It was evening; a cheerful mixture of twilight and firelight filled the
apartment in which our hero lay, slowly recovering from a brain fever of
many weeks duration.
He had been long delirious, and as yet had not recognised the friends
who were around him, or been conscious of any event which had occurred
since the morning on which Lady Arden had arrived at Geneva. But his
crisis was now past, and much was expected from the peaceful and
profound sleep he had enjoyed for nearly the whole, both of the last
night and of the last day. A group of itinerant musicians had stopped
beneath his window, and were performing some simple strain, which,
though possibly conducive to his awaking just at that moment, fell on
his half conscious ear with indescribable sweetness. Gradually his eyes
began to open: at first but in an imperceptible degree; yet, through the
still veiling lashes he now saw confusedly, visions, as of angels,
hovering around his pillow. While a countenance which bent over his,
watching, as it were, his slumbers, seemed to grow each moment brighter
and brighter, till, for one second, he distinctly beheld (or did he
dream), the face of Caroline! It disappeared instantly, and was
succeeded by that of his sister Madeline; but the shadow of a form
glided round the curtain which the eye of Alfred anxiously followed.
It was Caroline; she had gone to announce to Lady Arden Alfred's
awaking.
Lady Arden had been also ill herself, and was not yet able to bear much
fatigue: she had, therefore, lain down while Caroline and Madeline
cheered each other's watch in the sick chamber. The music in the street
had alarmed our youthful nursetenders, lest it should awake their
charge: they had raised their taper fingers, and thus asked each other
by signal, whether they should send to have it stopped; while, as a
preliminary movement, Caroline had glided to the bedside to note its
effect upon the sleeper. She had stood a few seconds, marking as well as
the imperfect light would permit, that his eyeballs seemed to move
tremulously beneath their lids. Anxious to ascertain the point, she had
bent closer and closer to the pillow; when, Alfred's eyes opening as we
have described, she had disappeared.
Madeline, as she took the place of the apparition, which had thus
quickly vanished, found Alfred making a feeble effort to draw aside the
opposite curtain. But he was quite unequal to the task.
"It was--it was she--" he faintly murmured, "Was it not? tell me,
Madeline!"
"Yes it was, dear Alfred, but you must not speak! she is quite well."
Fortunately, his extreme bodily weakness did not admit of any very
violent paroxysm of feeling. His recollections of the past too, were as
yet but confused; so that the overpowering intelligence that Caroline
was still living--was near him--was kindly attending him in sickness,
came not upon him at once in its full force, but grew with his growing
perceptions.
"Where is she gone, Madeline?" he at length breathed, in a scarcely
audible whisper.
"Only to my mother's room," replied Madeline, in accents scarcely
louder.
"And tell me where we are?" he added, after another pause.
"At Geneva, dearest Alfred. But you must not speak."
"At Geneva!" he repeated, then lay still a very long time, as if
endeavouring to recall past events: and she noted with alarm, that pale
though he was, after his long illness, a faint flush, was overspreading
his brow. He feebly grasped her arm, and looked in her face with an
earnestness of expression which she perfectly understood.
"No! no!" she replied, "she was only ill--faint--but she is now quite
well, but indeed, you must not speak, dearest Alfred."
"Madeline! is all this true?"
"Yes, quite true: and now, dear Alfred, you must lay still till the
doctor comes."
He tried to obey her for a time.
"I cannot, Madeline," he at length whispered, and then, though
much exhausted, he continued in broken accents, "the desire--to
know--how--it has all happened--will hurt me more--than listening to
your--sweet--voice.--So tell me all--and then--I will be composed."
Madeline, judging that of the two it was better he should listen to her
than persist in endeavouring to speak himself, replied in the softest of
whispers, shading the light of the fire from his face:
"Why, when my mother saw that she had both you and Caroline to nurse,
she wrote to us to come here. But, by the time we came, we found dear
Caroline so much recovered, that she was nursing both you and my mother,
who had then become ill herself from fatigue. But she is now quite well
again," she added, seeing Alfred look around. "And she has written to
Lady Palliser, and obtained her permission for Caroline to stay with us
while we remain abroad, that she may travel home with our party. And
now, indeed, I will not speak another word, so you must lay still."
Here the appearance of Lady Arden, and Aunt Dorothea, and soon after of
the doctor, relieved Madeline from the difficult task of keeping her
refractory patient in order.