While this intercourse was going on, and Mr. Everard became more and
more the associate of the ladies, the little shock that had been given
them by the result of Johnny’s excitement on the night of the accident
grew into something definite and rather alarming. Johnny was not ill--so
far as appeared, he was not even frightened; but he continued to see
“the lady” from time to time, and more than once a cry from the room in
which he slept had summoned Rosalind, and even Mrs. Lennox, forgetful of
her rheumatism. On these occasions Johnny would be found sitting up in
his bed, his great eyes like two lamps, shining even in the dim glow of
the night-light. It was at an hour when he should have been asleep, when
nurse had gone to her supper, and to that needful relaxation which
nurses as well as other mortals require. The child was not frightened,
but there was a certain excitement about this periodical awakening. “The
lady! the lady!” he said. “Oh, my darling,” cried Aunt Sophy,
trembling; “what lady? There could be no lady. You have been dreaming.
Go to sleep, Johnny, and think of it no more.”
“I sawed her,” cried the child. He pushed away Mrs. Lennox and clung to
Rosalind, who had her arms round him holding him fast. “I never was
asleep at all, Rosy; I just closed my eyes, and then I opened them and I
sawed the lady.”
“Oh, Rosalind, he has just been dreaming. Oh, Johnny dear, that is all
nonsense; there was no lady!” Aunt Sophy cried.
“Tell me about her,” said Rosalind. “Was it a strange lady? Did you know
who she was?”
“It is just _the_ lady,” cried Johnny, impatiently. “I told you before.
She is much more taller than Aunt Sophy, with a black thing over her
head. She wouldn’t stay, because you came running, and she didn’t want
you. But I want the lady to speak to me-- I want her to speak to me. Go
away, Rosy!” the little fellow cried.
“Dear, the lady will not come back again to-night. Tell me about her.
Johnny, did you know who she was?”
“I told you: she’s just _the_ lady,” cried Johnny, with the air of one
whose explanation leaves nothing to be desired.
“Oh, Rosalind, you are just encouraging him in his nonsense. He was
dreaming. My darling, you were dreaming. Nurse, here is this little boy
been dreaming again about the lady, as he calls her. You must give him a
dose. He must have got his little digestion all wrong. It can be nothing
but that, you know,” Aunt Sophy said. She drew the nurse, who had
hastened up from her hour’s relaxation in alarm, with her into the outer
room. Mrs. Lennox herself was trembling. She clutched the woman’s arm
with a nervous grasp. “What does he mean about this lady? Is there any
story about a lady? I am quite sure it is all nonsense, or that it is
just a dream,” said Mrs. Lennox, with a nervous flutter in the bow of
her cap. “Is there any story (though it is all nonsense) of a haunted
room or anything of that sort? If there is, I sha’n’t stay here, not
another day.”
The nurse, however, had heard no such story: she stood whispering with
her mistress, talking over this strange occurrence, while Rosalind
soothed and quieted the excited child. Amy’s little bed was in the outer
room, but all was still there, the child never stirring, so absolutely
noiseless that her very presence was forgotten by the two anxious women
comparing notes. “He always keeps to the same story,” said nurse. “I
can’t tell what to make of it, ma’am, but Master Johnny always was a
little strange.”
“What do you mean by a little strange? He is a dear child, he never
gives any trouble, he is just a darling,” Aunt Sophy said. “It is his
digestion that has got a little wrong. A shock like that of the other
day--it sometimes will not tell for some time, and as often as not it
puts their little stomachs wrong. A little medicine will set everything
right.”
Nurse demurred to this, having notions of her own, and the discussion
went on till Rosalind, who had persuaded Johnny to compose himself, and
sat by him till he fell asleep, came out and joined them. “It will be
better for you not to leave him without calling me or some one,” she
said.
“Miss Rosalind!” cried nurse, with natural desperation, “children is
dreadfully tiring to have them all day long, and every day. And nurses
is only flesh and blood like other people. If I’m never to have a
moment’s rest, day nor night, I think I shall go off my head.”
All this went on in the room where little Amy lay asleep. She was so
still that she was not considered at all. She was, indeed, at all times
so little disposed to produce herself or make any call upon the
attention of those about her, that the family, as is general, took poor
little Amy at her own showing and left her to herself. It did not even
seem anything remarkable that she was so still--and nobody perceived the
pair of wide-open eyes with which she watched all that was going on
under the corner of the coverlet. Even Rosalind scarcely looked towards
her little sister’s bed, and all the pent-up misery and terror which a
child can conceal (and how much that implies) lay unconsoled and
unlightened in poor little Amy’s breast. Meanwhile Johnny had fallen
fast asleep, untroubled by any further thought of the apparition which
only he was supposed to have seen.
This brought a great deal of trouble into the minds of Johnny’s
guardians. Mrs. Lennox was so nearly breaking down under a sense of the
responsibility that her rheumatism, instead of improving with her baths,
grew worse than ever, and she became so stiff that Rosalind and Everard
together were needed, each at one arm, to raise her from her chair. The
doctor was sent for, who examined Johnny, and, after hearing all the
story, concluded that it was suppressed gout in the child’s system, and
that baths to bring it out would be the best cure. He questioned Mrs.
Lennox so closely as to her family and all their antecedents that it
very soon appeared a certain fact that all the Trevanions had suffered
from suppressed gout, which explained everything, and especially all
peculiarities in the mind or conduct. “The little boy,” said the doctor,
who spoke English so well, “is the victim of the physiological sins of
his forefathers. Pardon, madam; I do not speak in a moral point of view.
They drank Oporto wine and he sees what you call ghosts; the succession
is very apparent. This child,” turning to Amy, who stood by, “she also
has suppressed gout.”
“Oh, Amy is quite well,” cried Aunt Sophy; “there is nothing at all the
matter with Amy. But it cannot be denied that there is gout in the
family. Indeed, when gentlemen come to a certain age they always suffer
in that way, though I am sure I don’t know why. My poor father and
grandfather, too, as I have always heard. Your papa, Rosalind, with him
it was the heart.”
“They are all connected. Rheumatism, it is the brother of gout, and
rheumatism is the tyrant which affects the heart. No, my dear young
lady, it is not the emotions, nor love, nor disappointment, nor any of
the pretty things you think; it is rheumatism that is most fatal for the
heart. I will settle for the little boy a course of baths, and he will
see no more ladies; that is,” said the doctor, with a wave of his hand,
“except the very charming ladies whom he has a right to see. But this
child, she has it more pronounced; she is more ill than the little boy.”
“Oh, no, doctor, it is only that Amy is always pale; there is nothing
the matter with her. Do you feel anything the matter with you, Amy, my
dear?”
“No, Aunt Sophy,” said the little girl in a very low voice, turning her
head away.
“I told you so; there is nothing the matter with her. She is a pale
little thing. She never has any color. But Johnny! Doctor, oh, I hope
you will do your best for Johnny! He quite destroys all our peace and
comfort. I am afraid to open my eyes after I go to bed, lest I should
see the lady too; for that sort of thing is very catching. You get it
into your mind. If there is any noise I can’t account for, I feel
disposed to scream. I am sure I shall be seeing it before long if Johnny
gets no better. But I have always supposed in such cases that it was the
digestion that was out of order,” Mrs. Lennox said, returning, but
doubtfully, to her original view.
“It is all the same thing,” said the doctor, cheerfully waving his hand;
and then he patted Johnny on the head, who was half overawed, half
pleased, to have an illness which procured unlimited petting without any
pain. The little fellow began his baths immediately, but next night he
saw the lady again. This time he woke and found her bending over him,
and gave forth the cry which was now so well known by all the party.
Mrs. Lennox, who rushed into the room the first, being in her own
chamber, which was near Johnny’s, had to be led back to the sitting-room
in a state of nervous prostration, trembling and sobbing. When she was
placed in her chair and a glass of wine administered to her, she
declared that she had seen it too. “Oh, how can you ask me what it was?
I saw something move. Do you think,” with a gasp, “Rosalind, that one
can keep one’s wits about one, with all that going on? I am sure I saw
something--something black go out of the door--or at least something
moved. The curtain? oh, how can you say it was the curtain? I never
thought of that. Are you sure you didn’t see anything, Rosalind?”
“I saw the wind in the curtain, Aunt Sophy: the window was open, and it
blew out and almost frightened me too.”
“Oh, I could not say I was frightened,” said Mrs. Lennox, grasping
Rosalind’s hand tight. “A curtain does bulge out with the wind, doesn’t
it? I never thought of that. I saw something--move--I--wasn’t
frightened, only a little nervous. Perhaps it was--the wind in the
curtain. You are sure you were frightened too.”
“It blew right out upon me, like some one coming to meet me.”
Aunt Sophy grasped Rosalind’s hand tight. “It must have some
explanation,” she said. “It couldn’t be anything super-- You don’t
believe in--that sort of thing, Rosalind?”
“Dear Aunt Sophy, I am sure it was the curtain. I saw it too. I would
not say so if I did not feel--sure--”
“Oh, my dear, what a comfort it is to have a cool head like yours.
You’re not carried away by your feelings like me. I’m so sympathetic, I
feel as other people feel; to hear Johnny cry just made me I can’t tell
how. It was dreadfully like some one moving, Rosalind.”
“Yes, Aunt Sophy. When the wind got into the folds, it was exactly like
some one moving.”
“You are sure it was the curtain, Rosalind.”
Poor Rosalind was as little sure as any imaginative girl could be; she,
too, was very much shaken by Johnny’s vision; at her age it is so much
more easy to believe in the supernatural than in spectral illusions or
derangement of the digestion. She did not believe that the stomach was
the source of fancy, or that imagination only meant a form of suppressed
gout. Her nerves were greatly disturbed, and she was as ready to see
anything, if seeing depended upon an excited condition, as any young and
impressionable person ever was. She was glad to soothe Mrs. Lennox with
an easy explanation. But Rosalind did not believe that it was the
curtain which had deceived Johnny. Neither did she believe in the baths,
or in the suppressed gout. She was convinced in her mind that the child
spoke the truth, and that it was some visitor from the unseen who came
to him. But who was it? Dark fears crossed her mind, and many a wistful
wonder. There were no family warnings among the Trevanions, or it is to
be feared that reason would have yielded in Rosalind’s mind to nature
and faith. As it was, her heart grew feverish and expectant. The arrival
of the letters from England every morning filled her with terror. She
dreaded to see a black-bordered envelope, a messenger of death.