IN WHICH A PERSON COMES TO MAKE A VISIT TO THE VICARAGE.
THE talking in the hall continued, but Catherine Bell, the vicar’s servant, ran upstairs, and seeing her master calling unheeded over the banister, she accosted him from the landing below in these words, with a delighted grin on her ruddy face —
“Oh, sir, beggin’ yer pardon, please, there be a bam coom.”
“A child come. What child? Whose child? What’s the meaning of all this? Is that Tom Shackles I hear downstairs? Will you tell him to come up to the lobby? I shall never know what it is otherwise; and come yourself also.”
And he put his head into the drawing-room and said, “Something that will interest you, my love. It never rains but it pours. A baby arrived, and coming up.”
“Bring the child up with you; that is, if it is fit to come up, of course. How do you do, Shackles? Come up for a moment; we want to hear what it is.”
“Here they come, dear,” he said, returning to the drawingroom, where his wife was standing near the door in a high state of excitement.
“Is he coming?” she asked.
“I’ll carry it. Gie’t to me, Tom, will ye?” said Catherine Bell, in a giggle of ecstacy, coming up the stairs with the baby lying across in her arms, looking like a bale of flannels, with a tweed shawl folded round it, and some thick veils pinned over its face.
“Bring the darling here, near the candles,” said kind Dolly Jenner to her maid. “Lay it on my lap.”
“The bonny bab! it’s sleepin’, ma’am.”
“Oh! the darling!” pursued the vicar’s wife. “We must take care, Kitty, not to let the light on its eyes, the poor little thing!”
“‘Twill be a bonny wee thing, I’ll warrant ye, ma’am. Shall I unpin the clout from its face?”
“Do, Kitty, quickly,” answered the lady, who was looking down on the lace veil — which indicated the rank of this little outcast’s people — longing, if it were possible, to see through it to the little slumbering face that was hidden from her eager eyes.
While they were thus employed, the vicar talked with Tom Shackles near the door.
Tom was the parish clerk, and followed other callings too. A tall fellow, of a long and solemn face, with a somewhat golden tint, and thick blackhair streaked with white, anda verybluechin.
“As ’twas a matter for your reverence, they sent round the corner for me. You’d say the woman was dyin’ a’most, and she calls for the sacrament. She’s down at the George, they’ve got her to bed. She says there be them on her tracks that would hurt the child, and that’s why she could not hold her peace till the babby was in charge o’ your reverence. She asked was your wife living, and when she heard so, she took heart and thanked God, and cried a bit. She did not come by the mail-coach. She got out at Scardon Hall, and took a chaise across. She thinks she’s followed, and she’s took wi’ the creepings at every stir in the hall. The doctor’s wi’ her noo. She was bad settin’ out, and she’s liggin’ in her bed now. I thought she was a bit strackle-brained, I did truly, when I saw her first. I couldn’t tell what she was drivin’ at; but she knew well enough herself. She was troubled in mind, and freated terrible about the babby, and that betwattled I ‘most thought she was daft.”
“But she’s not mad?” asked the vicar.
“Na, na, not a bit; only put about, and scared like.”
“Where does she come from?”
“South — Lonnon, I take it — a long way. She looks like death ‘most.”
“Did she mention her name?” asked the vicar.
“Ay, sir, I wrote it down here.”
And he plucked a scrap of paper from his waistcoat and read, Hileria Pullen.”
“Hileria Pullen! Dear me!” said the vicar, with the scrap of paper in his fingers, and turning to his wife, who, with Kitty Bell, was busy over the child. “Why, here’s that woman, Hileria Pullen, actually arrived at the George, and that’s the child, and the woman’s very ill. You saw her, didn’t you? What kind of person does she seem to you to be? respectable? “asked the vicar.
“That she does, sir; yes, a decent, farrantly woman, none o’ your fussocks, you know. A thin atomy of a woman, but well dressed. Not young, nor good-lookin’.”
“All the better, perhaps,” said the vicar.
“Thin and white-faced; fluke-mouthed, you’d say, sir.”
“No, Tom, not that phrase,” said the vicar.
“And hollow in the cheeks — dish-faced, you know. But I couldn’t see very well, for the candle was little better than a pig-tail-and they’s dark enough-except just where a twine of the candle-light fell.”
“And she wants to see me? “said the vicar, lighting a bedroom candle.
“Just so, your reverence.”
“And the sacrament, you’re sure?”
“Certain, sir.”
Come in here, Tom. There is some of the port open from last Sunday. You will carry it down; the rest we shall find there.”
And into the vicar’s study they stepped.
There, in a corner under the secretary, the bottle stood, also the simple silver cup and the patten. These the clerk put up, while the vicar took his hat, and coat, and thick woollen gloves, and his stick.
“I’m going, my love, to see the poor woman; down to the George; only a step,” said Doctor Jenner, with his mufflers on and his hat in his hand, extinguishing the candle he had just set down.
“And what is to be done with this poor little thing, Hugh?
I wish so much it might remain.”
“Certainly, darling, whatever you like best-exactly what you think best; and I shan’t be very long away, and you shall hear all when I come back. And hadn’t I better send Mrs. Joliffe up here? she knows everything that ought to be done, and we pass her door on the way to the George.”
“Oh, thank you, Hugh, darling-the very thing. It is so thoughtful of you. You do always think of everything.”
And running up close to him for her farewell, she kissed him with her arms about him, on the lobby, she added, in a hurried whisper —
“You darling, I am so delighted!”
Smiling, the vicar ran down, and, opening the hall-door, the beautiful moonlight scene was before him. The solitary old trees in the foreground, the lake with its dark expanse and glimmering lights, and the mountains rising round like mighty shadows.
“A beautiful night, Tom,” said the vicar, as they stood for a moment on the hard, dry ground before his door.
“A black frost belike, sir,” answered Tom.
“The countless watch-fires of an unseen host, Tom,” said the vicar, looking up at the glorious field of stars above him, and then down again on the beautiful lake, and across it to the huge, phantom-like mountains; and then, a little to the left, the antique George Inn close by met his view and recalled him. So with a sigh he said-
“Let us get on, Tom; we have a serious duty before us. Poor woman! I trust we may find her better.”
And walking on the short green grass, beneath which the frozen earth echoed to their tread, he approached the one red light that glowed from its porch.
“Just tell Mrs. Joliffe, Tom, as we pass, that the mistress wants her at the house this moment.”
“May God send all for the best,” murmured the vicar as, alone, he raised his eyes to heaven. “But come whatsoever his wisdom may decree, the poor little thing is welcome to share with us.”
Hereupon he entered the door of the George, which was still open. He inquired for the sick woman.
The doctor was still with her, and was giving her hot negus. “A very good thing, and there can’t be any fever, then, I take it,” said the vicar, relieved.
“I’ll go up-stairs, Tom, and see the doctor,” he said, addressing Shackles, who had joined him; “and I’ll take the bag in my hand,” he added, not caring that the silver vessels of the church should run a risk of accidental irreverence; “and I will call for you, Tom, as soon as you are required.”
Tom sat down at the bar for a chat with Mrs. Winder, and the vicar mounted the stairs with a gentle and measured step.