"I see no difference," replied Amy, as Frances glanced straight at her.

"There is none," she answered, and the tone went to Amy's heart with a nervous thrill. "And so this is your boy. What is he called?"

"Robert," answered Amy, feeling for the first time a strange dislike at saying his pet name. But her husband was not so scrupulous.

"We call him Bertie," he said.

"And so will I. Come and make friends, Bertie. What lovely hair he has, so soft and curly. I suppose,--indeed I can see,--you are quite proud of the boy, Mr. Vavasour."

"Mrs. Vavasour is, if I am not."

"Of course. All mothers are of their first-born. Do not go so near the fire, Bertie. You make me tremble lest anything should befall you."

What could happen to the child? Amy drew him further away still, then took him in her arms as if only there he was safe and shielded from all harm.

When Frances left the room Amy sighed more deeply than before, yet scarcely knew why she felt so low and sad, or why Frances' appearance should have brought with it a nervous dread; save that in that long-ago time, which she had tried to bury and forget, Frances had been her bitterest enemy, and she could not but feel that her coming now was disagreeable to her, nay more, caused a sudden, nameless fear to arise in her heart; and now although Frances' words were friendly, yet Amy detected, or fancied she did--a lurking sarcasm in their tone.

"I wish we were back at Somerton, Robert," she said.

"Again!" exclaimed Robert, "now Amy, you deserve to be scolded for this.

What an impatient little woman you are! Shall we not be home in a month?"

"Ah! in a month;" sighed Amy again, as she drew her child nearer to her heart, while her heart whispered, "Can anything happen in a month?"

CHAPTER VIII.

GOING FOR THE DOCTOR.

"In G.o.d's name, then, take your own way," said Christian; "and, for my sake, let never man hereafter limit a woman in the use of her tongue; since he must make it amply up to her, in allowing her the privilege of her own will. Who would have thought it?"

PEVERIL OF THE PEAK.

Three years and more have pa.s.sed away since we left Matthew the pikeman counting the stones in Goody Grey's box. Many changes have occurred since then, the greatest of all has fallen on his own cottage--Matthew has grown a sober man.

But we must go back a little.

We left Jane closing the cottage door, after the singular meeting that had taken place between her and Goody Grey, on Marks telling the latter of his sister-in-law's extraordinary fainting fit. When he and his wife returned to the cottage, Jane was carried up to bed, apparently too weak to be able to sit up, and there she remained for several weeks, more crazed than ever to Matthew's fancy, frightening him out of his wits at times, lest his wife should find out anything about the charm, and attribute, as he did, his sister-in-law's illness to it. One night his fears grew to such a pitch, he went and buried the box in the garden, and waited events in an easier frame of mind. Days pa.s.sed, and at length Jane grew better, but strenuously refused to leave her room, and go below. In vain Mrs. Marks remonstrated, in vain she stormed, Jane was not to be persuaded, and at length was allowed to do as she pleased. But suddenly her illness took a turn; she crawled down stairs to dinner, and one day, to Matthew's intense disgust, resumed her old seat in the chimney corner.

As the months rolled on the scrubbing and scouring within the cottage went on more mildly, while Mrs. Marks' strong stout arm grew thinner and weaker; the brush fell less harshly and severely on the ear, as it rushed over the table; the high pattens clanked less loudly in the yard; while the voice grew less shrill, and was no longer heard in loud domineering tones. The change was gradual; Matthew did not notice it at first, until just a few weeks before Amy returned to Brampton with her husband; then the change was unmistakable, the scrubbing and scouring ceased altogether. Mrs. Marks gave in, and acknowledged she was ill.

How Matthew's conscience smote him then! He knew he had never had the courage to face Goody Grey with the box still filled with the small gravel, as when she gave it him, neither had he dared throw the stones away, lest, in offending the giver, worse disasters would follow; and he was too superst.i.tious to think Goody Grey would know nothing at all about it, and believe as he might tell her that he had done as she had directed. No; he was certain that one word of distrust in his story, and he should break down altogether. He tried to reason with himself, and think that the tramping about in all weathers long ago had made his wife ill; but it would not do, his mind was not to be persuaded, and always reverted with increased dismay to the box, while his eye invariably rested upon its snug resting-place under the laurel, as he pa.s.sed it on his way out to the gate. Many a time he determined upon digging up the box, and restoring it to its owner, just as it was: but when the time for action came, and he drew near the spot, his courage failed him, and he would pa.s.s on, cursing the hour when he had been tempted to ask the wise woman for the charm which he believed had done so much evil; while his fear of telling the secret in his tipsy unconsciousness had done what all Mrs. Marks' storming had failed to do--made him, for the time being, a sober man. He shunned the "Brampton Arms" as if the plague dwelt there, and sat in the chimney corner opposite Jane, gloomy, and fearful almost of his own shadow, while his sister-in-law's eyes seemed to pierce him through more keenly than ever.

Mrs. Marks had steadily kept her promise, silently and secretly working with a will to seek out Hodge's son. Like most energetic women, a first failure did not daunt or dispirit her, it only roused her energies the more vigorously. She was not to be defeated. The more difficult of accomplishment the more determined was she, and in the end successful.

She dodged Hodge's "wide-awake" friend, and found Tom; nay more, she spoke with him, tried to reclaim him; but there she failed--she was not the sort of woman to win him over. A kind word might have done much, but that, Mrs. Mark's heart had not for such a reprobate as he. She told him the truth, the plain hard truth, heaping maledictions on his head unless he gave up his evil ways, forsook his G.o.dless companions, and returned home. She used no persuasion, no entreaty. Had she spoken to him kindly of his mother, perhaps his heart might have softened; but Mrs. Marks'

voice came loud and strong, words followed one another fast and indignantly, so that ere she had well-nigh exhausted all the scorn she had, his mind was made up, and he obstinately refused to return home, simply because she desired, nay, commanded him to do so. What! become the laughing-stock of the whole of Deane? be known and marked in the village as the vile sinner she denounced him to be? He laughed at her threats and taunts, and left her, feeling perhaps more hardened than ever.

Matthew was not far wrong when he tried to persuade himself the walking about in all weathers--so mysterious to him--had ruined his wife's health. A pouring steady rain was falling the day of her interview with Hodge's son, but true to her purpose, she had walked for miles along a heavy road, and across still damper fields to find him; then, flushed and heated with her pa.s.sionate words and subsequent defeat, had started back again through the same rain, and reached home thoroughly wet through; then came a violent cold, and from that time her strength seemed to fail, although unacknowledged to herself, while her limbs lost their power, and pained her strangely; still she worked on, with the will to get well, but alas! the strength to do so was gone.

She wrote to Mrs. Hodge advising her to have nothing further to do with such a good-for-nothing son, but forget him as fast as she could. Mrs.

Marks' letter was not meant unkindly, but she never attempted to lessen Tom's fault or palliate his conduct; the truth stood out in all its glaring hideousness. Having no children herself, she knew nothing of a mother's strong, steadfast love. The knowledge that her son, her first-born, was with a gang of poachers who had wounded the Squire's visitor and killed one of the game watchers, threw dismay into the mother's heart and broke it. She died, begging her husband to still look for Tom, and reclaim him if possible--a promise her husband felt impossible of fulfilment, as he, like Mrs. Marks, thought badly of his son's heart.

Mrs. Marks could scarcely move her limbs at all now, except to creep down the narrow stairs of a day into the small parlour, where she sat and scolded to her heart's content, Sarah, the girl who came as a help now the mistress was ill, following her every movement with her eyes, if she could not with her feet.

As her sister grew worse, Jane roused herself wonderfully, becoming as active as before she had been idle, and apparently as sane as she had been crazy; while as to Matthew, he turned into a model husband, helping in the work to be done as far as lay in his power, and nursing his sick wife with a tender solicitude quite foreign to his nature, while she grumbled at everything and everyone in turn, her eye, as I have said before, finding out their shortcomings in a moment, and denouncing them without mercy. But she was ill, must be ill to sit there so quietly and allow others to scrub down the table or be up to their elbows in the washing-tub; she deserved their pity and their silence, and they gave her both.

"There, that will do," said she one day, as Matthew tried to settle the pillows more comfortably at her back. "I don't think it's near so easy like as it was before you touched it, but it wouldn't be you if you didn't want always to have a finger in the pie. Sarah, leave off that racket among the cups and saucers; what on earth are you at, girl? Are you trying to break them all? What are you after?"

"I was a-dusting of the shelves, Mum," was the reply.

"Fine dusting, upon my word, and with a corner of your ap.r.o.n, too; be off and fetch a cloth this moment, such slop-work as that'll never do here; let me catch you at it again, that's all, or that clatter of the crockery either, when my head aches and buzzes like as if a thousand mills was at work in it."

"There, rest quiet, Missus," said Matthew; "it'll be all right by-and-bye."

"That's as much as you know about it. I tell yer I never felt so bad, like, in all my life."

"Ain't it most time to take the doctor's stuff?" suggested Matthew, meekly.

"I'm sick of the medicine, and the doctor too. What good has he done me?

I should like to know. I can't walk no better than I could a month ago.

My limbs is as stiff as ever, and just every bit as painful."

"That comes of them mad walks yer took in all weathers; yer would tramp about, and it's been t' undoing of yer altogether."

A torrent of words followed this, of which Matthew took no heed, until she leant back, apparently exhausted, saying, "I feel awful bad. I wonder whatever in the world ails me?"

"How d'yer feel?" asked her husband, compa.s.sionately.

"My head whizzes, and I'm all over in a cold sweat, like; only feel my hand, don't it burn like a live coal?"

"It do seem as though it were afire," he replied.

"Seem!" cried Mrs. Marks. "Is that all the pity yer have in your heart for maybe your dying wife?"

"Lord save us!" exclaimed Matthew. "I've been a deal worse myself, and got well again; don't be a frightening yourself in that way, or belike you'll think you've one foot in the grave."

Then he poured some of the medicine in the gla.s.s, and held it towards her.

"Here," said he, "here's what'll make you think different, and send away the dismals."

"I won't take none of it," she replied; "not one drop. It weren't given to me for the fiery pains I've got about me now."

"Come, Missus, come, don't'ee quarrel with the only thing that can do'ee good," said Matthew, coaxingly.

"Do me good!" she exclaimed, with a sudden return of energy. "It's my belief yer trying to pisin me. Be off and fetch the doctor!"