Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (51 page)

‘Well, it may be some consolation to you to know that she is very wretched too. She thinks she is dying, but that’s all nonsense, and so she made me promise to come down and see how you were, without saying anything about her.’

‘Wanted you to see how I squirmed, eh?’ said Hollebone coarsely. ‘You can just tell her, if you like, that I think her a — However, I suppose I must restrain my language in the presence of a lady.’

‘Oh, go on swearing; don’t mind me,’ said Julia, ‘if it relieves you.’

‘No, really, Julia,’ he said, ‘I’m awfully sorry I swore before, you know, but somehow it took me that way, and I couldn’t help it.’

And Julia answered, with a smile, —

‘Oh, never mind that y’know; but if you’ll just let me say my say I’ll go, and let you have a little peace, because I see you aren’t fit to be bothered more. But really, if you’ll take my word for it, Edie
did
marry that man for your sake, to get his money, and you ought to appreciate the sacrifice when you think what it is for a girl to marry an old man, more especially when she’s as romantic, not to say as spooney, as poor little Edie.’

‘Then there’s the money, doncher know?’ said Hollebone bitterly. ‘But, I say, what’s the man’s name?’

‘That I’m not going to tell you,’ Julia said; ‘but he’s very, very rich, and very, very old, and that’s all you’re to know, and so now I’m off. I sha’n’t get home to-night, and poor little Edie thinks she’s dying, but it’s only influenza. Besides which you want rest too. You’ve been out all day, and haven’t had a thing to eat.’

Hollebone was struck with an idea.

‘You’ll never get to Blackstone Edge tonight,’ he said.

‘No; but I shall get more than half-way, and I can go on by the first train to—’ She stopped suddenly. ‘Why, you knew all about it,’ she said.

But he answered, —

‘No, I only guessed — not that it makes any difference. She’s ruined my life, anyhow. God forgive her. But, Julia, won’t you stay and have some tea before you go?’

She shook her head.

‘No, thanks, old boy,’ she said. ‘I know you’d like to be alone, and I can get some at Blythborough. I know it’s no use saying more, but
really
you are wrong about Edie.’

Hollebone groaned.

‘Please leave that alone. It — it hurts, you know. How are you going to get to Blythborough?’

‘Oh, I’m all right. I’ve got a chaise from Southwold that’ll take me there, and go the rest of the way back alone.’

‘Anyhow, I must see you into it,’ he said, and she consented.

Therefore they went together to the inn, where the carriage was being baited, and even, while the horses were put to, had some tea together and talked commonplace, after which Julia rode off, saying to herself as she pulled up the window, ‘Poor fellow, he’ll feel it now all in a lump! ‘and she was right. Anyhow, the hangers on at the inn said the one to the other, as they went back out of the dark cold air — a wind, arisen at sunset, having somewhat dispelled the fog—’ T’doctor looks a’most boosy — can’t hardly walk straight.’ To which another replied, ‘Ay, Bill, reckon you’d be a little tight too, just after a man came down to tell you ‘at you’d got ten thousand pounds a year.’

Mary Ann’s ears were remarkably sharp, and, doubtless, the whole of Hollebone’s history would have been known throughout the village had not Dr Hammond’s entry forced her to retreat to the kitchen; but the news of his increment of fortune was noised abroad almost as soon as he knew it himself. But Hollebone, reaching the house once more, stumbled up the stairs in the darkness to his room. At the door a sudden rush of blood to his head and access of heat made him stagger and almost fall at full length; but recovering himself, in his need for air, he went to the window, and leaning on the sill, looked out into the night.

A stillness as of death was on everything, save that the wind brought down with it the noise that the wheels of the carriage made in bearing Julia home, and as that too died away in the distance, the murmur of the sea alone was audible, and everything was bathed in blessed darkness — not even a star glinted through the mist, only from the room below one little stream of yellow light, escaping the blind, fell like a narrow bar out into the garden — otherwise a feeling of deep rest, and as the sea murmured on, its very sound was restful, and within his brain the whirl of thoughts caused a feeling of numbness as of an opiate; for thought drove away thought and despair, despair, so that his brain, from very inability to grasp one settled idea, must needs abstain from work, and rest. Only, he knew that the feel of the cool air on his hot face was grateful to him, and that the darkness was like coolness to his eyes, and the silence to his ears.

Suddenly, through the mist upon the sea, shone a veiled glory of yellow light, as the moonbeams, struggling to be free to kiss the earth, broke tumultuous through a rift in the fog, and drove a golden trail across the sea, and from the garden beneath, where erstwhile blessed silence reigned, burst the tumultuous flood of a redbreast’s song, rendered louder by the stillness. For it is the fashion with the redbreast through the month of February, even on into March, at nightfall, after the world is newly hid in darkness, if the nights be middling warm, to offer up in sudden mellow song, as sudden hushed, its thankful praise that yet another day is safely sped, bringing it the nearer to the joys of spring and nesting.

But the sight of the yellow hazy light and the sound of the bird’s strain, momentary though they were, served to recall his thoughts to him, and with a moan like the death cry of a dumb creature he shut the casement, and dropped into a chair with a great aching in his throat and round his heart.

‘My aim in life is gone,’ he said, and prayed to God to kill him, or at least to let him cry, but the flood-gates of his nature were closed....

‘Mr Hollebone,’ a small voice said suddenly from out the stillness.

Hollebone started.

‘Who’s there?’ he said sharply, and the voice replied, —

‘It’s me, Gandy. Did she hit you? ‘cos you were crying.’

‘Who?’ asked Hollebone.

‘Ve lady.’

‘Yes, old man, she hit me very hard.’

‘When Mawy Ann slaps me I don’t cwy.’

‘That’s because you’re braver than I am. But what are you doing here anyhow?’

‘I wunned away and hided fwom papa’ cos he was goin’ to spank me.’

‘Was he, old boy?’ said Hollebone, rubbing his cheek over the wispy, strawlike thatching of the child’s head. ‘What have
you
been up to?’

‘I told him you were goin’ away, and he said I was a laïar, an’ I said no, ‘cos Mary Ann said’ at a gentleman had bwought you ten fousand pounds, an’ he said
vat
was a lie too — a
d — d
lie — an’ he was just gettin’ out of his chaïah to spank me, on y he tumbled back suddenly, and his face was all wed like a bloater, and his eyes standed out all over, an’ I was so fwightened, ‘cos he looked so funny, just like ve man vat was bwought in ve over day, an’ so I wunned upstairs and hided myself under ve bed, and when you came in I creeped out again, on’y you was lookin’ out of ve window, and—’

But Hollebone stopped him, a light breaking in on him.

‘Good gracious, child, are you telling the truth about your father?’

And Gandy answered, —

‘Yes, of course I am, an’ his mouf went all ovah on one saïde, an’ he slobbered awful! ‘Hollebone set the child off his knee, and rushing to the door, opened it and ran downstairs; but just as he reached the foot of the staircase Mary Ann ran out from the study crying, ‘For the Lord’s sake, Mr Hollebone, come, the master’s in a fit.’

The next few days were for Hollebone a sort of fool’s paradise, a rush of heavy wearing work, tearing alike to muscle and mind, and healthful alike for brawn and brain, making him, perforce, forbear to think. For the work of his own and Dr Hammond’s were supplemented by Dr Hammond himself, whose progress towards recovery was hindered in verisimilitude by a weight on his mind. The hemiplegia had left him for a time at least very weak, though paralysis hardly put in an appearance at all, except it might be in the twitching of the muscles of his drawn face, which seemed never to brighten except when Hollebone returned from his rounds, a thing which in itself was strange to those who observed it, for in the time before he and his partner had hardly agreed well together on any point, except to differ, and the doctor, in pique at finding an antagonist not to be overcome either by bluster or solid argument in matters social and political, had taken a dislike to him, as old men will, finding slights in trifles that no younger man would notice. But now a greater consideration had passed itself like a heavy hand over his brain, smoothing out the wrinkles of small mislikings, and this was neither the fear of death nor of punishment thereafter, for if ever man believed in his own righteousness, after his lights, more than another in this world it was Dr Hammond, for all his obstinacy. He was a man whom everyone, even his many patients, disliked or despised for his harmless little crotchets and hearty martinetry of character, and he lay tossing on his bed, with brows knit firm and wrinkled deep, a world of anxious thoughts in his eyes.

On the tenth day of his illness he lay still bedridden, towards dusk of the day. Hollebone entered, tired and mud bespattered, wet through to the skin with the torrents of rain that had fallen, his gait unsteady and rolling, even as it will be with one who has been for long hours in the saddle and is but newly dismounted.

‘How are you feeling to-night, doctor?’ he said cheerfully, and the doctor tossed uneasily.

‘Oh,’ he said querulously, ‘I’m getting well again. I was up for more than an hour this afternoon. I shall be out for a slight walk on the day after to-morrow, and in a week’s time I shall be soundly at work once more.’

Hollebone laughed, as one laughs at invalids, having care lest the laugh should seem derisive.

‘Now, my dear doctor,’ he said, ‘you will do nothing of the sort. You know you will not be fit to move, or at the least to do any work, for more than three weeks, and even then it will be very little. In the meanwhile the practice hardly suffers at all, tho’ I says it that oughtn’t. People, strange to say, have confidence in me tho’ I am so young.’

The doctor passed his hand across his forehead, on which the sweat stood clammy, begotten not by heat but cold in the mind.

‘Hollebone,’ he said, ‘I believe you are right. The worry would kill me. Not that I’m afraid to die, but it’s the children — My God, I have lost all my savings for years and years in some accursed mines, and now if I die, as I must do soon, they will go into the workhouse. After I have worked for my whole lifetime to lose it all! And then they told me that you have come into a fortune, and are going to leave me, and the practice will go to the devil. I’m getting too old, and after this fit I shall be good for hardly anything. I could starve, myself, well enough, but I am responsible in the sight of God for having brought my children into the world, and if they starve, and go to the devil, the sin will be mine, and I must face Him with that sin on my soul. Oh, my poor children! ‘and he burst into a passionate fit of weeping most frightful to think of — the lament of his soul for a long life that had ended in worse than — nothing.

Whether it was a generous impulse or a light breaking in upon him to show him how to spite himself, so to say, who can tell. (Let us, in Christ’s name, out of what charity there is in our minds, think the former.) Be that as it may, Hollebone said, —

‘Dr Hammond, for God’s sake do not take it so to heart. I will stop with you, and aid you in your practice, in spite of my fortune, which is nothing to me, and for the sake of your children, whom I have already learnt to love.’

The old doctor stopped in his sobbing, and objectionable little prig that he was, seized Hollebone’s hand, and would have kissed it, had he not drawn it away from very shame.

‘Don’t do that?’ he said, starting as though with pain, for he was wondering whether he had sacrificed himself out of love for his neighbour, or of dull despair at his loss of love. Nevertheless the doctor in his gratitude poured out torrents of thanks, likening his sacrifice to the visitation of an angel, or even to that of Christ Himself.