HOPING AGAINST HOPE.
Harold Pennington passed rapidly from one alarming stage of illness
to another. He was in a high fever when Polly arrived to crouch down
by his bedside, and when the doctor came to pay a third visit in the
same day, his face alone conveyed to the girl how justly founded had
been her despairing cry that there was no hope. Hope, indeed, there was
none. The case proved most complicated. By nighttime the temperature
had risen still higher, and symptoms of pneumonia had developed.
Grace never left the other girl, and Polly turned to her as though they
had been friends all their lives. It was, indeed, in such moments as
these that Grace demonstrated her full beauty and wealth of heart and
sympathy. She had bitterly reproached herself at first with lack of
thought for the boy.
“I ought not to have taken him out,” she said to Polly, her eyes full
of tears. “I ought to have known that this cold weather would try him.”
“Don’t say these things,” Polly whispered. “It was bound to come. I
have felt all along that there was real danger to be feared in his
future, and if he were to be a sufferer all his life, I—I almost
rejoice that this has come. I grieve more for my mother now. He was her
baby. Oh! she loves him so dearly.”
As the hours wore away thought of her mother pressed most hardly on the
girl, and Grace hardly knew how to console her. In one of her quiet
moments with Valentine in the corridor outside the sick room, Grace
asked him how they should act.
“I can see that her heart is riven. She wants to spare her mother, and
yet the truth must be told, for,” Grace added, in a lower voice, “Dr.
Smythson fears the very worst. What can we do, Val?”
Valentine answered slowly that he should go himself to London and break
the news to the mother, and also bring down other advice.
“Smythson may be mistaken,” he said, but Grace shook her head.
“Alas!” she answered, “I don’t need Dr. Smythson, or any other doctor,
to tell me how poor a chance the boy has. Oh! Val, if only I had not
taken him out yesterday!”
Valentine drew his sister toward him and kissed her brow.
“You distress yourself needlessly, dear,” he told her. “This has not
come through any fault of yours. The boy was doomed to go, and go
quickly. I saw it the first time my eyes rested upon him.”
He changed the subject here, and spoke of Polly. He was full of
solicitude for the girl.
“Has she eaten sufficient food? Try and make her rest a little. Tell
her to remember how important it is that she should keep up her
strength. I want you to be very good to her, Grace.”
Grace returned his kiss.
She misread the meaning of those last few words, and took them to be
only the expression of anxiety for one who was his guest, even under
such sorrowful conditions, and Valentine did not enlighten her further,
did not tell her that the girl sitting, heavy-eyed, with a breaking
heart, beside her brother’s bed, was to him the sweetest, dearest
creature the world could hold.
It was so hard for him to stand outside the door and know that she was
within, fighting down so grim and terrible a grief. He longed to range
himself beside her, to take from her the weight and the burning anguish
of this moment.
At such a time his size, his great physical strength, seemed almost a
mockery. Of what use to be so big, so powerful, when he could not even
stand forward and protect one whom he loved from all sorrow?
Grace stole back into the silent room, and whispered to Polly her news.
“He will be with your mother in a few hours,” she said.
Polly thanked her softly, and turned her eyes from gazing on Harold’s
white face.
“Don’t let her come here. It may be cruel in one sense, but it is kind
in another. I want her to remember him as she has always known him, not
as he is now. He used to be such a pretty boy,” Polly said, slowly, as
if to herself.
She refused to leave his room even to rest for an hour.
“The time is short,” she told Grace. “It may be hours and it may be
only moments. I must be here in case he needs me. He has recognized me,
and just before you came I thought he smiled. I am not tired or hungry.
I only want to be with him.”
Grace left her reluctantly. Duties in the house claimed her from time
to time. Death may creep slowly up to the threshold, but life demands
attention incessantly.
There were many things Grace had to do.
Valentine was going to London. He must have luncheon, and Sacha, too,
did not quite understand why his home should be turned upside down for
strangers. All these mundane things fell naturally to Grace’s lot to
arrange.
In her hurry to see to Valentine’s comfort, she had not time to realize
the lack of sympathy that characterized Sacha’s attitude at this moment.
It, therefore, came upon her with a shock, a few hours later, when
Ellen, her faithful maid and helper, informed her that Mr. Sacha had
ordered her to pack a portmanteau, and then had been driven up to
Sunstead to remain there for the time being.
“Sir Mark wants me to paint his portrait also, and this is as good an
opportunity as any,” the young man had told the servant, as she obeyed
his orders silently. “And I am quite sure Miss Grace will be glad to
get me out of the house,” he had added.
Grace made no remark when Ellen brought her this information.
It shocked her sharply for a moment to think that the heart of her
younger brother could prove itself so insensible to the sufferings of
others, but almost immediately her love began to frame an explanation,
if not an excuse, of Sacha’s conduct. She translated his selfishness to
signify a desire to save her any extra trouble.
“He thinks he will be better out of the way, that with so much to do
in the house he will be only an additional worry. I am sorry he should
have gone without speaking to me first; and I am more sorry still he
should have gone to Sunstead, especially just now; but,” Grace added in
her thought, “it is hardly just to expect Sacha to quarrel with Mark
because Mark has quarreled with us. Will she come here?” was Grace’s
next thoughts. “Surely her hardness must give way at such a time as
this. Though I have no wish to come in contact with her again, I still
hope she will remember she is this poor boy’s sister, and that her
place is near him now.”
Unconsciously Grace found herself saying this to the old servant.
“And when Lady Wentworth comes, Ellen,” she said, “you must let me know
at once. This is not the moment to remember angry or hurt feelings.”
Ellen replied to this quietly and decisively.
“Lady Wentworth will not come, my dear,” she said. “She cares just as
much whether her brother lives or dies as the greatest stranger might
care. Sir Mark’s wife, Miss Grace, will only come to your house when
she can do or say something to make you uncomfortable, and that’s just
the plain truth.”
Grace flushed at this.
“I hope you are wrong, Ellen,” she said. “I should not care to think so
badly of Lady Wentworth, or any other person.”
“I hope I am wrong, but I know I am right,” Ellen said, with obstinacy;
then her voice changed as she talked of Polly.
“What a difference. Is it possible they can be sisters, Miss Grace?
Poor little creature, it makes my heart ache to see her face. She looks
very ill herself. I don’t think she is fit to sit in that close room,
but there’s no way of moving her. Is Mr. Valentine going to bring the
mother with him, Miss Grace?”
Grace shook her head.
“No; Mrs. Pennington is too much of an invalid. Valentine is going to
break the news to her as gently as he can. Miss Polly has entreated him
to prevent her mother coming.”
“I don’t see how he can stop her,” Ellen said, thoughtfully. “She may
be delicate, but it’s only fair and right she should come and look on
her boy before he goes. If I know anything of a mother’s nature, I
warrant you Mrs. Pennington will come back with Mr. Valentine to-night.
I had better prepare Mr. Sacha’s room for her in case I am right, had I
not?”
Grace sanctioned this, feeling that there was wisdom in Ellen’s
suggested preparation, though she hoped, as Polly did, that the mother
might not come.
This wish was doomed to be set aside unfulfilled.
That same night, very late, a cab drove up to the door, and Valentine
almost lifted out a fragile woman’s figure.
“She is quite exhausted,” he whispered in Grace’s ear.
Grace put her arms about Mrs. Pennington, and led her into the nearest
room, while Valentine followed, looking strangely white and worn.
“I fear I am not a good emissary,” he said, sorrowfully, to his
sister; “but when she pleaded to be allowed to come to her boy, it was
impossible to refuse her. Shall I go and tell Miss Pennington?”
Grace merely nodded her head. She had all her work cut out, she saw
at a glance, to minister to this poor, broken-hearted mother, whose
haggard eyes and frail look brought the tears in a hot flood to her own
eyes.
She had Ellen at hand to help her, and the two women vied with each
other in doing all their hearts could suggest to give some strength to
the overtaxed frame.
The journey from town, the cold and the aching anxiety had reduced poor
Mrs. Pennington to an almost fainting condition, and though her eyes
looked pleadingly into Grace’s face, she was forced by her weakness to
rest before going upstairs.
Valentine stood a moment watching her, then turned and went to find
Polly.
He went slowly. He felt truly that the sight of her mother so prostrate
with grief would be the last drop in the girl’s cup of sorrow, and once
again he felt his whole being go out in one despairing, eager desire to
stand between Polly and all grief.
As he mounted the stairs slowly he heard a slight noise ahead of him,
and looking upward he saw her standing at the top of the stairs.
Valentine could not have told how it was that he divined what news she
had to give. He knew nothing definitely but that he stood beside her,
holding her two small, cold hands in his.
Polly’s eyes were dry, but her voice was as hoarse as though she had
shed innumerable tears.
“It came so softly—the end,” she said, speaking slowly and with
difficulty. “There seemed to be no pain—only just one long, deep sigh,
and then another—and then—silence. I waited half an hour, thinking
it might be sleep, then I bent over him, and saw that he was indeed
asleep, and that he will never waken here again.”
Valentine pressed the trembling fingers in his. It was the first
time in his life that tears had shut out his sight. He conquered his
feelings with difficulty as he led her down the stairs.
“Your mother is here; she has need of you,” he said. It was the only
thing he could say.