Recollections of Rosings (36 page)

    "He does, sir, but hadn't you better get yourselves out of this rain first?"

    "Oh thank God!" cried John Adams, then turning to Frank Burnett, asked, "Did you hear that, Frank? This man says Mr Barnaby knows about the accident. Are the ladies here then?" he asked, but before the man could answer, a window was thrown open above them and a man's voice called out, in some irritation, "What is going on down there, Thomas? Who is that with you?"

    "Mr Barnaby, sir, there's two gentlemen here. They say they are from the Rosings estate, looking for the young ladies who were in the accident, sir," answered Thomas.

    "Are they?" said the voice from above, this time a little less annoyed. "Well, they had better come indoors, then," and the window was pulled shut again.

    Thomas went to the door and rang the bell and soon they were admitted into a spacious, comfortable parlour, warmed by a large log fire. The servant who had opened the door took their sodden coats and hats and, going into the kitchen, returned directly with clean towels so they could dry their faces and hands. While they were doing so, a maid brought them hot drinks, which were most gratefully accepted. Thomas meanwhile took George around the house to the kitchen, while the two gentlemen waited in the parlour for Mr Barnaby.

    Frank Burnett was interested in the house, which had on its walls a variety of exotic souvenirs, but Mr Adams was most impatient, his anxiety for Lilian overwhelming for once his good manners.

    "Frank, what do you think? Do you really believe Lilian and Sally are here in this house?"

    A voice boomed behind them, "They certainly are and they are upstairs resting after their most dreadful ordeal." Descending the stairs was Mr Barnaby, a pleasant, cheerful-looking man and with him a kindly, middle-aged woman, who was clearly his wife. Both appeared eminently respectable and seemed rather bemused at what had happened that afternoon.

    "The young ladies have been very anxious indeed. Miss Harrison was most insistent that we should inform her mother they were safe. I was preparing to send Thomas over to Rosings with a message, when you turned up."

    Mr and Mrs Barnaby were keen at first to ascertain who the two men were before they agreed to bring the two young girls down to meet them, a fact that Mr Burnett thought did them great credit.

    "After all," he said later, "they had no means of knowing who we were. We may well have been blackguards bent on kidnapping the two young ladies."

    Mr Adams protested; he could not comprehend how anyone would think that he would do anything to harm one hair of Miss Lilian's head!

    Once Mr Burnett and Mr Adams had introduced themselves and explained how the young ladies came to be in the carriage and Mr Barnaby had then issued dire warnings about the dangers of letting two young women travel along country roads unprotected, Mrs Barnaby went upstairs and brought the girls down to the parlour. It transpired also that Lilian, not wishing to be separated from her, had claimed that Sally was her cousin, a fiction they were now all obliged to maintain.

    There was no mistaking their joy when Lilian and John Adams saw one another. It had already been explained to Mr and Mrs Barnaby that the pair were engaged to be married.

    "The ladies will both need to keep warm on the journey and I recommend that they should be seen by the physician, who will probably have them tucked up in bed for a few days," warned Mrs Barnaby. "They were both very wet indeed when we found them. And all because Miss Harrison insisted on trying to save the life of the unfortunate carter."

    Frank Burnett realised then that they had all been so concerned about Lilian and Sally, they had quite forgotten poor Sparks.

    "Where is he? Was he badly hurt?" he asked, only to be told that the man had been thrown so hard when his horse bolted, he had suffered a broken leg as well as concussion. He had been removed to the infirmary in the nearest town.

    "Miss Lilian insisted," said Sally, earning herself a black look from her erstwhile "cousin." "She said we could not leave him lying in the road. So we carried him over to the side and put him under some bushes, for shelter from the rain, but he groaned and moaned each time we touched him… it was terrible!" she said, with tears in her eyes.

    By this time Lilian, who had been standing beside John Adams, pleaded that she wished to be taken home, and Mr Burnett asked Mr Barnaby if he would be so kind as to have Thomas convey them to the road, where their carriage waited.

    Not only were the Barnabys happy to oblige, they supplied the travellers with scarves and rugs aplenty to keep them warm and insisted that they take blankets to wrap the two ladies in, before they sent them on their way, with many good wishes for their swift recovery.

    They set off, having thanked Mr and Mrs Barnaby profusely for their great kindness. It had turned out they had once been tenants on the Rosings estate, in the days when Mr Jonathan Bingley had been Lady Catherine de Bourgh's manager. Mr Barnaby was very complimentary indeed about Jonathan Bingley's stewardship of the estate. Following the death of Lady Catherine, Mr Barnaby, who had come into some money, had purchased the farm and land where they now lived.

    "When we said we were from Rosings, it was as though we had said the

magic word," Lilian explained. "After that Mr and Mrs Barnaby could not do enough for us."

    Lilian would have wished to tell them more, but she was beginning to feel the effects of her ordeal. As they reached the road and transferred to their carriage, they wrapped her up well, but she was too cold and weak to talk. Henceforth, they had to depend for most of their information upon Sally, who being younger and a good deal more resilient than her mistress, was able to tell the tale.

    It had been an extraordinary sequence of events.

    They had reached Redhill well in time, only to discover on arriving at the station that Mrs Fitzwilliam's train to Derby would not leave until one o'clock, due to a death on the railway line. A man had been killed; no one knew if he had committed suicide or had been accidentally run over by the train, but there had been officials and police everywhere, said Sally, explaining with her eyes wide with horror.

    "It was dreadful, the dead man still on the platform, his face covered with a coat. Mrs Fitzwilliam was most upset and Miss Lilian was in tears!" she said, shuddering at the memory.

    Despite that inauspicious beginning, they had settled Caroline in her seat and when the train was about to leave, said their farewells and returned to their vehicle to find the carter Mr Sparks complaining that his horse was out of sorts.

    "The poor creature looked like he were having a fit," said Sally, "frothing at the mouth and tossing his head all restless like."

    Mr Sparks had left them with the vehicle and gone to get the horse some medicine and when he returned some half an hour later, he had forcibly administered the concoction, pouring it down the horse's throat. Shortly afterwards, they had then set off for home, around two o'clock.

    "We had not gone far when we heard noises; gunshots, like someone shooting rabbits in the woods. We thought it were poachers; it got louder and nearer and the horse took fright and bolted. Try as he might, Mr Sparks could not hold him; he pulled the cart this way and that, then the horse broke loose and fled up the road and into the woods." Sally's vivid and terrifying account conveyed to them how close they had come to disaster.

    "Poor Mr Sparks, he tried to hang on but he were thrown onto the road and the cart pitched onto its side in the ditch. Miss Lilian and I, we clung to each other and screamed, I thought we would die, for sure. But then we fell upon each other, so we was not badly hurt. Miss Lilian has a bad bruise on her knee and my arms is all black and blue," she said, proceeding to tell how they had crawled out of the wrecked vehicle and tried to help Mr Sparks.

    "Miss Lilian said we could not leave him in the road or he would die. We tried to move him but he groaned something terrible, so we left him under a bush and walked until we found a crofter's cottage. The woman there had no one who could help, but she told us to go to the big house over the crest of the hill, where they had a carriage and servants who could take the carter to the apothecary in the village."

    "It was raining again and Miss Lilian and I had no umbrellas or anything; by the time we got to the house we must have looked real frights, because the housemaid who came to the door screamed and would not let us in. She ran away and then a man came and Miss Lilian pleaded with him and said we was from Rosings Park. I think Mrs Barnaby must have heard her through the open door, because she came at once and took us in. After that they was all very kind to us," she said, adding with a little giggle, "Miss Lilian told them we was cousins, so they would not send me off to the kitchen with the servants. She wanted me to stay with her. Mrs Barnaby was very kind; she had the maids bring up hot water and towels for us to wash and gave us hot soup and bread to eat.

    "But Miss Lilian wanted them to send a man to look for Mr Sparks, she kept telling them he would die. When Mr Barnaby came in, he sent Thomas and another lad to find Mr Sparks and take him to the apothecary, but when they came back they was not very hopeful. He had a broken leg, too, they said and the apothecary could not say if he would live.

    "Then Miss Lilian told them her mama would be sick with worry and she wanted to go home, but Mr Barnaby said no, he would not risk it in this weather, they might have another accident. He offered to send Thomas with a message to Rosings saying we'd be safe and Miss Lilian said she would write a note to her mama for Thomas to take. Mrs Barnaby got her some writing paper and a pen and ink, but just then, there was this great commotion in the yard and Mr Barnaby opened a window to look out and Miss Lilian recognised Mr Adams's voice. She cried out then in happiness like and we hugged each other, because we knew we was found at last!"

    Sally's tale concluded on such a high note as to suggest that it seemed to her that it had all been a big adventure, something she would tell and re-tell to all her friends and family for years to come. Not much younger, but certainly sturdier than Lilian and better able to withstand the rigours of their perilous journey, she would recover more easily. She was cold and a little weary, but not injured or unwell.

    Lilian, on the other hand, was clearly suffering from exposure and extreme fatigue. Despite the best efforts of Mrs Barnaby to keep her warm, she appeared to have caught a chill. She had begun to shiver and by the time they had reached the entrance to the Dower House, was too weak to walk and had to be carried from the carriage.

    Catherine had been watching from the window of her room, which afforded her a clear view of the road, for what had seemed like interminable hours. Refusing all food, taking only a cup of tea, she kept vigil, until in the distance she saw a man on horseback approaching the house. It was George, who had ridden on ahead of the others to bring her the news.

    Rushing downstairs, she flung open the door and demanded to know, "George, have they found them? Are they safe?"

    "Yes, ma'am, Miss Lilian and Sally are in the carriage with Mr Burnett and Mr Adams; they should soon be here, ma'am."

    "Thank God," was all she said, as she waited beside the open door until the carriage drew up at the gate. She watched then as Mr Burnett lifted Lilian out and carried her into the house.

    Everything had been made ready, because no one had known in what state the travellers would return. But when Catherine saw her daughter carried in, pale and quiet, while Sally had stepped out of the vehicle and walked in the door on her own two feet, she was afraid something dreadful had befallen her. Perhaps there had been an accident and Lilian had been badly hurt. Her mind raced ahead, anxious and afraid.

    Having carried Lilian into her room and laid her on the bed, Frank Burnett turned to reassure Catherine.

    "It is probably only a chill, they have been through a terrible ordeal, but there is no time to lose, I must get the doctor at once," he said.

    He went immediately, taking Mr Adams with him, confident that Catherine did not need the added strain of John Adams's anxiety at this time. She understood the intention behind his actions and was grateful indeed for his thoughtfulness.

    They returned from Hunsford with Dr Bannerman, who together with his partner Dr Whitelaw had attended upon the Harrison family for several years. He examined both girls and pronounced Sally to be un-injured save for some bruising for which he recommended treatment.

    Lilian had been his patient since she was a child. Hers had never been a robust constitution, less likely to withstand colds and chills than Sally's. Despite the kind ministrations of the Barnabys, the excessive exposure to cold and rain which Lilian had endured had clearly combined to give her a heavy cold. He saw no sign of infection yet, but they must guard against pneumonia, he warned.

    Dr Bannerman, reluctant to alarm Mrs Harrison, was nevertheless very insistent that Lilian must be kept warm, persuaded to take the medication he prescribed regularly throughout the night, and get as much rest as was possible. He left, promising to call again in the morning to check on her progress.

    After Dr Bannerman departed, Catherine had thanked Mr Burnett with tears in her eyes. "Frank, what can I say? I cannot imagine what we would have done had you not been here… Please accept my thanks…" but he would not let her continue; gently and lovingly reassuring her that he wanted no expressions of gratitude, he was thankful that he had been there and able to do something to help find her daughter. Promising to return the following morning and urging her to get some rest as well, he left them.