AN EVENTFUL EVENING.
THE Colonel found himself in for a month of nursing, or of something
nearly approaching thereto. It was a novel position for him. He
had always abhorred invalids and eschewed sick-rooms, with the
self-indulgence of a man whose own comfort is his prime consideration.
And here he was suddenly, not far from his sixtieth year, after a
long and undisturbed bachelor-life, with a frail little creature on
his hands, broken-hearted at losing her mother, positively ill from
mental stress, entirely dependent on the Colonel's generosity, and
unconsciously able to turn him to right and to left with one glance of
her sweet sad eyes.
The Colonel succumbed to the new condition of things, once and for all;
and Mrs. Burrell had no choice but to follow suit. She was privately
wrathful at times, declaring to her daughter and niece that "everything
in the house had to give way to that child, whether or no!" meaning,
doubtless, "whether or no she herself approved."
But she attempted no open resistance; not even when Colonel Smyth
desired that Bertha should sleep in the back bedroom with Rhona, and be
considered her special attendant. He offered additional remuneration
for the same; and Mrs. Burrell liked the remuneration though not the
arrangement. Bertha undertook her share of the matter with silent
rapture, and a warm affection sprang up between her and the child.
"You nice Bertha!" Rhona would call her often, in grateful tones.
Of course the Colonel was direfully ignorant as to children's needs and
sick people's ways. Hothouse grapes in profusion were all very well,
but he was impressed with the necessity for lollypops and bulls-eyes
for infant delectation. And his anxiety to "feed up" Rhona upon the
rich soups, stews and curries, in which he himself delighted, was only
equalled by his astonishment at finding them rejected.
"Mother wouldn't let me," in the child's languid voice, always put an
end to persuasions.
But he gave way reluctantly, and found her tastes enigmatical.
Rhona had no appetite and no spirit. She lay day after day upon the
sofa, sometimes in her own bedroom, more often in the Colonel's
sitting-room, always greeting him with a smile, but unable to employ
herself. She had evidently accepted the thought that her mother would
not return; and with this acceptance, all interest in life seemed to
have died away.
After the first storm of sorrow, there were no more outbreaks; only she
would often lie with closed eyes, slow tears stealing from beneath her
lashes, while the broad brow was dented with pain. French exercises
were no longer attempted; and even story-books, though gratefully
received, were not read.
Mrs. Burrell recommended calling in a doctor, but the Colonel was
averse to this.
"There was nothing the matter with the child, only fretting," he said.
"She would get over it in time."
He did not realise that persistent fretting might at last end in
positive illness; and he had an odd feeling that to summon a doctor
would imply a need for anxiety. Colonel Smyth did not wish to be made
anxious about Rhona, for she was twining herself round his heart. It
was curious to see how he shortened his daily walks, and absented
himself from his usual outdoor resorts that he might spend hours beside
the child.
Mr. Powis came in now and then to visit her, though not greatly
encouraged by the Colonel. But as yet, Rhona could say little to either
of them. She seemed to want only to lie still.
It came to the Colonel's hearing one day, as a result of his inquiries,
that just about the date of Mrs. Mordaunt's disappearance, the body of
a woman had been found in a certain canal,—a young woman, dark-haired,
slender, dressed in mourning, apparently most respectable, perhaps
even a lady, but having about her no name or address. The place was at
a considerable distance where the body was discovered, but higher up
in its course that same canal passed within a mile and a half of Mrs.
Howard's house. The poor young woman had received Parish burial; and
beyond these facts the Colonel could find out little. He had, however,
small doubt from that hour that his conjecture as to drowning in the
fog was correct, and thenceforth, he began to count little Rhona indeed
his own.
It was not his intention that Rhona should ever hear this sad tale. But
his resolution to keep silence was shaken.
"Rhona, I wish I knew what would do you good," he said one afternoon.
He had taken her on his knee, and she was lying in his arms, sadly
silent as usual. The stir of her eyelashes showed that she was not
sleeping. Colonel Smyth had a strange sense of pleasure in the feeling
of the little head resting on his shoulder. He began to wonder how he
had managed to live alone so many years.
"I wish I knew what would do you good," he repeated. "I don't like to
see my little girl always so white and tired."
"I shan't be tired—some day—perhaps," murmured the child.
"But I want to know of something that will make you less tired now," he
said.
"There isn't anything—except—" Rhona said.
He felt the sigh which finished her broken utterance.
"My little pet, I should like to see you happier," said the Colonel.
"I don't think I am exactly unhappy," said Rhona, with a singular
sedateness. "I think I am happy."
Colonel Smyth lifted her up, and looked earnestly into the pale face,
with its large wistful eyes.
"No, no, no," he said. "That is not happiness. I want to see you merry
and gay like other children—able to jump, and laugh, and play. But
it is too soon yet, isn't it? Now, now, don't cry—" as two or three
glittering drops fell. "Crying always brings on the pain in this poor
little head, and that makes you feel so dull."
"I can't help it when I think of mother," whispered Rhona, with an
evident struggle to speak. "It is so—'so' dreadful not to know. If only
I just knew! If only I just knew!" And she wrung her hands together.
"Just knew?" repeated the Colonel.
"Where she is!" Rhona answered, with bitter tears. "If only I could
know!"
"It is worse being uncertain than not knowing,—even if you had to be
sure of the very worst?" the Colonel said questioningly.
"Yes,—oh yes," sobbed the poor child. "I can't bear not to know. I do
so want to go to her—and take care of her—if she is ill."
"You poor little mite, you want taking care of yourself," said the
Colonel.
And then he debated the matter silently, plunging at length into a
sentence, without much idea of how it was to end—
"Rhona, your mother was a good woman, very good,—and she was lonely and
had a great many troubles, I suspect. Suppose it was as we fear, that
some accident had happened in that fog, and so she never could come
back. I don't say it is so, but suppose it were? Mother would be safe
in heaven then, wouldn't she? Don't you think she would be very happy
there, much happier than she was here?"
The Colonel felt uncomfortable at his own words; for certainly the very
last happiness he desired for himself was the happiness of heaven.
But he guessed rightly that no other line of argument would avail to
comfort Rhona.
"She wouldn't be glad to leave me," the poor little lips faltered.
"But she would be happy there, Rhona—I suppose—with your father, you
know. People are always happy in heaven," said the Colonel, vaguely
trying to administer the right sort of spiritual consolation.
"Oh yes,—yes," Rhona answered. "If only I knew!"
"It would make you feel easier in mind to picture your mother as in
heaven, instead of perhaps suffering among strangers," suggested the
Colonel. "Then I can tell you more than you know yet. Can you bear to
hear the worst, my little girl? There was somebody found drowned in a
canal, soon after that foggy day, and she was dressed in black and had
no name upon her. I think it must have been your mother, Rhona. I think
she must have lost her way in the fog, and have wandered to the canal
and fallen in. They say that drowning is a very painless death,—much
more painless than being run over, for instance. And now she will never
have any more troubles, you know."
The child heard in absolute silence. He could not detect even a quiver
of her eyelids. The Colonel waited silently the space of two minutes,
and then grew alarmed. Had she fainted?
"Rhona, my dear! Rhona!" he said. "You are not asleep, my dear?"
"Oh no. I am so glad you have told me," Rhona answered in a low
unchildlike voice, full of sorrow, and joy. "I am so glad I know,—so
glad I know."
"And you will not fret so much, my little girl," said the Colonel. "You
are going to belong to me now, and I am going to take care of you for
mother's sake. You will try to love me, Rhona."
"Oh yes, I do love you," Rhona answered in same strange voice, and she
sat upright on his knee, deathly pale. "I am so glad."
"Not glad of what I have told you! Impossible, my dear," expostulated
the Colonel, not liking the unnatural light in her eyes.
"Oh no!"
He did not know what to make of the child. "Put your head down here,
and try to go to sleep," he said coaxingly.
She went back to her former position in obedient fashion, but presently
he heard her murmur,—"God's will—"
"Yes,—" said Colonel Smyth uneasily.
"Mother said I must love His will,—every bit of it. I couldn't till
now."
"People are not expected to like trouble, Rhona."
"No, not trouble," Rhona replied in sweet grave tones. "But God's will."
"I suppose that sometimes comes to the same thing," said the Colonel.
Rhona did not attempt to disentangle the matter for him; perhaps
she did not even see his difficulty. Her next remark startled him
considerably.
"I wish it was time for me to go too!"
"To go to bed?"
She fairly smiled. "Oh no. I meant, to go to heaven."
"My dear, you must not talk like that. It is positively wrong," said
the Colonel. "I never heard of such a thing! A little girl of your age
wanting to be dead! It is quite wicked."
"Is it? Mother didn't tell me so," soberly answered Rhona, less
affected by the Colonel's energetic protest than he had intended her to
be.
A happy thought struck the Colonel. "I am sure your friend, Mr. Powis,
would say the same. You talk of liking God's will, and then you want
to die in a hurry before your right time. Why, the two things are
incompatible. Of course it is not the Divine Will that everybody should
die directly trouble comes. People must show submission and bear up
courageously, or the world would come to a standstill. You ought to
wish to live, and to do your duty in your station, and to be—ahem—a
useful member of society," concluded the Colonel, looking down with a
rather odd feeling upon the pure and peaceful little face.
"Yes," answered Rhona meekly. "I suppose I didn't think of all that.
I only wanted so much to be with mother. But I should like to be a
'useful member' very much,—only I don't exactly know what it means."
The Colonel's lips twitched under his moustache.
Rhona had her most thoughtful look.
"Oh, I know—" she said after a pause. "There's a chapter in the Bible,
with ever so much about members, and one member feeling with the rest.
Mother talked about that sometimes. She said all the members might be
useful in their own ways."
The Colonel grunted a monosyllabic answer.
"But I don't see how I can be useful to you," said Rhona gently.
"You shall mend my gloves for me, some day,—when you are well. I have
never had anybody to do that for me since—"
"Since you were at home and your own sisters did it?" suggested Rhona.
"No, not my sisters. I meant somebody else," said the Colonel, in a
constrained voice.
"Was it a great friend? Somebody that you loved very much?" asked
Rhona, deeply interested.
The Colonel's sunburnt face changed a little. "Yes," he said. "But that
is a long while ago."
"And was she very fond of you?" asked Rhona.
"I thought so—at one time," muttered the Colonel.
"And did she always go on mending your gloves as long as she lived?"
pursued the child.
"Oh dear, no,—not nearly so long. She grew tired of me," said the
Colonel, with a thin disguise of outside indifference, penetrated at
once by Rhona.
She gave him one sorrowful look, and then clasped his arm.
"I don't like her at all. She ought not to have got tired. You are so
good and so kind. But I shall always, always like to mend your gloves,
uncle. And I shall always love you."
"You are my own dear little girl!" whispered the Colonel.
He sat up late that evening, alone in the drawing-room, with a book
on his knees which he could not read. Memories of olden days were
stirred,—memories of one, once dear to him, nay always dear, though
the love which still lived in his heart was mingled with bitterness.
Colonel Smyth was one of those rare specimens of mankind, with whom to
be once deceived is to be always deceived, once disappointed always
disappointed. Not that his had been an unhappy life. He had found
other interests, had made other friends. But no second woman could
fill the place once held in his heart by a certain Margaret Willis;
no later love could usurp the place of his first love. His brother
officers had found him brave and true; not a religious man, even in
profession, but morally irreproachable; and among them he had been
as a rule popular. Towards women, however, his ordinary manners had
been marked by a brusquerie which in the opinion of some amounted even
to bearishness,—until little Rhona won her way into his affections,
putting aside all barriers.
"Would she be like the rest of them?" he sometimes inquired mentally,
jumbling "the rest of them" dismally together in the grey light of his
own early disappointment. Would she ever become fickle and uncertain,
ever learn to rejoice in her womanly power to wound? He put this
question to himself now, sitting alone in the lamplight, and his own
answer was an emphatic negative. A vision rose in his mind of a fair
and brilliant face, side by side with Rhona's placid brow and sweet
eyes.
"No, no, no,—wonderfully alike, but not the same. And Rhona has had a
different training. Too much religious talk of course; but something
genuine below."
From memories of Margaret Willis, he passed by an easy transition to
yet earlier recollections. He felt himself once again a little boy at
his mother's knee,—a peculiar and wilful child understood by no one
except that mother, so early taken away. His life after her death had
been a continuous knocking of his own hard corners against those of
other people, more especially in the home-circle.
He could hardly have told at first what had called up these pictures,
till he seemed suddenly to hear his mother's soft voice asking,—"Does
my Harry love Jesus?" That was the association; Rhona's reverent
utterance of the holy Name.
Everybody else in the house had gone to bed; and still the Colonel sat
on, plunged in deep reverie. The reverie unexpectedly became slumber.
Had Colonel Smyth not been thus stirred and roused, so as to break
through his usual habits, they might have all been burnt to death
in their beds that night. It was one of those merciful mysterious
Providences, which we may note but cannot explain, except by ascribing
them to Divine watchfulness and Fatherly care.
The Colonel slept long and soundly, leaning back in his comfortable
easy-chair. But by-and-by a dream began to trouble him.
He thought himself sailing on the high seas, going out to India, young
again in years, with hopes for the future bright and strong within him.
He was not alone, for two women stood, one on either side of him; on
the right his mother, as he dimly remembered her, soft and tender and
shadowy; on the left a young girl, brilliantly fair and beautiful, so
like little Rhona in feature that she might be Rhona grown up, only
'not' Rhona.
"She is mine now,—my own," Colonel Smyth murmured. "Mine always. No one
can ever take her from me."
He would have clasped her hand, but the fingers round which his own
closed were cold as ice, and seemed to shrink out of his grasp. Then as
he looked at her, she slowly faded and changed, till Margaret was gone,
and little Rhona stood there in her stead, looking up with wistful
eyes, and saying, "I shall always love you, uncle."
Even in his sleep, Colonel Smyth sighed bitterly, though he laid a kind
hand on the child's head.
Then suddenly, he saw red flames springing from the deck, in front and
on either side, and the air was thick with smoke. None but himself
seemed to see the peril they were in. Captain and crew went quietly
about their occupations, while those red flames curled upwards, and a
strange sense of nightmare withheld the Colonel from uttering a sound.
Rhona stood by him still, but his mother's form was changing.
"Must I lose all again?" he vainly strove to say.
And she answered the unspoken question in soft far-off tones,
"Yes,—all,—until my Harry learns to know and to serve JESUS."
She seemed to pass away like a mist-wreath into the flames, with a
smile upon her lips.
Then at length, the cry of "Fire! Fire!" burst from the Colonel, but
nobody paid attention.
He called aloud in vain, while the flames drew nearer, and he was
rooted to the spot. He struggled fiercely in his sleep, under the
sense of helplessness. And as he strove, Rhona turned to him with an
ineffable smile, and the Name upon her lips which she so loved to
utter. Then she too passed upwards, and the Colonel was left alone,
feeling himself cut off from her for ever.
"Rhona! Rhona! Come back!" he cried, and there the dream ended.
Colonel Smyth awoke, absolutely trembling, and covered with cold
perspiration. "Pshaw!" he exclaimed. "How utterly absurd! I never
dreamt such nonsense in my life."
He pulled out his watch mechanically. "Half-past one! Unearthly hours!
No wonder I took to dreaming. Something at dinner must have disagreed
with me. Well,—I must go to bed at once."
Ha! What was this strange odour, and the thick mistiness filling
the air, both of which the Colonel had at the first moment been too
bewildered to perceive?
"Smoke! That's not right!" He started immediately into full wakefulness.
Three strides took him to the door, but when he flung it open, eddying
wreaths came rolling in. The Colonel recoiled, aghast. A strong smell
of burning pervaded the atmosphere, and distant crackling with a
continuous low roar struck upon his ear.
The house was on fire,—and not a soul among the sleepers aware of the
fact. Standing there,—as for one half-second he did stand,—he could
distinctly hear the landlady's nasal utterances upstairs.
"Fire! Fire! Fire!" Shouts from the street now reached him. Had the
outer world only just become aware of the terrible fact?
"Fire! Fire! Wake up! The house is on fire!" rang through the passages
in the Colonel's stentorian tones.
An answering shriek from above showed that he was heard. Disregarding
all else, he rushed into Rhona's room.
A fierce glow from beneath cast sufficient light through the striped
blind to guide his steps. But the heat was intense, and the smoke
stifling. The fire seemed to have originated on this side of the house.
A sharp shake aroused Bertha, and she sprang up, stupefied yet
conscious. Five minutes later, she would have been past easy awakening.
"Quick, not a minute to spare," the Colonel said, as he passed on, and
caught up the sleeping child, wrapping a large woollen shawl around her.
"Throw on anything—dressing-gown and blanket. Ha!" as the contact of
her bare feet with the floor caused an exclamation. "Yes, your shoes.
Quick, my good girl."
Rhona lay heavily in his arms, uttering not a sound. The Colonel paused
an instant to snatch up a long towel, plunge it in water, and twist it
round the lower part of his face, letting one end drop protectingly
over Rhona's mouth and nose. He dipped a second, and flung it to Bertha.
"Do as I do," he said briefly. "Now come."
Opening the door, he went straight to the stairs, followed closely by
Bertha. What had become of the two upstairs, he could not pause to
think. His whole energies were bent on saving little Rhona first from
the terrible death with which she was threatened.
Thick waves of smoke met them, stinging and choking. But for the
protecting towels, they could not have advanced a dozen steps.
Descent by the staircase was impossible. That soon became evident. The
roar of flames and the rush of burning smoke increased each instant.
Colonel Smyth grasped Bertha's arm, feeling her stagger. "Back! Back!"
he said. "Upstairs at once! To my bedroom! This way is hopeless."
How they managed the ascent, he never afterwards knew. Supporting the
child on one arm, upholding and urging Bertha with the other, he seemed
possessed of almost superhuman strength. Leaving the drawing-room floor
behind, they pressed upwards, guided by the glare of light from below,
and by screams from above.
Mrs. Burrell and Hope had quitted their own bedroom at the back of
the house, for a glance downstairs, being at once beaten back by the
sights and sounds encountered. They had rushed into the Colonel's front
bedroom, to find no Colonel there. Hope was leaning out of one window
in her nightdress, shrieking continuously; and Mrs. Burrell, in a red
shawl, stood by her, wearing a look of utter despair.