Misrule. Five times had the children from the cottage trailed with sick
hearts up the long red road to the house, and each time had that
sorrowful signal been there.
Meg's heart had bled as she floated it out in the morning; only that
they had her faithful promise they should not be deceived, she could not
have borne to put it there. "Not so well," they had agreed it should
mean, but her heart said "Dying" as she fastened it, and she knew the
little anxious-eyed group at the gate would read it so.
Such a tiny darling it was, such a wee frail body for the fierce fever
to feed upon. How could it stretch out its little listless hands and
grasp strongly at that strange thing Life that was slipping so fast
away? And ah, God! that those standing by so wild with grief might not
put out their eager hands and seize it for her!
After the fifth sad journey the children dragged to the cottage again
and cried themselves sick. Poppet began. The minute they got inside the
little front room she dropped down in a heap on the oilcloth and sobbed
in a wild hysterical way that shook her poor little body all over.
Peter fell down beside her and cried in the bitter, astonished,
whole-souled fashion of very small children. And Bunty put his rough
head down on the table with both his arms round it. Nellie walked past
them all into her tiny bedroom, and only God saw her despairing grief.
They had had tea before they went the last time, and the early winter
darkness had fallen already, though it was only seven o'clock.
Alan had promised to come in at nine and give them the latest report,
but how could any of them see the end of that interval with such wet
eyes? Time seemed to have ceased for them altogether just now.
After a time, however, Peter sat up straight and looked around; childish
tears, thank Heaven, dry quickly. There was one of his little tin
soldiers on the hearthrug, and he picked it up gratefully and held it in
his small warm hand. Near the fender two of the horsemen with red caps
were lying; he would like to have reached them as well, only Poppet's
chest was on his other arm, and he could not bear to disturb her.
Five more minutes ticked away by the funny old clock on the mantelpiece.
It pointed to a quarter to eight, and had just struck eleven; they all
knew by that it was about twenty minutes past seven.
Peter sighed, and very, very softly withdrew his small cramped arm; he
waited a minute or two longer, and then crawled over to the horsemen.
He felt a chastened joy to find all the boxful in the fender just as he
had left them yesterday after the war against the Matabele tribes. He
had painted one of them black for Lobengula, and it reminded him of the
exciting game he had had over his capture. He wondered, poor little
tear-weary boy, would Essie mind very much if he had a little, only a
little, game very quietly on the floor now; the oilcloth had beautiful
yellow squares, all ready for the different detachments.
Poppet's head was turned the other way; he fancied she was asleep, she
lay so still; Bunty at the table had stopped breathing loudly; perhaps
he was asleep too; and Nellie was in her room.
[Illustration: "'NELTHONETH COPPED THE IMPITH!'"]
He marshalled the little figures up in rows, army against army; the
brass toy cannon he gave to the English, but to make up, he put a few
more men on the side of the Matabeles. He always felt secretly sorry
for them, and often gave Lobengula loopholes of escape that he did not
permit to Nelson, Gordon, and Marlborough, who, with small-boy
enthusiasm, he had placed in command of his British forces.
The clock struck six, indicated eight, and meant half-past seven. Then
the stillness of the little lamp-lit room was suddenly broken.
"Nelthonth copped the Impith! hurrah--hip, hip, hur----"
Poppet sat up speechless. Poor little sinful Peter lowered his head at
her accusing eyes and whimpered softly.
"You _cwuel_ boy!" she said
"I wath only picking them up," he returned, so bitterly ashamed he could
not be quite truthful.
"_I've_ been cwying hard all the time," was Poppet's sorrowfully
superior answer; she was feeling disappointed with herself at being so
near her own last tear, and it made her more severe with him. "I don't
b'leeve you care a _bit_."
"I'm thorrier than you, tho there!" he retorted tearfully.
"Why, you've hardly cwied at all!"
"I have, I cried for hourth,--you're a thtory, Poppet."
Bunty bade them hold their tongues. He got up and reached "Hereward the
Wake" off the side table to try to occupy his thoughts with; he was half
through "Tom Floremall's School Days," and it lay open on the same
table, but he felt it would have been unfeeling to read anything so
light.
The example, however, encouraged the children. Poppet put out her hand
and caught the black kitten that had tapped her shoulder temptingly once
or twice; she cuddled down on the hearthrug with it, after giving Peter
a kiss of forgiveness.
And Peter, utterly relieved, banged Marlborough and Lobengula together
in such fierce single combat that it is wonderful neither of them was
decapitated.
The door handle turned and Nellie came in again, Nellie with a
sheet-white face, heavy wet lashes, and swollen eyes.
"I'm going up again," she said.
"Tho 'm I," said Peter, springing to his feet.
"An' me," Poppet cried.
"Come on," said Bunty, picking up his hat.
But Nellie shook her head.
"You know your cold's bad again, Poppet; and, Peter dear, it's after
your bedtime,--you _must_ stay," she said. "Oh, Bunty, _do_ stop with
them."
"I'm sure----" Bunty answered, with contradictory accent.
Nellie caught a sob.
"I shall _die_ if I don't go this minute," she said passionately.
She moved to the door, but Bunty had gone before her.
"We _can't_ leave them,--oh, _Bunty_, if only you'd stay!" She held his
coat sleeve and tried to force him back.
"I want to hear as much as you do," he said, with all his old gruffness;
"here, let go."
"I tell you I shall go mad--_mad_--if I don't go!" the girl said wildly.
He saw the burning look in her eyes, the pain at her lips, and fell back
suddenly, awkwardly.
"All right, go on," he said.
Then his just wakening brotherly-protection ideas occurred to him.
"I say, you can't go," he said; "don't be a silly. You're only a girl,
and it's dark,--let me go, Nell; I'll run all the way, and come straight
back and tell you."
"I _must_ go," she repeated hoarsely. "Make them go to bed; give Poppet
her medicine; don't leave the matches near Peter."
She slipped off his detaining hand, and the next minute was flying up
the road through the cold white moonlight; a small dark figure with
desperate eyes, and the wretchedest little heart in the world.
*CHAPTER XXII.*
*AMARANTH OR ASPHODEL?*
"Falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar stairs,
That slope through darkness up to God."
All the way she never stopped once,--it was nearly a mile. Her heart
was in her throat, her breath coming in great choking pants; her knees
were trembling as she stumbled up against the old Misrule gate, and
clung to it blind and giddy for a moment.
There was a step on the footpath--it stopped at the gate. Some one came
and peered at her and uttered a cry of surprise.
"Why, Nellie!"
"How--is--she?"
She gasped the words, swayed, and recovered herself.
"I'm just going in again," Alan said. He slipped his arm round her and
steadied her--"I told you not to come again, Nellie."
[Illustration: "'OH, LET ME COME!' SHE IMPLORED."]
"I couldn't help it."
He saw she couldn't, and did not scold her.
"But what am I to do with you?" he said in dismay.
He was anxious to get in, and now here was this poor, trembling,
wild-eyed girl on his hands.
"Oh, _let_ me come!" she implored. There was a sob rising in her
throat.
Then he did scold her a little. Surely she was not going to trouble
them on this terrible night? Meg was all courage, and quite calm, and so
relieved to know the children were being well looked after,--she must
not fail them all now at the crisis.
The sob was strangled instantly.
"I'll stay," she said,--"only--oh, _Alan_, come out and tell me soon!"
He promised he would. He drew her just within the gate and wrapped his
overcoat round her, for she was jacketless, of course.
"I trust you not to come past the hedge," he said. "See, stand here, and
I can find you easily. There now, dear, I _must_ go."
"A minute--is she in--real danger, Alan? Is she going to die?"
Oh the wide, beseeching eyes, full of moonlight and misery!
He had never told a lie in his life,--never even charged one to his
medical conscience; but his arm clasped her more strongly, more
tenderly.
"She is in danger," he said quietly. "We are afraid she cannot live;
but there is always hope, and the next hour will decide."
She pushed him forward.
"Go!" she said, "go!" and he kissed her forehead and went.
She paced up and down by the low pittosporum hedge that divided the
garden from the shrubbery next the fence, and she held her hands so
tightly together, that she felt the pain as far as her elbows.
It was full moon to-night.
She remembered when it had been new,--a little, friendly, pretty
crescent. They had sat out on the verandah--four or five of
them--watching it rise, and Alan had said it
"Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf."
But Pip said he thought that man saw things straighter who found "the
curled moon more like a bitten biscuit thrown out of a top-story window
in a high wind." Meg culled from "Endymion." "The beautiful thing,"
she said,
"'Only stooped to tie
Her silver sandals, ere deliciously
She bowed into the heavens her timid head."
And Bunty said, "What rot!"
How happy and light-hearted they had been then! Oh the strange and sad
and oh the glad things that happen in this world between the crescent
moon and the full!
Such a white cold moon it was, so far away, so wondrously large and
calm. It suggested the immeasurable vastness of the universe, the
infinitesimal smallness of herself. Her heart sickened and died within
her,--what use was it for her to pray and weep and beat her hands to
such a far-off sky? What madness to suppose the great high awful God
beyond it would put forth His saving hand just because one small
insignificant creature down on earth prayed to Him! Such a faultful
creature too; all her life through she could not remember one really
good thing she had done, nothing but wrong-doings, littlenesses, and
selfishness came to her mind. She looked away from the sky and scornful
moon, she went to and fro with her eyes on the white ground.
"Of _course_ it's no use," she muttered, and held her hands together
more tightly.
A buggy stopped at the gate. The old doctor got out; he told the
coachman not to drive in, but to wait there.
Two people passing up the road saw him, and crossed over.
"How's the little girl?" they said.
And "Very bad, poor baby," was his answer. "I ought to have been here
before, but have been at a deathbed."
"Whose?" they asked, in the lowered tones death claims.
"Mrs. Fitzroy-Browne," he said, and hurried away up to the house.
Nellie went back to the low hedge. From there she could just see the
palely-lighted window upstairs, and the large shadows on the blind. She
saw Meg move across to the corner where the bed stood, then the nurse's
cap was outlined, Alan's head and shoulders, the doctor's.
More and more icy grew the hand at her heart, whiter and whiter shone
the moon, longer and longer every minute took to pass. A sudden gust of
wind blew over the pampas clumps full into her face, and the air was
still again. Perhaps with that very wind Essie had left them.
She fell on her knees with wide, outstretched arms, and dropped her face
on the low hedge. The twigs and leaves scratched and pricked her, the
ground made her knees ache, the night air was freezing her; but that was
happiness. The sky she dare not look at; but she was compelled to pray
again, just to say God, God, God! and shiver and writhe and bite her
lips. There was no help for her on earth, and she must shriek to God
even though He heard not.
Suddenly the moonlight faded, the garden, the silent house, the pale
lights.
She was at the top of a hill, and at the foot was the reddest sunset the
world had ever seen. She was a little child again, flying from the bark
hut and awful gathering shadows to the fence that skirted the road along
which help would come. She was a child flinging herself on the ground,
face downward, and crying, "Make her better, God!--God, make her
better,--oh, _can't_ you make her better!"
But Judy had died. He had not listened to her then, He would not listen
now.
She lifted a face of agony and looked at the sky again. It had grown
softer, a grey more tender, and deepened with blue; the moon hung lower,
a yellow warmth had crept into it.
Her tears gushed out again, and poured in hot streams down her face.
"Dear God!" she whispered,--"oh, my dear, great God, I will be so
good--only let her live, just let her live--such a little thing, God,
such a little baby thing,--oh, you wouldn't take her from us, my great
God--I will give you all my life, God! I will be good always, I will go
to church always, and do everything you want me to, only don't take her
away, God! Please, Jesus, ask Him,--dear, sweet Jesus, don't let Him
take her; oh, my sweet, kind Christ, let her stay here!"
Her face fell into the hedge once more, and her lips babbled the wild,
pitiful, bargaining prayer that only One could understand.
It seemed hours that she knelt there, praying, sobbing, and shivering,
before Alan came as he had promised.
She heard his step coming down the path, and she struggled to her feet
and forced herself forward.
But he was going past her,--had he forgotten her?
No, she knew; the child was dead, and he could not tell her.
He had passed the hedge and was going on to the gate; she stumbled along
after him, but he did not seem to hear her.
"Alan!" she said, as he pulled the chain aside to go out. Her voice
sounded hollow and far away.
He stopped, but did not look at her.
"I--know," she said.
He nodded.
"Dead--dead--dead!" she said.
But he spoke then.
"Essie is better," he said; "she will live now."
She caught at the palings; all the world was moving about her, the sky,
the ground beneath her feet.
"Better," she told herself--"better, better--can't you hear?"
Then she noticed Alan's face. It was deathly white, his lips were
trembling and twitching, his eyes were wild.
"What?" she whispered.
"Meg has got it," he said with a great sob in his voice; and he brushed
past her and went away.
*CHAPTER XXIII.*
*LITTLE FAITHFUL MEG.*
"And shadow, and silence, and sadness
Were hanging over all."
Pip had a time of unhappiness almost as great as that Nellie had gone
through.
He was playing chess at the Courtneys to keep from thinking, when Alan
came in with the news that Meg had the fever.
All the colour dropped from his brown, handsome face; he started up in
his place, the queen he had just captured still in his hand; he went out
of the room and out of the house without a word. Andrew caught him up
when he had gone some hundred yards up the road.
"Here's your hat, old fellow," he said, and Pip took it without thanks
and walked on.
Little faithful Meg, whose worst fault had been loving him too well to
let him spoil his life! And he had shaken her aside time after time
when she had tried to end the quarrel--he had told her he would never
forgive her!
And now, perhaps, he would never have the chance.
He pulled back the gate at Misrule with fingers as nerveless as the
veriest girl; he turned to go up to the house the short way, by the
pittosporum hedge. There was a little dark heap of something on the wet
grass in front of him; he touched it with his foot, and then bent down
in horror.
It was his second little sister, sobbing as if her heart would break;
she was face downwards, her arms spread out, her whole body convulsed.
So stunned and shaken with his grief had Alan been, he had utterly
forgotten, when he left the poor child, that she was not at her proper
place for the night; he had gone straight home to see if there had been
a call for him, then off to a serious case of typhoid in Fivedock, for
doctors cannot sit down and give themselves up to their grief, however
great the cause.
Pip tried to raise the girl, but she stiffened herself and resisted him;
when she had flung herself down she had prayed passionately that she
might die, and here was some one come to disturb her.
But surely it could not be careless Pip who held her so tenderly, when
at last he did manage to lift her,--Pip who stroked her hair, and rubbed
his cheek against hers, and let her finish her bitter weeping on his
shoulder.
When he felt how cold and damp she was, he stirred.
"You must come home, old girl," he said.
"Here," she said--"I must stay here! I shall nurse her, but she'll
die--oh! I know she'll die."
Pip groaned: he knew it himself, he would not give himself the slightest
hope; and the bitterness was as of death itself.
But he saw Nellie was totally unfit to go into an infected house that
night.
"To-morrow," he said; "come down to the cottage now; there's the nurse
there, and the servants; you'll be ill yourself next."
"I want to be--oh, why _can't_ I die?" she wailed. "It's all me, every
bit of this, and God won't let me die."
Oh the young miserable face, so white and wet in the moonlight! A great
lump came into Pip's throat, and in his heart a sudden knowledge of the
dearness of his sisters.
"Oh, you poor little thing!" he said.
He put her on the old seat under the mulberry tree near, and went away.
When he came back he was leading one of the horses by the bridle over
the grass.
"What are you going to do?" she asked miserably.
And "Ride you home," was his answer.
[Illustration: "HE LED THE HORSE OUT OF THE GATE, AND CARRIED HER TO
IT."]
He led the horse out of the gate, carried her to it, and put her just on
the saddle; then he got up himself behind, and held her with one hand
and the reins with the other.
That is how they reached the cottage.
The children were in bed, and poor Bunty, weary of waiting, had fallen
asleep sitting bolt upright in a chair.
Pip woke him, gently enough.
"Make up the fire," he said.
The boy fell to the task with all his heart, so dreadful was his
sister's face. The clatter woke Poppet; she slipped out of bed and came
in to them in her little nightgown, her eyes heavy with sleep and the
struggle between forgetfulness and remembrance.
"Baby!" she said. Then her eyes flew open, and the colour died out of
her little flushed cheeks. What made Nellie look so terrible?
"Better, much better--getting well," was Pip's hasty answer. He did not
want another ill on his hands.
The child gasped with relief.
"Go and get something on," said Pip; "and bring Nell a big shawl or rug,
and put something on your feet."
She came back with a great blanket for Nellie--she had pinned her little
flannel petticoat round her own shoulders, and stuck her feet into
goloshes.
Bunty made coffee--a great jugful. The grounds were floating on the
top, certainly, but it was very hot. Pip made the girl drink two full
cups and eat a big piece of bread and butter--he heard she had had
neither dinner nor tea.
Then she crept close to him again. What a dear big brother he was, and
how much less terrible things looked here in the firelight, with his arm
round her, than when she lay prone on the wet grass under the white, far
moon.
They dare not tell Poppet to-night, her eyes were far too bright, her
cheeks too flushed. So Bunty, at a whisper from Nell, picked her up and
carried her off to bed again.
"I'll stop with you till you go to sleep," he said, feeling her chest
heave.
"I b'leeve they're 'ceiving me," said the poor little child. "I heard
Nell whisper to you! Oh, Bunty, _tell_ me!--oh, Baby, Baby!"
He reassured her eagerly. The crisis was quite past; the doctor said
she could not _help_ getting better now. Why, they would be playing
with her again now in no time!
She cried a little from the relief, and then dropped off to sleep,
holding tightly to his gentle, roughened hand.
In the sitting-room Pip was comforting Nellie as tenderly and pitifully
as if he had been a woman and she a poor, little, hurt child. They had
never known each other before--these two--and both were touched and
surprised at the beauty of the new knowledge.
He agreed that she must go to Misrule and help to nurse, but thought
they would wire up to Yarrahappini and ask Mrs. Hassal to come down to
the cottage instead of getting any one strange. Nellie thought it an
excellent suggestion, and made him draft a telegram immediately, so that
it might be sent first thing in the morning.
When he thought she was calm again, and fit to be left he saw her into
her own bedroom, and made her promise to go direct to bed and try her
best to sleep, since so much depended on her now.
Such a poor, scratched, swollen face it was lifted to him for a
good-night kiss, so different from the brilliant, beautiful, rebellious
one that had defied him on the night of that trouble-causing dinner
party.
He took the front door key with him, and went out, riding slowly back to
Misrule, though he had no business there, as he knew. He put his
father's horse back into the stable, and learnt from the man, who had
just gone to bed, that Martha was with Essie and the nurse with Meg.
Then he went round into the garden, and to the side of the house where
Meg's bedroom was.
There was a white, flat paling fence separating that part of the garden
from the paddocks; he sat down on it and watched the light on her white
blind with a despairing expression in his eyes.
He would have given all the world for a kiss from her, a smile of
forgiveness; his love for Mabelle lay, a cold thing, almost dead, in his
breast; he felt he could never breathe on it and warm it to life again.
To him, as to Nellie, this great white awful night brought back to
memory the red red sunset and purple black shadows of the evening Judy
had died. Like Nellie, he too fell on his knees, and prayed as he had
only prayed that one other time in his life. And, like Nellie too, he
prayed despairingly and without faith because that other prayer had not
been answered. It was midnight when he had ridden back; he stopped
there in the white, hushed garden till the moon began to fade out of the
sky and a pale flush of rose crept up from the river. He was stiff and
cold from his long watch; on the ill-kept strip of grass beneath the
lighted window he had worn a path with his pacings, and his heart was
heavier than ever.
When five o'clock came he still lingered; he was watching for the first
opening door. To wait for her smile and forgiveness till she was
better--to wait--to miss it for ever, perhaps--was more than he could
bear to contemplate. He wrote her a little eager loving note on the
back of an envelope from his pocket; his sister, his dear, sweet old
Meg, would she ever forgive him?
He thought he would give it to Martha the minute there was a stir of
life within the house, and he went softly round the verandah to the side
door; it was always opened first, he knew. He stood there more than
half an hour, listening for a footstep on the stairs, for the creak of a
door or the sound of a voice.
On the weather-worn wall near there were a number of marks and names and
dates; it was the measuring wall of the family. It carried his thoughts
back a long, long time. It was nearly seven long years since the first
marks were made: the little one, only a couple of feet off the ground,
was marked "The General,"--Pip remembered Esther had to hold him there,
for it was before he could walk. Then all the small steps above
it--Baby, and Bunty, and Nell--such a little Nell; Judy, with a crossing
out at her name and a mark lower down--he remembered finding out after
he had measured her first, that she had tacked a bit of wood on to each
heel of her shoes; then himself, and Meg topping them all.
The last marks were recent; they had measured merrily just before Esther
went away, to see if any one could possibly grow in such a short time.
He himself was at the top now, ten inches past Meg, and Nellie and Bunty
were nearly up to Meg. How nearly the new little mark that meant Essie
had never risen any higher! And Judy, dear, dear little Judy, so quick
growing, so eager-eyed--her mark was no longer among them.
It forced itself upon Pip that perhaps never again would he put the flat
book on Meg's bright head and crush down, ere he measured her, the
fluffy hair that gave her an unlawful inch.
He turned on his heel from the wall; the mark seemed on his heart.