Chapter Three #3
Aubrey grinned feebly, and shut his eyes again.
He did not open them until Croyde came back with the chaise, but Damerel knew from the frown between his brows and a certain rigidity about his mouth that he was neither asleep nor unconscious.
He muttered something about being able to walk with a little help when he was lifted, but upon being commanded to put his arm round Damerel’s neck he obeyed, and thereafter devoted his energies to the really rather formidable task of maintaining a decent fortitude.
Carrying so slight and thin a boy across the field presented no difficulties, but it was impossible to lift him into the chaise without subjecting him to a good deal of pain, and although little more than a mile had to be covered before the Priory was reached the road was so rough that the journey became a severe trial.
No complaint was uttered, but when he was lifted down from the chaise Aubrey fainted again.
‘Just as well!’ said Damerel cheerfully, carrying him into the house. ‘No, no, take those smelling-salts away, Mrs Imber! We’ll have his boots off before we try to bring him round again, poor lad! Get a razor, Marston!’
The removal of his boots brought Aubrey to his senses again, but it was not until he had been stripped of his clothing and put into one of his host’s nightshirts that he was able to collect his dazed wits.
The relief to his swollen right ankle afforded by a cold compress seemed to mitigate the grinding ache that radiated from his left hip-joint, and the sal volatile which was tilted down his throat enabled him, after a fit of choking, to take stock of his surroundings.
He frowned unrecognisingly upon Damerel and his valet, but when his eyes wandered to Mrs Imber’s concerned face his memory returned, and he exclaimed thickly: ‘Oh, I remember now! I took a toss. Hell and the devil confound it! Riding like a damned roadster!’
‘Oh, the best of us take tosses!’ said Damerel. ‘Don’t fret yourself into a fever over that!’
Aubrey turned his head on the pillow to look up at him. A surge of colour came into his cheeks; he said stiffly: ‘I’m very much obliged to you, sir. I beg your pardon! Making such a bother of myself for nothing worse than a tumble! You must think me a poor creature.’
‘On the contrary, I think you’ve excellent bottom. More bottom than sense! You silly gudgeon! you know you ride a feather! What made you suppose you could hold such a heady young ’un as that chestnut of yours?’
‘He didn’t get away with me!’ Aubrey said, firing up. ‘I let him rush it – I was riding carelessly – but there isn’t a horse in the stables I can’t back!’
‘Much more bottom than sense!’ said Damerel, quizzing him, but with such an understanding smile in his eyes that Aubrey forbore to take offence.
‘And I suppose a few worse gudgeons, like that bailiff of mine, told you the horse was too strong for you, which was all that was needed to set you careering over the countryside! I own I should have done the same, so I won’t comb your hair for it.
Where am I to find the sawbones who doctors you when you’ve knocked yourself up? ’
‘Nowhere! I mean, I don’t want him: he will only pull me about, and make it ten times worse! It’s nothing – it will go off if I lie still for a while!’
‘Now, Mr Aubrey, you know Miss Lanyon would have the doctor to you, and no argle-bargle about it!’ interposed Mrs Imber.
‘And as for making you worse, why, what a way to talk when everyone knows he’s as good as any grand London doctor, and very likely better!
It’s Dr Bentworth, my lord, and if it hadn’t been for Croyde taking Nidd off with him like he did I would have sent to York straight! ’
‘Well, if he has brought the horses in by now he can set off as soon as I’ve written a note for the doctor. Meanwhile –’
‘I wish you will not!’ Aubrey said fretfully. ‘I’m persuaded I shall be well enough to go home long before he can come all this way. If you would but leave me alone –! I won’t have a grand fuss made over me! I hate it beyond anything!’
This ungracious speech made Mrs Imber look very much shocked, but Damerel replied coolly: ‘Yes, abominable! No one shall make a fuss over you any longer. You shall try instead if you can go to sleep.’
To Aubrey, who was feeling as if his every limb had been racked, this suggestion seemed so insensate that it was with difficulty that he refrained from snapping back an acid retort.
He was left to solitude, and to his own reflections, but these, do what he would, could not be diverted for long from his body’s aches and ails, and soon resolved themselves into a nagging dread that the fall had injured his hip badly enough to turn him into an out-and-out cripple, or at the very least to keep him tied to a sofa for months.
However, before he had had time to make himself sick with worry Damerel came back into the room with a glass in his hand.
After one keen look at Aubrey, he said: ‘Pretty uncomfortable, eh? Drink this!’
‘It’s of no consequence: I can bear it,’ Aubrey muttered. ‘If it’s laudanum I don’t want it – thank you!’
‘Remind me to ask you what you want, if ever I should wish to know!’ said Damerel. ‘At the moment I don’t! Come along, do as I tell you, or a worse fate may befall you!’
‘It couldn’t,’ sighed Aubrey, reluctantly taking the glass.
‘Don’t be too sure of that! I’ve no patience, and no bowels of mercy either. Can it be that you don’t know you are in the ogre’s den?’
That made Aubrey smile, but he said, looking distastefully at his potion: ‘I don’t take this stuff unless I am absolutely obliged. I’m not a weakling, you know – even if I do ride a feather!’
‘You’re an obstinate whelp. And who is making the grand fuss now, I should like to know? All for nothing more than a composer to make you more comfortable until your doctor can set you to rights! Drink it at once, and let me have no more nonsense!’
Wholly unused to receiving peremptory commands, Aubrey stiffened a little; but after staring at Damerel for a moment out of dangerously narrowed eyes he capitulated, saying with his twisted smile: ‘Oh, very well!’
‘That’s better,’ said Damerel, taking the empty glass from him.
Something in Aubrey’s thin, set face made him add: ‘I’ve a strong notion there’s nothing much amiss with you but bruises and blue devils.
You’d be in worse pain if you had done yourself a serious mischief, so come out of the dismals, young paperskull! ’
Aubrey’s eyes turned quickly towards him. ‘Yes. Yes, I should! I hadn’t thought of that. Thank you – I’m very much obliged to you! I didn’t mean to be uncivil – at least, I did, but – but I beg pardon, sir!’
‘Oh, pooh! go to sleep!’
‘Yes, very likely I shall, after drinking that vile stuff,’ Aubrey agreed, with a shy grin that made him look suddenly younger. ‘Only my sister will be a trifle anxious, I daresay. Do you think –’
‘Have no fear! I have already sent one of the stable-boys to Undershaw with a letter for her.’
‘Oh! Thank you! You didn’t tell her anything to alarm her, did you?’
‘No, why should I? I told her precisely what I told you, and merely requested her to put up what you need in the way of nightshirts and tooth-brushes for the boy to bring back with him.’
‘That’s right!’ Aubrey said, relieved. ‘They can’t fly into a pucker over that!’