Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series. Henry Wood
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Название: Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series
Автор: Henry Wood
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
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We had never heard a word about the fancy since that night when Annet first spoke of it at the stile, and supposed she had forgotten it long ago. The Squire and Mrs. Todhetley had often noticed how ill she looked, but they put it down to grief for Francis and to her anxiety about the farm.
“No, she has said no more since then,” observed David. “She took up an idea that the Squire ascribed it to a wandering brain; and so has held her peace since.”
“Is her brain wandering, do you think?” asked Tod.
“Well, I don’t know,” returned David, absently making little cuts at the edge of the cheese with the knife. “In all other respects she is as sane as sane can be; there’s not a woman of sounder sense, as to daily matters, anywhere. But this odd fancy has got hold of her mind; and it’s just driving her crazy. She says that her husband appears to her in her dreams, and calls upon her to help and release him.”
“Release him from what? From his grave in Finchley Cemetery?”
“From what indeed!” echoed David Skate. “That’s what I ask her. But she persists that, sleeping or waking, his spirit is always hovering near her, crying out to her to avenge him. She declares that it is no fancy. Of course it is, though.”
“I never met with such a case,” said Tod, forgetting the good cider in his astonishment. “Frank Radcliffe died up at Dr. Dale’s in London. Stephen could not have had anything to do with his death: he was down here at the time.”
“Well, Annet has the notion firmly fixed in her mind that he had, and there’s no turning her,” said David. “There will be no turning her this side the grave, unless we can free her from it. Any way, the fancy has come to such a pitch now, and is telling upon her so seriously, that something must be done. If it were not that just the busiest time has set in; the hay cut, and the wheat a’most ready to cut, I’d take her to London to Dr. Dale’s. Perhaps if she heard the account of Frank’s death from his own lips, and that it was a natural death, it might help her a bit.”
We went home full of this. The Squire was in a fine way when he heard it, and brimming over with pity for Annet. He had grown to like her; and he had always looked on Francis as in some degree belonging to him.
“Look here,” said he, in his impulsive good nature, “it will never do to let this go on: we shall have her in a mad-house too. That’s not a bad notion of David Skate’s; and if he can’t leave to take her up to London just now, I’ll take her.”
“She could not go,” said Tod. “She is in bed with low fever.”
“Then I’ll go up by myself,” stamped the Squire in his zeal. “And get Dr. Dale to write out all the particulars, and hurry down again with them to her as fast as the train will bring me. Poor thing! her disease must be a sort of mania.”
“Now, Johnny, mind you don’t make a mistake in the omnibus. Use your eyes; they are younger than mine.”
We were standing at Charing Cross in the hot afternoon sun, looking out for an omnibus that would take us westward. The Squire had lost no time in starting for London, and we had reached it an hour before. He let me come up with him, as Tod had gone to Whitney Hall.
“Here it is, sir. ‘Kensington,—Hammersmith,—Richmond.’ This is the right one.”
The omnibus stopped, and in we got; for the Squire said the sun was too fierce for the outside; and by-and-by, when the houses became fewer, and the trees and fields more frequent, we were set down near Dr. Dale’s. A large house, standing amidst a huge grass-plat, shut in by iron gates.
“I want to see Dr. Dale,” said the pater, bustling in as soon as the door was opened, without waiting to be asked.
The servant looked at him and then at me; as if he thought the one or the other of us was a lunatic about to be left there. “This way, sir,” said he to the Squire and put us into a small square room that had a blue and drab carpet, and a stand of plants before the window. A little man, with deep-set dark eyes, and the hair all gone from the top of his head, soon made his appearance—Dr. Dale.
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