august 16th.
they picked her up, poor vere! the man who loved her, and the servants who had known her since she was a child; picked her up and laid her on a board which did duty for a stretcher, rolled up a pillow for her head, and drew her golden hair back from her face. mr carstairs took off his coat and laid it over her as she lay. his face was as white as hers, and all drawn with pain, while hers was quite still and quiet. so still! i was afraid to look at her, or to ask any questions.
will put me down in a corner, and i sat there trembling and sick at heart, watching the little procession go round the corner of the house. i thought they had forgotten me, and i didn’t care. i was past caring! the pain and the shock and excitement were making me quite faint and rambly in the head, when someone spoke to me suddenly, and put an arm round my neck.
“it’s all over, darling! we have come to take you home. all your troubles are over now,” said a soft voice, and i looked up and saw a face looking down at me inside a close-fitting hood. for a moment i did not recognise her; i thought it was a nun or someone like that sprung out of a hazy dream, but when she smiled i knew it was rachel, and somehow i began to cry at once, not because i was sorry, but because now that she was there i could afford to give way. she would look after vere.
“yes, cry, dear, it will do you good; but you mustn’t stay here any longer. we have brought a chair, and are going to put you in it, and carry you home to the grange. we are your nearest neighbours, so you must give us the pleasure of looking after you for a time. they are taking your sister on ahead, and a man has ridden off for a doctor. he will look after that poor foot of yours presently. i am afraid it will be painful for you to be moved, but we will be very careful. the servants are preparing rooms in case they are needed. you shall get straight to bed.”
“and mother and father?”
“your mother was taken to the lodge. she is well, but very exhausted. they want to keep her quiet to-night. your father knows you are safe. he is very thankful, but he will not leave his post until the servants are safe. now here is the chair, and here are will and the coach-man waiting to carry you. are you ready to be moved?”
i set my teeth and said “yes,” and they hoisted me up and carried me down the path after that other dreadful procession. oh, my foot! i never knew what pain was like before that. how do people go on bearing it day after day, week after week, year after year? i couldn’t! i should go mad. i would have shrieked then, but my pride wouldn’t let me before will and rachel, when they kept praising me, and saying how brave i was.
i was carried straight to a room and put to bed. rachel bathed and bandaged my ankle, and then hurried away, and no one came near me for an age. i knew why. they were all with vere; my ankle was a trifle compared with her injuries. when at last the doctor did appear, he could tell me very little about her. the great thing was to keep her quiet until the next day, when he would be able to make an examination. i summoned courage to ask if she were in danger, and he answered me rather strangely—
“in danger—of death, do you mean? certainly not, so far as i can tell.”
what other danger could there be? i lay and pondered over it all through that hot, aching night; but i have learnt since then that there are many things which may seem, oh, far, far harder than death to a young, beautiful girl. i have never had a great dread of death, i am thankful to say. why should one fear it? if you really and truly are a christian, and believe what you pretend, it’s unreasonable to dread going to a life which is a thousand times better and happier; and as for dying itself, i’ve talked to hospital nurses when i was ill at school, and they say that most people know nothing about it, but are only very, very tired, and fall asleep. of course, there are exceptions. it would have been dreadful to have been burnt alive!
i did sleep towards morning, and it was so odd waking up in that strange room, which i had hardly noticed in the pain and confusion of the night before. i smiled a little even then as i looked round. it was so racheley! lots of nice things badly arranged, so different from my dear little room! oh, my dear little room; should i ever, ever see it again? someone was sitting behind the curtains, and as i moved he bent forward and took hold of my hand. it was father, looking so white and old that the tears came to my eyes to see him; but he was alive and safe, that was the great thing, and able to tell me that all the servants had been saved, and to give a good report of mother.
“very weak and shaken, but nothing more than that, thank god! good old mrs rogers is very happy helping terese to nurse her. she sent you her love.”
“and, oh, father, the house, the dear old home? is it quite ruined, or did you manage to put out the fire before it went too far? what happened after we left?”
his face set, but he said calmly—
“the lower rooms are more or less destroyed, but the second storey is little injured, except by smoke and, of course, water. the engines worked well, and we had more help than we could use. the people turned out nobly. the home itself can be saved, babs; it will take months to repair, but it can be done, and we shall be thankful to keep the old roof above our heads.”
“but it will never look the same. the ivy that has been growing for hundreds of years will be dead, and all the beautiful creepers! i can’t imagine ‘the moat’ with bare walls. and inside—oh, poor father, all your treasures gone! the silver and the china, and the cases of curios, and the old family portraits! you were so proud of them. doesn’t it break your heart to lose them all?”
“no,” he said quietly, “i cannot think of such things to-day. i am too filled with thankfulness that out of all that big household not a life has been lost, and that my three darlings are with me still. those things you speak of are precious in their way, but i have no room for regret for them in my heart when a still greater treasure is in danger, vere—”
“oh, father, tell me about vere! tell me the truth. i am not a child, and i ought to know. how has she hurt herself?”
“truthfully, dear, no one knows. she cannot move, and there is evidently some serious injury, but what it is cannot be decided until after an examination. they fear some spinal trouble.”
spinal! i had a horrid vision of plaster jackets and invalid couches, and those long flat, dreadful-looking chairs which you meet being wheeled about at bournemouth. it seemed impossible to connect such things with vere!
“it can’t be so bad! it can’t be really serious,” i cried vehemently. “it was all over in such a second, and we were there at once; everything was done for her! vere is easily upset, and she feels stiff and strained. i do myself, but she will be better soon, father—they must make her better! she could not bear to be ill.”
he sighed so heavily, poor father, and leant his head against the wall as if he were worn out, body and mind.
“poor vere, poor darling! i often wondered how her discipline would come. pray god it may not be this way; but if it does come thus we must help her through it as bravely as may be. it will be hard for us as well as for her; terribly hard for your mother especially. we shall look to you, babs, to cheer us up; you are young and lighthearted, and if our fears come true you will have a great work before you.”
but i didn’t feel that i could promise at all. after he had gone i lay thinking it all over and feeling perfectly wretched at the idea of being cheerful under such circumstances. i can be as lively as a grig, (what is a grig, by the way?) when things go smoothly, and other people are cheerful, too, but to keep lively when they are in the depths of woe, and you have to keep things going all by yourself and there is no excitement or variety, is a very different thing. i am quelled at once by sighs, and tears, and solemn faces. it’s my nature, i can’t help it. i’m so sensitive. miss bruce once said that that word “sensitive” was often used when “selfish” would be much more applicable. i thought it horrid of her at the time, but i expect, like most hard things, it is true. now if you didn’t think of yourself at all but only and wholly of others, it would be your one aim through life to make them happy, and no effort would be too difficult if it succeeded in doing that. then people would talk about you and say you were “the sunshine of the home,” and your parents would bless you with their latest breath, and people who had misjudged you would flock round and sit at your knee, and profit by your example. i should like to be like that. it would be so lovely and so soothing to the feelings.
the doctor came at noon and allowed me to be lifted on to the sofa and wheeled into the next room. it made a change, but it was a very long day, all the same, and i thought the afternoon would never come to an end. rachel came in and out the room, but could never settle down, for as soon as she sat down, rat-tat came to the door, someone said, “miss rachel, please,” and off she flew to do something else.
mrs greaves brought some sewing and sat beside me, but she can’t talk, poor dear; she can only make remarks at intervals and sigh between them, and it isn’t cheerful. at tea-time mr greaves appeared, and—well, he is a curious creature! i have always been taught that it is mean to accept hospitality, “eat salt,” as the proverb has it, and then speak unkindly of your host, and, of course, i wouldn’t to anyone else, but to you, o diary, i must confess that i’m truly and devoutly thankful he is not my father.
he has a great big face, and a great big voice, and very little manners, and i believe he enjoys, really thoroughly enjoys, bullying other people, and seeing them miserable. he was quite nice to me in the way of sympathising with my foot, and saying that he was pleased to see me; but i felt inclined to shake him when he went on to speak of “the moat,” and of all we had done that we should not have done, and left undone that we should have done, and of what he would have done in our place; making out, if you please, that the fire was all our fault, and that we deserved it if we were burnt out of house and home!
rachel poured tea on the troubled waters, and he snubbed her for her pains and called his wife “madam,” and wished to know if she had nothing fit to eat to offer to her guest. there were about ten different things on the table already; it was only rage which kept me from eating, but he chose to pretend that everything was bad, and we had a lively time of it, while he ate some of the cakes on every plate in turns and took a second helping and finished it to the last crumb, and then declared that it wasn’t fit for human consumption. all the while poor mrs greaves sat like a mute at a funeral, hanging her head and never saying so much as “bo!” in self-defence; and rachel smiled as if she were listening to a string of compliments, and said—
“try the toast, then, father dear. it is nice and crisp, just as you like it. if you don’t like those cakes, we won’t have them again. ready for some more tea, dear? it is stronger now that it has stood a little while.”
“it might easily be that. hot water bewitched—that’s what i call your tea, young lady. waste of good cream and sugar—”
so it went on—grumble, grumble, grumble, grum— and that rachel actually put her arm round his neck and kissed his cross red face.
“it is not the tea that is bad, dear, it is your poor old foot. cheer up! it will be better to-morrow. this new medicine is said to work wonders.”
then he exploded for another half hour about doctors and medicines, abusing them both as hard as he could, and at the end pointed to my face, which, to judge from my feelings, must have been chalky green, and wanted to know if they called themselves nurses, and if they wished to kill me outright, for if they did they had better say so at once, and let him know what was in store. he had borne enough in the last twenty-five years, goodness knew!
i was carried back to bed and cried surreptitiously beneath the clothes while rachel tidied up.
“dear father,” she said fondly; “he is a martyr to gout. it is so sad for him to have an illness which depresses his spirits and spoils his enjoyment. there are so few pleasures left to him in life now, but he bears it wonderfully well.”
i peeped at her over the sheet, but her face was quite grave and serious. she meant it, every word!
