Henry Wood - Johnny Ludlow, First Series

Dying, as was supposed. He and Jessup had disobeyed Blair, disregarded orders, and rushed into the field, shouting and leaping like a couple of mad fellows—as the labourers afterwards said. Making for the waggon, laden high with wheat, they mounted it, and started on the horses. In some way, Barrington lost his balance, slipped over the side and the hind wheel went over him.

I shall never forget the house when we got back. Jessup, in his terror, had made off for his home, running most of the way—seven miles. He was in the same boat as Wolfe, except that he escaped injury—had gone over the stile in defiance of orders, and got on the waggon. Barrington was lying in the blue-room; and Mrs. Frost, frightened out of bed, stood on the landing in her night-cap, a shawl wrapped round her loose white dressing-gown. She was ill at the time. Featherstone came striding up the road wiping his hot face.

“Lord bless me!” cried Featherstone when he had looked at Wolfe and touched him. “I can’t deal with this single-handed, Dr. Frost.”

The doctor had guessed that. And Roger was already away on a galloping horse, flying for another. He brought little Pink: a shrimp of a man, with a fair reputation in his profession. But the two were more accustomed to treating rustic ailments than grave cases, and Dr. Frost knew that. Evening drew on, and the dusk was gathering, when a carriage with post-horses came thundering in at the front gates, bringing Mr. Carden.

They did not give to us boys the particulars of the injuries; and I don’t know them to this day. The spine was hurt; the right ankle smashed: we heard that much. Taptal, Barrington’s guardian, came over, and an uncle from London. Altogether it was a miserable time. The masters seized upon it to be doubly stern, and read us lectures upon disobedience and rebellion—as though we had been the offenders! As to Jessup, his father handed him back again to Dr. Frost, saying that in his opinion a taste of birch would much conduce to his benefit.

Barrington did not seem to suffer as keenly as some might have done; perhaps his spirits kept him up, for they were untamed. On the very day after the accident, he asked for some of the fellows to go in and sit with him, because he was dull. “By-and-by,” the doctors said. And the next day but one, Dr. Frost sent me in. The paid nurse sat at the end of the room.

“Oh, it’s you, is it, Ludlow! Where’s Jessup?”

“Jessup’s under punishment.”

His face looked the same as ever, and that was all that could be seen of him. He lay on his back, covered over. As to the low bed, it might have been a board, to judge by its flatness. And perhaps was so.

“I am very sorry about it, Barrington. We all are. Are you in much pain?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” was his impatient answer. “One has to grin and bear it. The cursed idiots had stacked the wheat sloping to the sides, or it would never have happened. What do you hear about me?”

“Nothing but regret that it–”

“I don’t mean that stuff. Regret, indeed! regret won’t undo it. I mean as to my getting about again. Will it be ages first?”

“We don’t hear a word.”

“If they were to keep me here a month, Ludlow, I should go mad. Rampant. You shut up, old woman.”

For the nurse had interfered, telling him he must not excite himself.

“My ankle’s hurt; but I believe it is not half as bad as a regular fracture: and my back’s bruised. Well, what’s a bruise? Nothing. Of course there’s pain and stiffness, and all that; but so there is after a bad fight, or a thrashing. And they talk about my lying here for three or four weeks! Catch me.”

One thing was evident: they had not allowed Wolfe to suspect the gravity of the case. Downstairs we had an inkling, I don’t remember whence gathered, that it might possibly end in death. There was a suspicion of some internal injury that we could not get to know of; and it is said that even Mr. Carden, with all his surgical skill, could not get at it, either. Any way, the prospect of recovery for Barrington was supposed to be of the scantiest; and it threw a gloom over us.

A sad mishap was to occur. Of course no one in their senses would have let Barrington learn the danger he was in; especially while there was just a chance that the peril would be surmounted. I read a book lately—I, Johnny Ludlow—where a little child met with an accident; and the first thing the people around him did, father, doctors, nurses, was to inform him that he would be a cripple for the rest of his days. That was common sense with a vengeance: and about as likely to occur in real life as that I could turn myself into a Dutchman. However, something of the kind did happen in Barrington’s case, but through inadvertence. Another uncle came over from Ireland; an old man; and in talking with Featherstone he spoke out too freely. They were outside Barrington’s door, and besides that, supposed that he was asleep. But he had awakened then; and heard more than he ought. The blue-room always seemed to have an echo in it.

“So it’s all up with me, Ludlow?”

I was by his bedside when he suddenly said this, in the twilight of the summer evening. He had been lying quite silent since I entered, and his face had a white, still look on it, never before noticed there.

“What do you mean, Barrington?”

“None of your shamming here. I know; and so do you, Johnny Ludlow. I say, though it makes one feel queer to find the world’s slipping away. I had looked for so much jolly life in it.”

“Barrington, you may get well yet; you may, indeed. Ask Pink and Featherstone, else, when they next come; ask Mr. Carden. I can’t think what idea you have been getting hold of.”

“There, that’s enough,” he answered. “Don’t bother. I want to be quiet.”

He shut his eyes; and the darkness grew as the minutes passed. Presently some one came into the room with a gentle step: a lady in a black-and-white gown that didn’t rustle. It was Mrs. Hearn. Barrington looked up at her.

“I am going to stay with you for a day or two,” she said in a low sweet voice, bending over him and touching his forehead with her cool fingers. “I hear you have taken a dislike to the nurse: and Mrs. Frost is really too weakly just now to get about.”

“She’s a sly cat,” said Barrington, alluding to the nurse, “and watches me out of the tail of her eye. Hall’s as bad. They are in league together.”

“Well, they shall not come in more than I can help. I will nurse you myself.”

“No; not you,” said Barrington, his face looking red and uneasy. “I’ll not trouble you .”

She sat down in my chair, just pressing my hand in token of greeting. And I left them.

In the ensuing days his life trembled in the balance; and even when part of the more immediate danger was surmounted, part of the worst of the pain, it was still a toss-up. Barrington had no hope whatever: I don’t think Mrs. Hearn had, either.

She hardly left him. At first he seemed to resent her presence; to wish her away; to receive unwillingly what she did for him; but, in spite of himself he grew to look round for her, and to let his hand lie in hers whenever she chose to take it.

Who can tell what she said to him? Who can know how she softly and gradually awoke the better feelings within him, and won his heart from its hardness? She did do it, and that’s enough. The way was paved for her. What the accident had not done, the fear of death had. Tamed him.

One evening when the sun had sunk, leaving only a fading light in the western sky, and Barrington had been watching it from his bed, he suddenly burst into tears. Mrs. Hearn busy amongst the physic bottles, was by his side in a moment.

“Wolfe!”

“It’s very hard to have to die.”