Page 38 of It Takes Two to Tumble
But then he unfolded the note and read it. It was in the village apothecary’s scrawl. He got immediately to his feet, dropping the note onto the table. “I’m afraid I’ll miss dinner. Mr. Farleigh has taken a turn for the worse.” Everyone at the table murmured the appropriate words of concern. Phillip cast him a meaningful glance, but didn’t follow, and Ben was left to his duties alone.
Dinner was going to be every bit as bad as could be expected. Without Ben, Phillip was left presiding over a table of people who seemed determined to be merry. Phillip felt about as merry as a marble bust.
“Hartley, tell the story of that time you had to rescue me from the tree,” Miss Crawford said, a twinkle in her eyes.
“Do you mean the time you got chased into a tree by a lamb?”
“Be fair, Hart. It was a very frightening lamb.”
Mr. Hartley Sedgwick then proceeded to regale the table with a tale that made both Miss Crawford and himself look amusingly hapless and Ben heroically competent. Mrs. Howard was wiping tears of laughter from her eyes and Walsh sat back contentedly in his chair, cradling his wineglass easily in his hand.
Everything would have been a good deal more manageable if Alice Crawford weren’t so damned charming, if he could have pretended that he was the inadvertent means of impoverishing some kind of rural villainess. He ought to have known that any friend of Ben’s would be a paragon.
Since there was no hostess, they all retired to the drawing room at the same time. Walsh materialized by Miss Crawford’s side to help her from the table, and Hartley seemed occupied in brushing lint off his coat, leaving Phillip and Mrs. Howard to leave the dining room together.
Phillip had at first been slightly annoyed that Walsh was throwing Mrs. Howard at him. It could have been hideously awkward if Mrs. Howard hadn’t taken it in stride. “Don’t mind my brother,” she whispered. “He can’t help himself.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Was everyone determined to be gracious and charming when all Phillip wanted to do was scowl? As he walked past Ben’s empty chair, he saw the note that had called Ben away from the table. He palmed it, not certain what to do. Once he had settled Mrs. Walsh in the drawing room, he unfolded it, hoping that the sender of the note wrote the kind of hand that managed to stay still. But he had no such luck: the note had been written hastily with what looked like an unsharpened pencil, so the writing wiggled and blurred its way across the page.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he said to his guests. He was being a terrible host, but he didn’t care. “I ought to see to the children.”
He found Ned once again reading aloud fromRobinson Crusoe. When Jamie saw his father in the doorway, he shifted wordlessly to the side, making room in his bed for Phillip. Phillip squeezed in, and Jamie dropped his head sleepily to Phillip’s shoulder. In the other bed, Peggy was already nodding off. When Ned reached what sounded like the end of a chapter, Phillip cleared his throat. “Mr. Sedgwick was called away urgently, and he left this note. Would you mind reading it for me? My eyes aren’t up to the task. They, ah, never are.”
Ned’s eyes opened wide, but he took the paper Phillip handed him. “‘Dear Mr. Sedgwick,’” he read. “‘Mr. Farleigh has taken a turn. I doubt he will last the night. Mrs. Farleigh has asked for you.’” He put the note down. “It’s signed Davis. He’s the apothecary some of the tenants use.” The boy’s forehead creased with thought. “But the Farleighs don’t have money for Mr. Davis.”
“I called on him the other day and asked that he attend Mr. Farleigh and send the bill to me.” He hadn’t meant anyone to find out. He felt like he was getting too involved with people he’d soon be far away from.
“That was kind. Here’s your note back,” he said, passing the folded square to Phillip. “Do you need spectacles, Father?” He peered curiously at Phillip, and Phillip saw that Ned knew exactly what was wrong with his eyes.
“Alas, it’s not something spectacles can solve,” he said, glancing at Jamie. But Jamie was already asleep, his head pillowed on Phillip’s shoulder. Peggy, too, had fallen asleep. Ned closed the book, whispered good night, and retired to his own bedroom next door. Phillip stayed in Jamie’s bed for a while, listening to the sound of the children’s breathing.
The night was clear and warm, still and moonless, as Ben carefully picked his way along the narrow lane. He arrived at the farm as the apothecary was leaving.
“I told Mrs. Farleigh I’d come back in the morning,” the apothecary said. He had the weary look of a man who had been awake far too long and with little to show for it. “There’s nothing I can do but give him laudanum.” He sighed. This was not the first time he and Ben had met at the home of the ill or dying. “He’s nearly eighty,” he said, as if that made death more palatable. And it did, in a way; people several degrees away from death tended to find comfort in the idea that the departed had lived out his full allotment of time on earth. The nearest mourners never did. There was only scant comfort for them, and Ben knew it too well.
“And he’s been suffering.” This was Ben’s part in the litany, the pretense that death was acceptable if it relieved pain. This ritual dispensed with, the two men nodded at one another, the apothecary left, and Ben went into the eerily still farmhouse. Tonight there wasn’t even the stale scent of cooking or the crackle of an unseasonable fire. He found Mrs. Farleigh where he knew she would be, by her husband’s bedside. He wordlessly sat beside her and waited.
There was nothing to do but sit. He offered to pray with her, but she shook her head, and they both knew there would be time enough for prayers in the following days. But he couldn’t leave her alone. Eventually a neighbor or relation would arrive, and when Mr. Farleigh died, it would be the women who laid him out. It would be the women who had the work to do. All Ben had to do was bury this poor woman’s husband.
All he had to do was watch as this woman had half her soul wrenched away. It didn’t matter that he was old; it didn’t matter that he had been sick; it didn’t matter that she believed he’d be in a heaven more vivid and concrete than Ben could muster up any faith in. She was still going to lose him.
So he sat, giving her his presence while knowing it was inadequate, as so many necessary gestures were. He watched the dying man’s chest rise and fall, his ragged breaths coming too irregularly. He remembered every other sickbed he had attended, every other person he had watched leave this earth, every mourner they had left behind, broken, incomplete, shattered.
He thought of Phillip, who had lost a wife but had also suffered a loss he couldn’t even talk about because it didn’t have a name. He thought about his father, who had also endured two losses—Ben’s mother and then Will’s mother. That second loss didn’t have a name either. And maybe Ben had been quick to dismiss it as less than the loss of an actual wife. But Alton Sedgwick’s grief had been real as he watched Will’s mother grow weaker and paler until she could barely hold the blood-soaked handkerchief to her mouth. He ought to have done better by his father by recognizing that his grief may have affected his ability to care for his children. Shortly before dawn, the old man’s breathing stopped entirely, and Mrs. Farleigh went perfectly still. Ben took her hand—another necessary but inadequate gesture—and recited the Psalm everyone always relied on at these times. Had anyone held Phillip’s hand? Had anyone held his father’s?
Would anyone hold his own when Phillip was taken from him? It was a senseless question, because he would never be with Phillip the way Mr. and Mrs. Farleigh had been together.
They only had the present. But they needed the present.Necessary but inadequate, his tired, overwrought mind recited back to him.
By first light, neighbors had arrived, and Ben left, promising to return in the evening.
Chapter Eighteen
Phillip would have waited downstairs for Ben’s return, if such behavior might have gone unremarked in a household that now seemed to teem with servants and guests. Instead, he left his bedroom door open, knowing he would hear Ben’s footsteps when the man returned home. He didn’t even dress for bed, wanting to be ready to go to Ben, if Ben needed him. But hours passed and clocks chimed and eventually Phillip dozed off in his chair. He woke at the sound of careful steps in the corridor and sprang to his feet.
In the scant morning light, he could see Ben poised by the door to his own bedchamber. His hand was on the latch, but he paused and looked over his shoulder at the snick of Phillip shutting his door behind him.
“You’re back,” Phillip whispered, when he was near enough to be heard. Ben had purple half-moons beneath his eyes and a ragged, worn-out look. “Is all well?”
