A Life's Secret Part 11

From half-past eight to ten, three mornings in the week, Dr. Bevary gave advice gratis; and Mrs. Baxendale was on this one to have gone to him--rather a formidable visit, as it seemed to her, and perhaps the very thought of it had helped to make her worse.

'What is to be done?' repeated Mary.

'Could you not wait upon him, child, and describe my symptoms?'

suggested the sick woman, after weighing the dilemma in her mind. 'It might do as well. Perhaps he can write for me.'

'Oh, mother, I don't like to go!' exclaimed Mary, in the impulse of the moment.

'But, my dear, what else is to be done?' urged Mrs. Baxendale. 'We can't ask a great gentleman like that to come to me.'

'To be sure--true. Oh, yes, I'll go, mother.'

Mary got herself ready without another word. Mrs. Baxendale, a superior woman for her station in life, had brought up her daughter to be thoroughly dutiful. It had seemed a formidable task to the mother, the going to this physician, this 'great gentleman;' it seemed a far worse to the daughter, and especially the having to explain symptoms and ailments at second-hand. But the great physician was a very pleasant man, and would nod good-humouredly to Mary, when by chance he met her in the street.

'Tell him, with my duty, that I am not equal to coming myself,' said Mrs. Baxendale, when Mary stood ready in her neat straw bonnet and light shawl. 'I ought to have gone weeks ago, and that's the truth.

Don't forget to describe the pain in my right side, and the flus.h.i.+ngs of heat.'

So Mary went on her way, and was admitted to the presence of Dr. Bevary, where she told her tale with awkward timidity.

'Ah! a return of the old weakness that she had years ago,' remarked the doctor. 'I told her she must be careful. Too ill to get up? Why did she not come to me before?'

'I suppose, sir, she did not much like to trouble you,' responded Mary.

'She has been hoping from week to week that Mr. Rice would do her good.'

'_I_ can't do her good, unless I see her,' cried the doctor. 'I might prescribe just the wrong thing, you know.'

Mary repressed her tears.

'I am afraid, then, she must die, sir. She said this morning she thought she should never get up from her bed again.'

'I'll step round some time to-day and see her,' said Dr. Bevary. 'But now, don't you go chattering that to the whole parish. I should have every sick person in it expecting me, as a right, to call and visit them.'

He laughed pleasantly at Mary as he spoke, and she departed with a glad heart. The visit had been so much less formidable in reality than in antic.i.p.ation.

As she reached Daffodil's Delight, she did not turn into it, but continued her way to the house of Mrs. Hunter. Mary Baxendale took in plain sewing, and had some in hand at present from that lady. She inquired for Dobson. Dobson was Mrs. Hunter's own maid, and a very consequential one.

'Not able to get Miss Hunter's night-dresses home on Sat.u.r.day!' grumbled Dobson, when she appeared and heard what Mary had to say. 'But you must, Mary Baxendale. You promised them, you know.'

'I should not have promised had I known that my mother would have grown worse,' said Mary. 'A sick person requires a deal of waiting on, and there's only me. I'll do what I can to get them home next week, if that will do.'

'I don't know that it will do,' snapped Dobson. 'Miss Florence may be wanting them. A promise is a promise, Mary Baxendale.'

'Yes, it will do, Mary,' cried Florence Hunter, darting forward from some forbidden nook, whence she had heard the colloquy, and following Mary down the steps into the street. A fair sight was that child to look upon, with her white muslin dress, her blue ribbons, her flowing hair, and her sweet countenance, radiant as a summer's morning. 'Mamma is not downstairs yet, or I would ask her--she is ill, too--but I know I do not want them. Never you mind them, and never mind Dobson either, but nurse your mother.'

Dobson drew the young lady back, asking her if such behaviour was not enough to 'scandalize the square;' and Mary Baxendale returned home.

Dr. Bevary paid his visit to Mrs. Baxendale about mid-day. His practised eye saw with certainty what others were only beginning to suspect--that Death had marked her. He wrote a prescription, gave some general directions, said he would call again, and told Mrs. Baxendale she would be better out of bed than in it.

Accordingly, after his departure, she got up and went into the front room, which they made their sitting-room. But the exertion caused her to faint; she was certainly on this day much worse than usual. John Baxendale was terribly concerned, and did not go back to his work after dinner. When the bustle was over, and she seemed pretty comfortable again, somebody burst into the room, without knocking or other ceremony.

It was one of the Shucks, a young man of eight, in tattered clothes, and a shock head of hair. He came to announce that Mrs. Hunter's maid was asking for Mary, and little Miss Hunter was there, too, and said, might she come up and see Mrs. Baxendale.

Both were requested to walk up. Dobson had brought a gracious message from her mistress (not graciously delivered, though), that the sewing might wait till it was quite convenient to do it; and Florence produced a jar, which she had insisted upon carrying herself, and had thereby split her grey kid gloves, it being too large for her hands.

'It is black-currant jelly, Mrs. Baxendale,' she said, with the prettiest, kindest air, as she freely sat down by the sick woman's side.

'I asked mamma to let me bring some, for I remember when I was ill I only liked black-currant jelly. Mamma is so sorry to hear you are worse, and she will come to see you soon.'

'Bless your little heart, Miss Florence!' exclaimed the invalid. 'The same dear child as ever--thinking of other people and not of yourself.'

'I have no need to think for myself,' said Florence. 'Everything I want is got ready for me. I wish you did not look so ill. I wish you would have my uncle Bevary to see you. He cures everybody.'

'He has been kind enough to come round to-day, Miss,' spoke up John Baxendale, 'and he'll come again, he says. I hope he will be able to do the missis good. As you be a bit better,' he added to his wife, 'I think I'll go back to my work.'

'Ay, do, John. There's no cause for you to stay at home. It was some sort of weakness, I suppose, that came over me.'

John Baxendale touched his hair to Florence, nodded to Dobson, and went downstairs and out. Florence turned to the open window to watch his departure, ever restless, as a healthy child is apt to be.

'There's Uncle Henry!' she suddenly called out.

Mr. Henry Hunter was walking rapidly down Daffodil's Delight. He encountered John Baxendale as the man went out of his gate.

'Not back at work yet, Baxendale?'

'The missis has been taken worse, sir,' was the man's reply. 'She fainted dead off just now, and I declare I didn't know what to think about her. She's all right again, and I am going round.'

At that moment there was heard a tapping at the window panes, and a pretty little head was pushed out beneath them, nodding and laughing, 'Uncle Henry! How do you do, Uncle Henry?'

Mr. Henry Hunter nodded in reply, and pursued his way, unconscious that the lynx eye of Miss Gwinn was following him, like a hawk watching its prey.

It happened that she had penetrated Daffodil's Delight, hoping to catch Austin Clay at his dinner, which she supposed he might be taking about that hour. She held his address at Peter Quale's from Mrs. Thornimett.

Her object was to make a further effort to get from him what he knew of the man she sought to find. Scarcely had she turned into Daffodil's Delight, when she saw Mr. Henry Hunter at a distance. Away she tore after him, and gained upon him considerably. She reached the house of John Baxendale just as he, Baxendale, was re-entering it; for he had forgotten something he must take with him to the yard. Turning her head upon Baxendale for a minute as she pa.s.sed, Miss Gwinn lost sight of Mr.

Henry Hunter.

How had he disappeared? Into the ground? or into a house? or down any obscure pa.s.sage that might be a short cut between Daffodil's Delight, and some other Delight? or into that cab that was now whirling onwards at such a rate? That he was no longer visible, was certain: and Miss Gwinn was exceeding wroth. She came to the conclusion that he had seen her, and hid himself in the cab, though she had not heard it stop.

But she had seen him spoken to from the window of that house, where the workman had just gone in, and she determined to make inquiries there, and so strode up the path. In the Shucks' kitchen there were only three or four children, too young to give an answer. Miss Gwinn picked her way through them, over the dirt and grease of the floor, and ascended to the sitting-room above. She stood a minute to take in its view.

John Baxendale was on his knees, hunting among some tools at the bottom of a closet; Mary was meekly exhibiting the progress of the nightgowns to Dobson, who sat in state, sour enough to turn milk into curd; the invalid was lying, pale, in her chair; while the young lady appeared to be a.s.sisting at the tool-hunting, on her knees also, and chattering as fast as her tongue could go. All looked up at the apparition of the stranger, who stood there gazing in upon them.

'Can you tell me where a gentleman of the name of Lewis lives?' she began, in an indirect, diplomatic, pleasant sort of way, for she no doubt deemed it well to discard violence for tact. In the humour she was in yesterday, she would have said, sharply and imperiously, 'Tell me the name of that man I saw now pa.s.s your gate.'

John Baxendale rose. 'Lewis, ma'am? I don't know anybody of the name.'

A pause. 'It is very unfortunate,' she mildly resumed. 'I am in search of the gentleman, and have not got his address. I believe he belongs to this neighbourhood. Indeed, I am almost sure I saw him talking to you just now at the gate--though my sight is none of the clearest from a distance. The same gentleman to whom that young lady nodded.'

'That was my uncle Henry,' called out the child.

'Who?' cried she, sharply.

'It was Mr. Henry Hunter, ma'am, that was,' spoke up Baxendale.