she could not do anything but stare off into the middle distance. How dare he talk to me like that! Louisa thought. That man was so condescending that I don’t believe he could have been more deplorable if he’d tried. I know that there must be things we could do to help Papa recover, and how dare he say that because I was a woman, I would not know what I was doing! And that we did not have enough money to provide Papa with the proper care … I cannot believe that he could even think to say such a thing out loud.
As Louisa went over the interaction in her mind once more, she could feel a pair of eyes upon her. When she looked down, she saw that her father had woken up and was now looking at her with a great deal of concern. She felt a tear roll down her face before she even realized that she was crying, and watched as her father, with a great deal of difficulty, reached up and brushed the tear from her face with his thumb. She couldn’t help giving him an apologetic smile.
“You heard all of that, didn’t you?” she asked him, and he nodded. Archie had not been able to speak, and so any conversations that they had were completely one-sided. While it did not usually bother Louisa, she would have done anything to have heard his voice right now.
However, what Archie lacked in his ability to move or say much, he made up for in one-sided facial expressions. It had taken Louisa by surprise the first time that she had seen her father’s face so expressive, as he was typically a rather serious man. But when she realized that it would be the one way that he could communicate with her, she found this development not surprising at all.
Right now, for example, Archie looked rather like he wanted to strangle Doctor Franklin. He kept looking from Louisa towards the door, and then a look of uninhibited rage would come across the mobile half of his face. Louisa had to laugh, as her father’s equal detestation of that abhorrent doctor was very encouraging.
“I take it that you’re feeling exactly the same way about the dear doctor, aren’t you?” Louisa asked him, and his eyes positively burned with hatred. “I don’t believe a word he said. I think that if you and I practice a few things each day, you might gradually discover that you start feeling more like your old self. Shall we give that a try?”
For an instant, Archie looked pleased, but then he turned rather sad. He looked away from Louisa and did not make eye contact with her. “What is it, Papa?”
Archie shook his head roughly, and so Louisa pressed on. “Are you unhappy about our plan to help you get better?” Archie shook his head. “Are you feeling intimidated by your road to recovery?” Another head shake. Then, Louisa decided to try something, just to test him. “Do you think I won’t be able to help you because I’m nothing more than a ‘feeble little thing’?”
Archie swung his head over and looked at his daughter. He attempted to scoff, which ended up sounding more like he was trying to dislodge something from his nostrils, at which point both he and Louisa began laughing. Archie’s laugh may no longer have sounded like it used to, but it was a joyous sound to hear nonetheless.
When Louisa realized that she would probably not be able to discern exactly what it was that her father was upset about, she had an idea. “I’ll return momentarily,” she said and dashed into her father’s study. She picked up a piece of parchment and a quill pen and inkwell and then came back to her father’s bedside. She took a book and placed the parchment on top of it, and then placed the quill in her father’s hand with her own hand wrapped around on top. Then, she looked to her father and said, “Just try one word to tell me what you’re feeling.”
Archie nodded almost imperceptibly and then began focusing so hard on writing that Louisa feared he would injure himself in some way. They worked together to dip the quill, and then to her relief, she saw that her father was still able to write ... somewhat. Although he was originally right-handed, and so this should have been no problem, his body had undergone such trauma that it was still a great challenge for him.
Agonizingly slowly, a word came into view. “B ...” Louisa said encouragingly as the first letter appeared. “L? No, U,” came the next letter, and then, “R? Bur ... Burn? Buring? Burnt?” Archie shook his head and kept writing. The next letter was d, then e, then n. When the word lay on the page before Louisa, her heart broke for her father.
“Burden?” she whispered softly, squeezing her father’s hand that still held the quill. “Papa, you are the furthest thing from a burden. Mama and I are just so glad that you’re alive, we couldn’t bear to think ... to think ...”
For the first time in three days, Louisa collapsed into tears. She hastily moved all of the things they’d used for writing and flung herself across her father, hugging him as tightly as she could. “I was so scared we were going to lose you, Papa,” Louisa gasped in between heaving sobs. “I know it may not seem like the best outcome to you right now, but believe me, as long as you stay here with Mama and me, I will do every single thing that you need until the day that I die.”
Louisa continued weeping as she desperately clung to her father. She hadn’t been expecting him to be able to do anything to comfort her, but a few minutes after her outburst began, she felt a very jerky hand stroking her head. When she looked up, she saw that her father was crying too, but now he had a smile on his face. When he saw that she was looking at him, he made a writing motion with his hand, and Louisa scrambled to sit back up again and assist him to scribe.
This time, when he finished writing, it said, “Not losing me that easy.” Louisa looked up and saw that Archie now had a playful half-grin on his face and so she allowed herself a laugh through her tears.
“Good,” she said determinedly. “Then will you allow me to help you to recover as best as I can, and do you promise never to call yourself a burden again?”
Archie considered Louisa’s proposition for a long time, and then raised his right hand and wiggled it in mid-air to say ‘maybe’. When Louisa lightly swatted him to scold him, he laughed again and then accepted her conditions.
“Excellent,” Louisa responded, rising from her chair. “Then let me just go and check on Mama, and when I return, we shall begin trying to get you feeling better.”
She left her parents’ room and went into the sitting room, where her mother was still lying on the couch with a cold compress on her forehead. Louisa sighed. She knew that her mother wasn’t trying to be dramatic, but the fact that she had done nothing but lie on the couch and wail her worries regarding Archie did nothing to dissuade Louisa from using that word to describe her.
“How are you doing, Mama?” Louisa tried to ask as caringly as she could.
Martha bolted upright on the couch and looked at her daughter. “Did Doctor Franklin leave? Did he have any suggestions about how you could assist your father in his recovery? Did he say if Archie would ever be back to his old self?”
Louisa sighed. When her mother had said ‘how you could assist your father in his recovery’ instead of we, she knew that she was well and truly going to be the one responsible for caring for her father.
When the accident had happened, and her mother had taken to the couch, she thought that maybe, mayb
e, her mother would see how hard she was working to keep Archie well taken care of and pick up some of the other chores that needed doing around the house to help Louisa out in some way. But unfortunately, her mother was so lost in her own mind that she had not even remotely thought of doing that.
