The Story of Antony Grace. Fenn George Manville

Stuff! It’s only my way. There ain’t a better-tempered girl nowheres than I am; only when you come to live in a house where the master’s a snarling, biting, growling hound, and the missus is a fault-finding, scolding, murmuring himidge, it’s enough to put out a hartchangel. But I say, if I was you, and could write such a lovely hand, I should send and tell my father and mother. Oh, I am sorry, dear – I forgot about your poor father and mother. But I would write and tell somebody.”

      Mary’s allusion to my lovely handwriting was consequent upon my having copied a letter for her to one Mr William Revitts, who was a policeman in London. She had asked me to copy it for her, and direct it “proper,” because her hands were so dirty when she wrote that she was afraid he might not be able to read it. All the same, Mary’s hands seemed to have been perfectly clean, though the probabilities were that the said Mr William Revitts, “mi one dere willim,” would certainly not have been able to read the letter. In fact, I broke down over the very beginning by mistaking “one” for the number, and had to be corrected, Mary having meant to say own.

      Her allusion to my parents touched a tender chord, and my face worked as I recalled the happy times gone by. “I have nobody to write to,” I said at last – “only my uncle.”

      “Then I’d write and tell him, that I would.”

      “I am not quite sure where he lives,” I said. “I never saw him till – till he came to the funeral.”

      “But haven’t you got nobody belonging to you – no friends at all?”

      “I think not,” I said helplessly. “No one who would help me.”

      “Well, you are a one,” said Mary, pausing in the act of wiping out the tea-tray after half filling it and pouring the dirty water off at one corner. “Why, I’ve got no end o’ people belonging to me; and if that brute upstairs – as I wish he may ache bad for a week! – was to raise his hand against me, my William would be down and serve him worse than Mr Wooster did, I can tell him – a wretch!”

      “Is that Mr William Revitts,” I asked, “the policeman?”

      “Yes; but he wouldn’t come down here as a policeman, but as a gentleman, and he’d soon teach Mr Blakeford what he ought to – Yes! What is it?”

      This was in answer to a shrill call for Mary in Mrs Blakeford’s voice, and that lady came in immediately after, to Mary’s great disgust.

      “You must get hot water ready directly, Mary,” she began in an ill-used way. “I’m sure I don’t know what I shall do. He’s very bad indeed.”

      “Oh, there’s lots of hot water,” said Mary shortly. “Biler’s full, and kettle’s full, and I’ll put on the great black saucepan and light the copper if you like.”

      As she spoke Mary seized the big poker, and began stoking and hammering away at the fire in a most vicious manner, as if determined to vent her spleen upon Mr Blakeford’s coals.

      “Your poor master’s dreadfully bad,” said Mrs Blakeford again, and she kept on looking at me in a way that seemed quite to indicate that I alone was to blame.

      “Oh, yes, mum, I dessay he is, and so’s other people too, and wuss. I dessay he’ll get better again if he don’t die.”

      Mrs Blakeford stared at Mary in a half-terrified way, and backed to the door.

      “You ring the bell when you want it, and I’ll bring you a can of water upstairs,” continued Mary ungraciously.

      “And couldn’t you help me a little in attending upon your master, Mary?”

      “No, I couldn’t, mum,” she said shortly, “for I’m the worst nuss as ever was; and besides, I’ve got my kitchen work to do; and if you wants a nuss, there’s Mrs Jumfreys over the way would be glad to come, I dessay, only I ain’t going to have her here in my kitchen.”

      Mrs Blakeford hastily backed out of the kitchen and retreated upstairs, while Mary’s rough mask dropped off as soon as she had gone.

      “I wasn’t going to tell her as I nussed an invalid lady two years ’fore I came here,” she said, smiling. “Besides, I didn’t want to have nothing to do with him, for fear I should be tempted to give him his lotion ’stead of his physic, he aggravates me so. Lotions is pison, you know – outward happlication only.”

      That night I had a bed made up down in the kitchen, and passed a weary, feverish time; but towards morning a pleasant feeling of drowsiness came over me. I fell asleep to dream that I was at home once more, and all was bright and sunshiny as I sat half asleep in the summer-house, when my mother came and laid her hand upon my forehead, and I opened my eyes to find it was Mary, ready to ask me whether I was better; and though the sweet, bright dream had gone, there was something very tender in the eyes that looked in mine.

      Chapter Seven.

      Dreams of the Great Magnet

      I was very stiff and sore, and there was a peculiar giddiness ready to assail me as soon as I moved, so Mary, in her double capacity of doctor and nurse, decided that I was not to attempt to walk about that day.

      The consequence was that she made no scruple about dragging a little couch out of the parlour into the kitchen, and after I was dressed, making me lie down near the fire.

      “If they don’t like it about the sofy, they must do the other thing,” she said, laughing. “I say, do you know what time it is?”

      “No,” I replied.

      “Half-past ten, and I’ve been waiting breakfast till you woke. You have had a sleep. I wouldn’t wake you, for I thought it would do you good.”

      “I am better, a great deal,” I said.

      “Yes; so you are. He ain’t, or pretends he ain’t. Miss Hetty’s been catching it.”

      “Has she?”

      “Yes; for wanting to know about you. Missus told her you were a wicked young wretch, and had half killed your master, and she was never to mention your name again.”

      I was decidedly better, and in the course of the afternoon I got up and found that the various objects had ceased to waltz around. I made my way up to my bedroom, and for the first time had a look at myself in the glass, where I found that a sore feeling upon my face was caused by a couple of black marks which crossed each other at a sharp angle, and that high up above my temple, and just where the hair would cover it, there was a patch of black court-plaister, which was placed across and across in strips to cover a long and painful cut.

      The days glided by; the weals on my face changed colour and began to fade, while the cut on my head grew less painful. I was thrown a good deal with Mary, for no work had been set me in the office, and Mr Blakeford kept his bed, being regularly attended by the doctor.

      I found – Mary being my informant – that there was to be quite a serious case made of it, and Mrs Blakeford had told her that I was to be an important witness to the assault.

      A fortnight had passed; and as I sat alone day after day in the office thinking of a plan that had suggested itself to my mind, but fearing to put it into execution, I had two visitors who completely altered my career in life.

      The first came one morning as I was writing a letter to my uncle – a letter destined never to reach him – in the shape of the big farmer, Mr Wooster, who rapped sharply at the office door, and gazed sternly at me as I opened it and stood in the little passage.

      “Where’s Blakeford?” he said sharply.

      “Ill in bed, sir,” I said.

      “It’s a lie, you young rascal,” he cried, catching me by the collar. “Here, how old are you?”

      “Thirteen, sir.”

      “And you can tell lies like that, eh? and without blushing?”

      “It is not a lie, sir,” I said stoutly. “Mr Blakeford hasn’t been down since – since – ”

      “I