JANE IN DANGER.
Rosamund was awakened from her slumbers by Laura Everett, who shook her
lightly by the shoulder.
"Why, Rose," she said, "I wish you'd wake up. We are all in such a state
of confusion and anxiety. Have you the least idea what the hour is?"
"No. Where am I?" said Rosamund, sitting up in bed and pushing back her
hair.
"Well, it is close on nine o'clock. We had breakfast anyhow this
morning, for nothing is in order. I cannot even explain how bad things
are."
"Try and tell me, Laura; don't keep me in suspense."
"It's Jane, of course."
"My friend Jane?"
"You heard last night that she was very ill. Lucy told you. Lucy has
been talking about you. She said you were very queer when she came in
here last night, and didn't show a scrap of feeling. But I am sure you
are sorry for her. She is in great danger, Rosamund."
"Jane in danger!"
Rosamund had always been fond of Jane, but she had never thought her of
the slightest importance. She had always thought of her as just a good
sort to have as a friend; but all the admiration must be on the friend's
side, who must do all that Rosamund wished--for she, Rosamund, would not
put herself out for her friend. But now things were changed. Jane Denton
was the heroine of the hour. No one else in the whole of that house was
thought of in comparison with Jane. For the symptoms of the night
before had developed in a most aggravating way. She had grown worse and
worse; in short, she was so alarmingly ill that when Lucy came into the
room Mrs. Merriman had decided to send for the doctor from Dartford. He
was obliged to drive over, there being no train so late at night. When
he saw her he pronounced her illness to be diphtheria. How she had got
it nobody knew; but diphtheria Jane had, and of the most malignant type.
"What is it?" said Rosamund, now turning to Laura, who sat down on the
edge of her bed. "You think I have no heart, but you are mistaken."
Her bright eyes filled with tears, and Laura was softened at once.
"I knew you had a heart, dear," she said. "But the fact is, you never
understood Lucy. I like Lucy, and you don't--there lies the difference
between us. Lucy misunderstood you. She said that, instead of going to
bed, you were making a most awful noise, reciting poetry to yourself in
two distinct voices, and that an extraordinary noise came from under the
bed, and you declared it was rats. But she thinks you are a sort of
ventriloquist, and can throw your voice anywhere you like. She was
absolutely frightened, and rushed out of the room."
"Well, the doctor arrived about two o'clock in the morning, and he
stayed until early morning; and now the whole school knows, and what is
to be done is more than I can tell. The doctor wants us all to leave the
house."
"I shan't go," said Rosamund stoutly.
"What do you mean, Rose? You mustn't think of yourself at a moment like
this."
"I shall stay and nurse Jane. She is my friend. Don't keep me, please,
Laura. What a horrible creature I have been! Oh, dear! oh, dear! Do you
know where the Professor is, Laura?"
"I believe he is out, but I don't know. Mrs. Merriman is looking after
Jane at present. But, Rose, you won't be allowed to see her. The doctor
has forbidden any single individual except Mrs. Merriman to go into her
room, or to have anything whatever to do with her. You mustn't disobey
orders. A trained nurse is coming, and will be here in a very short
time. Perhaps there will be two nurses. They are going to try that new
treatment--antitoxin. Poor Jane's room is not so very far from where I
sleep, and I heard her groaning in the night. To think of our all being
so happy yesterday, and now this coming!"
"I know," said Rosamund in a low tone. She had never expressed herself
so before. There was a lump in her throat.
Laura went away and soon entered the schoolroom, where Lucy and the
other girls, all looking pale and anxious, were standing about. Laura
went straight up to Lucy.
"Well," said Lucy, "is that thoughtless, heartless creature awake yet?
Is she thinking of any one but herself?"
"Oh, yes, I woke her. She isn't heartless. I wish just at present, when
we are in such anxiety, you would try to be kinder, Lucy, and"----
Laura's voice suddenly broke.
Rosamund presently came downstairs. She wanted to find the Professor.
She wanted she knew not what. As a matter of fact, he was not to be
found, for he had gone by the very earliest train to Dartford to see Mr.
and Mrs. Brett.
The upshot of this visit was that soon Mrs. Brett's large, pale face,
with its light-blue eyes and gentle smile, was seen passing the window.
The Professor was with her. All the girls rushed out with a sudden
sense of relief to greet her.
"Oh, Aunt Susan, we are so glad you have come!" said Lucy, her own
little face quivering with sudden emotion.
"My dear, dear children," said Mrs. Brett, "I have come to take you away
with me--that is, all of you who can come. My husband and I are a
childless couple, and we have plenty of room in our house. You must just
pack your things and come along. That is what I have come for. There is
a nurse coming to look after the poor girl who is so dreadfully
ill.--Lucy, dear, your father is particularly anxious that you should
come--yes, and all the rest of you, for that matter. I can squeeze you
all in; but I cannot manage the governesses, that is the only thing. All
the rest--every single one of you--must come. Rosamund, you, of course;
and, Laura, you also. Annie Millar--yes, certainly--and Phyllis Flower,
and Agnes Sparkes--every single one of you shall come back with me. It
will be Poverty Castle, my loves, and we'll have to stint and scrape and
contrive; but at any rate we'll be merry when we can be merry, and we'll
forget our troubles in doing good to others."
Nothing could exceed the heartiness of Mrs. Brett's manner. Her very
smile brought sunshine with it, and her firm voice confidence. It seemed
in a minute to those agitated and unhappy girls that a ray of sunlight
had fallen upon them, and that the world was not quite so miserable
after all.
They were still standing talking eagerly in the hall when a fly drew up
at the door and Dr. Marshall stepped out. He had, in fact, followed Mrs.
Brett and the Professor up from the station. He saw Rosamund, and
recognized her as the girl he had seen some hours before walking alone
along the high-road. He went up to her and put his hand on her shoulder.
"Are you one of the young ladies who live here?"
"Yes," she replied, glancing at him in surprise, for so lost had she
been in her own thoughts that she had positively hardly observed him
when he swiftly passed her in the early morning.
"Then I congratulate you upon your powers of early rising."
Rosamund colored. Lucy's eyes were fixed on her face.
"My dear Miss Lucy," said the doctor, "your friend, Miss"----
"My name is Rosamund Cunliffe," said Rosamund.
"Your friend Miss Cunliffe has put all the rest of you young ladies to
shame. She was walking abroad this morning between four and five o'clock
at some distance from here."
Lucy's eyes flashed fire. Rosamund found herself turning pale. The
Professor looked at her. Suddenly Rosamund went up to the Professor and
took his hand.
"I want to speak to you, and alone," she said.
"In a moment, my dear," he answered.
He then turned to the doctor.
"Mrs. Brett, my kind sister-in-law, has promised to take all my young
people to her house in Dartford," he said. "She proposes that they
should return with her immediately. Then the house will be quite quiet
for the invalid, and there will be no danger of the disease spreading."
"If it does spread I shall be on the spot to grapple with it," said Dr.
Marshall.--"What an excellent plan, Mrs. Brett, and how exactly like
you!--Now then, young ladies, the sooner you pack up the better. You
needn't take a great many things; they can be sent to you afterwards.
The great thing is to get away. It may be in the air; it may be--we
cannot tell what; but the sooner all of you young people are out of
Sunnyside the safer it will be."
"It would not be fair," said the Professor, "to ask the Singletons to
take any of them in. We did think of that at first. We know how
particularly kind Mr. Singleton is. But there are his own children to be
thought of; and as he is the rector of the parish he has also to
consider his parishioners."
"I am the woman who has to act in this emergency," said Mrs. Brett; "and
now the sooner we drop the subject of whys and wherefores the
better.--Run upstairs, my dears, and get ready.--I will not even see my
dear sister, Mrs. Merriman, for fear of infection; but you will know
where to find me if you want my help."
"I don't think we shall need it," said the doctor. "Two excellent nurses
are coming by the next train, and I shall leave full directions, and my
assistant will come out to see the patient this evening.--Now, if you
will kindly allow me to pass, young ladies, I will go and see the
invalid, and I will not see any of you again afterwards. It is safer
not."
There was a look on his face which startled and brought back some of the
nervousness of most of the girls. But Mrs. Brett, or Aunt Susan, as Lucy
called her, was all smiles and benediction.
"My dears," she said in her motherly way, "there is room enough and to
spare in my house for every one of you--room enough and to spare. You
shall have the heartiest welcome."
Here Mrs. Brett went up to Rosamund, and, rather to the surprise of the
others, elected her for a resounding kiss on the cheek.
"My dear, a girl who can go out and take a walk at so early an hour in
the morning is quite after my own heart."
"But, Aunt Susan," interrupted Lucy, "do you really approve of a girl
who burns the candle at both ends? It so happens that I was obliged to
invade Rosamund's room last night, and I heard her reciting poetry in
two voices, and then I heard her throw her voice into a distant part of
the room, so that you might almost imagine that she was a ventriloquist.
It was nearly eleven o'clock, and the doctor said he saw her walking
along the high-road between four and five this morning. Don't you think
it is too much for her strength?"
"Never mind, dear," said Mrs. Brett, who was as kind in heart as her
face appeared. "I admire energy; but the energy of the young is
sometimes misdirected. When dear Rosamund comes to stay with me I will
show her one or two things.--You won't mind getting a wrinkle or two
from an old woman, will you, Rose?"
"No," said Rosamund, who was absolutely torn in the midst of many
conflicting emotions: her anxiety for her friend, her knowledge of what
had happened the night before, her ever-increasing dislike to Lucy--and,
in fact, the whole false position in which she found herself--all
distressed her beyond measure.
Again she touched the Professor on the arm.
"I want to say something," she remarked, and she turned and faced the
other girls.--"Before I decide to go with Mrs. Brett I must speak to
Professor Merriman."
"But there is no time, my dear," said Mrs. Brett. "Our train leaves in
three-quarters of an hour. Each girl will please pack a small bag, if
she possesses such a useful commodity, and we must walk as fast as ever
we can to the station, for my poor dear husband has no end of things for
me to attend to to-day, and the moment we get to Dartford we shall have
to bustle about, I can tell you. There'll be no time for whims and
fancies, or even for lessons; for there is to be an enormous tea-fight,
as I call it, for the young folk of the parish in the schoolhouse this
afternoon, and games afterwards, and recitations; and if you, Rosamund,
can recite as well as Lucy has described, why, you will be invaluable."
"But I can't recite. Lucy is mistaken," said Rosamund.--"Professor, may
I speak to you?--Mrs. Brett, if you are in a hurry, I will follow you by
a later train, if it is decided that I am to go to you."
Here the determined girl took the Professor by the arm, and leading him
into the study, shut the door behind them, and turned and faced him.
"I have been exceedingly naughty. I have broken my word of honor."
Now, the Professor, who was always extremely dreamy, had nearly
forgotten Rosamund's transgression of the previous Sunday. He did not
speak at all for a minute, but looked at her in puzzled astonishment.
"You have broken your word of honor?" he said. "We are in great trouble.
I hope you are not now beginning to be taken up with whims and fancies.
If so, please transfer them to a more convenient season. I am harassed
about my books, my--my dear wife, and that poor girl. By the way, she is
your friend, too. I can quite understand that you are grieved on her
account."
"I am terribly grieved. I do not wish to leave. I should like to stay
and help to look after her."
"But that cannot be permitted. That would be an act of the greatest
selfishness. What we require you to do is to leave the house before you
are infected--you even more than the others, for you have been in the
same room with her."
"I do not think I am infected. I cannot imagine how Jane caught
diphtheria. I did see her bending down over a drain the other day. She
had dropped her pencil and was trying to find it. I told her not to do
it, and even dragged her away. I am sure I am all right, and I should
not allow her to breathe on me, and I think I could help."
"It is generous of you, my dear, but it cannot possibly be permitted,"
said the Professor. "I will relate that little circumstance to my wife.
Not that it matters, after all, how we get our diseases; the thing is to
cure them when we have acquired them. However, I will mention the
circumstance to my dear wife."
"Please do. Now, I have something to confess. You heard what Lucy said:
that I was reciting poetry, that I was using two voices, that I was a
sort of ventriloquist. You heard what Dr. Marshall said: that he saw me
on the high-road at a very early hour this morning. Now, I was not
reciting last night; I was talking to another girl, and no less a girl
than that one I had promised you to have no communication with for a
whole week--Irene Ashleigh. Please hear me out before you speak. I did
not ask her to come to me. She came on her own account. I did mean to
keep my word of honor; but Irene, poor little girl! had taken a liking
to me. I had managed, I don't know how, to touch something sympathetic
in her heart, and she was hungering for me, and you had forbidden me to
go to her. So last night, after I came to bed, she was in my room. She
had got in by the window. Oh, don't look at me with those startled eyes!
I do not wish her to be blamed, and I was not to blame when I found her
there, for I did mean to keep my word of honor. She begged of me to lock
the door, but I refused; and I think I was almost inducing her to leave
the house, and to go home, when Lucy burst into the room. Lucy came to
fetch something for Mrs. Merriman--something that Jane wanted--and Irene
was under the bed like a flash. It was she who made that noise that Lucy
attributed to me. Then afterwards I felt reckless, and I did lock the
door, and I did go out by the open window, and I spent the night in the
summer-house with little Irene, and this morning I walked back with her
to The Follies. Now you know what I am. You see I am not worth saving;
and I want to tell you that if you will not have me here, then I will go
to Lady Jane, and tell her the entire story, and ask her if I may stay
with her--at least until the time of infection is over. That is what I
wish to do; but I will not go in the dark. I have told you how naughty I
have been, and you can punish me by expelling me from the school. But,
please, quite understand that your daughter has provoked me a great
deal, and that I did make an effort--at least at first--to keep my word
of honor."
Rosamund's voice dropped. In truth, the emotions of the previous day,
the night before, and this morning had been too many for her. She
trembled, and finally, to the great astonishment of the Professor, burst
into tears. Now, no one ever had higher principles than Professor
Merriman, but no man ever had a greater horror of tears. He could not
bear what Rosamund had told him; he could not understand how, under any
provocation, a girl could act as Rosamund had done; and yet, at the same
time, her tears so maddened him that he would have done anything to get
rid of her.
"You bewilder me," he said. "Of course, you did wrong. Do you wish to go
with Mrs. Brett? I will see you presently and speak to you."
"If you will not have me here, I will not go with Mrs. Brett. I will go
to Lady Jane; for there is one person who wants me, although you will
not believe it!"
"Then please yourself; but I grieve to tell you that after your recent
conduct I cannot receive you again at the school."
Rosamund left the room with a proud step, but there was something in her
heart which danced.