“Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given.”
Timon of Athens.
Under the circumstances of the Curtis family, no greater penance could
have been devised than the solemn dinner party which had to take place
only an hour after the investigation was closed. Grace in especial was
nearly distracted between her desire to calm her mother and to comfort
her sister, and the necessity of attending to the Grey family, who
repaid themselves for their absence from the scene of action by a
torrent of condolences and questions, whence poor Grace gathered to her
horror and consternation that the neighbourhood already believed that
a tenderer sentiment than philanthropy had begun to mingle in Rachel’s
relations with the secretary of the F. U. E. E. Feeling it incumbent
on the whole family to be as lively and indifferent as possible, Grace,
having shut her friends into their rooms to perform their toilette,
hurried to her sister, to find her so entirely engrossed with her
patient as absolutely to have forgotten the dinner party. No wonder! She
had had to hunt up a housemaid to make up a bed for Lovedy in a little
room within her own, and the undressing and bathing of the poor child
had revealed injuries even in a more painful state than those which had
been shown to Mr. Grey, shocking emaciation, and most scanty garments.
The child was almost torpid, and spoke very little. She was most
unwilling to attempt to swallow; however, Rachel thought that some of
her globules had gone down, and put much faith in them, and in warmth
and sleep; but incessantly occupied, and absolutely sickened by the
sight of the child’s hurts, she looked up with loathing at Grace’s
entreaty that she would, dress for the dinner.
“Impossible,” she said.
“You must, Rachel dear; indeed, you must.”
“As if I could leave her.”
“Nay, Rachel, but if you would only send—”
“Nonsense, Grace; if I can stay with her I can restore her far better
than could an allopathist, who would not leave nature to herself. O
Grace, why can’t you leave me in peace? Is it not bad enough without
this?”
“Dear Rachel, I am very sorry; but if you did not come down to dinner,
think of the talk it would make.”
“Let them talk.”
“Ah, Rachel, but the mother! Think how dreadful the day’s work has been
to her; and how can she ever get through the evening if she is in a
fright at your not coming down?”
“Dinner parties are one of the most barbarous institutions of past
stupidity,” said Rachel, and Grace was reassured. She hovered over
Rachel while Rachel hovered over the sick child, and between her own
exertions and those of two maids, had put her sister into an evening
dress by the time the first carriage arrived. She then rushed to her own
room, made her own toilette, and returned to find Rachel in conference
with Mrs. Kelland, who had come home at last, and was to sit with her
niece during the dinner. Perhaps it was as well for all parties that
this first interview was cut very short, but Rachel’s burning cheeks did
not promise much for the impression of ease and indifference she was to
make, as Grace’s whispered reminders of “the mother’s” distress dragged
her down stairs among the all too curious glances of the assembled
party.
All had been bustle. Not one moment for recollection had yet been
Rachel’s. Mr. Grey’s words, “Accountable for all,” throbbed in her ears
and echoed in her brain—the purple bruises, the red stripes, verging
upon sores, were before her eyes, and the lights, the flowers, the
people and their greetings, were like a dizzy mist. The space before
dinner was happily but brief, and then, as last lady, she came in as a
supernumerary on the other arm of Grace’s cavalier, and taking the only
vacant chair, found herself between a squire and Captain Keith, who had
duly been bestowed on Emily Grey.
Here there was a moment’s interval of quiet, for the squire was slightly
deaf, and, moreover, regarded her as a little pert girl, not to be
encouraged, while Captain Keith was resigned to the implied homage
of the adorer of his cross; so that, though the buzz of talk and the
clatter of knives and forks roared louder than it had ever seemed to do
since she had been a child, listening from the outside, the immediate
sense of hurry and confusion, and the impossibility of seeing or hearing
anything plainly, began to diminish. She could not think, but she began
to wonder whether any one knew what had happened; and, above all, she
perfectly dreaded the quiet sting of her neighbour’s word and eye, in
this consummation of his victory. If he glanced at her, she knew she
could not bear it; and if he never spoke to her at all, it would be
marked reprehension, which would be far better than sarcasm. He was
evidently conscious of her presence; for when, in her insatiable thirst,
she had drained her own supply of water, she found the little bottle
quietly exchanged for that before him. It was far on in the dinner
before Emily’s attention was claimed by the gentleman on her other hand,
and then there was a space of silence before Captain Keith almost made
Rachel start, by saying—
“This has come about far more painfully than could have been expected.”
“I thought you would have triumphed,” she said.
“No, indeed. I feel accountable for the introduction that my sister
brought upon you.”
“It was no fault of hers,” said Rachel, sadly.
“I wish I could feel it so.”
“That was a mere chance. The rest was my own doing.”
“Aided and abetted by more than one looker-on.”
“No. It is I who am accountable,” she said, repeating Mr. Grey’s words.
“You accept the whole?”
It was his usual, cool, dry tone; but as she replied, “I must,” she
involuntarily looked up, with a glance of entreaty to be spared, and
she met those dark, grey, heavy-lidded eyes fixed on her with so much
concern as almost to unnerve her.
“You cannot,” he answered; “every bystander must rue the apathy that let
you be so cruelly deceived, for want of exertion on their part.”
“Nay,” she said; “you tried to open my eyes. I think this would have
come worse, but for this morning’s stroke.”
“Thank you,” he said, earnestly.
“I daresay you know more than I have been able to understand,” she
presently added; “it is like being in the middle of an explosion,
without knowing what stands or falls.”
“And lobster salad as an aggravation!” said he, as the dish successively
persecuted them. “This dinner is hard on you.”
“Very; but my mother would have been unhappy if I had stayed away. It is
the leaving the poor child that grieves me. She is in a fearful state,
between sore throat, starvation, and blows.”
The picture of the effect of the blows coming before Rachel at that
moment, perilled her ability even to sit through the dinner; but her
companion saw the suddening whitening of her cheek, and by a dexterous
signal at once caused her glass to be filled. Habit was framing her
lips to say something about never drinking wine; but somehow she felt
a certain compulsion in his look, and her compliance restored her. She
returned to the subject, saying, “But it was only the woman that was
cruel.”
“She had not her Sepoy face for nothing.”
“Did I hear that Miss Williams knew her?”
“Yes, it seems she was a maid who had once been very cruel to little
Rose Williams. The Colonel seems to think the discovery may have
important consequences. I hardly know how.”
This conversation sent Rachel out of the dining-room more like herself
than she had entered it; but she ran upstairs at once to Lovedy, and
remained with her till disinterred by the desperate Grace, who could not
see three people talking together without blushing with indignation at
the construction they were certainly putting on her sister’s scarlet
cheeks and absence from the drawing-room. With all Grace’s efforts,
however, she could not bring her truant back before the gentlemen had
come in. Captain Keith had seen their entrance, and soon came up to
Rachel.
“How is your patient?” he asked.
“She is very ill; and the worst of it is, that it seems such agony to
her to attempt to swallow.”
“Have you had advice for her?”
“No; I have often treated colds, and I thought this a case, aggravated
by that wicked treatment.”
“Have you looked into her mouth?”
“Yes; the skin is frightfully brown and dry.”
He leant towards her, and asked, in an under tone—
“Did you ever see diphtheria?”
“No!”—her brow contracting—“did you?”
“Yes; we had it through all the children of the regiment at Woolwich.”
“You think this is it?”
He asked a few more questions, and his impression was evidently
confirmed.
“I must send for Mr. Frampton,” said Rachel, homeopathy succumbing to
her terror; but then, with a despairing glance, she beheld all the male
part of the establishment handing tea.
“Where does he live? I’ll send him up.”
“Thank you, oh! thank you. The house with the rails, under the east
cliff.”
He was gone, and Rachel endured the reeling of the lights, and the
surges of talk, and the musical performances that seemed to burst the
drum of her ear; and, after all, people went away, saying to each other
that there was something very much amiss, and that poor dear Mrs. Curtis
was very much to blame for not having controlled her daughters.
They departed at last, and Grace, without uttering the terrible word,
was explaining to the worn-out mother that little Lovedy was more
unwell, and that Captain Keith had kindly offered to fetch the doctor,
when the Captain himself returned.
“I am sorry to say that Mr. Frampton is out, not likely to be at home
till morning, and his partner is with a bad accident at Avonford.
The best plan will be for me to ride back to Avoncester, and send out
Macvicar, our doctor. He is a kind-hearted man, of much experience in
this kind of thing.”
“But you are not going back,” said polite Mrs. Curtis, far from taking
in the urgency of the case. “You were to sleep at Colonel Keith’s. I
could not think of your taking the trouble.”
“I have settled that with the Colonel, thank you. My dog-cart will be
here directly.”
“I can only say, thank you,” said Rachel, earnestly. “But is there
nothing to be done in the meantime? Do you know the treatment?”
He knew enough to give a few directions, which revealed to poor Mrs.
Curtis the character of the disease.
“That horrible new sore throat! Oh, Rachel, and you have been hanging
over her all this time!”
“Indeed,” said Alick Keith, coming to her. “I think you need not be
alarmed. The complaint seems to me to depend on the air and locality. I
have been often with people who had it.”
“And not caught it?”
“No; though one poor little fellow, our piper’s son, would not try
to take food from any one else, and died at last on my knee. I do not
believe it is infectious in that way.”
And hearing his carriage at the door, he shook hands, and hurried off,
Mrs. Curtis observing—
“He really is a very good young man. But oh, Rachel, my dear, how could
you bring her here?”
“I did not know, mother. Any way it is better than her being in Mrs.
Kelland’s hive of children.”
“You are not going back to her, Rachel, I entreat!”
“Mother, I must. You heard what Captain Keith said. Let that comfort
you. It would be brutal cruelty and cowardice to stay away from her to
night. Good night, Grace, make mother see that it must be so.”
She went, for poor Mrs. Curtis could not withstand her; and only turned
with tearful eyes to her elder daughter to say, “You do not go into the
room again, Grace, I insist.”
Grace could not bear to leave Rachel to the misery of such a vigil, and
greatly reproached herself for the hurry that had prevented her from
paying any heed to the condition of the child in her anxiety to make
her sister presentable; but Mrs. Curtis was in a state of agitation that
demanded all the care and tenderness of this “mother’s child,” and the
sharing her room and bed made it impossible to elude the watchfulness
that nervously guarded the remaining daughter.
It was eleven o’clock when Alexander Keith drove from the door. It was a
moonlight night, and he was sure to spare no speed, but he could hardly
be at Avoncester within an hour and a half, and the doctor would take
at least two in coming out. Mrs. Kelland was the companion of Rachel’s
watch. The woman was a good deal subdued. The strangeness of the great
house tamed her, and she was shocked and frightened by the little girl’s
state as well as by the young lady’s grave, awe-struck, and silent
manner.
They tried all that Captain Keith had suggested, but the child was too
weak and spent to inhale the steam of vinegar, and the attempts to make
her swallow produced fruitless anguish. They could not discover how long
it was since she had taken any nourishment, and they already knew what
a miserable pittance hers had been at the best. Mrs. Kelland gave her up
at once, and protested that she was following her mother, and that there
was death in her face. Rachel made an imperious gesture of silence, and
was obeyed so far as voice went, but long-drawn sighs and shakes of the
head continued to impress on her the aunt’s hopelessness, throughout
the endeavours to change the position, the moistening of the lips, the
attempts at relief in answer to the choked effort to cough, the weary,
faint moan, the increasing faintness and exhaustion.
One o’clock struck, and Mrs. Kelland said, in a low, ominous voice, “It
is the turn of the night, Miss Rachel. You bad best leave her to me.”
“I will never leave her,” said Rachel impatiently.
“You are a young lady, Miss Rachel, you ain’t used to the like of this.”
“Hark!” Rachel held up her finger.
Wheels were crashing up the hill. The horrible responsibility was over,
the immediate terror gone, help seemed to be coming at the utmost speed,
and tears of relief rushed into Rachel’s eyes, tears that Lovedy must
have perceived, for she spoke the first articulate words she had uttered
since the night-watch had begun, “Please, ma’am, don’t fret, I’m going
to poor mother.”
“You will be better now, Lovedy, here is the doctor,” said Rachel,
though conscious that this was not the right thing, and then she
hastened out on the stairs to meet the gaunt old Scotsman and bring him
in. He made Mrs. Kelland raise the child, examined her mouth, felt her
feet and hands, which were fast becoming chill, and desired the warm
flannels still to be applied to them.
“Cannot her throat be operated on?” said Rachel, a tremor within her
heart. “I think we could both be depended on if you wanted us.”
“She is too far gone, poor lassie,” was the answer; “it would be mere
cruelty to torment her. You had better go and lie down, Miss Curtis; her
mother and I can do all she is like to need.”
“Is she dying?”
“I doubt if she can last an hour longer. The disease is in an advanced
state, and she was in too reduced a state to have battled with it, even
had it been met earlier.”
“As it should have been! Twice her destroyer!” sighed Rachel, with a
bursting heart, and again the kind doctor would have persuaded her to
leave the room, but she turned from him and came back to Lovedy, who had
been roused by what had been passing, and had been murmuring something
which had set her aunt off into sobs.
“She’s saying she’ve been a bad girl to me, poor lamb, and I tell her
not to think of it! She knows it was for her good, if she had not been
set against her work.”
Dr. Macvicar authoritatively hushed the woman, but Lovedy looked up with
flushed cheeks, and the blue eyes that had been so often noticed for
their beauty. The last flush of fever had come to finish the work.
“Don’t fret,” she said, “there’s no one to beat me up there! Please, the
verse about the tears.”
Dr. Macvicar and the child both looked towards Rachel, but her whole
memory seemed scared away, and it was the old Scotch army surgeon that
repeated—
“‘The Lord God shall wipe off tears from all eyes.’ Ah! poor little one,
you are going from a world that has been full of woe to you.”
“Oh, forgive me, forgive me, my poor child,” said Rachel, kneeling by
her, the tears streaming down silently.
“Please, ma’am, don’t cry,” said the little girl feebly; “you were
very good to me. Please tell me of my Saviour,” she added to Rachel.
It sounded like set phraseology, and she knew not how to begin; but Dr.
Macvicar’s answer made the lightened look come back, and the child was
again heard to whisper—“Ah! I knew they scourged Him—for me.”
This was the last they did hear, except the sobbing breaths, ever more
convulsive. Rachel had never before been present with death, and awe and
dismay seemed to paralyse her whole frame. Even the words of hope and
prayer for which the child’s eyes craved from both her fellow-watchers
seemed to her a strange tongue, inefficient to reach the misery of this
untimely mortal agony, this work of neglect and cruelty—and she the
cause.
Three o’clock had struck before the last painful gasp had been drawn,
and Mrs. Kelland’s sobbing cry broke forth. Dr. Macvicar told Rachel
that the child was at rest. She shivered from head to foot, her teeth
chattered, and she murmured, “Accountable for all.”
Dr. Macvicar at once made her swallow some of the cordial brought for
the poor child, and then summoning the maid whom Grace had stationed in
the outer room, he desired her to put her young mistress to bed without
loss of time. The sole remaining desire of which she was conscious was
to be alone and in the dark, and she passively submitted.