The Apothecary's Daughter Part 54

"Here, here," Lilly said as she lifted her small gla.s.s. She glanced at her father and glimpsed tears rising to fill his blue eyes. She saw him glance at Maude, and answering tears brighten her eyes as well.

"I have always had the best of mothers a" Mary began.

Lilly found herself nodding to this. She too had gained the best of mothers. In many ways, Maude Mimpurse had long been a second mother to her.

"But now I have a brother-"

"Now, Mary, I ain't really." Charlie could still not grasp the change in their relations.h.i.+p, and Lilly could barely blame him, so recently had the facts come to light.

"And sister." She smiled at Lilly, eyes s.h.i.+ning. Mary's voice was hoa.r.s.e when she added, "And Father."

Tears spilled down Charles Haswell's freshly shaven cheeks. Lilly was distracted by Charlie, however, his face bunched up into a grimace of confusion and working himself up to a question. Hoping to divert him from asking about Mr. Mimpurse, Lilly said to him, "You don't like cake, do you, Charlie?"

He looked nearly indignant at this. "Indeed I do. You know I do. Father! Lilly forgot I like cake. Why, it's my favorite."

Sharing a knowing glance with Lilly, Mary said, "Then you shall have the first piece, Charlie. Would you like a little piece or a large one?"

"A gurt big one, Mary, if you please."

The moment was saved.

The evening was the most delightful in recent memory. They all stayed and did the was.h.i.+ng up together, and then Mrs. Mimpurse shooed the girls off to bed, saying she would finish putting the dishes away on her own. She reminded them they had a big day ahead of them, and the London coach would not wait, should they oversleep. At the kitchen door, her father gently embraced Mary before bidding her a good night. Lilly wanted to throw her arms around her friend a no, sister a too, but Mary was already backing away, waving goodbye on her way up to bed. Ah, well. They would have a whole week together in London.

The next morning, Lilly awoke early, taking a great deal of time with her appearance. She felt unaccountably nervous about returning to London. Her gowns would no longer be the latest, and her hands were calloused from long hours with the pestle. Thank goodness for gloves. She wished she might have thought to ask Mary to come over and help her with her hair. Not as a servant might, but as sisters might help one another. She felt giddy at the thought, and at the adventure ahead. She packed the items she had just used brush and comb, tooth sponge and alum into her valise and checked once more to make certain her money was in her reticule. Putting on her hat and cloak, she slipped the reticule onto her wrist and left her bedchamber, descending the stairs with no effort to be quiet. If her father was not yet awake, he ought to be rising. He insisted he wanted to be there to see them off. But it was not her father who stood in the laboratorykitchen, awaiting her noisy descent.

Mrs. Mimpurse stood there, a shawl thrown hastily over her nightdress, hair down, face a broken. Tears and anguish marred her countenance and Lilly froze in shocked horror. She knew the truth even before Mrs. Mimpurse could form the world-darkening words.

Thus ends the story of the apothecary. Although he has ceased to exist in name, his art still survives, and though stripped of much of its ancient mystery, it is likely to live, so long as suffering humanity has need of drugs and medicines to alleviate the ills to which the flesh is heir.

C. J. S. THOMPSON, MYSTERY AND ART OF THE APOTHECARY.

Sweet Memory! wafted by thy gentle gale,

Oft up the stream of Time I turn my sail.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

Remember Man as you Pasby as You Are Now So once Was i as i am Now so Must You Bee Make Peace with Christ And FOLLOW ME 1715 EPITAPH, WILTs.h.i.+RE NOTES AND QUERIES.

CHAPTER 48.

ary Helen Mimpurse had died in her sleep. And according .to her mother, and to Mr. Shuttleworth who had attended her, peacefully. No sign of a fit marred her lovely, placid features, nor her pale fingers. Mr. Shuttleworth said he had seen the like before, in the asylum where he once worked, though he did not pretend to understand the cause of death.

Lilly did not think she could have loved Mary more for knowing they were sisters, but she did mourn her loss more deeply, more enduringly, for that knowledge.

How Lilly wished she had known the truth sooner, even while she understood her father's and Mrs. Mimpurse's reasons for keeping it secret. She wished she might have explored, embraced, relished the strange and wonderful fact that she had a sister. Had she not always longed for one? Someone with whom to share frocks and courts.h.i.+p confessions. Someone to favour.

Now Lilly longed to look once more into Mary's dear face and recognize all that she had been blind to. Charles Haswell's features softened by Maude Mimpurse's rounder ones. Charles Haswell's and Charlie's blue eyes. The ginger hue of the Haswell hair, though a lighter wash upon Mary's fine silken strands. And what of Mary's infallible memory for the most complex recipes? So like Lilly's with physic.

Now Lilly felt guilty for the slight superiority of situation, intellect, and even beauty she had felt toward Mary over the years. How mistaken I was! Mary, she concluded, was the wiser, lovelier woman twice over.

As the days, then weeks, then months pa.s.sed, regret for the past transformed into pining for a future that would never be. Lilly thought of all she and Mary would miss together. They would have been aunts to each other's children. Their children close cousins. She thought of the hours they would have enjoyed, sitting together in Mary's coffeehouse-for it would have been hers nibbling on scones and village news and the triumphs of their children and grandchildren.

What comfort there would have been in beholding that familiar face and seeing the lines and reeves there, as on her own. They would have grown old together, yet seen in each other the young women they had once been, long after everyone else saw but two grizzled crones. Long after their husbands were gone men did seem to die the sooner they would have bided together as they had "a day back agone," as Mrs. Kilgrove would say. Of course all of this was a.s.suming Mary would have been allowed to wed.

Lilly would have seen to it somehow.

Charlie still visited the churchyard, as he always had. He no longer went to count dead men. He went instead to talk to Mary. He sat in the sun, his back resting against Sir Henry's headstone. Lilly did not think the old baronet would have minded.

Poor Charlie, Lilly thought. He had lost another woman he loved. Lilly prayed nothing would happen to her.

Since the fire, they had begun referring their patients to Shuttleworth's-or even to Dr. Foster, as the case required. Several of their oldest patients, Mrs. Kilgrove and Mr. Owen to name two, still insisted they would see a Haswell and no other, and she and her father did what they could for them.

That spring after Mary's death, Lilly and her father tended the physic garden together, and throughout the summer months, sold the herbs and simples to Shuttleworth and other medical men in the county, but also to the proprietor of The George, and other hostelries which had no kitchen-garden of their own. She and even her father, when he was able helped in the coffeehouse now that Mary was gone. Though neither her father nor Maude would likely admit it, Lilly thought the two old friends took great comfort in each other's company.

With the arrival of September, Lilly finally received a letter from Francis Baylor. Her heart squeezed at the sight of it and, hand to her chest, she stepped into the garden to read it.

Dear Miss Haswell, I have only just learned of Miss Mary's death. I was stunned and deeply sorrowed as no doubt everyone in Bedsley Priors must be, but especially you and Mrs. Mimpurse. You have my deepest sympathies. Had I known in time, I would have returned for the funeral, in hopes of being some comfort to your families at such a dark hour.

Though my lodgings seem to change with much regularity, I know I ought to have given you or your father some way to contact me. I had my reasons for not doing so at the time, but they seem foolish now, given what has happened. I hope you will forgive me.

I am here in London studying to become a fully qualified apothecary. Under the Apothecaries' Act, I need to acquire a certificate from the Court of Examiners to practice as an apothecary. But I did not tell you my plans, because in all truth I was not certain I should be able to afford the schooling, nor that I would succeed in pa.s.sing the examinations. You know I have never been a quick studenta.

"Nonsense," she breathed. "That was only as a lad. When you did not apply yourself."

a But I am succeeding. Beyond my five-year apprentices.h.i.+p with your father, the new Act requires instruction in anatomy, botany, chemistry, materia medica, and physic, in addition to six months' practical hospital experience. I am now undergoing the latter here at Guy's Hospital. G.o.d willing, I will set out my own s.h.i.+ngle one day, if you can believe it. I occasionally see Dr. Graves about the place, though he is master to my pupil. I suppose his return to London means you will soon be returning as well?

I have taken your advice and made the acquaintance of Mr. Lippert and his son and daughter. They have made me most welcome on several occasions. Miss Lippert is quite as charming as you led me to believe, and I must thank you for making the family known to me. The felicity of their society has given my life in London a congeniality I had not hoped to find. Mr. Lippert has even offered to sell his shop to me, hinting that I might have a wife in the bargain. He is only jesting, of course.

Lilly inhaled sharply. Is he? she wondered.

Francis went on to describe his studies at both the laboratory and gardens of the Apothecaries' Society as well as his time spent "walking the wards" at Guy's. He ended by giving his address and asking how her father fared. He sent his best to Mr. Haswell and said he would write to Mrs. Mimpurse himself.

He signed it FB.

No love, no warmly, no sincerely. Her spirits sank. But after nearly a year, what had she expected?

Still, Lilly wrote back to Francis, at the address he had given, and described her father's ongoing symptoms. She also told Francis in the most dispa.s.sionate terms of the demise of Haswell's as he knew it. She was surprised when he wrote back directly and suggested her father come to London. Thomas Bromley and a master apothecary at the teaching hospital were working with glandular and lung fever and might be able to help him. He said he would have suggested it earlier, but believed Charles Haswell would never consider leaving his shop as long as its doors remained open. Francis even offered to share his lodgings. It seemed there was a small pantry her father might have for nothing. She expected he was teasing with this last part and doubted her father would be interested in submitting himself to hospital care in any case.

She was wrong.

Within a matter of days, she and her father had made plans to travel to London. Aunt and Uncle Elliott had extended several invitations over the preceding months and wrote to say they would be delighted to have her stay with them for as long as she liked, Charles as well. But her father was adamant about going to the hospital directly. He was tired of being ill and wanted to start treatment as soon as possible.

Lilly was relieved they would not be arriving during the height of the season, but rather the quiet of autumn. They traveled by post to London and, from the coaching inn, hired a hackney to take them the rest of the distance to Guy's.

Lilly had worn black and grey mourning clothes for six months, as custom decreed for the pa.s.sing of a sister. But now, a year after Mary's death, she wore one of her more reserved promenade dresses from her London days, no longer in fas.h.i.+on and creased from the journey. She found she could not care. Her thoughts were of Francis. She longed to see him, but felt increasingly jittery and ill at ease as they neared the hospital.

There it was. The gate, the tan and grey building were familiar. Yet how long ago it seemed since she had been there with Dr. Graves. She wondered if she would see him again, and felt nervous at the prospect. She hoped he held no ill will toward her.

Taking her father's arm and a deep breath, they walked past the columns and arched doorway, and into the main corridor.

She was surprised to find Dr. Graves awaiting them in the receiving office. His smile was sincere, if reserved, as he stepped forward to greet them.

"Mr. Haswell." He shook her father's hand. "Welcome. And Miss Haswell." He bowed, then faltered. "I a trust you are well."

She nodded. "I am. And you?"

He pursed his lips, considering. "Like a fish tossed back in the pond."

She opened her mouth to reply but hesitated. Did he mean that he was relieved to be back in his element, or that he felt rejected? Before she could fas.h.i.+on some suitable reply, he returned his attention to her father.

"Dr. Bromley has been called away, I am afraid. But I have agreed to oversee your case until he returns." With that, Dr. Graves excused himself, saying he would see if the bed for Mr. Haswell was ready.

Francis appeared along the corridor. His pace hastened to a nearjog at seeing them, and he smiled broadly. Reaching them, he shook her father's hand vigorously. "Mr. Haswell, I am so glad you've come. You've arrived just when you wrote you would."

"Yes, we made good time by post."

He turned to Lilly, suddenly more reticent. "Miss Haswell." He bowed, and she curtsied stiffly, surprised at his cool greeting.

Graves rejoined them, and Lilly saw Francis hesitate. "Ah, here's Dr. Graves." She noticed him glance from the physician to her and back again.

"Dr. Bromley has quite a schedule of tests and treatments in store for you, Mr. Haswell," Dr. Graves said. "I trust we shall have you stronger very soon."

Her father nodded. "Excellent. When do we start?"

"Tomorrow morning. Let's get you settled into a room for a good night's sleep first."

Her father turned to her and said warmly, "I will bid you farewell here, my dear. I am sure you will not want to venture into the men's ward."

"Indeed no." She received her father's kiss and embraced him in return. She whispered, "I shall pray for you every day."

"I count on it." He held her at arm's length and looked directly into her face, as though committing her features to memory. As though in final farewell. Lilly felt her lips begin to tremble and forced them into a smile.

"Never fear," Francis a.s.sured her. She felt the barest graze of his hand at her elbow. "He will be in excellent hands with your Dr. Graves here."

She felt her smile falter and her brow pucker at his final words.

"Well," Dr. Graves said to her father. "Why don't I show you the way." He glanced back at Francis, brows raised. "Mr. Baylor?"

Francis was still looking at Lilly. "I shall be along directly. I shall just see Miss Haswell out. Hail a hackney for her."

Dr. Graves nodded, stiffly resigned. "Very well." And led her father away.

With a sweep of his hand, Francis gestured Lilly toward the entrance and walked beside her. She was filled with nervous antic.i.p.ation at being alone with him. Would he say anything? Should she? Her palms were damp, while her mouth felt suddenly dry.

"Staying with your aunt and uncle?" he asked.

"Yes. In Mayfair."

He nodded. "How does Mrs. Mimpurse fare?"

"As well as can be expected. Still wearing her mourning, though."

Somberly, he reached over and pressed her hand. Her whole arm tingled. "Again, I am sorry I was not there."

She nodded her understanding, disappointed he had released her hand so quickly. An awkward silence followed, broken only by the sound of their echoing footfalls. They had never been so stiff and formal in one another's company before. Had it been too long? Were things irreparable between them?

As they emerged through the columns into the courtyard, Lilly asked too brightly, "And how are the Lipperts?"

He pursed his lips. "Fine, last I saw them." They reached the gutter and Francis hailed a hackney carriage approaching from up the street. "I am afraid I haven't visited of late. I've been busy preparing for exams." He turned to look at her, hesitated, then said, "Your Dr. Graves has never given his reason for leaving Bedsley Priors. I admit I wondered. When I received your letter, I deduced it was something to do with Foster and the fire. I suppose he is waiting until he fully establishes himself here before-"