Midnight is a Place (26 page)

"But I thought you said he should stay for another two weeks?" Lucas protested to the Sister.

"I know I did, my boy, but there has been a bad roof fall in one of the collieries, and we have a great many urgent cases coming in; we need all the beds we can spare."

Lucas saw the force of this, but he felt extremely worried as to whether they would be able to give Mr. Oakapple the proper kind of care.

Anna-Marie, however, was simply pleased at the news. "
Grand'mère
will know what to do for him!" she whispered to Lucas. "And it will be much, much nicer to have him at home. Besides, then we need not pay those
cochons
of Friendly Boys!"

Slowly, with many pauses, they assisted Mr. Oakapple downstairs, and out to the cart. He was painfully weak and breathless; getting him up and on to a seat was a long and difficult process.

"Where are you taking me?" he inquired, as Lucas turned the pony's head uphill.

"We have left our lodgings in the town and gone to live in the old icehouse," Lucas explained.

"The icehouse?" Mr. Oakapple said weakly. "Is that comfortable?" He sounded rather dismayed at the prospect. No doubt, Lucas thought, if he had been well, he might have regarded the move to the icehouse as a practical notion, but in his present frail condition it was plain that he did not relish the idea of living in a kind of cave.

"It is all right, monsieur," said Anna-Marie reassuringly. "Truly, you will find it
quite
comfortable when you get there."

"I can't imagine how you are managing to live at all," said Mr. Oakapple in a troubled voice, gingerly touching one hand to his newly healed cheek. "If I were only a little stronger.... How are you managing about money, the pair of you? Did Throgmorton give you no help at all?"

"No, sir. He said Sir Randolph left no will, and that anyway there was no money to leave. And the Mill was sold to pay the taxes."

"Yes, I see.... I suppose all your father's money was sunk in the Mill-"

"But we are doing very well, monsieur," broke in Anna-Marie. "I work in the Mill, and Luc, he is a tosher in the sewers, and we make enough money—plenty! You do not have to worry about us at all. We can look after you till you are well, do not disquiet yourself! Besides, we have such a surprise for you—"

"Wait, Anna-Marie!" warned Lucas.

He could see that Mr. Oakapple was not fit for the move, that he was really very near to collapse. Although the mare plodded along slowly, Lucas could not steer her away from all the bumps in the snow, which jarred the tutor's hurts. And the night was bitterly cold. Besides, Lucas thought, just being out of hospital, obliged to face the difficulties of the world again, was very tiring.

"I don't think Mr. Oakapple is ready for more news until we have him sitting by the fire," he told Anna-Marie. "And we've got the walk to worry about now."

Lucas had in fact wondered whether it might be better to go the long way round, through the lodge gates, and drive the cart across the snow to the icehouse. But he was not at all sure if the poor old mare would be able to pull the trap through the deep snow; it would be dreadful to get stuck. And it was much farther; Mr. Oakapple was shivering badly already, and if he were to catch cold his recovery might be set back even more. So, having considered the alternative and decided against it, Lucas drove the cart as close as he could get to the hole in the wall.

"This part is going to be troublesome, sir. Can you walk a couple of hundred yards, do you think?"

"I must, mustn't I?" remarked the tutor, with a return to his former dry manner. "We'll just have to take it slowly. Perhaps you could find me a walking-stick."

Lucas found him a stick, and he and Anna-Marie each took one of the tutor's arms to help him over the rough ground. Getting through the thickety little wood was extremely difficult and harassing; Lucas crept along by Mr. Oakapple, supporting him as well as he could; Anna-Marie went backwards ahead of them, pulling aside the branches and brambles. Luckily the moon shone overhead. Then there was a painful and tiring struggle while they assisted the tutor to get through the gap in the wall.

"Really, what an awkward, useless lump I am," he said, impatient with his own weakness. "I begin to wonder if, when you have got me into this hidey-hole of yours, I shall ever get out again!"

He meant to make a joke, but he did not sound hopeful about his own prospects.

"I have a good idea, monsieur," said Anna-Marie when he was through the wall. "Wait there just a moment—lean against the wall, so—and I will run and get you
Grand'mère's
chair, so that you can sit and rest as we go."

She darted off across the snow.

"Did you save some furniture from the Court, then?" asked Mr. Oakapple in weak bewilderment. "She said
Grand'mère
's chair?" Then he stopped speaking, as two figures appeared outside the icehouse, carrying the chair between them.

"Who is that?"

Mr. Oakapple put the question so quietly that Lucas could only just hear his voice. And before Lucas could answer Lady Murgatroyd was beside him, taking his arm to support him.

"There, monsieur!" Anna-Marie proudly thumped the chair down beside him. "Now, sit quickly, and rest yourself.
Grand'mère
has brought you some cordial, too."

"It is made from herbs and honey," said Lady Murgatroyd. "Swallow it down as fast as you can. If I had known you were coming out of the hospital today we could have prepared a litter to carry you in. It is too bad that they turned you out when you are still so weak. Never mind, once we get you indoors, we shall look after you famously!"

"Ma'am," said Mr. Oakapple, looking up into her face.

"Drink first," she said firmly, steadying the little stone flask which she held with his hand round it.

He drank and rested a moment longer; then he struggled up and they helped him over half the distance to the icehouse; Anna-Marie brought up the chair and he sat in it again, always looking at Lady Murgatroyd's face; then he walked the rest of the way, and was helped inside the house.

Anna-Marie had again darted on ahead and, consulting Lady Murgatroyd with a look, had pulled her grandmother's sleeping-cot over until it stood near the fireplace. Mr. Oakapple was steered straight to it, and they made a pile of folded rugs to support his back.

"There," said Anna-Marie, covering him with a fluffy sheepskin. "Now you are as snug, monsieur, as a bumblebee in a rose. All you have to do is to go to sleep. And when you wake you will feel so much better."

"Perhaps he should take a little soup first, though," said Lady Murgatroyd, and she set a potful on the hearth. "I had made this ready for the children when they came back from visiting, but there is plenty for all."

"Ma'am," Mr. Oakapple began again, but she said, "I can see plainly that you are so tired you are almost fainting. Truly you must rest. Wait until you have had some soup."

It was true that the tutor was ashy pale, except for the patches of scarlet on his face and hands where the burn scars were fading. He lay back weakly, and gazed around the big shadowy place with a strange look of astonishment and acceptance on his face.

Anna-Marie bustled about, fetching more covers, and a wedge of wood to put behind Mr. Oakapple under the rugs, which would support him more comfortably, she fancied; then she brought a wooden tray with a plate, bread, salt, a mug of water, and a spoon for him to eat his soup with; then she curled up on the floor beside her grandmother and sat sucking her thumb, waiting till the soup should be hot. Lady Murgatroyd meanwhile sat calmly and silently on one of the stump stools, gazing at the flames. And Lucas, having seen that there was nothing he could usefully do at present, had withdrawn to a book-filled corner and taken up a book. But he was not reading.

At last Anna-Marie pronounced the soup to be ready, and served it out to everybody in mugs.

"You,
Grand'mère?
"

"Yes, I will take a little, thank you, my child. You see what a useful helper I have acquired," Lady Murgatroyd said, smiling at Mr. Oakapple.

The soup had given him back a little color. He said, "Ma'am, how long have you been here? In Midnight Park?"

"Longer than you," she said cheerfully. "I suppose it may be ten years now. I can remember when you came; I have seen quite a lot from my hermitage! But one thing I did not know, and that was, that the tutor who came to look after Sir Randolph's ward was the Julian Oakapple who had been such a devoted friend to my poor Denny."

She stood up and, walking over, took his injured hand in both of hers. "I know what you did for him," she said simply. "I know you hurt your hand protecting him from a sword thrust. Tom Grenvile told me that, before he died." She looked at the gloved hand. "You were a violinist, were you not? I remember Denny talking of your great promise. It must have been a hard thing to get over. And you were so young."

"Yes," he said. "It was hard. But not so hard as believing that he had died when the ship sank."

"What did you do, after you got better?" she asked.

"Oh—my parents sent me back to school, as soon as my hand was healed. They were not harsh to me; they told me the injury to my hand was a judgment. I could still sing. I learned all they could teach me at the school, and then I taught. I did not want to quit this part of the country because, somehow, I always had a faint hope that perhaps Sir Denzil was not really dead, and that possibly some day matters might be righted—by some miracle—so that he could come back.... Was that why you stayed here, Lady Murgatroyd?"

"Partly," she said. "Also, when people are gone, if you are old, you cling to a place....So then, what did you do?"

"Then," he said slowly, "a strange thing happened. That was about five years ago. I was in Blastburn, and I heard a sailor singing down by the docks. It was a song I knew very well—one that Sir Denzil had made up for me to sing. I thought nobody knew it but me. So I asked the man where he had learned it, and he said from an Englishman who had taught him in school, in Dieppe."

"Dieppe!" said Anna-Marie, who had been listening intently to this conversation. "Yes, we lived in Dieppe for a while, before we moved to Calais. Papa would always live as near to England as possible."

"Oh, my poor son," said Lady Murgatroyd softly to herself.

"So I traveled to Dieppe," said Mr. Oakapple. "And I asked. And people said, Yes, an Englishman had lived there, but he had married and moved away. No one knew where. So then I traveled about, searching. I could not find out where he had gone. I stayed in France three years, teaching English, always moving about—"

"
That
is why you speak French so well, monsieur—"

"And then my mother was ill, and lonely, and wrote, saying, Come back. So I came back. And then, not long after she died, I read in the
Blastburn Post
that the orphan son of Sir Randolph's partner had come to live at the Court. I had no employment just then, for I had been looking after my mother, so I offered myself for the position of tutor."

"Why did you do that?" Lady Murgatroyd asked.

Mr. Oakapple looked at the fire. "One reason was that I wanted to come here again," he said. "This was where I first saw your son—Sir Denzil. There was a midsummer fete in the grounds—I was nine, I came with my choir school and played my fiddle; there were strawberries and cream," he said smiling, "and you gave away the prizes in a white dress, Lady Murgatroyd. And Sir Denzil was there, home from college, and he said I played like an angel and must come and play for him whenever he gave a party, and that when he left college and had a house of his own, I should come and be his musical director and play for him always."

"I remember those fetes," Lady Murgatroyd said. "We had two or three every summer—before Denny quarreled with his father. We used to have archery competitions and roast an ox. But I do not remember that one especially. What were your other reasons for wanting to come back here?"

"Oh," said Mr. Oakapple, still staring at the fire. "At first I had some wild notion of killing Sir Randolph. I could not see why a person who had done such harm should be allowed to stay alive.
But then when I saw what a poor, sick creature he was, I thought only that perhaps I might be able to persuade him to confess that he had cheated over the wager when he won the place. Or that I might persuade him to leave the Court to your son when he made his will. But I succeeded in doing neither of those things.... And then came a letter from a woman in Calais to say that Sir Denzil had died, and she had charge of his little daughter. So, I thought, This was why I came here. And, without telling Sir Randolph, I wrote to the woman and told her to send Anna-Marie."

"Oh, I am so glad that you did so, Meester Ookapool," said Anna-Marie. "Just think, if you had not I should never have met
Grand'mère,
or Luc, or you. For that I am going to give you a kiss," and she came and did so, but carefully, on his ear, where it would not hurt him. "But it is so sad that you went to Dieppe and not to Calais, where we were all the time."

"Yes. It is sad," said Mr. Oakapple.

"Tell me, monsieur, what was the song you heard the sailor sing !

"It was called 'Meet Me at Midnight.'"

"Oh yes, I know it. Papa would sometimes sing it to me. It went,

Meet me, meet me at Midnight,
Among the Queen Anne's lace
Midnight is not a moment,
Midnight is a place—"

She sang the words. Mr. Oakapple looked up sharply at the sound of her voice. Lady Murgatroyd met his eye over the top of Anna-Marie's head, and nodded. But she said, "It is late, Mr. Oakapple—or perhaps I may be allowed to call you Julian? After all you were my son's friend. I think you should go to sleep now. And these children have to go to their work early. There will be plenty of time for all we want to do."

They went to bed.

Lady Murgatroyd arranged herself a bed in Anna-Marie's room and left her bed for Mr. Oakapple. "Tomorrow we will clear out the empty room for Julian," she said. "Really, we are getting to be quite a household!"