Charlotte Yonge - Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood

“Well, if you like to encourage abominable humbug and have Allen lamed for life, I don’t,” said Bobus. “I shan’t stay in the house with the blackguard.”

He stalked out of the room with great loftiness of demeanour, just as the operator was being introduced—a tall, sinewy man, with one of those strong yet meek faces often to be found among the peasantry. He came in after the old farmer, pulling his forelock to the lady, and waiting for orders as if he had been sent for to mend the grate; but Caroline saw in a moment that he was a man to trust in, and that his hands were not only clean, but were well-formed, and powerful, with a great air of dexterity.

“I am afraid my boy’s arm is put out,” she said, trembling a good deal.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And—and,” said she, feeling sick, and more desolate and left to her own judgment than ever before. “Can you undertake to push it in again.”

“Please God, ma’am,” Higg said, gravely, coming nearer for examination.

Allen shrank and shuddered.

“Won’t it hurt awfully?” he asked.

“Well, sir, it won’t just be a bed of roses, but it won’t last, not long, if you sets your will to it.”

He asked for various needments, and while he was inspecting them, Allen’s courage began to fail, and he breathed out whispers that the man was rougher and more ignorant than he expected, and they had better wait and send to Kenminster for a doctor; but those who thought Caroline helpless and childish would have been amazed at the gentle resolution with which she refused to listen to his falterings, and braced him to endure, knowing well that her husband had said that skill was hardly needed in such a case, only resolution. She would not let herself be taken out of the room, and indeed never thought of herself, only of Allen, whose other hand she held, and to whom she seemed to give patience and courage. When all was well over, there was a hospitable invitation to the patient to remain till he was fit to return, and an extension of the invitation to his mother, but with promises of every care if she must leave him, and this she was forced to decide on doing, as such a household as hers could not well spare her, especially on a Saturday evening; and she also saw that the inconvenience to her hosts would have been great.

Allen was so much relieved, that she had no fear of leaving him to these kind people, to whom she had taken a great fancy.

“I shall learn the habits of the genuine species, British farmer,” said he, as his mother kissed him, and declared him the best and most conformable of boys.

Old Mr. Gould would not be denied driving her home in his gig, and when she thought about it, she found she had a strange relaxed aching of the knees, which made her glad of kindness for herself and the little ones. In the fine old kitchen she found that Armine had had an overpowering fit of crying, which had been kindly soothed by motherly Mrs. Gould, and the whole party were partaking of a luxurious tea, enlivened by mince pies and rosy-cheeked apples, which had diverted his attention to the problem why the next year’s prosperity should depend on the number of mince pies consumed before Christmas.

Bobus was not among them, having marched off in his contempt of the bone-setter, and his mother was not without fears that he might bring a real surgeon down on her at any moment, so she quickly drank off her cup of tea, and took her seat in Farmer Gould’s gig with Babie as bodkin in front, and Joe and Armine in the little seat behind. Robin and the two Johns were to stilt themselves home, while she was taken so long and rugged a way, that at every jolt she was ready to renew her thanks for sparing it to her son’s shoulder; and they were at home before her.

The whole family came pouring out to meet her, and the Colonel made warm acknowledgments of the farmer’s kindness, speaking of him when he was gone as one of the most estimable men in the neighbourhood, staunch in his politics, and very ill-used by old Barnes of Belforest.

Caroline looked anxiously for Bobus; and Janet, who had stayed at home to finish some papers for her essay society, said that he had only hurried in to tell her and take off his stilts, and had then gone down to Dr. Leslie’s.

“Then has Dr. Leslie gone? We did not meet him, but he may have gone through Belforest,” exclaimed Caroline.

“O no, he has not gone; he would not when he heard about that Higg,” said Janet, with uneasy and much disgusted face. “He couldn’t do any good after his meddling.”

“Do you mean that he said so?” asked Carey, much alarmed.

“Never mind,” said the Colonel, “you did quite right, Caroline, whatever the doctor says. Any man of sense, with good strong hands, can manage a shoulder like that, and I should have thought Leslie had sense to see it; but those professional men can’t stand outsiders.”

“Where is Bobus?” asked Caroline; “I should like to distinguish between what Dr. Leslie said to him and what he told Janet. He might be more zealous for Dr. Leslie than Dr. Leslie for himself.”

Bobus was unearthed, and by much pumping was made to allow that Dr. Leslie had told him that there was nothing more to be done, and that his brother was quite safe in Higg’s hands; but Bobus evidently did not believe it. He kept silence while his uncle remained, but he had hunted up his father’s surgical books, and went on about humeral clavicles and ligatures all the evening, till his mother felt sick, in the nervous contemplation of possibilities, though her better sense was secure that she had done right, while Janet was moodily silent and angered with her, in the belief that she had weakly let Allen be injured for life; and Bobus seemed as if he had rather it should be so than that he should be wrong, and Higg’s native endowments turn out a reality.

Caroline abstained from looking at the book herself, partly because she thought she might only alarm herself the more without confuting Bobus, and partly because she knew that the old law which forbade Janet to meddle with the medical books, would be considered as abrogated if she touched them herself.

Both she and Janet were much more anxious than they confessed, except by the looks which betrayed their broken rest the next morning. Each was bent on walking to River Hollow, and they would fain have done so immediately after breakfast, but to take the whole tribe was impossible; and to let them go to Church without her, would infallibly lead to Jock’s getting into a scrape with his relatives, if not with the whole congregation. Was it not all her eyes could do to hinder palpable smiles in the sermon, and her monkey from playing tricks on his bear, who, by some fatality, always sat in front, with his irresistible broad back, down which, in spite of all her vigilance, Jock had once thrust a large bluebottle fly. She also knew that both her husband and his mother would have thought she ought to go to Church, and that if matters went amiss with her boy, she should reproach herself with the omission. Her children, too, influenced her, though very oppositely, for Janet was found preparing to start for River Hollow, and on being told that she must wait, to go with her mother, till after Church, declared defiantly that “she saw no sense in staying at home to hear Rigdum when she did not know how ill Allen might be.”

“You would not have said that to grandmamma,” said Carey.

“Well, if you like to go to Church, you can. I can go alone.”

“No, I will not have you take that long walk alone.”

“Then I will take one of the boys.”

“No, Janet, I mean to be obeyed. Go and put on your other hat, and do not make us late for Church.”

Janet was forced to submit, for she never came to the point of actual disobedience to her mother. Caroline’s ruffled feelings were soothed by little Armine, who ran in from feeding his rabbits to ask to have the place in his Prayer-book shown to him where he should pray for poor Allen. She marked the Litany sentence for him, and meant to have thrown her own heart into it, but when the moment came, her mind was far astray, building vague castles about her boys.