absence of spoons had to stir their cups with the bone ends of their
toothbrushes, but the meal gave them both new life and spirits. Meg
toasted the bread on the end of her knife and spread a piece thickly
with the toothsome jam. She proffered it to Nell with burnt cheeks and
a gay little laugh.
"Oh, _Meg_, you are the best girl on earth!" the girl said, flinging her
arms impetuously around her sister's neck. "I'm not fit to black your
boots! there's nobody just like you, Meg, in all the world. Oh, Meg
darling, why can't you make me more like you?"
[Illustration: "'LOOK!' SAID MEG."]
Meg only kissed her for answer, kissed her with a sweet, moved look on
her face. And then Nellie told everything: how she had dropped from the
window on to the tanks and scrambled down from there with the help of
the creeper, how she had been in time for the brougham they had sent,
how utterly miserable she had been all the evening.
She declared their own comparative poverty seemed beautiful against the
Brownes' wealth and glaring vulgarity.
Meg saw all the girl's sensitive nature had suffered, and uttered not a
word of rebuke; she even said they would keep the affair to themselves,
and not tell Pip.
But she dropped one little word in season before she went to her own
room to bed.
The dressing-gown suited the girl's exquisite young beauty marvellously;
all the time they had talked Meg could not help admiring.
When they got up she drew her quietly to the long glass of the
dressing-table.
Oh the wonderful picture it showed! the rich, warm colouring of the
graceful gown, the young sweet face with its dewy eyes and tremulous
lips and pink flush, and all the soft great waves of riotous hair one
golden splendour to her waist!
"Look!" said Meg.
The girl looked at her image shyly, almost shamedly, but with a certain
little glad quickening at her heart.
"Oh, _Nellie_! how good you ought to be!" whispered the elder girl, and
kissed her and slipped away.
*CHAPTER XIX.*
*HEADACHE AND HEARTACHE.*
"Look where the healing waters run,
And strive and strain to be good again."
Poor little Nell,--it was almost pitiful to see how good she tried to be
after her escapade. There was absolutely nothing she would not have done
for Meg. She begged to be allowed to help in the housekeeping, offered
to take the darning of Bunty's socks and Peter's terrible stockings as
her own particular work, and sternly refrained from looking in her glass
when it was not necessary for the straight set of her collar or
respectable appearance of her hair.
She consulted Meg as to the best study she could take up--she said she
felt ashamed to be so dreadfully ignorant.
"Why, I haven't read anything better than Jessie Fothergill and Rhoda
Broughton this year," she said, in a tone of stern surprise at herself.
Meg suggested the "Essays of Elia," "The Professor at the Breakfast
Table," "Sesame and Lilies," Lives of various poets.
"You can go then gradually to something deeper," she said. "I'm afraid
you might be discouraged if you started on anything more solid just
yet."
But Nellie's zeal was too tremendous for half measures.
During the morning of the day after the dinner party, Meg had occasion
to go into the nursery for something or other during Miss Monson's
hours, and with difficulty restrained a smile.
Nellie always studied--or pretended to--at a rickety-legged
draught-table in the window. Her working materials hitherto had
consisted of a chased silver pen that looked too elegant to write with,
an ornamental inkstand with violet and red ink, a box of chocolates, a
novel in brown paper covers, "Le Chien," highly dilapidated, and "Samson
Agonistes," which she was supposed to be studying in detail.
This morning all was changed. There was black ink in the bottles, the
silver pen was invisible, and a plain penny red one occupied its place
on the stag's head. No trace of chocolates, no covered fiction at all.
Instead, a pile of books selected from the study simply because they
were the most solid looking and driest on the shelves. The choice had
occupied Nellie for almost an hour; if any she took down had spaced
matter, light-looking conversations, or broken-up paragraphs she
instantly replaced them. She had finally selected and carried to the
nursery, to Miss Monson's incredulous surprise, the following six:
"Sartor Resartus," "The Wealth of Nations," "Marcus Aurelius,"
"Mazzini's Essays," the "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," and
Johnson's "Rasselas."
When Meg came in she was struggling with Carlyle, fingers at ears to
keep him quite apart from the object lesson on Ants which Miss Monson
was delivering to Poppet and Peter. In the afternoon she practised for
two consecutive hours, not waltzes and scraps from the "Mikado" and
"Gondoliers" and "Paul Jones" as usual, but Plaidy's technical studies
and Czerny's Velocity Exercises and a fugue from Bach.
At night she took out a quantity of red wool that she found in a box,
and began to crochet a petticoat for an old woman who lived in a
tumble-down bark hut near the river, and had the reputation of being
mother of two bushrangers who had been shot, sister to a famous
murderer, and daughter of one of the early Botany Bay convicts.
But of course such an abnormal state of goodness could not be expected
to continue uninterruptedly, at any rate in its early days. In less
than a fortnight the silver pen made its reappearance, and violet ink
crept back into one of the bottles. The crochet needle was slipped out
of the sixth row of the petticoat and made to work fleecy white wool up
into that pretty style of head wrap known as a "fascinator."
"Oh, I didn't do anything so very dreadful, after all," she said to
herself, with the blunted memory of ten days. "Dear old Meg is always a
little inclined to make mountains out of molehills."
At first there had been a little real fright mixed with the thought of
the dinner-party. Five days after it was over, she was in at the
chemist's spending eighteenpence of her allowance on a sweet little
bottle of scent for Meg.
And one of the grooms from Trafalgar House came in with a prescription.
"The old lady's pretty bad," he said, in answer to a question of the
chemist that Nell had not caught, "and two more of the maids are down."
Nellie lingered a few minutes, counted her change several times,
examined the nail and tooth-brushes displayed in a glass case, and read
an advertisement setting forth the merits of somebody's pills.
The man said he would call back for the medicine in half an hour, and
departed. Then she went back to the counter.
"Is it Mrs. Fitzroy-Browne who is ill?" she asked, remembering with a
pang the poor old woman's wistful "I just wish you was my little girl!"
"Yes, she's down with scarlet-fever--several of the servants too," he
said, and went to the gas to melt some sealing-wax.
The girl went home with a grave face. Apart from regret at the old
lady's illness, there was the fear that she herself might have caught
it. She went straight to her room and examined her tongue anxiously at
the glass; then she held one wrist gravely with a finger and thumb, and
asked herself if she felt feverish.
But the pulse was calm, the tongue healthily red,--she laughed at
herself.
"I never felt better in my life," she said aloud. After some
deliberation she decided she would not tell Meg. "She'd only worry, and
prepare herself for my immediate funeral," she thought. "I should be
all over red spots by now if I had got it."
So that is how it happened, when ten days had gone and she still felt
exuberantly well, that the silver pen returned and the fascinator was
commenced. One could not wear sackcloth for ever.
She even borrowed "Comin' thro' the Rye" and "Joan" from a girl-friend;
and "Rasselas" and "Sartor Resartus" slipped down behind the table and
were forgotten.
But she had intended all the time to consult Alan. He had been away for
almost a fortnight in Victoria, or she would have asked him before.
The afternoon he returned, and as soon as she could get him away from
Meg, she asked him if he would come down into the garden with her, as
she wanted to ask him something very particularly.
The young doctor laughed, and put himself very much at her service.
"I hope it's not about the style of hats in Melbourne," he said in mock
alarm, as they went down the path; "for I culpably forgot to notice. If
it's only sleeves, now, I can tell you--they're up to the ears, and a
yard and a half wide."
"It's about the state of my health," she said sententiously,--"I wish to
consult you _professionally_, Dr. Courtney!"
He put on a sympathetic look.
"The heart, I suppose?" he said.
But Nell stopped short in the summer-house.
"Don't be stupid!" she said. "Look here, Alan, have I, or have I not,
got scarlet-fever?"
He could not help laughing. It seemed so absurd for a fine girl--the
picture of health--to ask such a question.
"Your skin is cool--your pulse normal--your tongue fit for a health
advertisement. If you have got it you're managing to conceal it very
well," he said. "You might give me the recipe for my other patients."
"I was talking to some one who had scarlet-fever just after," Nell
returned,--"that's all."
There was no fun in Alan's face now.
"When?" he said sharply.
"Oh, nearly a fortnight ago!"
"You've not got it, then," he said. "Did you change your things
after?--take every precaution? How did it happen?"
She told him everything, blushing hotly at the surprise in his face when
he heard she had been to Trafalgar House.
He looked exceedingly serious over it.
"There's no knowing what may be the end of it," he said, a frown of
anxiety on his brow. "How could you do such a thing, Nellie? You might
have known Meg's judgment would be good."
"But you say I haven't got it," the girl answered, resenting the
elder-brotherly tone of reproof, "so there's no need for any more fuss."
"How do I know you did not bring it home with you and give it to one of
the others?" he said shortly.
Nell looked aghast.
"Why, I couldn't do that, could I?" she said, with startled eyes. "I
never dreamt any one but I could have got it."
"You ought not to have been allowed with the others," he said.
"However, as things are, I daresay no harm has been done. No one has
been complaining of headache or sore throat, have they?"
Nellie thought hard for a minute or two. She reviewed each member of
the family rapidly in succession, and tried to remember if any one's
appetite had failed at any meal lately, that was always the great test
of health at Misrule.
"No," she said at last. Then she caught her breath.
"Essie had a headache this morning," she faltered. "Oh, but she fell
down and bumped her head, so that accounts, and she ate four jam tarts
yesterday when no one was in the room; that's the cause of hers, Alan,
isn't it?--oh, you can see it is."
"I'll look at her," he said. "Does Meg know anything about all this?"
"I didn't like to worry her," Nellie answered, and followed him up the
path like a criminal found out in blackest iniquity. She had never
dreamed she was endangering the others. Poppet met them on the second
path.
"Afternoon tea's ready, and Meg says aren't you two ever coming in. No,
I don't want any, there's only gingerbread."
[Illustration: "PETER WAS ENGAGED IN CHASING A FAT DUCK."]
Alan felt her pulse, and asked to see her tongue.
"There's something alarming in a little girl who doesn't like
gingerbread," he said; but there was a professional look in his eye.
"She never eats gingerbread," Nell exclaimed, almost indignant with him
for having fears when the child looked so rosy.
"Poppet's all right," he said in a low tone, as they went on; and Nellie
could have cried in her relief.
"Peter next," she said.
They went down into the paddock, where Peter was engaged in chasing a
fat duck from end to end, without a thought in his mind of being cruel
to it. He was hot, certainly, but that was the exertion of running and
shouting.
"Is your throat sore?" Nellie burst out, before they fairly reached him.
"I thould think I can thout if I like," he said in an injured tone,
taking her anxious query for sarcasm.
Alan caught him by the back of his sailor coat.
"Mad, quite mad," he said--"only lunatics rush about like this. Hold
him while we find out the symptoms, Nellie, and see whether we'll have
to extract his teeth, or put his legs in plaster-of-Paris."
"He's all right too, I think," he said, when the released boy sprang
away again after the duck, that was panting in a corner with one anxious
eye on its enemy.
"Bunty's _beautifully_ well," Nell said eagerly, as they went up to the
house again. "You should just see him eat, Alan. And Pip is splendid,
so is Meg, as you can see."
Meg was standing on the front verandah, a troubled look in her eyes.
"Oh, there you are!" she said.
"Here we are," said Nellie. She drooped her eyes guiltily. "Is the tea
cold?"
But Meg did not answer her.
"I wish you'd come and look at Essie, Alan," she said. "She's been
eating pastry, and it's upset her, poor little thing. I don't like her
looks."
"Does her head ache?" Nellie asked with dry lips.
"She says her head aches, her throat aches, and her legs
ache,--everything aches," was Meg's answer. "Esther always gives her
aconite if she's out of sorts, Alan. I gave her five drops this
morning: was that right?"
"Quite," he said; "I'll go up and look at her now."
He went up the stairs behind Meg, a very grave look in his eyes.
And Nellie followed with a face as colourless as the great white roses
she had stuck in her belt so lightheartedly half an hour ago.
*CHAPTER XX.*
*MY LITTLE ONE DAUGHTER.*
"Misery,--oh! Misery,
This world is all too wide for thee!"
The very next day came a letter from India.
"Oh, this beautiful, beautiful country!" wrote Esther. "Oh, the
colouring, the life in everything I I cannot tell you how _new_,
painfully new, Australia seems compared with it. Imagine a little
perky, pretty cottage beside a grand old castle, whose walls bear the
mark of centuries. India is the castle. Or a nice, clean, healthy child
in pinafores, very fond of play, and more than a little inclined to be
spoilt, beside an old, old seer with a grand head grown white with
wisdom, and wide eyes dim with staring at eternity. Australia is the
nice clean child.
"It is the age of the place that sobers me. I feel I ought to go about
on tiptoe and speak in a whisper half the time. We are at Ajmere just
now: from the window here I can see a white temple on the peak of wild
mountains. It is called Taraghur, or the abode of the stars, and the
Mohammedans make pilgrimages to it. Yesterday we rode (I wear a white
linen habit and a helmet, girls) to Pookur, twelve miles away. It is a
spot considered sacred by the Hindoos; indeed, it is one of the most
sacred places in India. There is a lake lying in a basin among the
hills, with its banks studded with buildings, old temples, and gardens,
and in the centre a ruined fane I am afraid to say how many hundreds and
hundreds of years old.
"To-morrow we go to Musseerabad, where the garrison is that your father
has to take notes about; then on to Oodeypore; after that I am not
certain of the programme, only--don't all exclaim at once, or I shall
hear even at this distance--we cannot possibly be back in the time we
said. Your father has written for two months' extension, and really,
though of course I want to see you all, and ache sometimes for a sight
of my baby's little dear dirty face, I shouldn't like to come without
seeing more. Fancy if we had to come back without visiting the Taj
Mahal! My only anxiety is that any one should be ill; but then, again,
I don't see why any one should be so inconsiderate,--you've all managed
to keep in splendid health for years; just keep a clean bill till I get
back, and then you shall all take it in turns if you like. Dear Meg,
keep Essie's hands from picking and stealing. I dreamt the other night
she ate a cocoanut and went in a fit. And Peter, my precious son, don't
climb the pine tree till mum comes back--if you must break your dear
little collar bone at least give me the satisfaction of seeing it done.
Of course there is no earthly reason why any of you should be ill, but I
worry a little at times; I suppose it is because of the difficulty in
getting letters. We never know where we are going next, so they can't
send on the mails from Bombay to us till we write for them. I will send
you, by the next mail, an address to write to: we have not decided yet
whether we are going to Hyderabad, Madras, or Calcutta. We are picking
up presents for you all,--the loveliest chessmen for Pip, a wonderful
cabinet of Bhoondee carving for Meg, moonstones from Ceylon for
Nell,--something for every one. Such a box we shall have.
"Good-bye, my chickies all; take care of yourselves, and have as good a
time as you can. If you should be just a little extravagant with the
housekeeping money, Meg, I won't scold you much; you can let Bennett's
bill run if you like, and have a little garden party or jollification.
Every one kiss my little one daughter for me.
"Your loving old mother,
"ESTHER."
It was only the last part they heeded. What were descriptions of old
temples to them with that little tossing head on the pillow?
"Oh, Esther,--poor, poor Esther!" Meg said, with the first sob in her
throat since Alan had pronounced it to be the fever--"oh, _if_ she
knew!" But she was mercifully spared that knowledge. They held a grave
consultation together, Meg, Nell, Pipi and the family doctor, while Alan
stayed at the bedside. It really seemed useless to send for the
travellers to come home. If it was only a slight attack the child would
be quite well again by the time they returned; if--there was a catching
of breaths--if even the very worst should happen, still they could not
be home in time, and oh! what agony of mind they would have during the
long voyage. It was even no use sending a cable until they received
Esther's next letter, for they had no address.
The doctor decided the matter.
"Don't send," he said; "please God we'll have the little woman up and
well in no time. I will send in a trained nurse, she shall have every
care possible. Mrs. Woolcot could not do anything further if she were
here herself. Now about the other little folks."
It had been decided at once to send the others away from fear of
infection. Pip had even suggested packing them off by the early morning
train to Yarrahappini.
But the doctor shook his head. There was the chance that they had the
germs in their systems even now; it was neither fair to send them into
other families, nor yet wise to allow them to go far from home nursing.
There was a furnished cottage about half a mile up the road: he advised
that Poppet, Peter, and Bunty should be removed there until all danger
of infection was over.
"This young lady might go to look after them," he said, laying his hand
on Nellie's shoulder. "They will want some one, of course, and Miss
Margaret will be quite sufficient to help the lady I shall send in."
Nellie lifted great beseeching eyes, rimmed with the shadows of a
sleepless night.
"Oh, let me stay! oh, I must stay,--it would kill me to have to go!" she
said, with a great sob.
"Of course you will have to go, Nellie," Pip said hastily; "don't make
extra trouble by being tiresome,--surely you have done enough."
"Oh, hush!" said Meg.
Pip knew now how the infection had been brought, and could not find any
excuse for his sister.
[Illustration: "'OH, LET ME STAY! OH, I MUST STAY!'"]
But Meg saw the wince of pain that his words caused the poor girl, and
knew a little what an agony of remorse she was suffering.
"She'll be out of the danger, too," Pip added, a little ashamed of
himself when he saw the beautiful, miserable eyes.
Out of the danger! And the girl was in such a frenzy of repentance and
grief, she would gladly have laid down her life just to see Essie go
flying down the drive in a losing race with Flibbertigibbet.
She caught the doctor's arm.
"I would watch night and day--I would do anything in the world,
anything--oh! _let_ me stay," she said.
"Poor little girl!" he answered, and patted her bright head; he had
learnt something of the heart apart from its physiological formation
during his long practice. "Poor little girl! standing still is very
hard work, isn't it? But all soldiers can't fight at the same time, you
know.
"'Yours not to reason why,
Yours but to do or die.
That's not for sword-soldiers only, little girl."
Poor Nellie! no punishment on earth could have been harder for her. To
die--that would be quite easy, pleasant even; but to remain passive--oh!
it needed greater courage than hers.
To go away, to leave the house, and not even venture past the gates
again for weeks, not to see the little sweet sister upon whom her
wilfulness alone had brought this suffering, not even to have the relief
of spending her strength in nursing! To go away, and eat and sleep and
pass the time doing ordinary things, and trying to keep Bunty, and
Poppet, and Peter comfortable and happy!
No one would ever know quite what it cost the girl, but it had to be
done.
"Mayn't I just see her for one minute, Meg?" she said, her courage
failing her at the last minute.
It almost made Meg cry to see the utter despair and misery on her face,
and to have to refuse her.
"Alan shall tell you every day how she is. Dear Nell, you know I dare
not let you go into the room."
Then she went away to take up her post with the nurse. And Nellie, with
that unutterable ache at her heart, had to go and collect the clothes
they would all need, the books, playthings,--everything.
She and Poppet, with Bunty's help, were to do the work of the cottage
between them. At first, Meg had thought of letting Martha go with them,
but afterwards it occurred to her it might be better to let Nellie cook,
wash up, and see to everything, just to keep her time occupied.
Bunty was to go to school daily, but Miss Monson relinquished her duties
for a time. She had two little sisters and a baby brother at home; no
one could say that Peter or Poppet would not sicken personally, and she
dare not run the risk. "But Nellie can easily manage the little ones,"
she said, "and even keep up her own studies; she will have plenty of
time."
The little sick child was put into Esther's room, and a bed made up on
the sofa for Meg or the nurse. The window looked straight to the gate,
and could be seen through a gap in the acacias. They arranged a code of
signals to be waved by Meg through it three times a day. She kept a
walking-stick of the Captain's just near the window, and with it a white
towel, an old red dressing-gown of Poppet's, and a black wool shawl
belonging to Martha. The black signal meant "Better,"--not for worlds
would they have used the black for "Worse"; the white meant "No change";
the red, "Not so well."
And when that was settled, and every other little matter, and the
dogcart filled and sent off with the luggage, then the four sorrowful
little figures walked slowly down the drive, waved with wet eyes to Meg
at the window, and disappeared round the bend in the road.
And Misrule, strangely quiet for days and days, saw only the
silent-footed nurse in her grey dress and cap, and poor Meg with her
young shoulders weighed down with the responsibility; the two doctors,
Alan and the old one, on occasion, and the maids. Nobody shouted in the
nursery or quarrelled and laughed along the passages; no little girls
ran lightly down the stairs; no boys tramped up with muddy boots. No
ringing voices floated from the grounds through the open windows; no
flying figures and yelping dogs went down the drive.
Meg's face grew grave and old-looking those long, slow, silent days when
there was so little to be done and so much to fight for. She lost her
old trick of dimpling when she smiled--she almost lost the trick of
smiling at all. Always there was a picture before her eyes,--Esther
coming towards her, radiant with the happiness of home-coming, Esther
with outstretched arms and bright eyes with no shadow of suspicion in
them.
Always the picture was speaking--
"Meg, where is Essie?--what have you done with my baby, Meg?"
*CHAPTER XXI.*
*THE SEVENTH DAY.*
"When the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow."
Seven leaden days had come and gone. To-night they said the little
child would die or live. But the second would need almost a miracle.