Friends I Have Made Part 17

"Then followed instructions for preparing the juice of meat, arrowroot, and that an ample supply of brandy should be at hand; when, just as Mr Ross was in the act of administering a little in the arrowroot, the door opened, and in walked the great pract.i.tioner, expressing great astonishment at seeing his fellow professional there.

"`You here, sir?' he exclaimed. `This seems to be a most astounding breach of etiquette. Perhaps you will step with me into the next room.'

"`Mr Tomkins!' exclaimed the father angrily, `I entrusted the life of my sick child in your hands. You neglected that trust--whether from ignorance or carelessness I will not say--'

"`Oh, indeed!' bl.u.s.tered the surgeon loudly, `I can see through the trick; charlatans and pretenders are always waiting to seize their opportunity; and--good heavens!' he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed as if in horror--`a dessert spoonful of strong brandy to a tender child like that.'

"Mr Ross turned upon him fiercely, but recollected himself directly after, and kneeling down by his little patient, he proceeded to pour the diluted spirit, drop by drop, between the parted lips, watching eagerly the effect; every tiny drop that trickled down seeming to brighten the eye, and give new life; even as when the effect pa.s.sed off, the eye grew dim, and that life seemed slowly sinking away.

"The old surgeon made some further remark, but Mr Western sternly ordered him to leave the room, when Mr Ross rose from his knees.

"`I could not speak before that man, sir,' he said, `for he has heaped too many insults upon me since I have been in Elmouth; but I think that now, with careful watching and treatment, there may be some hope for the little one; and if you would prefer that your old attendant should take my place, I will directly leave.'

"As Mr Ross spoke, his eye lighted for an instant upon Mrs Western's face, in which consternation was painted most plainly, but her husband took the young doctor's hand, and in a broken voice said something respecting grat.i.tude, and thanks, which he could not finish, for, worn out with watching and anxiety, he sank into a chair and wept like a child.

"Anxious hours followed, life appearing to be sustained by the strong spirit administered at intervals of ten or fifteen minutes, when the flame seemed to spring up vigorously, but only to slowly decline, and then begin to flicker and tremble, as if waiting for some stronger blast of air than usual to extinguish it for ever.

"And so on at every quarter-hour the little sufferer seemed to be s.n.a.t.c.hed back, as it were, from the hands of death--all that day, all that night, and again the next day; and during that s.p.a.ce the young surgeon never left the child's side. Next night he lay down upon a sofa in the room for a few hours, but only to be awakened at four o'clock by the anxious father, who dreaded that some change for the worse had taken place.

"But the alarm was needless, though Mr Ross once more took his place at the side of the little cot, working incessantly at his task with the earnestness of a man whose soul was in his profession. No night seemed too long, no watching too tedious, in his efforts to get the better of the great enemy with whom he was contending. If he was away for ten minutes he was restless to return, lest any change should take place in his absence, and truly it seemed that, but for the incessant care and attention, death would have gained the victory.

"But science conquered; and from incessant watching, Mr Ross's attention was reduced to visits three times, twice, and then only once a day. From the inanimate pale face the dark shadow had been effectually chased, and divers signs of amendment set in, one succeeding the other rapidly, till danger was quite at an end.

"And now the change had taken place; for instead of sitting at home hour after hour, neglected, and longing for a patient, the demands upon Mr Ross's time grew incessant, till with a pout on her lips, but joy in her heart, Mrs Ross declared that she could never be sure of her husband from one hour to another.

"For the fame of the cure had gone forth, with all the exaggerations common to a country place, and wealthy old Tomkins grew at last fat, as he sat at home gnawing his nails with annoyance at seeing his practice become less year by year, till a call grew to be something unusual; and making a virtue of necessity, he told a crony, one evening in confidence, that with so many new-fangled ideas in medicine the profession was going to the dogs, and he was glad to say he was not called out now one night in a month; while as to meeting that upstart, Ross, in consultation, he would not do it to save his life--and he might have added, anybody else's.

"But John Ross was not proud in his prosperity, and would at any time have stretched out the hand of good fellowship to the old doctor, could he have been sure that it would have been taken.

"The Ross family found fast friends in the Westerns; and it was at one of the dinner parties at the Hall, that after seriously speaking to his friends of the debt of obligation he was under to Mr Ross, and thanking him again as the instrument, under G.o.d's providence, of giving them back their child to life, that, to give a livelier tone to the conversation, the squire related an anecdote he professed to have heard a few days before, in an encounter which took place between the s.e.xton of the old church, and the old gentleman doing duty at the new.

"`Ah!' said the first old man, chuckling with triumph, `you don't have half so many funerals in your yard as I do in mine.'

"`No,' said the other, `and somehow they seem to be falling off year by year. My place isn't hardly worth holding now. The town gets a deal too healthy.'

"`It does so,' said the first speaker. `I'm nearly ruined, and can't make it out anyhow--can you?'

"`No,' said the other, `it's past me'--`and then the two old fellows went chattering and grumbling off,' continued Mr Western; `and if any one wishes to know the reason of the falling away, he must ask our friend the doctor there; though he will be sure to deny that he has had anything to do with it.'

"`There's the bell again, dear,' said Mrs Ross one day, `and if it wasn't for knowing that you are wanted for some poor suffering creature, I believe I should exclaim against it as being a perfect nuisance. You never now seem to get a meal in peace.'

"`Oh! yes, I do,' said Mr Ross smiling. `The bell does its share of work, though, certainly. By the way though, my dear, you never feel any dread in having the bell answered now, do you?'

"`Dread? no; what a question!' said Mrs Ross. `What made you say that?'

"`I was only thinking of a few years ago, when a ring at the bell sometimes caused one's heart to beat, lest it should be some hungry creditor.'

"Mrs Ross sighed, and then smiled, saying, `and all the rest has come of patience.'

"`And work,' said her husband.

"`But I don't think,' she whispered, creeping closer to his side, and drawing one strong arm around her as if for protection--`I don't think, dear, you will ever again say that the rich have no trouble.'

"John Ross was silent for awhile, as he recalled the loss he had so nearly sustained, and the scene at the Hall, when the hope of two fond parents lay a-dying, and then he answered softly--

"`G.o.d forbid!'"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

PENGELLY'S WEAKNESS.

These were the people the Hendricks wished me to go and visit, and in due course I went down to Elmouth to pa.s.s two of the most delicious months of rest and peace, growing stronger day by day, and finding ample food for thought in what I saw and heard.

I had left London with a feeling that one great interest of my life would be for the time in abeyance, but I soon found upon mixing with the simple-hearted fishing and mining folks, that though the locality was changed, the pleasures and pains of people were just the same, and that care and suffering came to Cornwall hand-in-hand as often as elsewhere.

One of my great friends here was Old Pengelly, the Ross's gardener, and often in a dreamy pleasant day have I sat in the old rugged garden, made in a niche of the great granite rocks with a view of the restless changing sea.

Old Pengelly always had an idea that I was too weak to walk, and showed me the tenderest solicitude as he moved my chair more into the shade, fetched my sunshade or book; but his great delight was to kneel down and weed some bed close by me, and talk about the past, and no sooner did he find that he had hit upon some subject that seemed to interest me, than he would go steadily on, only rising up and straightening himself now and then, to get rid of a pain in his back.

"Ah-h-h!" he would say, "don't take no notice of my groaning ma'am, that's my back that is, and all along of mowing, and digging, and sweating, and lifting about them lumps of granite stone to make the missus's rockeries; master don't seem to do it a bit of good."

"Doesn't he, Pengelly?" I said, as I could not help smiling as I thought of the fine st.u.r.dy old man's age, for he was seventy-five.

"No, ma'am; you see it's rheumatiz just in the small, through the rain on it sometimes, and the sun on it sometimes, and the perspiration on it always, along o' that bit o' lawn swade. Nice bit o' green swade, though, as any in the county--spongy, and springy, and clean. Deal o'

worrit though, to get it to rights, what with the worms a-throwing up their casties, and them old starlings pegging it about and tearing it to rags, and then the daisies coming up all over it in all directions.

There ain't nothing like daisies: cut their heads off, and they like it; spud 'em up, and fresh tops come; stop 'em in one place, and they comes up in another. I can't get riddy of 'em. That bit o' lawn would be perfect if it wasn't for the daisies; but they will come up, and like everything else in this life, that there lawn ain't perfect. They will come, you know: they will live, and you can't kill 'em. They ain't like some things in this life that won't live, do all you can to make 'em.

"There, don't you take no notice of them; they ain't tears, they ain't; that isn't crying, that's a sort o' watery weakness in the eyes through always being a gardener all your life, and out in the wet. Only, you know, when I get talking about some things living do all you can to kill 'em--such as weeds, you know, and daisies; and of some things not living, do all you can to make 'em, like balsams in frosty springs, you know--I think about my boy, as was always such a tender plant, do all I would, and about all the plans I'd made for him, and all cut short by one o' the sharp frosts as the good Master of all sends sometimes in every garden, whether it's such a one as this, with good shelter, and a south aspeck, and plenty of warm walls for your trained trees, or the big garden of life, with the different human trees a-growing in it; some fair plants growing to maturity, and sending out fine green leaves, well veined and strong, well-shaped blossoms of good colour and sweet smell, fair to look upon, and doing good in this life; st.u.r.dy, well-grown trees of men, and bright-hued, tender, loving plants of women; some with tendrils and clinging ways--the fruitful vines upon your house--and many cl.u.s.tering blossoms of children; and bad weeds, and choking thorns, and poison-berries, and all. Life's just one big garden, and when I stick my spade in like this here, and rest my foot on it, and my elber on the handle, and my chin on my hand, I get thinking about it all in a very strange way, oftens and oftens.

"Say I get a bit of ground ready, and put seed in. That's faith, ain't it? I put those little tiny brown grains in, and I know in all good time, according as the great G.o.d has ordained, those tiny grains will come up, and blow, and seed in their turns. Not all though; some gets nipped, and never comes to anything, spite of all your care, some slowly shrivels away, and those that do are generally the best.

"That's the watery weakness again. Don't you take no notice of that; only, you know, whatever I get talking about seems, somehow or other, to work round to my poor boy as we've laid in the earth over yonder by the old church--a human seed, sowed in corruption, to be raised in incorruption, eh? Those are the words, ain't they, ma'am? And that's faith, too, you'll say.

"We were quite old folks when we married, you see, not being able to afford it early in life, and when that boy was born, being an odd, old-fashioned gardener of a man, I was always looking upon him as a sort of plant sent to me to bring up to as near perfection as we can get things in a garden that isn't Eden. And there I used to sit at dinner hours or teas having my pipe, as made the little thing sneeze, but kept away blight, you know: and then I used to plot and plan as to how I'd work him; how, every now and then, I should, as he grew, carefully loosen all the earth about his tender young fibres, and give him some of the best, well-mixed, rich soil when I repotted him, shaking it well in amongst his roots, giving him room to grow, every now and then, by putting him in a larger pot, watching carefully for blight, taking away all green moss, giving him proper light and air, and all the time while it was nursery gardening, treating him as his tender nature required.

"Light, rich, loamy soil I meant him to have as soon as he was fit to go on a border, and then I meant to train him; ah, that I did! I'd made up my mind that no one else should touch him, but that I'd train him myself. A weed shouldn't come near him, nor slug, nor snail neither, if I knew it, but I'd cover him over, and shelter him from all frosts, and then watch him grow and grow in the light and warmth of G.o.d's beautiful sunshine. And let me tell you that you people who live in your big towns don't know the real pleasure there is in seeing a young plant grow day by day, putting forth its wonderful leaves from out some tiny bud, where they have lain snugly shut up from the winter's frosts, then the beautifully-painted flowers with their sweet scents. There, when I go to bed every night, in my humble fashion I thank G.o.d that I was made a gardener, with the chance through life of watching His wondrous works, and how He has ordained that man, by industry and skill, can change the wild, worthless weed or tree into the healthy, life-supporting vegetable or fruit. And yet I don't know but what I'm doing you town-dwellers a wrong, for I've seen many a pale face in your close, crowded courts watching patiently over some sickly, sun-asking flower in a broken pot, watering it, maybe, with a cracked jug, and then I've longed to put that pale face down in such a place as my garden here--I call it mine, you know, though it's master's--to watch it brighten, and see, as I've often seen before now, the tears of joy come into the eyes of that pale face because things were so beautiful.

"There's nothing like gardens, ma'am, to make people good and pure-hearted, for there's something about flowers that leads the thoughts up and up, higher and higher. I pity you folks in London.

There's religion in gardens, and I think if you put beautiful flowers within reach of people, you do them more good than by showing them grand buildings and sights. There's a something in flowers that makes its way to the heart--not only in the grandest blossoms, but in the simplest; and I ain't going to set up for a prophetic person, but I mean to say that as long as this world lasts there will always be a tender love in every human heart for the little, gentle, sweet-scented violets. I've lived in big towns myself, and seen the girls with their baskets full of fresh-gathered blossoms, nestling amongst green leaves, with the water lying upon them in big, bright beads, and when, being only a poor man, I've spent my penny in a bunch of the fragrant little blossoms, and held it to my face, what have I breathed in?--just the scent of a violet?

Oh, no! but G.o.d's bright country--far away from the smoke, and bricks, and mortar--and health and strength, and then it would be that a great longing would come on me to be once again where the wind blew free and the sun shone brightly.

"That was, you know, when I went up to London to better myself, and didn't; thinking, you know, to get to be gardener to some great man, or in one of the societies, but there wasn't room for me.

"I've heard about some poet saying something about a man to whom a primrose by the river's brim was a yellow primrose, and nothing more. I wonder what sort of a man that was, who could look upon the simplest flower that grows, and not see in it wonder, majesty, grandeur--a handiwork beside which the greatest piece of machinery made by man seems as it were nothing. But there, that's always the way with violets and primroses, they always have a tendency towards bringing on that watery weakness. They do it with hundreds, bless you, if given at the right times. They're so mixed up with one's early life, you see, and with days when everything looked so bright and sunny; and with some people, I suppose, that is the reason why they act so upon them; while with me, you see, there's something else, for when I think of them, I can always see two little bunches lying upon a little breast, with never a breath to stir them,--bright blossoms, smelling of the coming spring-time, but soon to be shut from the light of heaven, and buried deep, deep with that seed to be raised where chill winds never come, where the flowers are never-fading, and where the light of love shines ever upon those thought worthy to enter into that garden of life everlasting, amen!

"For it was all in vain, it was not to be. I made all my plans, I took all the care I could, I meant to train and prune and cut out all foreright and awkward growths, I meant that boy to be something to be proud of; but it was not to be: he was not to blossom here,--this did not seem to be his climate; and though I wouldn't see it, there was the plain fact, that there was a canker somewhere out of sight where it could not be got at; and though I tried, and the doctor tried, all we knew, it was of no use, and at last I was obliged to own that my little fellow was slowly withering away. I used to have him in his little chair in a sheltery spot, where there was sunshine, and give him a bunch of flowers to play with; but at last he grew too weak to be taken out, so I used to take him some flowers home, and it was always the same, he would hold them in his hand till they withered away, and then cry to see how they were faded.