Speed, Melise, speed! such cause of haste
Thine active sinews never braced,
Bend ‘gainst the steepy hill thy breast,
Burst down like torrent from its crest.
Scott.
“Hark!”
The guides and the one other traveller, a Mr. Graham, who had been
at the inn, were gathered at the border of the Daubensee, entreating,
almost ready to use force to get the poor mother home before the
snow should efface the tracks, and render the return to Schwarenbach
dangerous.
Ever since the alarm had been given there had been a going about with
lights, a shouting and seeking, all along the road where she had parted
with her sons. It was impossible in the fog to leave the beaten track,
and the traveller told her that rewards would be but temptations to
suicide.
Johnny had fortunately been so tired out that he had gone to bed soon
after coming in, and had not been wakened by the alarm till eleven
o’clock. Then, startled by the noises and lights, he had risen and made
his way to his aunt. Substantial help he could not give--even his German
was halting, but he was her stay and help, and she would--as she knew
afterwards--have been infinitely more desolate without him. And now,
when all were persuading her to wait, as they said, till more aid could
be sent for to Kandersteg, he knew as well as she did that it was but
a kindly ruse to cover their despair, and was striving to insist that
another effort in daylight should be made.
He it was who uttered the “Hark,” and added, “That is Chico!”
At first the tired, despairing guides did not hear, but going along
the road by the lake in the direction from which the sound came, the
prolonged wail became more audible.
“It is on the moraine,” the men said, with awe-struck looks at one
another.
They would fain not even have taken John with them, but with a resolute
look he uttered “Ich komm.”
Mr. Graham, an elderly man, not equal to a moraine in the snow, stayed
with the mother. He wanted to take her back to prepare for them, as he
said--in reality to lesson any horrors there might be to see.
But she stood like a statue, with clasped hands and white face, the
small feathery snow climbing round her feet and on her shoulders.
“O God, spare my boys! Though I don’t deserve it--spare them!” had been
her one inarticulate prayer all night.
And now--shouts and yodels reach her ears. They are found! But how
found! The cries are soon hushed. There is long waiting--then,
through the snow, John flashes forward and takes her hand. He does not
speak--only as their eyes meet, his pale lips tremble, and he says,
“Don’t fear; they will revive in the inn. Jock is safe, they are sure.”
Safe? What? that stiff, white-faced form, carried between two men, with
the arm hanging lifelessly down? One man held the smaller figure of
Armine, and kept his face pressed inwards. Kind words of “Liebe Frau,”
and assurances that were meant to be cheering passed around her, but
she heard them not. Some brandy had, it seemed, been poured into their
mouths. They thought Jock had swallowed, Armine had not.
At intervals on the way back a little more was administered, and the
experienced guides had no doubt that life was yet in him. When they
reached the hotel the guides would not take them near the stove,
but carried them up at once by the rough stair to the little
wood-partitioned bedrooms. There were two beds in each room, and their
mother would have had them both together; but the traveller, and the
kindly, helpful young landlady, Fraulein Rosalie, quietly managed
otherwise, and when Johnny tried to enforce his aunt’s orders, Mr.
Graham, by a sign, made him comprehend why they had thus arranged,
filling him with blank dismay.
A doctor? The guides shook their heads. They could hardly make their way
to Leukerbad while it was snowing as at present, and if they had done
so, no doctor could come back with them. Moreover the restoratives were
known to the mountaineers as well as to the doctors themselves, and
these were vigorously applied. All the resources of the little way-side
house were put in requisition. Mr. Graham and Johnny did their best for
Jock, his mother seemed to see and think of nothing but Armine, who lay
senseless and cold in spite of all their efforts.
It was soon that Jock began to moan and turn and struggle painfully back
to life. When he opened his eyes with a dazed half-consciousness, and
something like a word came from between his lips, Mr. Graham sent John
to call the mother, saying very low, “Get her away. She will bear it
better when she sees this one coming round.”
John had deep and reverent memories connected with Armine. He knew--as
few did know--how steadfastly that little gentle fellow could hold the
right, and more than once the two had been almost alone against their
world. Besides, he was Mother Carey’s darling! Johnny felt as if his
heart would break, as with trembling lips he tried to speak, as if in
glad hope, as he told his aunt that Jock was speaking and wanted her,
while he looked all the time at the still, white, inanimate face.
She looked at him half in distrust.
“Yes! Indeed, indeed,” he said, “Jock wants you.”
She went; Johnny took her place. The efforts at restoration were
slackening. The attendants were shaking their heads and saying, “der
Arme.”
Mr. Graham came up to him, saying in his ear, “She is engrossed with the
other. He will not let her go. Let them do what is to be done for this
poor little fellow. So it will be best for her.”
There was a frantic longing to do something for Armine, a wild wonder
that the prayers of a whole night had not been more fully answered in
John’s mind, as he threw himself once more over the senseless form,
propped with pillows, and kissed either cheek and the lips. Then
suddenly he uttered a low cry, “He breathed. I’m sure he did; I felt it!
The spoon! O quick!”
Mr. Graham and the Fraulein looked pitifully at one another at the
delusion; but they let the lad have the spoon with the drops of brandy.
He had already gained experience in giving it, and when they looked for
disappointment, his eyes were raised in joy.
“It’s gone down,” he said.
Mr. Graham put his hand on the pulse and nodded.
Another drop or two, and renewed rubbing of hands and feet. The icy
cold, the deadly white, were certainly giving way, the lips began to
quiver, contract, and gasp.
Was it for death or life? They would not call his mother for that
terrible, doubtful minute; but she could not long stay away. When Jock’s
fingers first relaxed on hers, she crept to the door of the other room,
to see Armine upheld on Johnny’s breast, with heaving chest and working
features, but with eyes opening: yes, and meeting hers.
Johnny always held that he never had so glad a moment in all his life as
that when he saw her countenance light up.
The first word was “Jock!”
Armine’s full perceptions were come back, unlike those of Jock, who
was moaning and wandering in his talk, fancying himself still in the
desolation of the moraine, with Armine dead in his arms, and all the
miseries, bodily, mental and spiritual, from which he had suffered were
evidently still working in his brain, though the words that revealed
them were weak and disjointed. Besides, he screamed and moaned with
absolute and acute pain, which alarmed them much, though Armine was
sufficiently himself to be able to assure them that there had been no
hurt beyond the strain.
It was well that Armine was both rational and unselfish, for nothing
seemed to soothe Jock for a moment but his mother’s hand and his
mother’s voice. It was plain that fever and rheumatism had a hold upon
him, and what or who was there to contend with them in this wayside inn?
The rooms, though clean, were bare of all but the merest necessaries,
and though the young hostess was kind and anxious, her maids were the
roughest and most ignorant of girls, and there were no appliances for
comfort--nothing even to drink but milk, bottled lemonade, and a tisane
made of yellow flowers, horrible to the English taste.
And Jock, ill as he was, did not fill his mother with such dread for the
future as did Armine, when she found him, quiet indeed, but unable to
lie down, except when supported on John’s breast and in his arms--with a
fearful oppression and pain in his chest, and every token that the lungs
were suffering. He had not let them call her. Jock’s murmurs and cries
were to be heard plainly through the wooden partition, and the little
fellow knew she could not be spared, and only tried to prevent John and
Mr. Graham from alarming her. “She--can’t--do--any--good,” he gasped out
in John’s ear.
No, nobody could, without medical skill and appliances. The utmost that
the house could do was to produce enough mustard to make two plasters,
and to fill bottles with hot water, to warm stones, and to wrap them
in blankets. And what was this, in such cold as penetrated the wooden
building, too high up in the mountains for the June sun as yet to have
full power? The snow kept blinding and drifting on, and though everyone
said it could not last long at that time in the summer, it might easily
last too long for Armine’s fragile life. Here was evening drawing on and
no change outside, so that no offer of reward could make it possible for
any messenger to attempt the Gemmi to fetch advice from Leukerbad.
Caroline could not think. She was in a dull, dreary state of
consternation, and all she could dwell on was the immediate need of
the moment, soothing Jock’s terrors, and, what was almost worse, his
irritable rejection of the beverages she could offer him, and trying to
relieve him by rubbing and hot applications. If ever she could look into
Armine’s room, she was filled with still greater dismay, even though a
sweet, patient smile always met her, and a resolute endeavour to make
the best of it.
“It--does--not--make--much--difference,” gasped Armine. “One would not
like anything.”
John came out in a character no one could have expected. He showed
himself a much better nurse, and far more full of resource than the
traveller. It was he who bethought him of keeping a kettle in the room
over the inevitable charcoal, so as slightly to mitigate the chill of
the air, or the fumes of the charcoal, which were equally perilous and
distressing to the labouring lungs. He was tender and handy in lifting,
tall and strong, so as to be efficient in supporting, and then Armine
and he understood one another. They had never been special companions;
John had too much of the Kencroft muscularity about him to accord with a
delicate, imaginative being like Armine, but they respected one another,
and made common cause, and John had more than once been his little
cousin’s protector. So when they were so much alone that all reserves
were overcome, Armine had comfort in his cousin that no one else in the
place could have afforded him. The little boy perfectly knew how ill he
was, and as he lay in John’s arms, breathed out his messages to Babie as
well as he could utter them.
“And please, you’ll be always mother’s other son,” said Armine.
“Won’t I? She’s been the making of me every way,” said John.
“If ever--she does want anybody--” said Armine, feeling, but not
uttering, a vague sense of want of trust in others around her.
“I will, I will. Why, Armie, I shall never care for any one so much.”
“That’s right.”
And again, after an interval, Armine spoke of Jock, saying, “You’ll help
him, Johnny. You know sometimes he can be put in mind--”
John promised again, perhaps less hopefully, but he saw that Armine
hoped.
“Would you mind reading me a Psalm,” came, after a great struggle for
breath. “It was so nice to know Babie was saying her Psalms at night,
and thinking of us.”
So the evening wore away and night came on, and John, after full
six-and-twenty hours’ wakeful exertion and anxiety, began to grow
sleepy, and dozed even as he held his cousin whenever the cough did not
shake the poor little fellow. At last, with Armine’s consent, or rather,
at his entreaty, Mr. Graham, though knowing himself a bad substitute,
took him from the arms of the outwearied lad, who, in five minutes more,
was lying, dressed as he was, in the soundest of dreamless slumbers.
When he awoke, the sun was up, an almost midsummer sun, streaming on the
fast-melting snow with a dazzling brilliancy. Armine was panting under
the same deadly oppression on his pillows, and Mother Carey was standing
by him, talking to Mr. Graham about despatching a messenger to Leukerbad
in search of one of the doctors, who were sure to be found at the baths.
How haggard her face looked, and Armine gasped out--
“Mother, your hair.”
The snow had been there; the crisp black waves on her brow were quite
white. Jock had fallen into a sort of doze from exhaustion, but moaning
all the time. She could call him no better, and Armine’s sunken face
told that he was worse.
John went in search of more hot water, and on the way heard voices which
made him call Mr. Graham, who knew more of the vernacular German patois
than himself, to understand it. He thought he had caught something about
English, and a doctor at Kandersteg. It was true. A guide belonging to
the other side of the pass, who had been weather-bound at Kandersteg,
had just come up with tidings that an English party were there, who had
meant to cross the Gemmi but had given it up, finding it too early in
the season for the kranklicher Milord who was accompanied by his doctor.
“An English doctor! Oh!” cried John, “there’s some good in that. Some
one must take a note down to him at once.”
But after some guttural conversation of which he understood only a word
or two, Mr. Graham said--
“They declare it is of no use. The carriage was ordered at nine. It is
past seven now.”
“But it need not take two hours to go that distance downhill, the lazy
blackguards!” exclaimed John.
“In the present state of the path, they say that it will,” said Mr.
Graham. “In fact, I suspect a little unwillingness to deprive their
countrymen of the job.”
“I’ll go,” said John, “then there will be no loss of time about writing.
You’ll look after Armine, sir, and tell my aunt.”
“Certainly, my boy; but you’ll find it a stiffish pull.”
“I came in second for the mile race last summer at Eton,” said Johnny.
“I’m not in training now; but if a will can do it--”
“I believe you are right. If you don’t catch him, we shall hardly have
lost time, for they say we must wait an hour or two for the Gemmi road
to get clear of snow. Stay; don’t go without eating. You won’t keep it
up on an empty stomach. Remember the proverb.”
Prayer had been with him all night, and he listened to the remonstrance
as to provender enough to devour a bit of bread, put another into his
pocket, and swallow a long draught of new milk. Mr. Graham further
insisted on his taking a lad to show him the right path through the fir
woods; and though Johnny looked more formed for strength than speed, and
was pale-cheeked and purple-eyed with broken rest, the manner in which
he set forth had a purpose-like air that was satisfactory--not over
swift at the outset over the difficult ground, but with a steadfast
resolution, and with a balance and knowledge of the management of his
limbs due to Eton athletics.
Mr. Graham went up to encourage Mrs. Brownlow. She clasped her hands
together with joy and gratitude.
“That dear, dear boy,” she said, “I shall owe him everything.”
Jock had wakened rational, though only to be conscious of severe
suffering. He would hardly believe that Armine was really alive till Mr.
Graham actually carried in the boy, and let them hold each other’s hands
for a moment before placing Armine on the other bed.
Indeed it seemed that this might be the poor boys’ last meeting.
Armine could only look at his brother, since the least attempt to speak
increased the agonised struggle for breath, which, doctor or no doctor,
gave Mr. Graham small expectation that he could survive another of these
cold mountain nights.
Their mother was so far relieved to have them together that it was
easier to attend to them; and Armine’s patient eyes certainly acted as
a gentle restraint upon Jock’s moans, lamentations, and requisitions for
her services. It was one of those times that she only passed through
by her faculty of attending only to present needs, and the physical
strength and activity that seemed inexhaustible as long as she had
anything to do, and which alone alleviated the despair within her heart.
Meantime John found the rock slippery, the path heavy, and his young
guide a drag on him. The path through the fir woods which had been
so delightful two days (could it be only two days?) ago, was now a
baffling, wearisome zigzag; yet when he tried to cut across, regardless
of the voice of his guide, he found he lost time, for he had to clamber,
once fell and rolled some distance, happily with no damage as he found
when he picked himself up, and plodded on again, without even stopping
to shake himself.
At last came an opening where he could see down into the Kandersteg
valley. There was the hotel in clear sunshine, looking only too like a
house in a German box of toys, and alas! there was also a toy carriage
coming round to the front!
Like the little foot-page of old ballads, John “let down his feet and
ran,” ran determinately on, down the now less precipitous slope--ran
till he was beyond the trees, with the summer sun beating down on him,
and in sight of figures coming out from the hotel to the carriage.
Johnny scarce ventured to give one sigh. He waved his hat in a desperate
hope of being seen. No, they were in the carriage. The horses were
moving!
But he remembered a slight steep on the further road where they must go
slower. Moreover, there were a few curves in the horse-road. He set his
teeth with the desperate resolution of a moment, clenched his hands,
intensified his mental cry to Heaven, and with the dogged determination
of Kencroft dashed on, not daring to look at the carriage, intent only
on the way.
He was past the inn, but his breath was short and quick; his knees
were failing, an invisible hand seemed to be on his chest making him
go slower and slower; yet still he struggled on, till the mountain tops
danced before his eyes, cascades rushed into his ears, the earth seemed
to rise up and stop him; but through it all he heard a voice say,
“Hullo, it’s the Monk! What is the matter?”
Then he knew he was on the ground on his face, with kind but tormenting
hands busy about him, and his heart going so like a sledge hammer, that
the word he would have given his life to utter, would not come out of
his lips, and all he could do was to grasp convulsively at something
that he believed to be a garment of the departing travellers.
“Here, the flask! Don’t speak yet,” said a man’s voice, and a choking
stimulant was poured into his mouth. When the choking spasm it cost him
was over, his eyes cleared, and he could at least gasp. Then he saw that
it was his housemate, Evelyn, at whom he was clutching, and who asked
again in amaze--
“What is up, old fellow?”
“Hush, not yet,” said the other voice; “let him alone till he gets his
breath. Don’t hurry, my boy,” he added, “we will wait.”
Johnny, however, felt altogether absorbed in getting out one panting
whisper, “A doctor.”
“Yes, yes, he is,” cried Evelyn. “What’s the matter? Not Brownlow!”
“Both--oh,” sobbed John in the agony of contending with the bumping,
fluttering heart which _would_ not let him fetch breath enough to speak.
“You will tell us presently. Don’t be afraid. We will wait,” said the
voice of the man who, as John now felt, was supporting him. “Hush,
Cecil, another minute, and he will be able to tell us.”
Indeed the rushing of every pulse was again making it vain for Johnny to
try to utter anything, and he shut his eyes in the realisation that he
had succeeded and found help. If his heart would have not bumped and
fluttered so fearfully, it would have been almost rest, as he was helped
up by those kind, strong arms. It was really for little more than five
seconds before he gathered his powers to say, still between gasps--
“Out all night--the moraine--fog--snow--Jock--very
bad--Armine--worse--up there.”
“At Schwarenbach?”
“Yes. Oh, come! They are so ill.”
“I am sure Dr. Medlicott will do all he can for them,” said another
voice, which John saw proceeded from a very tall, slight youth, with a
fair, delicate, girlish face. “Had he not better get into the carriage
and return to the hotel?”
“By all means.”
And John found himself without much volition lifted and helped into the
carriage, where Cecil Evelyn scrambled up beside him, and put an arm
round him.
“Poor old Monk, you are dead beat,” he said, as the carriage turned, the
other two walking beside it. “Did you come that pace all the way down?”
“Only after the wood.”
“Well, ‘twas as plucky a thing as I ever saw. But is Skipjack so bad?”
“Dreadful! Light-headed all yesterday--horrid pain! But not so bad as
Armine. If something ain’t done soon--he’ll die.”
“Poor little Brownlow! You’ve come to the right shop. Medlicott is first
rate. Did you know it was we?”
“No--only--an English doctor,” said John.
“Mother sent us abroad with him, because they said Fordham must have
Swiss air; and poor old Granny still goes on in the same state,” said
Cecil. “We got here on Tuesday evening, and saw your names; but then the
fog came, and it snowed all yesterday, and the doctor said it would not
do for Fordham to go so high. And the more I wanted them to come up with
you, the more they would not. Were they out in that snow?”
Here came an order from the doctor not to make his friend talk, and
Johnny was glad to obey, and reserve his breath for the explanation. He
did not hear what passed between the other two, as they walked behind
the carriage.
“A fine fellow that! Is he Cecil’s friend?”
“No, I wish he were. However, it can’t be helped now, in common
humanity; and my mother will understand.”
“You mean that it was her wish that we should avoid them.”
“She thinks the influence has not been good for Cecil.”
“That was the reason you gave up the Gemmi so easily.”
“It was. But, as I say, it can’t be helped now, and no harm can be done
by going to see whether they are really so ill.”
“Brownlow is the name. I wonder if they are any relation to a man I once
knew--a lecturer at one of the hospitals?”
“Not likely. These are very rich people, with a great house in Hyde Park
regions, and a place in the country. They are always asking Cecil there;
only my mother does not fancy it. It is not a matter of charity after
the first stress. They can easily have advice from England, or anywhere
they like.”
By this time they reached the hotel, and John alighted briskly enough,
and explained the state of affairs in a few words.
“My dear boy,” said Dr. Medlicott, “I’ll go up at once, as soon as I
can get at our travelling medicine-chest. Luckily we have what is most
likely to be useful.”
“Thank you,” said Johnny, and therewith he turned dizzy, and reeled
against the wall.
“It is nothing--nothing,” he said, as the doctor having helped him into
a sitting-room, laid his hand on his pulse. “Don’t delay about me! I
shall be all right in a minute.”
“They are getting down the boxes. No time is lost,” said the doctor,
quietly. “See whether they can let us have some soup, Cecil.”
“I couldn’t swallow anything,” said Johnny, imploringly.
“Have you had any breakfast this morning?”
“Yes, a bit of bread and a drink of milk. There was not time for more.”
“And you had been searching all one night, and nursing the next?”
“Most of it,” was the confession. “But I shall be all right--if there is
any pony I could ride upon.”
“You shall by-and-by; but first, Reeves,” as a servant with grizzled
hair and moustache brought in a neatly-fitted medicine-chest, “I give
this young gentleman into your care. He is to lie down on my bed for
half an hour, and Mr. Evelyn is not to go near him. Then, if he is
awake--”
“If--” ejaculated John.
“Give him a basin of soup--Liebig, if you can’t get anything here.”
“Liebig!” broke out John. “Oh, please take some. There’s nothing up
there but old goat, and nothing to drink but milk and lemonade, like
beastly hair-oil; and Jock hates milk.”
“Never fear,” said Dr. Medlicott; “Liebig is going, and a packet of tea.
Mrs. Evelyn does not send us out unprovided. If you eat your soup like a
good boy, you may then ride up--not walk--unless you wish to be on your
mother’s hands too.”
“She’s my aunt; but it is all the same. Tell her I’m coming.”
“I shall go with you, doctor,” said Cecil. “I must know about Brownlow.”
“Much good you’ll do him! But I’d rather leave this fellow in Fordham’s
charge than yours.”
So Johnny had no choice but to obey, growling a little that it was
all nonsense, and he should be all right in five minutes, but that
expectation continued, without being realised, for longer than Johnny
knew. He awoke with a start to find the Liebig awaiting him; and Lord
Fordham’s eyes fixed on him, with (though neither understood it)
the generous, though melancholy envy of an invalid youth for a young
athlete.
“Have I been asleep?” he asked, looking at his watch. “Only ten minutes
since I looked last? Well, now I am all right.”
“You will be when you have eaten this,” said Lord Fordham.
Johnny obeyed, and ate with relish.
“There!” said he; “now I am ready for anything.”
“Don’t get up yet. I’ll go and order a horse for you.”
When Lord Fordham came back from doing so, he found his patient really
fast asleep, and with a little colour coming into the pale cheeks. He
stole back, bade that the pony should wait, went on writing his letter,
and waited till one hour, two, three hours had passed, and at last the
sleeper woke, greatly disgusted, willing to accept the bath which Lord
Fordham advised him to take, and which made him quite himself again.
“You’ll let me go now,” he said. “I can walk as well as ever.”
“You will be of more use now, if you ride,” said Lord Fordham. “There,
I hear our luncheon coming in. You must eat while the pony is coming
round.”
“If it won’t lose time--thank you,” said Johnny, recovered enough now
to know how hungry he was, “But I ought not to have stayed away. My aunt
has no one but me.”
“And you can really help her?” said Lord Fordham, with some experience
of his brother’s uselessness.
“Not well, of course,” said Johnny; “but it is better than nobody; and
Armine is so patient and so good, that I’m the more afraid. Is not it
a very bad sign,” he added, confidentially; for he was quite won by the
youth’s kind, considerate way, and evident liking and sympathy.
“I don’t know,” faltered Lord Fordham. “My brother Walter was like that!
Is this the little fellow who is Cecil’s fag?”
“Yes; Jock asked him to take him, because he was sure never to bully him
or lick him when he wouldn’t do things.”
This not very lucid description rejoiced Lord Fordham.
“I am glad of that,” he said. “But I hope the little boy will get over
this. My mother had a very excellent account of Dr. Medlicott’s skill;
and you know an illness from a misadventure is not like anything
constitutional.”
“No; but Armine is always delicate, and my aunt has had to take care of
him.”
“Do you live with them?”
“O no; I have lots of people at home. I only came with them because I
had had these measles at Eton; and my aunt is--well, the very jolliest
woman that ever was.”
Lord Fordham smiled.
“Yes, indeed she is. I don’t mean only kind and good-natured. But if
you just knew her! The whole world and everything else have just been
something new and glorious ever since I knew her. I seem to myself to
have lived in a dark hole till she made it all light.”
“Ah! I understand that you would do anything for her.”
“_That_ I would, if there was anything I could do,” said Johnny, hastily
finishing his meal.
“Well, you’ve done something to-day.”
“That--oh, that was nothing. I shouldn’t have made such a fool of myself
if I hadn’t been seedy before. I hear the pony,” he added. “Excuse me.”
And, with a murmured grace, he rose. Then, recollecting himself, “No end
of thanks. I don’t know how to thank you enough.”
“Don’t; I’ve done nothing,” said Lord Fordham, wringing his hand. “I
only hope--”
The words stuck in his throat, and with a sigh he watched the lad ride
off.