Chapter Thirty-Eight #3
Tildy’s face was very pale, and deep shadows undermarked her eyes, but when she spoke her voice, though tremulous, held no trace of hysteria or imbalance.
‘I can’t understand why he should have fallen victim,’ she mused aloud. ‘I strained and boiled every drop of water that we used. I just can’t understand it.’
Charles Brown was feeling very unhappy about Daniel Lambert’s death himself.
It was he who had treated the sick man, utilising the whole battery of various treatments, all to no avail.
Now he sat pondering over this failure. Repeatedly going over in his mind the treatments and the chronological order of their application.
Wondering if he himself had inadvertently worsened Lambert’s condition with the doses of drugs and liquors, the application of sinapisms, and use of harsh purgatives and enemas.
Unable to restrain himself, he voiced his own sense of guilt that Daniel should have died, but Tildy smiled wanly, and would not accept this.
‘You did all that could be done in the light of our present knowledge, Charles. You have nothing to reproach yourself about.’ She sighed tremulously, ‘We just have to accept that we don’t know enough yet, to defeat the cholera.’
A spark of her normal fiery spirit suddenly flared, ‘But one day we will. Of that I’m certain.
And until that day I intend to go on fighting against it in every way I can think of.
I owe that to my Daniel. I owe it to him to go on fighting.
Tomorrow I shall go and see John Clayton and offer myself to work as a nurse in the hospital. ’
This outburst of defiance gave Tildy renewed strength of purpose and comforted her with the knowledge that at least she would still be defying the foul evil thing that had taken her loved man from her, and carrying on the battle against it.
As the hours passed, many people came individually to the house to offer their condolences, and to see if Tildy needed help of any kind.
When she expressed her surprise at the kindness being shown towards her by so many diverse personalities, Old Esther smiled and told her, ‘’Tis only the bread you’se cast on the waters coming back to you, my duck. ’
An old friend of Esther, Tildy and Davy came unexpectedly, late in the afternoon, Zeke Pickering, the poacher, looking hale and hearty.
He and his Romany woman were camping in the woodlands out by the Beoley village, and as he told Davy of the small herd of fine ponies and horses he had now amassed, the boy’s eyes sparkled and it seemed that his grief for Daniel Lambert’s death visibly eased.
When Zeke Pickering tentatively suggested that Davy should stay with him at his camp for a few days and help him to break some of the young horses the boy’s eyes shone, and Tildy gratefully accepted the man’s offer, knowing that this would help her son to recover more quickly from losing Daniel, because in many ways Zeke Pickering himself had been a surrogate father to the boy until she had come to live with Daniel Lambert.
Another reason, which influenced Tildy in favour of Davy leaving now with Zeke Pickering, was that there had been no cases of the cholera where Zeke Pickering lived, and the isolation of his camp’s area was such that she considered there to be little likelihood of any such cases occurring.
When the man and boy had left, Old Esther told Tildy, ‘I reckon you did the right thing theer, my duck. ’Tis best for the boy that he should leave this house o’ mourning for a little whiles. But I canna help but think that you should ha’ kept him back to goo to the funeral fust?’
Tildy looked at the old woman with steady eyes.
‘I think not, Esther. What could Davy gain by seeing a long wooden box put down into a big hole in the ground?’ She shook her head, ‘No, let him see young ponies and fine horses galloping through the woodland, full of their joy of life. That will do him a sight more good than watching a dead man be buried. I want Davy to remember Daniel as he was, full of strength and joy, not as a wooden box being lowered into a clay hole.’
The old woman thought on this for a time, then nodded, ‘Ahr, I can see the sense in what you says my duck.’
Charles Brown smiled warmly, ‘Of course you’re right, my dear. Going off with Zeke Pickering is by far the finest medicine I could ever prescribe for Davy’s happiness at this time.’
Tildy’s own heart was filled with a fresh sense of loss, and she could have wept as she watched the boy walking away. But she knew that when he came back, he would still be hers, and that she had done the right thing in letting him go.
A wave of utter weariness swept over her, and she could not repress a yawn. Charles Brown took her hand and insisted. ‘You will go to my room, and you will sleep for a short while, Tildy.’
She shook her head and protested, ‘No, I must stay close to Daniel. I can’t think of sleeping now. Not until I’ve laid my man in his final resting place.’
He saw her determination, and let the matter lie.