As for the lady, poor thing, she was very young — perhaps no more than fifteen — and very thin. Her bones shewed through an almost translucent skin which was stretched, tight as a drum, over her swollen belly. Although I have read a great deal upon the subject, I found it more difficult than I had imagined to make the lady attend to what I was saying. My instructions were exceptionally clear and precise, but she was weak and in pain and I could not persuade her to listen to me.
I soon discovered that the baby was lodged in a most unfortunate position. Having no forceps, I tried several times to turn it with my hand, and at the fourth attempt I succeeded. Between the hours of four and five a male child was born. I did not at first like his colour. Mr. Baillie told me that newborn children are generally the colour of claret; sometimes, he said, they may be as dark as port-wine, but this child was, to all intents and purposes, black. He was, however, quite remarkably strong. He gave me a great kick as I passed him to the old woman. A bruise upon my arm marks the place.
But I could not save the mother. At the end she was like a house through which a great wind rushes, making all the doors bang at their frames: death was rushing through her, and her wits came loose and banged about inside her head. She appeared to believe that she had been taken by force to a place where she was watched night and day by a hideous jailoress.
“Hush,” said I. “These are very wild imaginings. Look about you. Here is good, kind …” I indicated the old woman with the porcupine face. “… who takes such excellent care of you. You are surrounded by friends. Be comforted.” But she would not listen to me and called out wildly for her mother to come and take her home.
I would have given a great deal to save her. For what in the end was the result of all my exertions? One person came into this world and another left it — it seemed no very great achievement.
I began a prayer of commendation, but had not said above a dozen words when I heard a sort of squeal. Opening one eye, I saw the old woman snatch up the baby and run from the room as fast as her legs could carry her.
I finished my prayer and, with a sigh, went to find the lady’s husband. I discovered him in his library where, with an admirable shew of masculine unconcern, he was reading a book. It was then about seven or eight o’clock.
I thought that it became me as a clergyman to offer some comfort and to say something of the wife he had lost, but I was prevented by my complete ignorance of everything that concerned her. Of her virtue I could say nothing at all. Of her beauty I knew little enough; I had only ever seen her with features contorted in the agonies of childbirth and of death. So I told him in plain words what had happened and finished with a short speech that sounded, even to my own ears, uncommonly like an apology for having killed his wife.
“Oh!” he said. “I dare say you did what you could.”
I admired his philosophy though I confess it surprized me a little. Then I recalled that, in speaking to me, she had made several errors of grammar and had employed some dialect words and expressions. I concluded that perhaps, like many gentlemen before him, he had been enticed into an unequal marriage by blue eyes and fair hair, and that he had later come to regret it.
“A son, you say?” he said in perfect good humour. “Excellent!” And he stuck his head out of the door and called for the baby to be brought to him. A moment later Dando and the porcupine-faced nurse appeared with the child. The gentleman examined his son very minutely and declared himself delighted. Then he held the baby up and said the following words to it: “On to the shovel you must go, sir!” He gave the child a hearty shake. “And into the fire you must go, sir!” Another shake. “And under the burning coals you must go, sir!” And another shake.
I found his humour a little odd.
Then the nurse brought out a cloth and seemed to be about to wrap the baby in it.
“Oh, but I must protest, sir!” I cried. “Indeed I must!” Have you nothing cleaner to wrap the child in?”
They all looked at me in some amazement. Then the gentleman smiled and said, “What excellent eyesight you must have, Mr. Simonelli! Does not this cloth appear to you to be made of the finest, whitest linen imaginable?”
“No,” said I in some irritation. “It appears to me to be a dirty rag that I would scarcely use to clean my boots!”
“Indeed?” said the gentleman in some surprize. “And Dando? Tell me, how does he strike you? Do you see the ruby buckles on his shoes? No? What of his yellow velvet coat and shining sword?”
I shook my head. (Dando, I may say, was dressed in the same quaint, old-fashioned style as his master, and looked every inch what he no doubt was — a tattered, swaggering scoundrel. He wore jackboots up to his thighs, a bunch of ragged dirty lace at his throat, and an ancient tricorne hat on his head.)
The gentleman gazed thoughtfully at me for a minute or two. “Mr. Simonelli,” he said at last, “I am quite struck by your face! Those lustrous eyes! Those fine dark eyelashes! Those noble eye-brows! Every feature proclaims your close connexion with my own family! Do me the kindness, if you will, of stepping before this mirror and standing at my side.”
I did as he asked and, leaving aside some difference in our complexions (his as brown as beechmast, mine as white as hot-pressed paper) the resemblance was, I confess, remarkable. Everything which is odd or unsettling in my own face, I saw repeated in his: the same long eye-brows like black pen-strokes terminating in an upward flourish; the same curious slant to the eye-lid which bestows upon the face an expression of sleepy arrogance; the same little black mole just below the right eye.
“Oh!” he cried. “There can be no doubt about it! What was your father’s name?”
“Simonelli,” I said with a smile, “evidently.”
“And his place of birth?”
I hesitated. “Genoa,” I said.
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Frances Simon.”
“And her place of birth?”
“York.”
He took a scrap of paper from the table and wrote it all down. “Simon and Simonelli,” he said, “that is odd.” He seemed to wait for some further illumination upon the matter of my parentage. He was disappointed. “Well, no matter,” he said. “Whatever the connexion between us, Mr. Simonelli, I shall discover it. You have done me a great service and I had intended to pay you liberally for it, but I have no notion of relations paying for services that ought to be given freely as part of the duty that family members owe one another.” He smiled his long, knowing smile. “And so I must examine the question further,” he said.
So all his much-vaunted interest in my face and family came to this: he would not pay me! It made me very angry to think I could have been so taken in by him! I informed him briefly that I was the new Rector of Allhope and said that I hoped to see him in church on Sunday.
But he only smiled and said, “We are not in your parish here. This house is Allhope House, and according to ancient agreement I am the Lord of Allhope Manor, but over the years the house and village have become separated and now stand, as you see, at some distance from each other.”
I had not the least idea what he was talking about. I turned to go with Dando, who was to accompany me back to the village, but at the library door I looked back and said, “It is a curious thing, sir, but you never told me your name.”
“I am John Hollyshoes,” said he with a smile.
Just as the door closed I could have sworn I heard the sound of a shovel being pushed into the fire and the sound of coals being raked over.