HE lingered the greater part of the day. Marjory took her place permanently by his bedside, where Fanshawe had been seated when she first appeared. She had allowed herself to be entreated to say nothing to him; but a certain fixed awe and pain in her look communicated themselves to Tom’s mind without a word said. He noticed this at first with an uneasy laugh.
“Ah, I see you think badly of me, May. You think I am going, though I deceive myself. Don’t deny it. If I was not so sure by my feelings that you are wrong, you would make me think so too.”
“I am anxious,” she said. “You know what papa says, Tom, it is a woman’s fault.”
“Ay, so he did,” said her brother; “he has sense enough for half-a-dozen. I wish I had minded him more. May, you needn’t be so frightened. If I am going, as you think—well, well! there would be nothing to be so dismal about. It has to be one time or another. If it were not for all those tangled threads, and things done that shouldn’t have been done, and left undone that should have been done, like the Prayer-book. I suppose it’s the common way. Good and bad would not say it every Sunday, if it were not the common way.”
“It is the very commonest way of all, Tom.”
“I thought so. Then I’ll be forgiven, too, like the rest, if that’s all. The old doctor at Comlie would be harder on a fellow than the Prayer-book is. You’re great for the Kirk, May, and I suppose, as we’re Scotch, you’re right; but if I were a religious fellow, which I’m not, I would go in for the Prayer-book, mind you; it’s kinder; it asks fewer questions. We have done what we ought not to have done; we have left undone—If I had time just now, and felt up to it, I would like to tell you something, May.”
“Tell me, Tom,” she said, eagerly. “We are quiet now; there’s nobody here.”
“Presently,” he said; and then fell into a musing state, from which she could not rouse him. Now and then he would brighten up, and call her attention to a fly on the ceiling; to the pattern of the paper on the walls; to an old picture over the mantel-piece; smiling and commenting upon them.
“The walls should not be papered in a room where a man is to lie ill,” he said. “If you knew what strange figures they turn into. There’s an old witch in that corner with a red nose and a red cap; don’t you see her? Last night she kept sailing about the room on a broomstick, or something; and, by Jove! there is that unhappy fly astride on her red nose!”
At this idea he laughed feebly, yet loudly. How that laugh echoed down into May’s heart! He would not allow anything more serious to be spoken of.
“I am too tired to be sensible,” he said. “Don’t disturb my fly, May. He’s numb, poor fellow, after the Winter. I only hope if the witch takes to riding about again, to-night, she won’t disturb him. I don’t see her broomstick to-day. Trifling talk, eh? To be sure, it’s nonsense; but if a man may not indulge in a little nonsense when he’s laid by the heels like this, and has a nice sister smiling at him—”
Here the poor fellow put out his hand to her, which Marjory took within her own, doing her best to keep up the smile which pleased him, though there were few exertions of strength which would not have been easier to her at the moment.
“I like nonsense,” she said, softly. “But, Tom, somebody will come in presently and disturb us. Tell me, dear, first what you wanted to say.”
“Presently,” said Tom. “I have not quite made up my mind about it. There’s time enough—time enough. Show Uncle Charles that print when he comes up. I think it’s a good one. I thought of him as soon as I saw it. What quiet steady-going lives now, these old fellows live! It’s strange for a man to think of settling down into that sort of thing, you know, but I suppose I shall come to it in time like the rest. Farming, like my father, or prints, and books, and coins, and so forth. May, you women have other kind of ideas; but fancy giving up youth, and stir, and movement, and all that makes life pleasant—for that.”
“I suppose when one is old it is the quietness that makes life pleasant,” said poor Marjory, aching to her very finger-points with a sense that this life was ebbing away while they thus talked.
“By Jove, I don’t think it would ever make life pleasant to me,” said Tom. And then with a curious consciousness, he looked up at her, half defiant, half inquiring. “You think, I suppose,” he said, “that I will never give myself the chance to try if I go on in this way. Never you fear, May; I know when to pull up as well as you do. Fun first, sobriety afterwards—never you fear. I may have had about my swing by this time. Mind, I make no rash promises, but if I keep in the same mind when I get better—— I suppose the old boy would give me a house somewhere, when I’m married and settled. Married and settled!” he repeated, with a somewhat wild laugh; and then stopped abruptly, and added, “that’s the worst of it—there’s the rub.”
Marjory did not follow this lead; she had grown confused with misery, feeling that she sinned against him, trying to think of something she could say to him which should lead his mind to other thoughts. She saw nothing but levity in what he said, and her own mind seemed paralysed. She could have thrown herself upon him and begged him in so many words to think that he was dying; but nothing less direct than this seemed possible. She sat by him, holding his hand between hers, gazing wistfully at him, but with her mind far from what he was saying, labouring and struggling to think of something that would warn without alarming him. He, for his part, looked at her somewhat wistfully too. Certain words seemed on his very lips, which one syllable from her, had she but comprehended, would have drawn forth; but, in the inscrutable isolation of humanity, the two pair of eyes met, both overbrimming with meaning, but with a meaning incommunicable. What a pitiful gaze it was on both sides!
At last Marjory, feeling the silence insupportable, burst forth into a few faltering words, from which she tried hard to keep all appearance of strong emotion.
“Tom, we used to say our prayers in the nursery together when you were ill, don’t you remember? ‘Pray God take away Tom’s fever,’ I used to say. And this is so like old times. Tom—I don’t think I said my prayers this morning—”
He put up his hand to stop her, and then his countenance changed and melted, and some moisture came into his bright eyes. He gave a strange little laugh.
“I was a better boy in those days than I am now.”
“You never made yourself out to be good,” said Marjory, with tears; “but you were always good to me. Oh, God bless you, dear Tom! if we were only to say, ‘Our Father’—after being up all night—don’t you think it would do us good?”
“Say what you like, May.”
The words were common-place, but not the tone; and Marjory, with his hand clasped tighter within hers, was kneeling down by the bed, when the door opened, and their father came in. Mr. Heriot had grown ten years older in that half hour. He came in with a miserable smile, put on at the door as a woman might have put on a veil.
“Well, Tom, my man, and how are we getting on now?” he said, with an attempt at hearty jocularity, most pitifully unlike his natural tone.
Tom looked from his father’s ghostly pretence at ease to his sister’s face, as she knelt by the bed, with his hand pressed between hers, now and then softly kissing it, and smiling at him with an effort which became more and more painful. A change came over his own countenance. With a sudden scared look, he thrust his other hand into his father’s, and grasped him tight, like a frightened child.
“Don’t let me go!” he cried, with one momentary unspeakable pang.
Then swiftly as the mind moves at moments in which a whole life-time seems concentrated, he recovered his mental balance. How few fail at that grand crisis! He recovered himself with one of those strange rallyings of mental courage which make all sorts of men die bravely with fortitude and calm. The whole revolution of feeling—enlightenment, despair, self-command—passed so quickly that only spectators equally absorbed and concentrated could have followed them.
“Well!” he said, finally, “if it is to be so, we must bear it, father. We must bear it as well as we can.”
Meanwhile Mr. Charles, not knowing what to do with himself, had examined everything in the sitting-room downstairs, not because there was anything to interest him, but because, while he suffered as much as the others, he had not, like the others, a primary claim to be with the chief sufferer of all.
“Best leave them alone, best leave them alone,” he had said to himself a dozen times over. “They’re better alone with him—better alone.”
But his mind was full of malaise, anxiety, and pain. And after a while he wandered out into the yard of the inn, where still there was a great commotion, horses and dogs about, and a floating population of grooms. Mr. Charles went and looked at one or two of the slim glossy hunters which were being taken out for exercise, or which were being prepared to depart, as the hunting season approached its end. He was a man of very different tastes; yet he was country-born and country-bred, and knew the points of a horse. Poor man, this new investigation chimed in strangely with the very different thoughts in his mind. He looked at the animals with an eye that could not help seeing, but an aching heart whose attention was directed elsewhere. While he was thus standing in the middle of the yard, vaguely examining everything around him, the deformed old ostler came up to him once more.
“Beg your pardon, Sir, but do you know if they’ve sent for the bone-setter, Sir, as I spoke to you and the lady about? T’other old gentleman won’t listen to me, not on no consideration. He’s awful cut up, he is; and I ask you, Sir, as a gentleman and a scholar, is this a time to be standing on p’s and q’s, and thinking what’s most genteel and that? Job Turner ain’t genteel, but he’ll save Mr. ’Eriot’s life, soon as look at ’im. Do’ee have him, now; do’ee have ’im;” cried the old man, with tears in the strange little blear eyes which shone out of his face from among the dark puckers of his cheeks and brow like diamonds. “Them brutes would have had the breath out o’ me years and years since, if it hadn’t a-been for Job. Every bone in my body, Sir, he’s put to rights, and joined together sometime. Now, do’ee have him; do’ee now, my gentleman! he’ll mend Mr. ’Eriot like he mended me. Men is alike, just as ’osses is alike; they’ve the same bones, and flesh and blood. Nature makes no account o’ one being a gentleman and one in the stables. Oh, Lord bless you, Sir, do’ee have him, or you’ll never forgive yourself. You all know Job Turner, mates; speak up for him, for God’s sake, and let the gentleman hear what he is.”
“He’s a rare ’un for bones!” cried one of the grooms.
“He’ll work your joint back into its socket, like as it was a strayed babby!” cried another.
“Ain’t he now; don’t he now, boys!” cried the old ostler; “speak up for him, for God’s sake; it’s for young Mr. ’Eriot, as always was the pleasantest gentleman I ever see in a ’unting field, or out on’t; he gave me ten bob just for nothing at all, the last blessed morning as ever he rode out o’ this yere yard. Lord bless you, Sir, we’ll have him up and well in a week if you won’t mind his not being genteel, and send for Job.”
“Hold your nonsense!” said another man, interfering. “Job ain’t the Lord to kill and make alive. The young gentleman’s broken his back; send you for the clergyman, or some one as’ll give him good advice, Sir. They ain’t fit to die at a moment’s notice, no more nor the likes of us. Send for the clergyman, Sir, if you’ll take my advice.”
Mr. Charles stood and looked from one to the other with a certain weary bewilderment; he felt as if the family misfortune, which had thus fallen upon the Hay-Heriots, out of all precedent, a thing that never had happened before, had made him a mark at which every kind of arrow might be shot. He shook his head as he went away, pursued by the old ostler’s entreaties.
“One thing is certain, that these bone-setting bodies learn a great deal about the human frame,” he said to himself; “not scientific information, but something that’s like inspiration sometimes. It might be too late; or it might be nonsense altogether. Perhaps he could do nothing for poor Tom, perhaps—should I go back and speak to Thomas, and try? But what’s the good of disturbing the poor fellow for nothing? It could not come to anything; you may mend legs and arms, but you cannot mend the spine. God bless us all; this is what it comes to, to give a lad his own way, and let him take his swing! And it will kill his father. Never was it known yet, in all the records, that a Hay-Heriot died like this—the heir without an heir; leaving it all to go in the second line. If I could but know whether this Job what-do-you-call-him would be of any use! It would worry Thomas to ask him; but what of that if it saved the lad? My mind’s in a terrible swither, whether to try or not. Job! Job! It’s an uncanny kind of name. Oh, my bonnie May, if I could but have five minutes speech of you to say ay or no! And there’s no time, if anything can be done. I think I’ll risk it. God help us! He knows; but we do not; it can do no harm. Hey! hi! hem! you crooked old body! That’s uncivil; he’ll pay no attention. I want the other man, a bit little withered up, crooked—Hi! my good man; come here and tell me where your Job—what do you call him—is to be found. I don’t know if he can do anything; but if you’ll show me where he lives, I’ll try.”
“Lord bless you, Sir, I knew as you were a reasonable gentleman,” said the ostler, limping up. “It’s but a poor place, but what o’ that? and master and groom we’re all much the same. Leastways, so far as bones go, as is the foundation like. This way, Sir; it ain’t above ten minutes from here—if Job’s in; which he ain’t always, at this time of the day. Gentlefolks thinks little of him; but poor folks think much; and he’s out and about over all the country, wherever there is a leg out, or a bone broken. It is a chance if we find ’im; but a man can but do his best, when all’s said; and it ain’t not more than ten, or say fifteen minutes walk.”
“Quick, man, quick!” said Mr. Charles; but the road to Job’s house was through the back streets of the little town, which were swarming with children, and full of wandering provision merchants selling vegetables and earthenware, and a great many other descriptions of merchandize; for it was Saturday, and market-day. To the stranger, with his sick heart and his brain buzzing with pain and suspense, the twistings and turnings of the narrow lanes, the streets they had to cross, the passages they threaded through, the corners they turned seemed endless. What a fool’s errand it was, after all, he thought! and then something seemed to call him, which sounded now like Marjory’s appealing voice—now like poor Tom’s cry of pain. What was he doing here, astray, in a strange place? seeking out some unknown quack; leaving his own people perhaps to bear “the worst that could happen,” without such support as he could give? He suddenly turned round, while his guide was enlarging upon Job’s gifts, and upon the unlikelihood of finding him—an argument which was not intended to discourage Mr. Charles, but only to enhance Job’s importance—
“Go yourself and find him!” he said; “I’m going back! I’m going back! I may be wanted. Bring the man, and I’ll pay him—and you too.” And with these words Mr. Charles darted across the street, with a vain but confident endeavour to re-traverse the way he had come. He fell over the children; he was all but run down by the wheelbarrows; and as was natural, he lost his way. And words could not tell the painful confusion of his mind as he wound in and out, round and round in a circle, never seeming to approach a step nearer; growing every moment more wretched, more anxious, more confused; figuring to himself what might be passing in the sick-room; how he might be wanted; and how “the worst” might have happened, while he was about this wild goose chase. When he got back at last to the door of the hotel, the old ostler had reached it before him, and stood waiting in the yard with a villainous companion, who pulled his forelock to the confused and tremulous gentleman, and announced himself as Job Turner.
“You mayn’t think he’s much to look at, Sir,” whispered the ostler, under shelter of his hand; “but if you knowed all, as I know—the cures he’s done; the bones he’s set; the folk as he’s brought up from the grave—”
Mr. Charles waved his hand—he was too breathless to speak—and hurried upstairs. A dead calm seemed to have fallen on the house. A frightened woman-servant met him on the stairs, creeping down on tiptoe. It seemed to be years that he had been wandering about the streets, absent from his post. Then the doctor met him, and pointed silently to the closed door, shaking his head. Trembling, conscience-stricken, weary and sick with his suspense, Mr. Charles crept into the sick-room. All was quiet and silent there, except some gasps for breath. Mr. Heriot stood at one side of the bed, Marjory at the other. Fanshawe, Tom’s friend, was at the foot, leaning against the bed, and hiding his face with his hand. Mr. Charles trembled too much to be of use to any one; he stood behind them all, wiping his forehead, trying to see with his hot and dazzled eyes.
Nothing to be done, and nothing to be said! It had come to that. Tom was out of hearing, though they had so much to say to him. And he, too, had much to say, but had left it all unsaid. Who can tell the anguish of such a moment for those who are called upon to survive? To stand by helpless, impotent; willing to do everything, capable of nothing—nothing but to look on. Humanity has no agony so great.
At the very last, poor Tom came out of his death-struggle, as by a miracle, and looked at his watchers.
“I told you, May,” he said, faintly. “I told you!” These were his last words. He seemed to die repeating them in a whisper, which grew fainter and fainter: “I told her—told her; I told—thank God!”
Oh! for what, poor deceived soul? They looked at each other with a thrill of terror which overcame even their grief. What did he thank God for as he crossed the threshold of the other life?