A FORLORN HOPE.
Another week passed; mamma was better--not much better in spirits, but
very much apparently in health. She was now a good deal more tranquil,
though in great affliction. Poor mamma! No book interested her now but
the Bible; the great, wise, gentle friend so seldom listened to when all
goes well--always called in to console, when others fail.
Mr. Forrester had got me some work to do--work much more interesting
than I had proposed for myself. It was to make a translation of a French
work for a publisher. For a few days it was simply experimental, but it
was found that I did it well and quickly enough; and I calculated that
if I could only obtain constant employment of this kind, I might earn
about seventy pounds a year. Here was a resource--something between us
and actual want--something between me and the terrible condition of
dependence. My ambition was humble enough now.
For about two days this discovery of my power, under favourable
circumstances, to make sixty or seventy pounds a year, actually cheered
me; but this healthier effect was of short duration. The miseries of our
situation were too obvious and formidable to be long kept out of view.
Gloom and distraction soon returned--the same rebellious violence
inflamed by the fresh alarm of mamma's returning illness.
She was very ill again the night but one after the good news about my
translation--breathless, palpitating. I began to grow frightened and
desponding about her. I had fancied before that her symptoms were mere
indications of her state of mind; but now, when her mind seemed more
tranquil, and her nerves quiet, their return was ominous. I was urging
her to see Sir Jacob Lake, when Mr. Forrester called, and I went to our
drawing-room to see him. He had got a note, cold and petulant, from my
uncle, Lord Chellwood, that morning. This letter said that "no person
who knew of the number and magnitude of the charges affecting his
property could be so unreasonable as to suppose that he could, even if
he had the power, which was not quite so clear, think of charging an
annuity upon it, however small, for the benefit of any one." That "he
deeply commiserated the distressing circumstances in which poor Frank's
widow found herself; but surely he, Lord Chellwood, was not to blame for
it. He had never lost an opportunity of pressing upon his brother the
obligation he conceived every married man to be under, to make provision
for his wife; and had been at the trouble to show him, by some very
pertinent figures, how impracticable it was for him to add to the
burdens that weighed on the estates, and how totally he, Lord Chellwood,
was without the power of mitigating to any extent the consequences of
his rashness, if he should leave his wife without a suitable provision."
So it went on; and ended by saying that "he might possibly be able, next
spring, to make--it could be but a small one--a present to the poor
lady, who had certainly much to answer for in the imprudent career in
which she had contributed to engage her husband, and during which she
had wilfully sacrificed her settlement to the pleasures and vanities of
an expensive and unsuitable life." The letter went on in this strain,
and hinted that the present he spoke of could not exceed a hundred and
fifty pounds, and could not possibly be repeated.
"This looks very black, you see," said the good-natured solicitor. "But
I hope it may not be quite so bad as he says. If he could be got to do a
little more, a small annuity might be purchased."
I did not like my uncle. It is very hard to get over first impressions,
and the repulsion of an entirely uncongenial countenance. There was
nothing manly in his face--it was narrow, selfish, conceited. He was
pale as wax. He had manners at once dry and languid; and whether it was
in his eye or not, I can't say, but there was something in his look,
though he smiled as much as was called for, and never said a
disagreeable thing, that conveyed very clearly to me, although neither
papa nor mamma seemed to perceive it, that he positively disliked us,
each and every one, not even excepting poor, gay, good-natured papa. We
all knew he was stingy; he had one hobby, and that was the nursing and
rehabilitation of the estates which had come to him, with the title, in
a very crippled state.
With these feelings, and the pride which is strongest in youth, I
fancied that I should have died rather than have submitted to the
humiliation of accepting, much less asking, money from his hand.
* * * * *
I must carry you three weeks further on. It was dark; I can't tell you
now what o'clock it was; I am sure it was not much earlier than nine. I
had my cloak and bonnet on; Rebecca Torkill was at my side, and her thin
hand was upon my arm.
"And where are you going, my darling, at this time of night?" she said,
looking frightened into my face.
"To see Lord Chellwood; to see papa's unnatural brother; to tell him
that mamma must die unless he helps her."
"But, my child, this is no time--you would not go out through them
wicked streets at this hour--you shan't go!" she said sturdily, taking a
firm hold of my arm.
I snatched it from her grasp angrily, and walked quickly away. I looked
over my shoulder, as I reached the two piers, and saw the figure of old
Rebecca looking black in the doorway, with a background of misty light
from the candle at the foot of the stairs. I think she was wavering
between the risk of leaving the house and mamma only half protected, and
the urgent necessity of pursuing and bringing me back. I was out of her
reach, however, before she could make up her mind.
I was walking as quickly as I could through the streets that led towards
Regent Street. I had studied them on the map.
These out-of-the-way streets were quiet now, but not deserted; now and
then I passed the blaze of a gin-palace. It was a strange fear and
excitement to me to be walking through these poor by-streets by
gas-light. No fugitive threading the streets of a town in the throes
of revolution had a keener sense of danger, or moved with eye and sinew
more ready every moment to start from a walk into a run. I suppose they
allow poor people, such as I might well be taken for, walking quickly
upon their business, to pass undisturbed. I was not molested.
At length I was in Regent Street. I felt safe now; the broad pavement,
the stream of traffic, the long line of gas-lamps, and the still open
shops, enabled me, without fear, a little to slacken my pace. I required
this relief. I had been ill for two days, and was worse. I felt chilly
and aguish; I was suffering from one of those stupendous headaches which
possibly give the sufferer some idea of the action of that iron "cap of
silence" with which, during the reign of good King Bomba, so many
Neapolitan citizens were made acquainted. I can afford to speak lightly
of it now; but I was very ill. I ought to have been in my bed. Nothing
but my tremor about mamma would have given me nerve and strength for
this excursion.
She had that day had a sudden return of the breathlessness and
palpitation from which she had suffered so much, and I had succeeded in
getting Sir Jacob Lake to come to see her.
It was a hurried visit, as his visits always were. He saw her, gave some
general directions, wrote a prescription, spoke cheerfully to her, and
his manner seemed to say he apprehended nothing. I came with him to the
stairs, which we went down together, and in the drawing-room I heard the
astounding words that told me mamma could not live many months, and
might be carried off at any moment in one of those attacks. He told me
to get her to the country, her native air, if that could be managed,
immediately. That might prolong her life a little. It was only a chance,
and at best a reprieve. But without it he could not answer for a week.
He told me that I must be careful not to let mamma know that he thought
her in danger. She was in a critical state, and any agitation might be
fatal. He took his leave, and I was alone with his dreadful words in my
ears.
Now, how was I to carry out his directions? The journey to Golden
Friars, as he planned it, would cost us at least twenty pounds, and he
ordered claret, then a very expensive wine, for mamma. He did not know
that he was carrying away our last guinea in his pocket. I had but half
a sovereign and a few shillings in my purse. Mr. Forrester was out of
town; and even if he were within reach, it was scarcely likely that he
would lend or bestow anything like the sum required. The work was not
sufficiently advanced to justify a hope that he would give me, a
stranger, a sum of money on account of a task which I might never
complete. Poverty had come in its direst shape. In the distraction of
that dreadful helplessness my pride broke down. This was the reason of
my wild excursion.
As I now walked at a more moderate pace, I felt the effect of my
unnatural exertion more painfully--every pulse was a throb of torture.
It was an effort to keep my mind clear, and to banish perpetually rising
confusions, the incipient exhalations of fever. What drowsiness is to
the system in health, this tendency to drop into delirium is to the
sick.
I found myself, at length, almost exhausted, at my noble kinsman's door.
I knocked; I asked to see him. The footman did not recognise me. He
simply said, looking across the street over my head, with a careless
disdain:
"I say, what's the row, miss?"
Certainly such a visitor as I, and at such an hour, had no very
recognisable claim to a ceremonious reception.
"Charles," I said, "don't you know me?--Miss Ware."
The man started a little, looked hard at me, drew himself up formally,
as he made his salutation, receding a step, with the hall-door open in
his hand.
"Is his lordship at home?" I asked.
"No, miss, he dined out to-day."
"But I must see him, Charles. If he knew it was I he could not refuse.
Tell him mamma is dangerously ill, and I have no one to help me."
"He is out, miss; and he sleeps out of town--at Colonel Anson's
to-night."
I uttered an exclamation of despair.
"And when is he to return?"
"He will not be in town again for a fortnight, miss; he's going to
Harleigh Castle."
I stood on the steps for a minute, stunned by the disappointment,
staring helplessly into the man's face.
"Please, shall I call a cab, miss?"
"No--no," I said dreamily. I turned and went away quickly. It troubled
me little what the servants might say or think of my strange visit.
This blow was distracting. The doctor had distinctly said that mamma's
immediate removal to country air was a necessity.
As people will under excitement, I was walking at the swiftest pace I
could. I was pacing under the evergreens of the neighbouring square,
back and forward, again and again; I saw young ladies get from a house
opposite into a carriage, and drive away, as I once used to do. I hated
them--I hated every one who was as fortunate as I once was. I hated the
houses on the other side with their well-lighted halls. I hated even the
great prosperous shop-keeping class, with their overgrown persons and
purses. Why did not fortune take other people, the purse-proud, the
scheming, the vicious, the arrogant, the avaricious, instead of us--drag
them from their places, and batter and trundle them in the gutter? Here
was I, for no fault--none, none!--reduced to a worse plight than a
beggar's. The beggar has been brought up to his calling, and can make
something of it; while I could not set about it, had not even that form
of pluck which people call meanness, and was quite past the age at which
the art is to be learned.
All this time I was growing more and more ill. The breathless walking
and the angry agitation were precipitating the fever that was already
upon me. I had an increasing horror of the dismal abode which was now my
home. Distraction like mine demands rapid locomotion as its proper and
only anodyne. Despair and quietude quickly subside into madness.
Some public clock not far off struck the hour; I did not count it; but
it reminded me suddenly of the risk of exciting alarm at home by
delaying my return. So with an effort, and as it were an awakening, I
began to direct my steps homewards. But before I reached that melancholy
goal, an astounding adventure was fated to befall me.