Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle

asked. “I thought he had been chasing us, but if that was the way of it what makes him care a button for my leg?”

“I can’t think!” said Phoebe. “But he didn’t come in search of me, that I do know! In fact, he says he didn’t come to Austerby to offer for me at all. I was never more relieved in my life!”

Tom looked at her in a puzzled way, but since he was a good deal exhausted by all he had undergone, and his leg was paining him very much, he felt unequal to further discussion, and relapsed into silence.

In a short space of time Sylvester came back, bringing Keighley with him, and carrying a glass half full of a rich brown liquid, which he set down on a small table beside the bed. “Well, Keighley says that if it is a simple fracture he can set it for you,” he remarked cheerfully. “Let us hope it is, therefore! But I can’t help feeling that the first thing to do is to get you out of your clothes, and into your nightshirt. You must be excessively uncomfortable!”

“Oh, I do wish you will persuade him to be undressed,” exclaimed Phoebe, regarding Sylvester for the first time with approval. “It is precisely what Mrs. Scaling and I wanted to do for him at the outset, but nothing would prevail upon him to agree to it!”

“You amaze me!” said Sylvester. “If I find him similarly obstinate Keighley and I will strip him forcibly. Meanwhile, Miss Marlow, you may go downstairs—if you will be so obliging!—and assist Mrs. Scaling to tear up a sheet for bandages. No, I know you don’t wish to leave him to our mercy, but, believe me, you are shockingly in the way here! Go and brew him a posset, or some broth, or whatever you think suitable to this occasion!”

She looked a trifle mulish, but a chuckle from Tom clinched the matter. “Oh, do go away, Phoebe!” he begged.

She went, but the incident did nothing to put her in charity with Sylvester, politely holding the door for her, and saying with odious kindness, as she passed him: “You shall come back presently!”

Tom, however, was so grateful that he began to think Sylvester a very tolerable sort of man; and when Sylvester, turning away from the door, winked at him, he grinned, and said shyly: “I’m much obliged to you, sir! She’s a good girl—as good as ever twanged, in fact—but—but—”

“I know,” said Sylvester sympathetically. “They will be ministering angels!”

“Yes,” agreed Tom, somewhat uneasily eyeing Keighley, who, having shed his coat, was now rolling up his shirtsleeves in an ominous manner.

“You want to bite on the bullet, sir,” recommended Keighley. “Because I’ll have to find out just what you have broke in your leg, if you’ve broke anything, which I’ve only got your word for, when all’s said.”

Tom assented to this, clenched his teeth and his fists, and endured in sweating silence while Keighley discovered the exact nature of his injury. The rough cart-journey, and the inexpert attempts of Will Scaling to set the broken bone, had caused considerable inflammation. Keighley said, as he straightened himself: “Properly mauled you they did, sir! True enough, you’ve broke your fibula—which is what you might call Dutch comfort, because it might have been worse. Now, if that jobbernoll below stairs has sawn me off a nice splint, like I told him to do, we’ll have you going along like winking in a pig’s whisper, sir!”

“Are you sure of that, John?” Sylvester asked. “It won’t do to be making a mull of it!”

“I shan’t do that, your grace. But I’m thinking it would be as well if the young gentleman was put to bed. I’ll have to slit his breeches up the left side, but I can get ’em off easier without his leg being splinted.”

Sylvester nodded; Tom said faintly: “My razor is on the dressing-table. You may as well use it. It’s ruined already, cutting my boot.”

“Don’t let that vex you!” said Sylvester. “You can borrow one of mine.”

Tom thanked him. He submitted to being stripped, and put into his nightshirt, and owned, upon being lowered again on to the pillows, that he felt a degree more comfortable. Keighley then went away to collect splints and bandages; and Tom, a little white about the gills, said with what jauntiness he could muster that he would be devilish glad when it was over.

“I should think you would be,” agreed Sylvester. He picked up the glass he had brought into the room, and held it out. “Meanwhile, here’s a drink to fortify you. No daylights, mind!”

Tom looked rather dubiously at the dark potion, but took the glass, and raised it to his lips. Then he lowered it again. “Yes, but it’s rum, isn’t it, sir?”

“Yes. Don’t you like it?”

“Well, not above half. But the thing is I should be as drunk as a wheelbarrow if I drank all this!”

“That isn’t of the slightest consequence. Oh, are you thinking of what Miss Marlow might say? You need not: I shan’t let her come back until you’ve slept it off. Don’t argue with me! Just drink it, and be thankful.”

Keighley, returning to find his patient happily, if somewhat muzzily, smiling, said with approval: “That’s the dandy! Properly shot in the neck, ain’t you, sir? It won’t make any odds to you what’s done to you. Now, if your grace will lend a hand—?”

If Tom was not quite as insensible as Keighley optimistically prophesied, the rum undoubtedly made it much easier for him to bear the exquisite anguish of the next minute or two. He behaved with great fortitude, encouraged by Keighley, who told him he was pluck to the backbone. The ordeal was soon at an end. It left him feeling limp and rather sick. His leg ached; and he found that everything he tried to look at swam so giddily before him that he was obliged to close his eyes, yielding to the powerful effect of rum. Keighley, observing with satisfaction that he was sinking into stertorous sleep, nodded at Sylvester, and said briefly: “He’ll do now, your grace.”

“I hope he may, but it will be as well if we get a surgeon to him,” replied Sylvester, frowning down at Tom. “If anything were to go amiss, I’ve no mind to be responsible. He’s under age, you know. I wonder why the devil I embroiled myself in this affair?”

“Ah!” said Keighley, snuffing the candles. “Just what I’ve been asking myself, your grace!”

They left the room together, and descended the stairs to the coffee room. Here they found Phoebe, sitting before a brisk fire, and looking anxious. Sylvester said: “Well, Keighley has set the bone, and Orde is now asleep. For anything I know, there’s nothing more to be done, but at the same time—What’s the weather like?” He stepped up to the window, and drew the blind aside. “Still snowing, but not dark yet. What do you wish, Miss Marlow?”

She had smiled at Keighley, and thanked him; but at these words she cast him an apologetic glance, and said: “I should wish to bring a doctor to see him, because if it hadn’t been for me it would never have happened, and I know Mrs. Orde would do so. It is the most vexatious thing! Mrs. Scaling only spoke to me of a doctor at Newbury, and now I’ve discovered that there is a Dr Upsall, living at Hungerford! If I had known of him earlier I might have walked there, for I don’t think it’s much above four miles. Mrs. Scaling didn’t think to tell me of him, because from what she says I collect he is above her touch.”

“Let us hope he doesn’t consider himself above mine. Do you suppose the half-wit capable of guiding one to his house?”

“I should think he would be. He says so, at all events. But it is growing dark, and perhaps the doctor might not choose to venture out, for a stranger?”

“Nonsense!” Sylvester said. “It is his business to venture out. He will be well paid for his trouble. You had better put the horses to immediately, John—and tell young Scaling he is to go with you! You may present my card to this Dr Upsall, and say that I shall be obliged to him if he will come here at once.”

“Very good, your grace,” Keighley said.

Phoebe, who had listened to Sylvester’s orders in gathering indignation, waited only until Keighley had left the room before exclaiming in accents of strong censure: “You cannot mean to send that unfortunate man out in this weather!”

He looked surprised. “You said you wished a doctor to see Orde, didn’t you? I own, I wish it too, and though he might take no particular harm through waiting until the morning it is quite possible, you know, that the road may be impassable by then.”

“Indeed, I wish him to see a doctor!” she said. “And if you will trust your horses to me I’ll fetch him myself— since you do not care to go!”

“I?” he demanded. “Why should I do any such thing?”

“Can’t you see that your groom has the most shocking cold?” she said fiercely. “He is looking worn to a bone already, and here you are, sending him out again without a thought to what may come of it! I suppose it is of no consequence if he contracts an inflammation of the lungs, or falls into a confirmed consumption!”

He flushed angrily. “On the contrary! I should find it excessively inconvenient!”