They fell back, staring and uttering expressions of rough wonder at the advance of the lady in her glistening silk, but as she knelt down by the poor creature, held her on her arm, bathed her face with scent on her own handkerchief, and held to her lips the champagne that Raymond poured out, there was a kind of hoarse cheer.
'I think her arm is put out,' said Rosamond; 'she ought to go to the Infirmary.'
'Send for a cab,' said Raymond to the policeman; but at that moment the girl opened her eyes, started at the sight of him and tried to hide her face with her hand.
'It is poor Fanny Reynolds,' said he in a low voice to Rosamond, while the policeman was gruffly telling the woman she was better, and ought to get up and not trouble the lady; but Rosamond waved off his too decided assistance, saying:
'I know who she is; she comes from my husband's parish; and I will take her home. You would like to go home, would you not, poor Fanny?'
The woman shuddered, but clung to her; and in a minute or two an unwilling fly had been pressed into the service, and the girl lifted into it by Raymond and the policeman.
'You are really going with her?' said the former. 'You will judge whether to take her home; but she ought to go to the Infirmary first.'
'Tell Cecil I am sorry to desert her,' said Rosamond, as he wrung her hand, then paid the driver and gave him directions, the policeman going with them to clear the way through the throng to the border of the down.
The choice of the cabman had not been happy. He tried to go towards Backsworth, and when bidden to go to Wil'sbro', growled out an imprecation, and dashed off at a pace that was evident agony to the poor patient; but when Rosamond stretched out at the window to remonstrate, she was answered with rude abuse that he could not be hindered all day by whims. She perceived that he was so much in liquor that their connection had better be as brief as possible; and the name on the door showed that he came from beyond the circle of influence of the name of Charnock Poynsett. She longed to assume the reins, if not to lay the whip about his ears; but all she could do was to try to lessen the force of the jolts by holding up the girl, as the horse was savagely beaten, and the carriage so swayed from side to side that she began to think it would be well if there were not three cases for the Infirmary instead of one. To talk to the girl or learn her wishes was not possible, among the moans and cries caused by the motion; and it was no small relief to be safely at the Infirmary door, though there was no release till after a fierce altercation with the driver, who first denied, and then laughed to scorn the ample fare he had received, so that had any policeman been at hand, the porter and house surgeon would have given him in charge, but they could only take his number and let him drive off in a fury.
Poor Fanny was carried away fainting to the accident ward, and Rosamond found it would be so long before she would be visible again, that it would be wiser to go home and send in her relations, but there was not a fly or cab left in Wil'sbro', and there was nothing for it but to walk.
She found herself a good deal shaken, and walked fast because thus her limbs did not tremble so much, while the glaring September afternoon made her miss the parasol she had left in the carriage, and find little comfort in the shadeless erection on her head. It was much further than she had walked for a long time past, and she had begun to think she had parted with a good deal of her strength before the Compton woods grew more defined, or the church tower came any nearer.
Though the lane to the Reynolds' colony was not full in her way, she was glad to sit down in the shade to speak to old Betty, who did not comport herself according to either extreme common to parents in literature.
'So Fanny, she be in the 'firmary, be her? I'm sure as 'twas very good of the young Squire and you, my lady; and I'm sorry her's bin and give you so much trouble.'
Everybody was harvesting but the old woman, who had the inevitable bad leg. All men and beasts were either in the fields or at the races, and Rosamond, uncertain whether her patient was not in a dying state, rejoiced in her recent acquisition of a pony carriage, and speeding home with renewed energy, roused her 'parson's man' from tea in his cottage, and ordered him off to take Betty Reynolds to see her daughter without loss of time.
Then at length she opened her own gate and walked in at the drawing-room window. Terry started up from the sofa, and Anne from a chair by his side, exclaiming at her appearance, and asking if there had been any accident.
'Not to any of us, but to a poor woman whom I have been taking to the Infirmary,' she said, sinking into a low chair. 'Where's Julius?'
'He went to see old George Willett,' said Anne. 'The poor old man has just heard of the death of his daughter at Wil'sbro'.'
'And you came to sit with this boy, you good creature. How are you, master?'
'Oh, better, thanks,' he said, with a weary stretch. 'How done up you look, Rose! How did you come?'
'I walked from Wil'sbro'.'
'Walked!' echoed both her hearers.
'Walked! I liked my two legs better than the four of the horse that brought me there, though 'twasn't his fault, poor beast, but the brute of a driver, whom we'll have up before the magistrate. I've got the name; doing his best to dislocate every bone in the poor thing's body. Well, and I hope baby didn't disturb you?'
'Baby has been wonderfully quiet. Julius went to see after her once, but she was out.'
'I'll go and see the young woman, and then come and tell my story.'
But Rosamond came back almost instantly, exclaiming, 'Emma must have taken the baby to the Hall. I wish she would be more careful. The sun is getting low, and there's a fog rising.'
'She had not been there when I came down an hour ago,' said Anne; 'at least, not with Mrs. Poynsett. They may have had her in the housekeeper's room. I had better go and hasten her home.'
Julius came in shortly after, but before he had heard the tale of Fanny Reynolds, Anne had returned to say that neither child nor nurse had been at the Hall, nor passed the large gate that morning. It was growing rather alarming. The other servants said Emma had taken the baby out as usual in the morning, but had not returned to dinner, and they too had supposed her at the Hall. None of the dependants of the Hall in the cottages round knew anything of her, but at last Dilemma Hornblower imparted that she had seen my lady's baby's green cloak atop of a tax-cart going towards Wil'sbro'.
Now Emma had undesirable relations, and Rosamond had taken her in spite of warning that her uncle was the keeper of the 'Three Pigeons.' The young parents stood looking at one another, and Rosamond faintly said, 'If that girl has taken her to the races!'
'I'm more afraid of that fever in Water Lane,' said Julius. 'I have a great mind to take the pony carriage and see that the girl does not take her there.'
'Oh! I sent it with Betty Reynolds,' cried Rosamond in an agony.
'At that moment the Hall carriage came dashing up, and as Raymond saw the three standing in the road, he called to the coachman to stop, for he and his friend were now within, and Cecil leaning back, looking much tired. Raymond's eager question was what Rosamond had done with her charge.
'Left her at the Infirmary;-but, oh! you've not seen baby?'
'Seen-seen what! your baby?' asked Raymond, as if he thought Rosamond's senses astray, while his bachelor friend was ready to laugh at a young mother's alarms, all the more when Julius answered, 'It is too true; the baby and her nurse have not been seen here since ten o'clock; and we are seriously afraid the girl may have been beguiled to those races. There is a report of the child's cloak having been seen on a tax-cart.'
'Then it was so,' exclaimed Cecil, starting forward. 'I saw a baby's mantle of that peculiar green, and it struck me that some farmer's wife had been aping little Julia's.'
'Where? When?' cried Rosamond.
'They passed us, trying to find a place. I did not show it to you for you were talking to those gentlemen.'
'Did you see it, Brown?' asked Julius, going towards the coachman. 'Our baby and nurse, I mean.'
'I can't tell about Miss Charnock, sir,' said the coachman, 'but I did think I remarked two young females with young Gadley in a tax-cart. I would not be alarmed, sir, nor my lady,' he added, with the freedom of a confidential servant, who, like all the household, adored Lady Rosamond. 'It was a giddy thing in the young woman to have done; and no place to take the young lady to. But there-there were more infants there than a man could count, and it stands to reason they come to no harm.'
'The most sensible thing that has been said yet,' muttered the friend; but Rosamond was by no means pacified. 'Gadley's cart! They'll go to that horrid public-house in Water Lane where there's typhus and diphtheria and everything; and there's this fog-and that girl will never wrap her up. Oh! why did I ever go?'
