PATIENT AND NURSE.
Mrs. Hanbury was greatly shocked by the news her son had given her
that day about his relations with Dora. She had a conviction that it
would be to John's advantage to be married. She held that, all other
things being reasonably taken care of, a young man of twenty-six ought
to marry and settle down to face the world in the relations and
surroundings which would govern the remainder of his life. There had
never been any consideration of John's sowing wild oats. He had always
been studious, serious, domestic. He was the very man to marry and, in
the cheerful phrase of the story book, live happy ever after.
And where could he find a wife better suited to him than in Curzon
Street? Dora had every single quality a most exacting mother could
desire in the wife of an only son, and Mrs. Hanbury was anything but
an exacting mother. Dora's family was excellent. She was one of the
most beautiful girls in London, she was extremely clever, and although
she and he did not seem fully in accord in their views of some things,
they agreed in the main. She was extremely clever and accomplished,
and amiable, and by-and-by she should be rich. In fact, Mrs. Hanbury
might have doubled this list without nearly exhausting the advantages
possessed by Miss Ashton, and now it was all over between the pair.
This really was too bad.
She idolized her son, and thought there were few such good young men
in the world; but she was no fool about him. She had watched his
growth with yearning interest from infancy to this day. She knew as
well, perhaps better than anyone, that he was not perfect. She knew he
was too enthusiastic, that sometimes his temper was not to be relied
on. She knew he was haughty, and at rare times even scornful. She knew
he had no mean estimate of his own merits, and was restive under
control. But what were these faults? Surely nothing to affright any
gentle and skilful woman from uniting herself with him for life. Most
of his faults were those of youth and inexperience. When he was
properly launched, and met other men and measured himself against
them, much of his haughty self-satisfaction would disappear. Most
young men who had anything in them were discontented, for they had
only vague premonitions of their powers, and they felt aggrieved that
the world would not take them on their own mere word at their own
estimate.
What Mr. and Mrs. Ashton would say she could not fancy. Perhaps they
would imitate for once the example of younger people, and say nothing
at all. They could not, however, help thinking of the matter, and they
would be sure to form no favourable estimate of John's conduct in the
affair. The rest of the world would be certain to say that John jilted
the girl, and anyone who heard the true history of the Hanbury family,
just come to light, would say that John kept back in the hope of
making a more ambitious marriage.
He was, every one allowed, one of the most promising young men in
England, and now the glamour of a throne was around him. All the
philosophy in the world would not make him ever again the plain John
Hanbury he was in the eyes of people a few days ago, in the eyes of
every one outside this house still. Stanislaus II. may have been
everything that was weak and contemptible, and been one of the chief
reasons why his unfortunate country disappeared from the political map
of the world, but John Hanbury was the descendant of King Stanislaus
II. of Poland, and if that monarchy had been hereditary and the
kingdom still existed, her son would be the legal sovereign, in spite
of all the Republicans and revilers in Europe.
She herself set no store by these remote and shadowy kingly honours,
but even in her own heart she felt a swelling of pride when she
thought that the child she had borne and reared was the descendant of
a king. A pretender to the throne of England would be put in a padded
room and treated with indulgent humanity. But on the Continent it was
not so. Sometimes they put him in prison, and sometimes they put him
on the throne he claimed. She knew that her son would no more think of
laying stress upon his descent from the Poniatowskis than of asking to
be put in that padded room. But others would think of it and set value
on it. Exclusive doors might be closed against the clever speaker,
plain John Hanbury, son of an English gentleman, who for whim or greed
went into trade, when he was rich enough to live without trade; but
few doors would be closed against the gifted orator who was straight
in descent and of the elder line of the Poniatowskis of Lithuania, and
whose great grandfather's grandfather was the last King of Poland.
After all, upon looking more closely at the affair, the discovery was
of some value. No one now could think him over ambitious for his years
if he offered himself for Parliament. Younger men than he, sons of
peers, got into Parliament merely by reason of a birth not nearly so
illustrious as his, and with abilities it would be unfair to them to
estimate against his.
There was something in it after all.
If now he chose to marry high, whom might he not marry? Putting out of
view that corrupt, that forced election to the throne of Poland, he
was a Poniatowski, _the_ Poniatowski, and few English families of
to-day could show such a pedigree as her son's.
There was certainly no family in England that could refuse an alliance
with him on account of birth.
And now vicious people would say he had been guilty, of the
intolerable meanness of giving up Dora Ashton either in order that he
might satisfy his ambition by a more distinguished marriage, or that
he might be the freer to direct his public career towards some lofty
goal. She knew her son too well to fancy for a moment any such
unworthy thought could find a home in his breast; but all the world
did not know him as she did, and no one would believe that the
breaking-off came from Dora and the cause of it arose before the
discovery of Stanislaus' secret English marriage.
When the doctor made his second visit, he pronounced Edith Grace
progressing favourably. She was then fully conscious, but pitifully
weak. There was not, the doctor said, the least cause for uneasiness
so long as the patient was kept quite free from excitement, from
even noise. A rude and racking noise might induce another period of
semi-insensibility. Quiet, quiet, quiet was the watchword, and so he
went away.
Mrs. Grace had protested against a hired nurse. She herself should sit
up at night, and in the daytime the child would need no attendance.
Mrs. Grace had, however, to go back to their lodgings to fetch some
things needed, and to intimate that they were not returning for the
present. Mrs. Hanbury volunteered to sit in Edith's room while the old
woman was away. Protests were raised against this, but the hostess
carried her point. "I told you," she said, with a smile, "that I am
very positive. Let this be proof and a specimen."
So the old lady hastened off, and Mrs. Hanbury sat down to watch at
the bedside of the young girl. Speaking was strictly forbidden. Mrs.
Hanbury took a book to beguile the time, and sat with her face to the
patient, so that she could see that all was right by merely lifting
her eyes.
The young girl lay perfectly still, with her long dark hair spread out
upon the pillow for coolness, and her white face lying in the midst of
it as white as the linen of the sheet. Her breathing was very faint,
the slight heaving of her breast barely moving the light counterpane.
The lips were slightly open, and the eyes closed.
Edith was too weary and too weak to think. Before she had the fainting
fit or attack of weakness (she had not quite fainted), she heard the
story of the dwarfs misfortunes in a confused way through that sound
of plashing water. She was quite content now to lie secure here
without thought, in so far as thought is the result of voluntary
mental act or the subject of successive processes. But the whole time
she kept saying to herself in a way that did not weary her, "How
strange that Leigh should lose everything and I gain so much, and that
both should be lying ill, all in so short a time!" This went on in her
mind over and over again, more like the sound of a melody that does
not distress one and may be listened to or not at will, than an
inherent suggestion of the brain. It was the result of the last strong
effort of the brain at memory blending with the first awakening to
full consciousness. "How strange that Leigh should lose everything and
I gain so much, and that both should be lying ill in so short a time!"
Mrs. Hanbury raised her eyes from her book and gazed at the pallid
face in the sea of dark hair. "She might be asleep or dead. How
exquisitely beautiful she is, and how like Dora. How very like Dora,
but she is more beautiful even than Dora. Dora owes a great deal to
her trace of colour and her animation. This face is the most lovely
one I ever saw, I think. How gentle she looks! I wonder was Kate Grace
that Poniatowski married like her. If so I do not wonder. Who could
help loving so exquisite a creature as this?"
Both of the girl's hands were stretched outside the counterpane.
Mrs. Hanbury leaned forward, bent and kissed the one near her, kissed
it ever so lightly.
The lids of the girl trembled slightly but did not open.
Mrs. Hanbury drew back afraid. She had perhaps awakened her.
Gradually something began to shine at the end of the long lashes, and
a tear rolled down the sweet young pale face.
"Have I awakened you?"
"No. I was awake."
"Are you in pain?"
"No. Oh, no!
"You are weeping."
"That," she moved slightly the hand Mrs. Hanbury had kissed, "that
made me, oh, so happy."
"Thank you, dear."
No more words were uttered, but when Mrs. Hanbury looked down upon her
book her own eyes were full.
The touch of the lips upon that hand had brought more quiet into the
girl's heart than all the muffling in the house or the whispered
orders to the servants or the doctor's drugs.
"She believed I was asleep and she kissed my hand," thought the girl.
No quiet such as this had ever entered her bosom before.