There entered, in the front drawing-room of my father's house in
Russell Street--an Elf!!! clad in white,--small, delicate, with curls
of jet over her shoulders;--with eyes so large and so lustrous that
they shone through the room, as no eyes merely human could possibly
shine. The Elf approached, and stood facing us. The sight was so
unexpected, and the apparition so strange, that we remained for some
moments in startled silence. At length my father, as the bolder and
wiser man of the two, and the more fitted to deal with the eirie
things of another world, had the audacity to step close up to the
little creature, and, bending down to examine its face, said, "What do
you want, my pretty child?"
Pretty child! was it only a pretty child after all? Alas! it would be
well if all we mistake for fairies at the first glance could resolve
themselves only into pretty children!
"Come," answered the child, with a foreign accent, and taking my
father by the lappet of his coat--"come! poor papa is so ill! I am
frightened! come--and save him--"
"Certainly," exclaimed my father quickly: "where's my hat, Sisty?
Certainly, my child! we will go and save papa."
"But who is papa?" asked Pisistratus--a question that would never have
occurred to my father. He never asked who or what the sick papas of
poor children were, when the children pulled him by the lappet of his
coat.--"Who is papa?"
The child looked hard at me, and the big tears rolled from those large
luminous eyes, but quite silently. At this moment, a full-grown figure
filled up the threshold, and, emerging from the shadow, presented to
us the aspect of a stout, well-favoured young woman. She dropped a
curtsy, and then said, mincingly,
"Oh, miss! you ought to have waited for me, and not alarmed the
gentlefolks by running up stairs in that way. If you please, sir, I
was settling with the cabman, and he was so imperent: them low fellows
always are, when they have only us poor women to deal with,
sir,--and----"
"But what is the matter?" cried I; for my father had taken the child
in his arms, soothingly, and she was now weeping on his breast.
"Why, you see, sir, (another curtsy,) the gent only arrived last night
at our hotel, sir--The Lamb, close by Lunnun Bridge--and he was taken
ill--and he's not quite in his right mind like:--so we sent for the
doctor, and the doctor looked at the brass plate on the gent's
carpet-bag, sir,--and then he looked into the _Court Guide_, and he
said, 'There is a Mr Caxton in Great Russell Street,--is he any
relation?' and this young lady said, 'That's my papa's brother, and we
were going there.'--And so, sir, as the Boots was out, I got into a
cab, and miss would come with me, and----"
"Roland--Roland ill!--Quick--quick, quick!" cried my father; and, with
the child still in his arms, he ran down the stairs. I followed with
his hat, which, of course, he had forgotten. A cab, by good luck, was
passing our very door; but the chambermaid would not let us enter it
till she had satisfied herself that it was not the same she had
dismissed. This preliminary investigation completed, we entered and
drove to The Lamb.
The chambermaid, who sate opposite, passed the time in ineffectual
overtures to release my father of the little girl, who still clung
nestling to his breast,--in a long epic, much broken into episodes, of
the causes which had led to her dismissal of the late cabman, who, to
swell his fare, had thought proper to take a "circumbendibus!"--and
with occasional tugs at her cap, and smoothings down of her gown, and
apologies for being such a figure, especially when her eyes rested on
my satin cravat, or drooped on my varnished boots.
Arrived at The Lamb, the chambermaid, with conscious dignity, led us
up a large staircase, which seemed interminable. As she mounted the
region above the third story, she paused to take breath, and inform
us, apologetically, that the house was full, but that, if the "gent"
stayed over Friday, he would be moved into No. 54, "with a look-out
and a chimbly." My little cousin now slipped from my father's arms,
and, running up the stairs, beckoned to us to follow. We did so, and
were led to a door, at which the child stopped and listened; then
taking off her shoes, she stole in on tiptoe. We entered after her.
By the light of a single candle, we saw my poor uncle's face: it was
flushed with fever, and the eyes had that bright, vacant stare which
it is so terrible to meet.--Less terrible is it to find the body
wasted, the features sharp with the great life-struggle, than to look
on the face from which the mind is gone,--the eyes in which there is
no recognition. Such a sight is a startling shock to that unconscious
habitual materialism with which we are apt familiarly to regard those
we love: for, in thus missing the mind, the heart, the affection that
sprang to ours, we are suddenly made aware that it was the something
_within_ the form, and not the form itself, that was so dear to us.
The form itself is still, perhaps, little altered; but that lip which
smiles no welcome, that eye which wanders over us as strangers, that
ear which distinguishes no more our voices,--the _friend_ we sought is
not there! Even our own love is chilled back--grows a kind of vague
superstitious terror. Yes, it was not the matter, still present to us,
which had conciliated all those subtle nameless sentiments which are
classed and fused in the word "_affection_,"--it was the airy,
intangible, electric _something_,--the absence of which now appals us.
I stood speechless--my father crept on, and took the hand that
returned no pressure:--The child only did not seem to share our
emotions,--but, clambering on the bed, laid her cheek on the breast
and was still.
"Pisistratus," whispered my father at last, and I stole near, hushing
my breath--"Pisistratus, if your mother were here!"
I nodded; the same thought had struck us both. His deep wisdom, my
active youth, both felt their nothingness then and there. In the sick
chamber, both turned helplessly to miss the _woman_.
So I stole out, descended the stairs, and stood in the open air in a
sort of stunned amaze. Then the tramp of feet, and the roll of wheels,
and the great London roar, revived me. That contagion of practical
life which lulls the heart and stimulates the brain,--what an
intellectual mystery there is in its common atmosphere! In another
moment I had singled out, like an inspiration, from a long file of
those ministrants of our Trivia, the cab of the lightest shape and
with the strongest horse, and was on my way, not to my mother's, but
to Dr M---- H----, Manchester Square, whom I knew as the medical
adviser to the Trevanions. Fortunately, that kind and able physician
was at home, and he promised to be with the sufferer before I myself
could join him. I then drove to Russell Street, and broke to my
mother, as cautiously as I could, the intelligence with which I was
charged.
When we arrived at The Lamb, we found the doctor already writing his
prescription and injunctions: the activity of the treatment announced
the danger. I flew for the surgeon who had been before called in.
Happy those who are strange to that indescribable silent bustle which
the sick-room at times presents--that conflict which seems almost hand
to hand between life and death--when all the poor, unresisting,
unconscious frame is given up to the war against its terrible enemy;
the dark blood flowing--flowing; the hand on the pulse, the hushed
suspense, every look on the physician's bended brow; then the
sinaplasms to the feet, and the ice to the head; and now and then,
through the lull or the low whispers, the incoherent voice of the
sufferer--babbling, perhaps, of green fields and fairyland, while your
hearts are breaking! Then, at length, the sleep--in that sleep,
perhaps, the crisis--the breathless watch, the slow waking, the first
_sane_ words--the old smile again, only fainter--your gushing tears,
your low--"Thank God! thank God!"
Picture all this; it is past: Roland has spoken--his sense has
returned--my mother is leaning over him--his child's small hands are
clasped round his neck--the surgeon, who has been there six hours, has
taken up his hat, and smiles gaily as he nods farewell--and my father
is leaning against the wall, with his face covered with his hands.