OF THE APPROACH OF LIZARANN'S RETURN, AND HOW JIM'S HOPES WERE FED BY
OLD DAVID. HOW JIM DID NOT CURSE A MOTOR-CAR. HOW LIZARANN DIED OF
TUBERCULOSIS
So it had come about that for weeks past news of Lizarann, that
none could doubt the meaning of, came to the Rectory, and that all
of it that passed on to her Daddy reached him corrected out of all
knowledge--the sting withdrawn.
Had he been able to read the letters that contained it himself, this
would not have been possible. Some may have a stone ready to cast at
Athelstan Taylor for this. The story has none. It was a question with
the Rector of allowing poor Jim a few more days of false hope in order
that he himself might be beside him in the first of his despair. His
own easiest course, far and away, would have been to read Adeline
Fossett's last letter to the poor fellow aloud, say, "God's will be
done!" and so forth, and get away to Chipping Chester. But he had it in
his mind to go to Jim when the use of the knife became inevitable, and
remain with him, if Mrs. Fox were still away, at least until the day of
her return. He shrank from leaving him alone in the cottage, a tortured
soul in a sunless universe, within reach of a razor.
Had he conceived for one moment what the speed of events would be,
his course might have been different. But the letters that he could
not read aloud to Jim were misleading on one point. The writer caught
constantly at the only easement words could be found for, that the
actual hour or day, or even week, of Death could not be forecast. The
dear little thing was not actually _dying_; she might live for weeks,
even months. But the doctor here--said Miss Jane Fanshawe--who really
had had immense experience, thought the case could only end one way.
Still, the temperature was half a degree lower to-day, and we thought
the air was beginning to tell. We should be able to see better when she
was got back home, with her old surroundings. She fretted a good deal
about her Daddy. That was the general tone of the penultimate letter.
Then came the one Miss Fossett enclosed on with the telegram which
followed it. It came too late for the Rector to modify his plan of
operations.
So Jim lived on by himself, and thought of his little lass, counting
the days to her return. He spoke with no one, water-customers apart,
except a neighbour who had undertaken to see to his needs in Mrs. Fox's
absence. His dog was under the impression that it was _he_ that was
doing this, and there can be no doubt that he actually did conduct
his master to and from the well. But nobody, except his canine self,
believed that he had any share in cooking the dinner or making the beds.
Each long day that went by was a day nearer to the blind man's hearing
of his child's voice. It would come, and would be hers once more--many
times more than once. His reason might whisper to him of one end, and
one alone, in some vague terrible future, to this insidious plague
that had stolen on him like a thief in the night, to rob him of his
happiness--the one jewel his darkness and his crippled limbs had left
him. But that the hour was at hand, and the word spoken, that the
light in his heart should be utterly quenched, and leave his soul to
a darkness blacker than the void his eyesight had become--this was an
idea it was not in him to receive, a thought that nature rose against.
No!--her return would be very soon now, and he knew how it would come.
He had nothing to guide him to the day or the hour beyond his knowledge
of the term first fixed--six weeks from the day of her departure. But
he knew what would be his first hearing of it. She would call out to
him--he was sure of that--the signal he had taught her to greet him
with, in the old days of Bladen Street; the word he had listened for so
many a time as he felt his way, touching with his stick the long blank
wall he had to pass before he could feel her little hand in his. He
dreamed and dwelt upon the moment when he should hear that call again,
"Pi-lot!"
The villagers coming to the well for water were a great solace to him;
a mine of robust hopefulness in which the choke-damp of misgiving was
unknown. Often when Jim was downhearted about the little lass--had got
a hump about her, as he phrased it--some village matron's voice would
come to him like a breath of fresh air. "Yow'ull be having yower little
maid back again vairy soon now, Master Coupland!" And the sympathetic
confidence bred in Jim's own voice would help him to a conviction
that it was well-grounded, as he answered, "Aye, mistress, sure!
But a very little time to run now!" Even when the slight insecurity
implied in the addendum, "Please God!"--making the little lass's return
conditional on anything--weakened the robust language of unqualified
Hope, Jim received it as a mere concession to the prejudices of
Society. Besides, he and his Maker were on better terms now, since his
initiation into church-music.
No note of alarm had reached the villagers; in fact, the Rector and
his sister-in-law kept their information to themselves. Even Phoebe
and Joan, when they paid Jim visits of consolation--every other day
or thereabouts--were a reassuring element; though so near sources of
better, or worse, information. They--poor little souls!--knew nothing
of death close at hand, though alive to funerals, somewhat as a
counsel's children might be alive to law-suits.
* * * * *
It was near the close of a cloudless day in the fourth week of that
August that Jim, undisturbed by applicants for water, was enjoying his
last pipe before starting for home. He was not alone. One of the very
old men one knows so well in every village was with him; a survival of
the past who will tell you tales of your grandfathers, and end them
up with some memory of a grandchild of his own, then living. Death
is keeping them in mind, be sure!--will not forget them in the end,
even though they may tax his recollection for another decade. This one
could remember his childhood better than the events of yesterday, and
though he could tell but little of it, was not quite without a record
of Waterloo. For he could recall how his father held him up, a child of
five, to see the blaze on Crumwen Beacon yander, when they loighted up
fires all round about for the news that had come of the great battle
across the water. But as for Nelson and Trafalgar, inquired about
keenly by Jim, as pages from the same book, he could say nothing of
them; they were afower his time. But he minded when they painted up
the sign of the Lord Nelson on the roo-ad to th' Castle, with an empty
sleeve to his cwo-at; and the painter of un didn't know his trade, and
put stoof with th' payunt to ma'ak it show up gay, and look at un now!
"It's a tidy bit o' time too, Master David," said Jim. "Many a year
afore ever I was heard tell of."
"Aye well--that's so! But you'll be quite a yoong ma'an, coo-unting by
years. Why, I lay you'll be yoonger by many a year than Peter Fox's
widow--she that's gone to her sister in Loon'un."
"My old mother at the cottage? Ah, she'll be my age twice told, and a
spell thrown in."
"Aye--aye! She's getting on, forward, now you ne'am it. But I mind
her when she first came to these parts--just a yoong wench, not long
wed--more by token my power missus lay dying at the time.... Noa!--I'd
been marrud woonce afower then--marrud to Sarah Tracey--you may ree-ad
her ne'am on the sto'an in the graveyard. But for Peter Fox's widow,
she was a coomly yoong wench, shooerly!"
He wandered among domestic events, until the dog, feeling he was
being taken too little notice of, remonstrated. The substance of his
communication, interpreted by Jim, was that it was time to be getting
back home. On the road, his opinion was they were going too slow, and
he endeavoured to drag his master at a trot. Old David commented on the
restlessness of youth.
"But you won't be needing th' yoong poop soon, Master Coupland. That
little maid of yowern she'll be coomin' ba-ack, I lay, none so many
days ahead."
Here was a chance for Jim to reassure himself.
"For all I could say," said he, "the lassie may be up at the Rectory
now. She'd come with her lady, as I make it out; just for the first
go off, seeing the old mother's not handy for to nurse her up. Not
that there'd be the need for it, to my judgment. These here doctor's
stories...."
The old man interrupted him, stopping in the road to speak, with an
uplifted impressive finger. "Do'ant ye hearken to none o' they, Master
Coupland. They be a main too clever, that they be! Why, I'm not the
only ma'an with a tale to tell about they doctors?"
"What might your tale be, Master David?"
"My tale? Now I only say this to ye, Master Coupland. Just ye look at
me.... Aye--be sure!--I should ha' said, feel hold of my arm.... There
now!--where do ye find th' hospital pa'atient in that? Towerned o'
ninety-nine year, last Whitsuntide! What'll your doctors ma'ak of that?"
"Won't they give you a clean bill, Master David?"
"Couldn't roightly say, Master Coupland, without consooltin' of 'em.
And I can tell ye this much, they'll have to make shift without me; you
may tell 'em so! Now, you hearken to me, not to they." The voice of the
old boy, so nearly a centenarian, rose quite to vigour as he worked up
his indignation against leechcraft. "That little maid of yowern, she
has a bit o' cough o' nights?"
"Aye, aye!--a fair sort of a cough--comes and goes by the season."
"Ah!--and I lay, now and again o' nights, she'll sweat like to sop a
flannel shirt through, like a spoonge?"
"And that's true, too!"
"And happen she's thinned doon a bit?--happen she hasn't...?"
"To the touch o' my hand, belike! But I'm an onsartain judge--and
that's the truth."
"Now I'm telling ye this." The old man stood still to make his tale
the more impressive, his thousand wrinkles and his few grey hairs all
fraught with emphasis that was lost on his hearer; though the sight
of them in the afterglow might have held a passer-by, and made him
listen. He repeated: "I'm tellin' ye this, Master Coupland. If ye
could have handled me when I was a yoong lad of mebbe fowerteen year,
or fifteen, you would just have felt through to th' boans. _And_ the
cough, night and mowerning--my word! You might well ha' thowt yower
little maiden's just a gay trifle.... What said th' doctor?" The old
man laughed scornfully, if toothlessly. "Said to my moother she might
let the oonderta'aker measure me for my coffin. And she was that
simple she took his word for it, and vairy nigh did ... ah!--you may
be laughin'--but vairy nigh she did! And there was I the while, just
turned off my food and drink for a spell! Groo-wun I was, I ta'ak it.
And to hear doctor cha-atterin', cha-atterin'! Such a maze o' wo'ords,
it passes thinkin' where he could have gotten so ma-any. Ha--ha--ho!"
And the old man resumed his walk with, "Eighty-fower year agone, Master
Coupland, and me here, hale and hearty, to tell the tale!"
And no doubt a good deal of the tale was true, and the good-will of
its narrator past all question. But he was making the most of it for
the sake of the pleasure it gave him to cheer up the blind man's
loneliness, without thinking quite enough of his responsibility to
truth. When he wished Master Coupland sound sleep and pleasant dreams
at the gate of the little cottage, and went slowly on to his own home
in the village, he was saying good-bye to a man only too ready to give
the rein to the horses of the chariot of Hope, even without an excuse.
And here he had one, surely.
So, through his lonely supper--for, granting it cooked and placed on
the table, Jim had a marvellous faculty of shifting for himself--he was
building a sweet castle in the air with the materials so good-naturedly
placed at his disposal. He imagined to himself as a thing to be
to-morrow, if it had not already come to pass to-day, a journey home of
a reinstated Lizarann, all eagerness for her Daddy. Not an exorbitantly
robust little lass--he would not be unreasonable--but one perceptibly
better than the one that left him a month since; whose kisses he could
still feel, was soon to feel again. As he lighted his pipe in the
garden with a vesuvian--for he never lit it in the house when alone,
for safety's sake--and sat smoking under the stars in the clematis
arbour, now beginning to lose its glory, it glowed in unison with the
fire of a stimulated hope the old man's tale had kindled. If old David
had been worse off eighty-four years ago than Lizarann, why should not
the child have many a long year of life before her--aye!--even after
he, Jim, had borne the last of his troubles, and was laid beside Dolly
in the grave? Short of that, why should not he at least treasure the
hope of the month to come, with Lizarann herself beside him in the
warmth of that late summer the gentleman had all but guaranteed? For
this castle in Spain owed a great deal of its vividness to Challis's
obliging meteorology. He had vouched for "St. Augustin's Summer," and
it sounded well.
Then a painful thought came to him. It had fretted him before this, at
intervals. How if that grave where Dolly lay could not be found? What
did he know about it? Little enough! Priscilla knew; she had arranged
all that--as Jim, for all his good-nature, suspected--with a certain
ghoul-like joy. But suppose, when he himself came to an end, Lizarann
wished to place as much as was left of him beside her mother, where
was the Lizarann of that day to find her? Well!--he could do nothing
about it now. He would speak to the master, and make a clear chart, for
the lassie's sake. No question came in here of how _he_ might be the
survivor, and have to place _her_ in her mother's grave. Old David's
tale had been an opiate to thoughts like that, and his heart rested on
it.
Oh yes!--Lizarann was due, to-morrow or next day at furthest. She would
tell him about the sea. He could bear to hear of it from her--his
lassie who had seen it--though he had fought shy of actually hearing
what he could never see again himself.
He was so happy in his dwelling on her near return, and the glamour he
had clothed it with, that he could smoke there beneath the starlight
he could not see, and think of his old nights on ship-board without a
pang. Little things came back to him, long forgotten; one particularly,
slight enough in itself, but so unlike Tallack Street and the spurious
match trade! A wandering ice-floe from the Antarctic Circle, as the
ship passed the Falkland Islands; and upon it, clear in the light of a
great golden moonrise, a huge white she-bear with one young cub. They
were drifting northward--ever northward--to the heat, and the seeming
firm ground beneath their feet would melt quicker and quicker each day,
to fail them altogether in the end, and leave them to die hard--the
strong swimmers--in the deadly warmth of some tropic sea. Jim wondered
at the thoughtlessness of his young day of brute courage and heedless
energy, and how he never had a thought _then_ for the mother-bear and
her despair of saving her child in that plain of immeasurable waters;
while _now_, for some unexplained reason, it was quite a discomfort to
him to think of it, there in old Margy's arbour under the clematis.
But presently he suspected a reason why he felt a new feeling over
it. How if his hold over his child, his precious possession, was
melting--melting away! He brushed the intolerable thought aside! Could
he not feel for the poor soul on the iceberg, bear though she was,
without that? Oh yes!--Lizarann would come to-morrow.
All this trouble, and doctoring, and the like, makes a man raw, thought
poor Jim to himself, seeking for apologies for his failure to attain
a Spartan ideal. 'Tain't like then-a-days, when you might be in a
high sea any hour of the day or night, and be whistled up to take in
sail--as he was, to be sure, out of a dream about Dolly, that very time
he saw the Flying Dutchman, and lost his sight the week after.... There
now!--where was the use of going back on bygones, when Lizarann would
be here to-morrow, to hear him tell again about the Dutchman, with all
her added knowledge of the sea to help.
But it was true, for all that, that a man got soft with nothing to
rouse him up like, and keep him off of nursing up his old grievances,
with ne'er a soul nigh to throw a word to. Jim never felt any too sure,
neither, that his new cult of music was not an enervating luxury.
Undermining musical phrases crept into his practice as a chorister
that made him no better--mind you!--than a cry-baby. There was one
in particular that was almost cruel to him in its beauty--it was as
a matter of fact an adaptation by the Rector of that Ave Maria of
Arkadelt that you know as well as we do--and he sang it aloud to the
night-wind stirring in the trees, and the owls, for by now night was
over all, in a kind of bravado, to show that he could bear it. But
his voice broke on the last cadence, do what he might. "There, ye
see!--just come of being so lonesome!" Jim spoke aloud to the darkness
and the owls, to feel his solitude less if it might be.
But what did it matter when his lassie was coming to-morrow--coming
to-morrow!
How the time was passing! There went the cottage clock again the
third time since Jim lighted his first pipe after supper. Surely he
must be mistaken!--it would stop on the stroke of ten. He counted the
deliberate strokes, each with its long preliminary warning; and on the
eleventh said to himself that he must have counted wrong. Could he
possibly be within an hour of the day that was to bring him Lizarann?
Listen for the church-clock of the village, and make sure! He could
hear his own heart beating in the stillness, even through the monotone
of a cricket somewhere close at hand. Old Margy's clock was a bit fast
always....
There!--sure enough this time, the first stroke on the wind. Jim
counted steadily to the tenth, and all but made quite certain he had
heard the last, so long did the pause seem to his anxiety, when yet
another came. No mistake this time. Eleven! Bedtime.
Was it true? One hour more, and he might be asleep, to wake up to the
day that would bring him back the thing that was dearer to him than the
light no day would ever bring again. Only an hour!
His little dog, sharper of hearing even than he, caught a coming
sound afar, and started up in sudden indignation, dog-wise, that
something, somewhere, was presuming to exist without consulting him!
Whatever it was, Jim thought a restraining finger in his collar a good
precautionary measure; with a slight admonition that a smothered growl,
for the present, would meet all the needs of the case. It continued to
express, under protest, a deep, heart-felt resentment as of a wrong too
great to be endured, and still Jim could not spot the cause. At last
a motor-horn, somewhere, perhaps, on the far side of the village--two
miles away, say!
Loud and faint, by turns, through the village; then clearer on the
open road, and then the noise of wheels at great speed. The little
dog, probably catching the blinding glare of the lamps, lost all
self-control at those two great unheard-of wrongs to his kind, and gave
way to his feelings without reserve. Then a rush and a dust-cloud, left
to do its worst, at leisure, to the lungs of man and cattle and plants,
and a stench to poison the sweet air of heaven. And then a couple of
folk had been carried, quicker than need was, from Thanes Castle to
Royd Hall, with the execrations of a small population behind them.
Jim was too happy at heart to curse even a motor-car. Besides, he
remembered how once this very car had given his little lass a ride. He
owed it a benediction rather. He felt his way to his couch, and had got
his wooden leg off, and found his pillow, before the reek of petrol had
died away, and was asleep almost as soon as the little dog beside him.
Was it his last sleep there before he should hear his little lassie's
voice again?
* * * * *
The gas was turned down low, almost to extinction, in the ward of the
Chalk Cliff Nursing Home, where Adeline Fossett was preparing to
pass the night beside her little invalid's bed. There was no other
patient in the room. Miss Jane, looking worn and sad, was just saying
good-night, with a small hand-lamp in her hand, whose green shade was
no help to the pallor of either lady. Both knew what was pending;
neither knew how soon.
"Ring if you have the least doubt about it, dear," said Miss Fanshawe.
"But my own impression is this will go on a day or two longer. I can't
say, but I think if there's a change you'll see it."
"I won't scruple to call you. But I suppose there's nothing to be done
that I can't do?"
"Nothing at all. No one can do anything now. Good-night, Adeline!" As
she opened the door to go, a muffled clock outside struck midnight.
"It's twenty minutes fast," said she, as she closed the door. Then,
as Miss Fossett sat in the half-darkness in the large chair by the
bedside, she could hear two sounds--the interrupted breathing of the
little patient on the bed, and the rapid, irritating ticking of her own
watch, laid by chance on something resonant. It would become maddening,
she knew, in the growth of the stillness, as the night took its hold
upon her; so presently she rose and quenched it. Then, being up, she
went to the window, just open for ventilation, and feeling the soft
air, warm for late August, opened it gently to its width, and leaned
out. The voice of the water was a bare murmur now, away off over half
a league of sand; and the wind must have changed, for the bells of a
church a mile inland were striking twelve at leisure, and were clear
through the silence; till, a railway-yell cutting them off at the tenth
stroke, they wavered, lost heart, and died. These were sounds new to
the day at Chalk Cliff, bathed for forty-eight hours in a southwest
wind, off the sea.
"What did you say, darling?" She closed the window gently, and went
back to the bed, to hear.... "Why can't you hear the waves? Is that it?
Because the tide's going out. Because it's gone out as far as it can
go."
"Can't it go no furver?" asks the voice from the pillow, through a
breath that goes heavily.
"Not to-day. Next time it goes out it will--at least, I think so."
The speaker was not sure on the point, but she had caught sight of a
three-quarter moon, and that would do to quote in case of catechism.
She turned on the light slightly, to talk by; then sat by the bed
again. But Lizarann's days of scientific inquiry are over. She listens
for the sea though, because her Daddy once went sea-voyages, still.
"Mustn't I be took to my Daddy in free dyes, by the rilewye?" The sound
of the railway-whistle through the window has helped to this.
"Yes, darling; in three or four days you shall go to Daddy. There's a
big grape with the skin off for you to suck. Such a big one! Try if you
like it."
Lizarann gives her old nod, with the grape in her mouth. She is
refusing other diet now, and it was clear two days since that
nourishing food and stimulants had been given every chance and failed.
She is to be allowed to die in peace, being in good hands.
"I do love you, Teacher, very, very much!"
"So do I, darling.... There are no pips to spit out, because I took
them all out. Another?... No?--very well, dear; then I won't bother
you.... The counterpane?--it's too heavy? Very well, dear, we'll have
it off ... so!"
Which of us, over five-and-twenty, has the luck to be still a stranger
to the penultimate restlessness of coming Death--to the hands that
will still be weakly seeking for God knows what!--the speech that
cannot frame some want its would-be speaker may be helpless to define,
but will not give up attempting? Lizarann is nearing that stage
fast--faster than Adeline Fossett thought when Miss Jane left her but
now.
But her mind is quite clear still on the great main point of her small
life. The words "Only Daddy most!" show the continuous current of
her thought, coming as they do a long pause after her apostrophe to
"Teacher."
"Of course Daddy most, darling child!" says the latter. "But Mr. Yorick
very much too!"
The name arouses enthusiasm. "Oh, very, very much too!" But this is too
great a tax on the poor little lungs, tubercle-gripped, and an attempt
to follow with a schedule of loves deserved and granted fails, and
quiet is imperative.
Adeline Fossett turned down the light again, and remained silent,
listening to the heavy breathing, with its ugly little spasmodic jerk
now and again. She was unhappy in her mind, over and above grief.
Here was this little thing with only a few days at most to live--she
was convinced of that--and utterly unconscious of her state. Was
it right--was it fair--to leave her so? All the traditions of her
religious cult from youth upward said no; according to them, the dying
were to prepare, or be prepared, for death. But when the patient was
simply slipping almost painlessly away--seeming at least to suffer
only from an inexplicable feverish unrest, never from acute pain that
could not be denied at will--what was to be gained by thrusting on a
childish mind a demand to face the black contingency, to make a formal
acknowledgment of the grave? Would it not be safe to give one little
soul Godspeed into the Unknown, whose only care was now that each of
her many loves should be known to their recipients, each in its right
degree? Would not those very loves be as garments to shelter the
new-born soul in the world beyond, whether the date of its arrival was
now or hereafter? She was shocked at the venturesome impiety of the
question she half-asked herself:--Could she not trust God for that?
A happy inspiration hinted at a half-answer in the affirmative, and
biassed her to silence.
Another anxiety, perhaps more pressing still, took the place of that
one. Ought she not to have written more explicitly to the Rectory
about the child's state? On her arrival, in answer to Miss Fanshawe's
telegram, she had found nothing to warrant prediction of the days, or
even weeks, that the tension might be prolonged. All she could say with
certainty was that Lizarann was at present quite unfit to be moved, but
that it was impossible to foresee. We must wait on events. But she said
never a word to set any hopes afoot. She had written almost daily; once
in answer to a letter of Athelstan Taylor, telling how he might have to
go away for a few days, and of his resolution of silence with respect
to Jim. She was, at first, inclined to disapprove this course, but
later saw that it was unavoidable, and wrote to that effect. Still, the
idea of Jim in ignorance, nourishing hopes, perhaps, while his little
lass lay there dying, was an excruciating one. She said to herself
repeatedly that it was merely an idea; that the co-temporaneousness
of a death with far greater unconsciousness of its possibility than
Jim's was an everyday occurrence. What would the wife, who now hears
of her husband's death months ago, have gained by the knowledge of her
widowhood, had the news come sooner? She pictured other instances to
persuade the idea away. But it remained.
Miss Fanshawe, to whom this case was only one of a hundred, said to
her, "If you could spirit the child's father down here to be with
her when she dies, that would be another matter. But you say that's
impossible. Why give him ups and downs of anxiety? Tell him what you
like by way of preparation, but not till it's all over." Miss Fossett
felt the truth of this view, but the position grated on her moral
sense. However, she felt she must submit to the discomfort of a sense
of untruth for awhile. It was not to last long.
She must have been dozing, and for longer than she could have believed
possible, when she waked suddenly to reply to the child, who had
spoken, with, "Yes--darling! What did you say?"
"Aren't you going to bed, Teacher?"
"Yes, dear, presently."
"'Tin't night?"
"Yes, it's night. But that doesn't matter. I shall go to bed presently."
"When shall you go to bed?" After a pause, this.
"Presently, when Miss Jane comes. She'll come very soon." Then, in
response to something only audible to close listening, "No, darling,
you're not to have the nasty medicine--only the nice one. It's not time
yet for either.... Why mustn't you have no medicine?... Well, darling,
you know we all have to take medicine when the doctor says so...."
"Did the doctor said I was ill?"
"Yes, dear, the doctor said you were ill, and to stop in bed till you
were quite well ... what?"
"And then go home to my Daddy where Mrs. Forks is?"
"And then go home to your Daddy where Mrs. Fox is." A phase of coughing
comes upon this; alleviation is tried for with the nice medicine. But
stimulants and sedatives have had their day in this case. Adeline
Fossett is becoming alive to the fact. However, the nice medicine can
still soothe a little; and in half an hour a lull comes, and a kind of
sleep.
Then for the watcher another deadly doze, of jerks and nightmares.
And then another waking to the sound of the little patient's voice,
curiously full of life this time.
"When I'm took home to my Daddy, Teacher, where Mrs. Forks is...."
"Yes, dear!"
"Shall the children go on digging and spaddle in the water, just the
same like now?"
"Yes, darling, just the same, till it's too cold. Then they'll go home
and go to school."
"And fish for sprawns just the same?"
"Just the same."
"And when they've gone to school and no one's on the beach to see, will
there be high water?"
"High water? Yes, of course, dear--every day, just the same as now ...
what?"
"And low water?"
"And low water too."
"Like when my Daddy went sea-viyages?"
"Like when your Daddy went sea-voyages." But this has been a long talk,
and has gone slowly against obstacles of speech. So when Lizarann ends
with a half-inaudible, "I sould tell my Daddy that," the torpor is
returning, and it may be she really sleeps, for all that the breathing
is so difficult. She has persisted that she suffers no pain; so Miss
Fossett tries for satisfaction on that score. But the fear is that
having no pain may only mean that the pain eludes description. Still,
there is room for hope, of a sort.
* * * * *
"I've heard many cases talk like that, quite brightly, just before,"
says Miss Jane, standing by the bed. She has come to relieve guard, and
has heard her friend's report of her night's watching. Lizarann has not
moved since she spoke last, an hour ago, and still lies in what may be
sleep, breathing heavily. The jerks in the breathing do not wake her,
strangely.
"She was almost chattering, one time," says Miss Fossett. "Poor little
darling!"
"About her Daddy?"
"Yes, and about the high and low tides, and how he went sea-voyages."
"Fancy that! The little soul! But no delirium?"
"I think none. Just a little feverishness--in the half-waking. Not
delirium."
"You go to bed now. I'll call you if there is anything."
"Promise to!" A nod satisfies the speaker, who goes away to lie down.
As she looks out, from a window on her way, across a sea without a
ripple, she understands why the tide was unheard. Even now, scarcely
a sound! She pauses a little to look at the planet blazing above the
offing, and its long path of light upon the water--wonders is it Venus
or Jupiter?--and passes on to rest. How callous is the bed one lies
down on in one's clothes, with something over one, to get a few hours'
sleep! And how hard they are to get, sometimes!
* * * * *
Adeline Fossett had had over three hours when she waked with a start in
response to a hand on her shoulder. "I should like you to come," said
Miss Jane, who then returned at once.
Lizarann, or the shadow that had been she, was propped up with pillows
on the bed when Miss Fossett followed her friend two minutes later. "Is
that Teacher?" was what she seemed to say. But speech was very faint
indeed.
"I don't think she sees you," said Miss Jane.
"Can you hear what I say, darling?" Yes, apparently; and knows it is
Teacher who speaks. What is it we can get for her? For the feverish
movement of the hands, and the constant effort to articulate, have all
the usual effect of baffled speech, with much to say.
Miss Fanshawe's wider hospital experience makes her less receptive of
the idea. She waited, silent, while Miss Fossett asked the question
more than once, before any intelligible answer came.
Then speech came suddenly to Lizarann. She wanted to get up now, and
go to her Daddy. Yes!--she sould like to have her new flock on and go
to her Daddy. Mustn't she go, Teacher? To which Teacher replied: "Yes,
darling, you shall go, very soon. But it's night now, and Daddy's in
bed."
"But I _shall_ go?"
"Yes--indeed you shall! Very soon." Then Miss Fossett looked up at
Miss Jane, who merely said, "Not very long now." But how strong the
voice was for a moment! Yes--that would be so sometimes--sometimes even
louder than that. Wasn't she speaking now?
Miss Fossett stooped to listen again. "I shall see my Daddy," is all
she hears. Yes--Lizarann shall see her Daddy--it's a promise! What is
that she's saying now? Be quiet and listen!
"When I see my Daddy--when I see my Daddy...."
"Yes--darling! What?"
"When I see my Daddy I shall call out, 'Poy-lot!'"