and he raised his pipe an inch or two, with his thumb on the bowl, “without ‘backy and fire. ‘Tisn’t in it.”
“Maybe I can be of some use?” I said, thinking.
“Maybe,” he rejoined.
By this time he received from the old deaf abigail a flaming roll of brown paper, and, touching his hat to me, he withdrew, lighting his pipe and sending up little white puffs, like the salute of a departing ship.
So he did not care to hear how his daughter was, and had only come here to light his pipe!
Just then the doctor emerged.
“We have been waiting to hear how your poor patient is to-day?” I said.
“Very ill, indeed, and utterly neglected, I fear. If she were equal to it — but she’s not — I think she ought to be removed to the hospital immediately.”
“That poor old woman is quite deaf, and the man is so surly and selfish! Could you recommend a nurse who would stay here till she’s better? I will pay her with pleasure, and anything you think might be good for the poor girl.”
So this was settled on the spot. Doctor Jolks was kind, like most men of his calling, and undertook to send the nurse from Feltram with a few comforts for the patient; and he called Dickon to the yard-gate, and I suppose told him of the arrangement; and Milly and I went to the poor girl’s door and asked, “May we come in?”
There was no answer. So, with the conventional construction of silence, we entered. Her looks showed how ill she was. We adjusted her bed-clothes, and darkened the room, and did what we could for her — noting, beside, what her comfort chiefly required. She did not answer any questions. She did not thank us. I should almost have fancied that she had not perceived our presence, had I not observed her dark, sunken eyes once or twice turned up towards my face, with a dismal look of wonder and enquiry.
The girl was very ill, and we went every day to see her. Sometimes she would answer our questions — sometimes not. Thoughtful, observant, surly, she seemed; and as people like to be thanked, I sometimes wonder that we continued to throw our bread upon these ungrateful waters. Milly was specially impatient under this treatment, and protested against it, and finally refused to accompany me into poor Beauty’s bed-room.
“I think, my good Meg,” said I one day, as I stood by her bed — she was now recovering with the sure reascent of youth —“that you ought to thank Miss Milly.”
“I’ll not thank her,” said Beauty, doggedly.
“Very well, Meg; I only thought I’d ask you, for I think you ought.”
As I spoke, she very gently took just the tip of my finger, which hung close to her coverlet, in her fingers, and drew it beneath, and before I was aware, burying her head in the clothes, sh suddenly clasped my hand in both hers to her lips, and kissed it passionately, again and again, sobbing. I felt her tears.
I tried to withdraw my hand, but she held it with an angry pull, continuing to weep and kiss it.
“Do you wish to say anything, my poor Meg?” I asked.
“Nout, Miss,” she sobbed gently; and she continued to kiss my hand and weep. But suddenly she said, “I won’t thank Milly, for it’s a’ you; it baint her, she hadn’t the thought — no, no, it’s a’ you, Miss. I cried hearty in the dark last night, thinkin’ o’ the apples, and the way I knocked them away’ wi’ a pur o’ my foot, the day father rapped me ower the head wi’ his stick; it was kind o’ you and very bad o’ me. I wish you’d beat me, Miss; ye’re better to me than father or mother — better to me than a’; an’ I wish I could die for you, Miss, for I’m not fit to look at you.”
I was surprised. I began to cry. I could have hugged poor Meg.
I did not know her history. I have never learned it since. She used to talk with the most utter self-abasement before me. It was no religious feeling — it was a kind of expression of her love and worship of me — all the more strange that she was naturally very proud. There was nothing she would not have borne from me except the slightest suspicion of her entire devotion, or that she could in the most trifling way wrong or deceive me.
I am not young now. I have had my sorrows, and with them all that wealth, virtually unlimited, can command; and through the retrospect a few bright and pure lights quiver along my life’s dark stream — dark, but for them; and these are shed, not by the splendour of a splendid fortune, but by two or three of the simplest and kindest remembrances, such as the poorest and homeliest life may count up, and beside which, in the quiet hours of memory, all artificial triumphs pale, and disappear, for they are never quenched by time or distance, being founded on the affections, and so far heavenly.
Chapter 45.
A Chapter-Full of Lovers
WE HAD about this time a pleasant and quite unexpected visit from Lord Ilbury. He had come to pay his respects, understanding that my uncle Silas was sufficiently recovered to see visitors. “And I think I’ll run up-stairs first, and see him, if he admits me, and then I have ever so long a message from my sister, Mary, for you and Miss Millicent; but I had better dispose of my business first — don’t you think so? — and I shall return in a few minutes.”
And as he spoke our tremulous old butler returned to say that Uncle Silas would be happy to see him. So he departed; and you can’t think how pleasant our homely sitting-room looked with his coat and stick in it — guarantees of his return.
“Do you think, Milly, he is going to speak about the timber, you know, that Cousin Knollys spoke of? I do hope not.”
“So do I,” said Milly. “I wish he’d stayed a bit longer with us first, for if he does, father will sure to turn him out of doors, and we’ll see no more of him.”
“Exactly, my dear Milly; and he’s so pleasant and good-natured.”
“And he likes you awful well, he does.”
“I’m sure he likes us both equally, Milly; he talked a great deal to you at Elverston, and used to ask you so often to sing those two pretty Lancashire ballads,” I said; “but you know when you were at your controversies and religious exercises in the window, with that pillar of the church, the Rev. Spriggs Biddlepen ——”
“Get awa’ wi’ your nonsense, Maud; how could I help answering when he dodged me up and down my Testament and catechism? — an’ I ‘most hate him, I tell you, and Cousin Knollys, you’re such fools, I do. And whatever you say, the lord likes you uncommon, and well you know it, ye hussy.”
“I know no such thing; and you don’t think it, you hussy, and I really don’t care who likes me or who doesn’t, except my relations; and I make the lord a present to you, if you’ll have him.”
In this strain were we talking when he re-entered the room, a little sooner than we had expected to see him.
Milly, who, you are to recollect, was only in process of reformation, and still retained something of the Derbyshire dairymaid, gave me a little clandestine pinch on the arm just as he made his appearance.
“I just refused a present from her,” said odious Milly, in answer to his enquiring look, “because I knew she could not spare it.”
The effect of all this was that I blushed one of my overpowering blushes. People told me they became me very much; I hope so, for the misfortune was frequent; and I think nature owed me that compensation.
“It places you both in a most becoming light,” said Lord Ilbury, quite innocently. “I really don’t know which most to admire — the generosity of the offer or of the refusal.”
“Well, it was kind, if you but knew. I’m ‘most tempted to tell him,” said Milly.