Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Miss Cattledon came. Janet solemnly declared, not only that she had not the bank-note, but that she had never seen the note: never at all. Mrs. Knox said no one but Janet could have taken it, and but for her illness, she would be already in prison. Miss Cattledon told Mrs. Knox she ought to be ashamed of herself for suspecting Janet Carey, and took Janet off by train to Miss Deveen’s. Janet arrived there in a shivering-fit, fully persuaded that the Lefford policemen were following her by the orders of Mrs. Knox.

  And for the result of it all we must go on to the next paper.

  DR. KNOX.

  “My dear Arnold,

  “Come down to Lefford without delay if you can: I want to see you particularly. I am in a peck of trouble.

  “Ever your friend,

  “Richard Tamlyn.”

  The above letter reached Dr. Knox in London one morning in April. He made it right with the authorities to whom he was subject, and reached Lefford the same afternoon.

  Leaving his bag at the station, he went straight to Mr. Tamlyn’s house; every other person he met halting to shake hands with him. Entering the iron gates, he looked up at the windows, but saw no one. The sun shone on the pillared portico, the drawing-room blinds beside it were down. Dr. Knox crossed the flagged courtyard, and passed off to enter by the route most familiar to him, the surgery, trodden by him so often in the days not long gone by. Mr. Dockett stood behind the counter, compounding medicines, with his coat-cuffs and wristbands turned up.

  “Well, I never!” exclaimed the young gentleman, dropping a bottle in his astonishment as he stared at Dr. Knox. “You are about the last person I should have expected to see, sir.”

  By which remark the doctor found that Mr. Tamlyn had not taken his apprentice into his confidence. “Are you all well here?” he asked, shaking hands.

  “All as jolly as circumstances will let us be,” said Mr. Dockett. “Young Bertie has taken a turn for the worse.”

  “Has he? I am sorry to hear that. Is Mr. Tamlyn at home? If so, I’ll in and see him.”

  “Oh, he’s at home,” was the answer. “He has hardly stirred out-of-doors for a week, and Shuttleworth says he’s done to death with the work.”

  Going in as readily as though he had not left the house for a day, Dr. Knox found Mr. Tamlyn in the dining-room: the pretty room that looked to the garden and the fountain. He was sitting by the fire, his hand rumpling his grey hair: a sure sign that he was in some bother or tribulation. In the not quite four months that had passed since Dr. Knox left him, he had changed considerably: his hair was greyer, his face thinner.

  “Is it you, Arnold? I am glad. I thought you’d come if you could.”

  Dr. Knox drew a chair near the fire, and sat down. “Your letter gave me concern,” he said. “And what do you mean by talking about a peck of trouble?”

  “A peck of trouble!” echoed Mr. Tamlyn. “I might have said a bushel. I might have said a ton. There’s trouble on all sides, Arnold.”

  “Can I help you out of it in any way?”

  “With some of it, I hope you can: it’s why I sent for you. But not with all: not with the worst. Bertie’s dying, Arnold.”

  “I hope not!”

  “As truly as that we are here talking to one another, I believe him to be literally dying,” repeated the surgeon, solemnly, his eyes filling and his voice quivering with pain. “He has dropped asleep, and Bessy sent me out of the room: my sighs wake him, she says. I can’t help sighing, Arnold: and sometimes the sigh ends with a groan, and I can’t help that.”

  Dr. Knox didn’t see his way clear to making much answer just here.

  “I’ve detected the change in him for a month past; in my inward heart I felt sure he could not live. Do you know what your father used to say, Arnold? He always said that if Bertie lived over his sixteenth or seventeenth year, he’d do; but the battle would be just about that time. Heaven knows, I attached no importance to the opinion: I have hardly thought of it: but he was right, you see. Bertie would be seventeen next July, if he were to live.”

  “I’m sure I am very grieved to hear this — and to see your sorrow,” spoke Arnold.

  “He is so changed!” resumed Mr. Tamlyn, in a low voice. “You remember how irritable he was, poor fellow? — well, all that has gone, and he is like an angel. So afraid of giving trouble; so humble and considerate to every one! It was this change that first alarmed me.”

  “When did it come on?”

  “Oh, weeks ago. Long before there was much change for the worse to be seen in him. Only this morning he held my hand, poor lad, and — and — —” Mr. Tamlyn faltered, coughed, and then went on again more bravely. “He held my hand between his, Arnold, and said he thought God had forgiven him, and how happy it would all be when we met in heaven. For a long while now not a day has passed but he has asked us to forgive him for his wicked tempers — that’s his word for it, wicked — the servants, and all.”

  “Is he in much pain?”

  “Not much now. He has been in a great deal at times. But it made no difference, pain or no pain, to his sweetness of temper. He will lie resigned and quiet, the drops pouring down his face with the agony, never an impatient word escaping him. One day I heard him tell Bessy that angels were around him, helping him to bear it. We may be sure, Arnold, when so extraordinary a change as that takes place in the temperament, the close of life is not far off.”

  “Very true — as an ordinary rule,” acquiesced Dr. Knox. “And now, how can I help you in this trouble?”

  “In this trouble? — not at all,” returned Mr. Tamlyn, rousing himself, and speaking energetically, as if he meant to put the thought behind him. “This trouble no earthly being can aid me in, Arnold; and I don’t think there’s any one but yourself I’d speak to of it: it lies too deep, you see; it wrings the soul. I could die of this trouble: I only fret at the other.”

  “And what is the other?”

  “Shuttleworth won’t stay.”

  “Won’t he!”

  “Shuttleworth says the kind of practice is not what he has been accustomed to, and the work’s too hard, and he does not care how soon he leaves it. And yet Dockett has come on surprisingly, and takes his share now. The fact is, Arnold, Shuttleworth is just as lazy as he can hang together: he’d like to treat a dozen rose-water patients a-day, and go through life easily. My belief is, he means to do it.”

  “But that will scarcely bring grist to his mill, will it?” cried Dr. Knox.

  “His mill doesn’t want grist; there’s the worst of it,” said Tamlyn. “The man was not badly off when he came here: but since then his only brother must go and die, and Shuttleworth has come into all his money. A thousand a-year, if it’s a penny.”

  “Then, I certainly don’t wonder at his wanting to give up the practice,” returned the doctor, with a smile.

  “That’s not all,” grumbled old Tamlyn. “He wants to take away Bessy.”

  “To take away Bessy!”

  “The two have determined to make themselves into one, I believe. Bessy only hesitated because of leaving poor Bertie. That impediment will not be in her way long.”

  He sighed as he spoke. Dr. Knox did not yet see what he was wanted for: and asked again.

  “I’ve been leading up to it,” said Mr. Tamlyn. “You must come back to me, Arnold.”

  “On the same terms as before?” inquired the doctor, after a pause.

  “Nonsense. You’d say ‘No,’ off-hand, if I proposed them. In Shuttleworth’s place.”

  “Of course, Mr. Tamlyn, I could not come — I would not come unless it were made worth my while. If it were, I should like it of all things.”

  “Yes, just so; that’s what I mean. Don’t you like your post in London?”

  “I like it very well, indeed. And I have had no doubt that it will lead to something better. But, if I saw a fair prospect before me here, I should prefer to come back to Lefford.”

  “That shall be made fair enough. Things have changed with me, Arnold: an
d I shouldn’t wonder but you will some time, perhaps not very far distant, have all my practice in your own hands. I feel to be getting old: spirits and health are alike broken.”

  “Nay, not old yet, Mr. Tamlyn. You may wait a good twenty years for that.”

  “Well, well, we’ll talk further at another interview. My mind’s at rest now, and that’s a great thing. If you had refused, Arnold, I should have sold my practice for an old song, and gone clean away: I never could have stood being associated with another stranger. You are going up home, I conclude. Will you come in this evening?”

  “Very well,” said Dr. Knox, rising. “Can I go up and see Bertie?”

  “Not now; I’d not have him awakened for the world; and I assure you the turning of a straw seems to do it. You shall see him this evening: he is always awake and restless then.”

  Calling for his bag at the station, Dr. Knox went on to Rose Villa. They were at tea. The children rose up with a shout: his step-mother looked as though she could not believe her eyesight.

  “Why, Arnold! Have you come home to stay?”

  “Only for a day or two,” he answered. “I thought I should surprise you, but I had not time to write.”

  Shaking hands with her, kissing the children, he turned to some one else, who was seated at the tea-table and had not stirred. His hand was already out, when she turned her head, and he drew back his hand and himself together.

  “Miss Mack, my new governess,” spoke Mrs. Knox.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Dr. Knox to Miss Mack, who turned out to be a young person in green, with stout legs and slippers down at heel. “I thought it was Miss Carey,” he added to his step-mother. “Where is Miss Carey?”

  Which of the company, Miss Mack excepted, talked the fastest, and which the loudest, could not have been decided though a thousand-pound wager rested on it. It was a dreadful tale to tell. Janet Carey had turned out to be a thief; Janet Carey had gone out of her mind nearly with fever and fear when she knew she was to be taken to prison and tried: tried for stealing the money; and Janet’s aunt had come down and carried her away out of the reach of the policemen. Dr. Knox gazed and listened, and felt his blood turning cold with righteous horror.

  “Be silent,” he sternly said. “There must have been some strange mistake. Miss Carey was good and upright as the day.”

  “She stole my fifty pounds,” said Mrs. Knox.

  “What?”

  “She stole my fifty-pound note. It was the one you sent me, Arnold.”

  His face reddened a little. “That note? Well, I do not know the circumstances that led you to accuse Miss Carey; but I know they were mistaken ones. I will answer for Janet Carey with my life.”

  “She took that note; it could not have gone in any other manner,” steadily persisted Mrs. Knox. “You’ll say so yourself, Arnold, when you know all. The commotion it has caused in the place, and the worry it has caused me are beyond everything. Every day some tradesman or other comes here to ask whether the money has been replaced — for of course they know I can’t pay them under such a loss, until it is; and I must say they have behaved very well. I never liked Janet Carey. Deceitful minx!”

  With so many talking together, Dr. Knox did not gather a very clear account of the details. Mrs. Knox mixed up surmises with facts in a manner to render the whole incomprehensible. He said no more then. Later, Mrs. Knox saw that he was preparing to go out. She resented it.

  “I think, Arnold, you might have passed this one evening at home: I want to have a talk with you about money matters. What I am to do is more than I know, unless Janet Carey or her friends can be made to return the money.”

  “I am going down to Tamlyn’s, to see Bertie.”

  Dr. Knox let himself out at the street-door, and was walking down the garden-path, when he found somebody come flying past. It was Sally the housemaid, on her way to open the gate for him. Such an act of attention was unusual and quite unnecessary; the doctor thanked her, but told her she need not have taken the trouble.

  “I — I thought I’d like to ask you, sir, how that — that poor Miss Carey is,” said Sally, in a whisper, as she held the gate back, and her breath was so short as to hinder her words. “It was London she was took to, sir; and, as you live in the same town, I’ve wondered whether you might not have come across her.”

  “London is a large place,” observed Dr. Knox. “I did not even know Miss Carey was there.”

  “It was a dreadful thing, sir, poor young lady. Everybody so harsh, too, over it. And I — I — I can’t believe but she was innocent.”

  “It is simply an insult on Miss Carey to suppose otherwise,” said Dr. Knox. “Are you well, Sally? What’s the matter with your breath?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing but a stitch that takes me, thank you, sir,” returned Sally, as she shut the gate after him and flew back again.

  But Dr. Knox saw it was no “stitch” that had stopped Sally’s breath and checked her utterance, but genuine agitation. It set him thinking.

  No longer any sitting up for poor Bertie Tamlyn in this world! It was about eight o’clock when Dr. Knox entered the sick-chamber. Bertie lay in bed; his arms thrown outside the counterpane beside him, as though they were too warm. The fire gave out its heat; two lamps were burning, one on the mantelpiece, one on the drawers at the far end of the room. Bertie had always liked a great deal of light, and he liked it still. Miss Tamlyn met Dr. Knox at the door, and silently shook hands with him.

  Bertie’s wide-open eyes turned to look, and the doctor approached the bed; but he halted for one imperceptible moment in his course. When Mr. Tamlyn had said Bertie was dying, Arnold Knox had assumed it to mean, not that he was actually dying at that present time, but that he would not recover! But as he gazed at Bertie now in the bright light, he saw something in the face that his experienced medical eye could not mistake.

  He took the wasted, fevered hand in his, and laid his soothing fingers on the damp brow. Miss Tamlyn went away for a minute’s respite from the sick-room.

  “Bertie, my boy!”

  “Why didn’t you come before, Arnold?” was the low, weak answer; and the breath was laboured and the voice down nowhere. “I have wanted you. Aunt Bessy would not write; and papa thought you would not care to come down from London, just for me.”

  “But I would, Bertie — had I known you were as ill as this.”

  Bertie’s hands were restless. The white quilt had knots in it as big as peas, and he was picking at them. Dr. Knox sat down by the low bed.

  “Do you think I am dying?” suddenly asked Bertie.

  It took the doctor by surprise. One does not always know how to answer such home questions.

  “I’ll tell you more about it when I’ve seen you by daylight, Bertie. Are you in any pain?”

  “Not a bit now: that’s gone. But I’m weak, and I can’t stir about in bed, and — and — they all look at me so. This morning papa and Shuttleworth brought in Dr. Green. Any way, you must know that I shall not get to be as well as I used to be.”

  “What with one ailment and another, with care, and pain, and sorrow, and wrong, it seems to me, Bertie, that very few of us are well for long together. There’s always something in this world: it is only when we go to the next that we can hope for rest and peace.”

  Bertie lifted his restless hands and caught one of Dr. Knox’s between them. He had a yearning, imploring look that quite pained the doctor.

  “I want you to forgive me, Arnold,” he said, the tears running down. “When I remember how wicked I was, my heart just faints with shame. Calling all of you hideous names! — returning bitter words for kind ones. When we are going to die the past comes back to us. Such a little while it seems to have been now, Arnold! Why, if I had endured ten times as much pain, it would be over now. You were all so gentle and patient with me, and I never cared what trouble I gave, or what ill words I returned. And now the time is gone! Arnold, I want you to forgive me.”

  “My dear boy, there’s nothin
g to forgive. If you think there is, why then I forgive you with all my heart.”

  “Will God ever forgive me, do you think?”

  “Oh, my boy, yes,” said the doctor, in a husky tone. “If we, poor sinful mortals, can forgive one another, how much more readily will He forgive — the good Father in heaven of us all!”

  Bertie sighed. “It would have been so easy for me to have tried for a little patience! Instead of that, I took pleasure in being cross and obstinate and wicked! If the time would but come over again! Arnold, do you think we shall be able to do one another good in the next world? — or will the opportunity be lost with this?”

  “Ah, Bertie, I cannot tell,” said Dr. Knox. “Sometimes I think that just because so few of us make use of our opportunities here, God will, perhaps, give us a chance once again. I have not been at very many death-beds yet, but of some of those the recollection of opportunities wasted has made the chief sting. It is only when life is closing that we see what we might have been, what we might have done.”

  “Perhaps He’ll remember what my pain has been, Arnold, and how hard it was to bear. I was not like other boys. They can run, and climb, and leap, and ride on horseback, and do anything. When I’ve gone out, it has been in a hand-carriage, you know; and I’ve had to lie and lie on the sofa, and just look up at the blue sky, or on the street that tired me so: or else in bed, where it was worse, and always hot. I hope He will recollect how hard it was for me.”

  “He saw how hard it was for you at the time, Bertie; saw it always.”

  “And Jesus Christ forgave all who went to Him, you know, Arnold; every one; just for the asking.”