Please come soon. Phoebe seems very ill.--P. C.
He hailed a hansom and was off in a moment.
The child was asleep in her crib, and Mrs Cameron watched uneasily by
her side. The flushed face, hurrying pulse, the dry skin, and spasmodic
breathing showed signs of fever. There were cases of diphtheria about,
and he looked grave. But he decided to cause no unnecessary anxiety, and
promised to return later. Then there was no concealing it; great care,
he said, must be exercised, as the child was young and not over-strong.
He put his opinion in that form to avoid being an alarmist, though the
symptoms of the disease were unfavourable, and he dreaded the worst. But
his own hope was so great that it tempered his report with consolation,
for he had not the heart to warn Phoebe's mother of his fears.
After hours of anxious watching he could not but own to himself that no
progress was made, and that the crisis must be awaited with dread.
Should he tell her? Dared he? In front of him lay the probably dying
little creature that was first in her life--before himself, before
anything. Should she perish, there would be no barrier in the world
between them; Mrs Cameron would have no duty but to herself!
A warm flush underlay his features--not the flush of pride or of
satisfaction; it was the dye of shame for thoughts which placed himself
and his egoistic desires before the life of the innocent being whose
fate seemed to lie in his hands. It lasted not a moment, for he rose and
left the house with a face quite ashen grey, whence all the light and
fire of youth had faded. He was not long absent, for he had secured a
passing hansom and paid a doubled fare for doubled speed.
He found Mrs Cameron alone with the child, while the nurse, worn out and
weary, dozed in an adjacent room. Little Phoebe, who, earlier in the
day, had been restless to a frightful degree, flinging about her waxen,
chubby arms distractedly in the effort to gain breath, now lay almost
motionless. Her mother, little experienced in any phase of illness,
imagined that some slight improvement had taken place, but Ralph Danby
knew better. The dull bluish pallor of the hitherto rosy skin; the rapid
pulsation and agonised breathing; the feeble, sad croak that could not
develop force enough for a cry--all told him there was no time to be
lost.
He hastily opened the case for which he had journeyed home, and produced
a small silver tube.
Mrs Cameron watched his movements with anxiety.
"What are you going to do?"
She was standing near the crib, midway between it and a table whereon he
had deposited the case. As her eyes met his she read, by an
extraordinary intuition which comes to most of us when reason fails,
that he purposed some extreme course of action.
"What are you going to do?" she reiterated, somewhat sharply.
"I must give our little patient relief--instant relief--by means of
this," he answered, hastily. She seemed to be wasting time with
questions when every moment was precious. Still she stood motionless in
front of him.
"How?" she persisted, in a voice so hollow that he could scarcely
recognise it.
"I cannot explain now. You must trust me."
"How?" she cried, imperatively. "I will know." A light was dawning on
her. She was recalling a case of which she had read in some old paper
where the doctor lost his life to save the patient.
Danby frowned slightly, and his face looked worn and old. He was
unaccustomed to be doubted or to have his authority questioned.
"If you will know, I shall insert this in the throat," he replied,
deliberately advancing towards the cot, "and remove the mucus by
suction."
"But you might catch the disease?"
"Possibly."
"You might--you might die?"
"Well?"
He was bending towards the child, and gently rubbing the tube with his
handkerchief. With a sudden movement she flung herself between him and
the crib, and placed her outstretched palms against his broad chest.
"You--shall--not!"
Her agonised touch, the expression of her wild, troubled eyes, made
Dot's heart thump within him, but his face showed no sign.
With seeming severity he clasped her wrists and drew her to the
adjoining dressing-room.
"It is a matter of life and death--your child's. I dared not tell you
how serious--I hoped to save you alarm. Now there is no time to spare."
With that he returned to the room, closed the door, and locked it,
leaving her in a passion of tears on the other side. Then he rang for
the nurse, and proceeded.
* * * * *
Though at first his very soul seemed shaken with suppressed emotion, in
a few seconds the sight of the infant's sufferings, its near approach to
suffocation, overwhelmed all remembrance of his own personality, and
restored the equilibrium. One thought of the woman, and his frame had
throbbed and shivered like the forest trees in March; another, the
greater, nobler thought of his science, his sacred mission at the hands
of his Maker, and the trembling fingers grew steady.
With accuracy and judgment he inserted the shining channel into the
windpipe of the sufferer; with patience and deliberation he held the end
of the instrument in his mouth and sucked!
And all the while from the inner room came the sound of sobs--the
passionate wail of the woman who had betrayed herself, who stood
self-accused of neglecting her child. He heard the grievous sound as he
strained the poisonous mucus from the tiny throat and breathed the
death-laden air into his lungs. He knew that he swayed on the bridge
between life and eternity; that possibly--nay, probably--he should never
hear the sweet enchantment of her voice again; that if he should die it
must be without so much as a pressure from her hand; and yet the great
heart never wavered, but beat evenly like the pulse of some grand
cathedral clock, which, spite of marriage chime or funeral knell,
pursues its steadfast purpose for ever.
At last the work was over, and its reward, the free respiration of the
little sufferer, was assured. Then a feeling of dizziness crept over his
brain, and he hastened home, but not before summoning his partner to
relieve him.
When Doctor Davis arrived, he learnt from the nurse and Mrs Cameron what
had taken place. He was a practical, prosaic person, cumbered with a
delicate wife and up-growing children, and censured Danby's conduct as
foolhardy in the extreme.
"Is he bound to catch it?" asked Phoebe, with concern.
"Most certainly," replied the physician, scowling. He liked Ralph, and
thought him much too sound a fellow to be lost through idiocy. "I
believe there have been cases to the contrary--some solitary
exceptions."
"But even then," pursued she, anxiously, "he need not die? He will
recover?"
"Ten to one against it," said the doctor, bluntly, quite unconscious
that the ghastly pallor of his questioner was due to more than weary
watching by her child.
But Danby did recover. His magnificent constitution pulled him through
in a manner little short of the miraculous. Perhaps hope had some occult
healing power unknown to those who watched and tended him.
At the end of six weeks the burly "Dot" was himself again, and once more
made his way to the little house in Mervan Street in glad expectation. A
terrible disappointment awaited him. Phoebe major was not at home!
Phoebe minor, however, executed gleeful saltations in honour of his
arrival.
"How is 'oo, Dot Dandy? Twite, twite well? Phoebe pray Dod every day
make Dot well!"
The big man stooped and kissed the tiny prattler, and thus avoided the
necessity for speech. His heart seemed to have risen in his throat, and
made a huge lump there.
Hurriedly taking his departure, he determined to call another day, but
though he went again and again, it was with no better luck. Then he
understood that Mrs Cameron's repeated absences were not the result of
accident, but of design. She had been kind in her daily inquiries after
him, but now that he had recovered, she was decided they should not
meet.
A few days later the child had a feverish cold, and to his chagrin he
heard that Doctor Davis had been sent for. That made it quite evident he
was not wanted. He made no effort to go, but smarted under the sense of
injury. His better reason argued that as she had intentionally broken
with him, she could not demand his attendance on the infant without risk
of unavoidable meeting. But why had she so behaved? Had he not saved her
child, the light of her life, the aim of her future? Had he not
determined studiously to forget her accidental show of anxiety for him,
prompted by ignorance of the child's immediate danger? Why had she asked
after him daily? Why had little knots of flowers been left by bairn and
nurse, and why, ah, why! had the wee lips uttered a prayer for him?
"Perhaps the child had acted of her own impulse," sighed his modesty.
"Perhaps she had been so taught," panted his hope.
At last he determined to end the estrangement or let friendship perish
in the attempt. He wanted nothing but her forgiveness; that he felt he
deserved.
He knew every afternoon at five the nurse was relieved by Mrs Cameron,
who watched in the nursery while the babe slept. That hour, therefore,
was chosen for his visit. He mounted the stairs two at a time and rapped
at the familiar door. There was no answer. He turned the handle and
entered.
Phoebe major sat at the open window idle. She was reading the picture
promise of the clouds. Phoebe minor in a cot slept rosily in the far
corner of the room.
"Good afternoon," he whispered softly, in order not to disturb the
little slumberer.
Mrs Cameron extended a hand, but no smile greeted him. She scarcely
turned from her study of the skies. Poor Danby's heart felt sore and
heavy laden. He asked a few trivialities regarding the invalid's health,
and each query received an appropriate reply--nothing more.
He had taken a seat facing hers by the window, but even then only a
profile view of the face he loved was accorded him.
At length he could endure no longer.
"Mrs Cameron, I regret having come instead of Davis. He was engaged. I
had no idea I should be so unwelcome. Have I offended you irremediably?"
"No. Yes!" she corrected.
"How?"
He bent forward to induce her gaze to rest on him, but was foiled.
"If you will not tell me, how can I make amends? Was it because I locked
you from your own room?"
"No."
He noticed the tight grasp of her soft fingers against the window-sill.
She was not as callous as she wished to appear.
"Was it because I treated the child without your leave?"
"No."
Her frame shook slightly, and two crystal drops which she was too proud
to wipe away stood in her eyes.
Very gently he covered her hand with his own great one; very softly he
whispered in a voice he could scarcely steady:--
"Was it because I seemed ungrateful for the little love you offered me?"
The two tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped upon his wrist. With
quivering mouth she strove to frame what her face confessed would be a
lie.
He no longer hesitated, but caught her to his breast and crushed the
naughty falsehood with his lips.
How long the operation would have lasted it is impossible to guess, for
two shining eyes set in slumber-flushed cheeks peered suddenly from the
distant cot, and a prattling voice, unabashed and lusty, shouted:--
"Tiss me too--Dot Dandy!"
Romance of the Coulisses.
"Menez moi dit ma belle
A la rive fidele
Ou l'on aime toujours."
The difficulty of apprehending the female character is well-nigh
insurmountable. Woman has been called chameleon, weathercock, enigma;
but an enigma has a solution which may be reached by patience or
accident, a weathercock will confess the bent of the wind for however
short a space, and the colour of a chameleon can be periodically proved
by its dietary. But woman--she is a reiterating question, an argument
sans crux, a volume with uncut leaves dotted about through the most
exciting chapters. Without the right clue you must dip and skip, now
pricked, now irritated, till you approach a frenzy bordering on madness.
For you like to know the sort of creature you are dealing with--a
painter especially, since his fame hangs on his knowledge--hence these
ruminations round Betty.
Betty? you say--do we not all know her? Does not her dimpled face peer
out of the weekly papers, and do not their columns expose and magnify
every little detail of her life--her fads, her fancies, and her follies?
Cannot we see her night after night whisking her mazy skirts in the
limelight, and opening the carnation folds of her lips to patter
enchanting nonsense and pout promises brittle as pie crust? Dear little
Betty! How her twinkling feet make merry, light as sea-foam frothing on
shells; how our pulses throb and dance in pace with hers; how our ears
dote on the fragile, cooing tones of her dainty voice as it coquettes
with banalities, flirts with the very bars of melody that silly men have
tried to make witty and pretty. But the prettiness and wittiness are
Betty's; do we not all know that? Do we not know that the shiver of the
violins is only quaint when Betty shudders at the whisper of a kiss,
that the cyclone of strings and wind fades exquisitely, "like a rose in
aromatic pain," simply because Betty, our whimsical dear, chooses to
sigh for having shuddered? And when at last she cries, to think she
sighs for that at which she shuddered, we all clap our hands to
splitting--not, oh, not at the music, but in wild collective rapture
over the vagaries of our Betty!
In this way I thought I knew her every trick and wile and whim, till I
came to paint her picture, till one after another my charcoal lines were
flicked from the canvas, and I succumbed to that paralysing sense of
total defeat which is almost always the punishment of swollen ambition.
What was wrong? I asked myself. What had I missed? The pose, the
expression, the throb of motion? Weeks passed--then I worked again, made
a new study, and consulted my cousin Laura. She knew something of
dancing, and was at that time practising ballet steps, a necessary
accompaniment--so she had been told--to her debut in comic opera.
"The face is perfection," she said. "The little droop in the left
eye--she must have been born winking--and the upward curve at the corner
of the lip, they couldn't be improved."
I shook my head. Laura's verdict was unsatisfactory. The human mind so
often demands an opinion when it really wants a looking-glass.
"Perhaps if I could get more action--more of the warmth which goes with
action----?"
"It would affect the flesh tint, certainly. You should see me
pirouetting at Dupres'--a peony isn't in it."
"I should like to see you," I said, jumping at a probable solution of my
difficulties, "particularly in daylight. One gets better to the core
of----"
"With women," Laura interrupted, "it's safest to reject the core."
"Cynic. You admit the downiest have the hardest hearts--like peaches,
eh?"
"I didn't mean to be cynical. You can avoid the hard part. It is better
than choosing the human plantains that have none: smooth, soapy, insipid
things, they clog in no time."
"But pears eat straight through--sweet to the pip," I said, gazing
quizzically at my latest sketch. "Betty is a pear."
Laura laughed generously.
"Foolish boy, keep your illusions. You can clean your brushes in them.
Degas saw wonderful things in his models--things hidden from the vulgar
eye."
"I am glad you mentioned Degas. I mean to see more than this Betty of
the Ballet. Take me to your class."
"Oh, I don't dance in the class. I have a private lesson when the girls
are gone. You can come this afternoon at four."
We made a long journey on the top of an omnibus to a hole somewhere in
Lambeth. Squalor appeared to grope under railway arches, and penury to
moan through flapping fragments of clothing that swung at intervals
along the narrow paths, behind rows of second-hand furniture and groups
of dishevelled infants.
"A choice locality," I growled.
"Cheap," exclaimed Laura. "When you put your shoulder to the wheel you
mustn't mind greasing your jacket."
She was a plucky girl--glad, like many others, to grasp the only
opportunity of self-support. My uncle, a Cheshire parson, had died
peacefully, leaving four girls and six boys with bucolic appetites to
the charge of Providence.
"Here we are at last," my cousin said, leaping down with agility, and
hardly stopping the omnibus for her exit.
We alighted almost in front of a quaint building which looked like an
excrescence--a wart--on the visage of a dilapidated chapel. Laura led
the way up a garden in size somewhat larger than a postage-stamp, where
two heartseases, sole invaders of the desolate gravel, tried to blink
golden eyes through a canopy of dust. The door was opened by a youth who
mingled an air of proprietorship with the aspect of a waiter at a
third-rate cafe. He waved a hand to rooms, or rather cabins, on the
right, through which Laura led me. Cabin the first contained a dining
table and a fossil piano utilised as shelf for sundries and sideboard;
cabin the second, apparently a sleeping chamber, held a bed, dressing
table, and a diminutive bracket on which might have stood a hand basin;
while cabin the third--little more than a wooden box papered with
promiscuous remnants of a decorator's stock--stored a plank upraised by
volunteer legs enlisted from haphazard sources, a basin, a bottle of
cloudy water, and a cracked wall mirror.
There Laura slipped off her walking shoes, and announced her intention
to make a change of toilette.
I forthwith escaped through the further door, and found myself in a
large, bare room, facing a middle-aged man, who was evidently the
dancing master, M. Dupres.