REPARATION.
But, after all, Fate willed that this marriage should be but the chief
episode in the story, and not the story itself, of Rachel's life.
One day, when she was flitting about her great drawing-room, with a
basket of flowers on her arm, singing soft airs from "Don Giovanni"
under her breath as she busied herself with the arrangement of little
groups of leaves and flowers in sundry precious receptacles here and
there, a footman entered with a telegram.
"That is from your master," said Rachel, lifting it from the salver and
tearing off the envelope.
"Wait a moment, James, until I see if there are any orders for you to
take out."
She put down her flowers on the piano, read the brief message
tranquilly, and then lifted her face with a smile.
"Ask Wilkinson to have the carriage ready at three o'clock," she said;
"not the brougham, if it keeps as fine as it is now, the open carriage.
And tell cook I want to speak to her in half an hour.
"Your master is coming home to-day instead of Friday."
James said "Yes'm" and retired, and his mistress continued her
occupation of arranging the flowers with more haste and eagerness than
before.
Mr. Kingston had gone from home a few days previously to meet some
distinguished foreign visitors at a friend's house in the country, a
thing he did not often do, and she had stayed behind because little
Alfred seemed to have symptoms of a bad cold coming on--which, however,
had been happily checked at that stage.
She had not expected her lord's return just yet, but she concluded that
he had not found the party amusing, or had been bored in some way, and
so had excused himself from prolonging his visit; and she was glad of
the accident, whatever it was, that was bringing him back so soon.
In the afternoon she went upstairs to get ready to go to the station to
meet him. It was winter, and she clothed herself in rich furs--sealskin
and sable, with the sealskin cap of old days on her shining
head--against which the soft roundness of her cheek and throat, and the
blush-rose delicacy of her complexion was particularly distinct and
striking, and also the evident fact that, far from pining away, she had
developed in health and strength quite as much as in beauty during the
five or six years of her married life.
When she was dressed she went to the nursery, where her little boy ran
to meet her, begging her to take him with her wherever she was going.
She caught him up in her arms and looked irresolutely at the imposing
nurse, who was responding to his appeal in an official and determined
manner, telling him that he must not cry to go in the carriage to-day;
he must go for a nice walk with his nursey, because his dear papa did
not like to be bothered with little boys when he was driving with his
dear mamma (which was very true).
"Never mind, Alfy," said Rachel, hugging him to her maternal bosom, and
covering his fair little face--which was very like her own--with
kisses; "You shall go with mother next time, my sweet. Don't cry, dear
little man! Suppose mother brings him home a pretty new toy? What shall
mother bring Alfy home, nurse, eh?"
"I don't want toys, I want to go with you, mother," wailed Alfy.
"Oh, well, I think he might," said Rachel, weakly. "It is a fine
afternoon, and he would enjoy it so! And his father hasn't seen him for
four days. Dress him quickly, nurse, and I'll take him. You needn't come
to-day, I can look after him quite well by myself for once."
Alfy was accordingly dressed, his nurse performing that operation
silently, with a mien of severe disapproval, and his mother kneeling on
the floor and helping her.
When he was ready--looking, Rachel thought, more nearly like an angel
than ever child looked before--he was carried downstairs in her own
caressing arms, resting his curly head on her sable collar, and clasping
his mites of hands round her white throat; and she placed him in the
carriage beside her, and tucked up his little legs in the soft bearskin,
and they set forth together to Spencer Street in a state of beatific
satisfaction and enjoyment, slightly qualified by Rachel's well-founded
apprehension that her husband would scold her for spoiling the child and
making a nursemaid of herself.
When Mr. Kingston arrived at the station, closely muffled in overcoat
and comforters, it was evident to Rachel's experienced eye--or ear
rather, for as she knew he would object to her waiting unattended on the
platform, she stayed in the carriage and sent the footman to meet him at
the train and to take his baggage, and so heard him before she saw
him--that he was in anything but a good temper.
He rated an unfortunate porter who drove a barrow in his way in
unnecessarily violent terms, and then he demanded angrily of his servant
why the dickens they hadn't brought the brougham for him on such a
bitter day.
"Oh, Graham," said Rachel, stretching out her hand, "how do you do,
dear? I am so sorry!--but I thought you would like the open carriage
best. It was beautifully mild when we started--it has been quite a warm
day. And here is Alfy come to meet you. He is quite well, again, you
see, and such a good little boy, aren't you, Alfy? He is taking care of
his mother to-day, and sitting so quietly."
"Why did you bring him out in the cold?" responded the father
snappishly. "And where's the nurse? At home? Upon my word, Rachel, we
might as well be spared the expense of servants altogether, for all the
use you make of them. No, I won't kiss him--I might give him a sore
throat."
"Have you a sore throat, dear?" inquired Rachel meekly, tucking the
child into her own corner of the carriage, and whispering to him to sit
very still.
"I should rather say so--not so much a sore throat, perhaps, as a
general bad cold--the most confounded bad cold I ever had in my life.
I'm regularly seedy and done up," grumbled Mr. Kingston, climbing into
his seat beside her.
"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry!"
"That is why I have come home to-day," he added. "It's the most wretched
thing to be in other people's houses when you don't feel well."
"Indeed it is," assented Rachel sympathetically; "and I am very glad you
came back. How did you catch it, do you think?"
"I think I must have got it before I started. But that idiot Lambert
sent an open trap to meet me--you know what a pouring wet day it turned
out? --and I had to sit and be soaked for an hour and a half. Umbrellas
were no good in that rain, and there was a sharp wind, too, and before
we reached the house--great, cold barrack of a place, with stingy little
coal fires--fancy _coal_ fires!--shows what an idiot the fellow is, and
she's worse--before we got there I was thoroughly wet through, and
chilled to the bone. I never was so cold in my life. I took a hot bath
before I dressed for dinner, and I got Lambert to send me up some
brandy, but it was no use--it seemed to have regularly struck into me. I
_couldn't_ get warm--not till about the middle of the night, and then I
felt as if I'd got a fever. I believe I have too."
"Oh, Graham, I hope not."
"It has settled on my chest," he went on. "I haven't been able to sleep
for coughing--you know I have never had a cough in my life--and I can't
draw a breath without feeling as if I was dragging something up by the
roots. Can't you hear how I breathe? You never heard me breathe like
that before did you?"
Rachel turned her blooming face, now grave and anxious, to listen to his
respiration, which certainly was strangely quick and laboured, and
noisy, and she was struck by a great change in _his_ since she had seen
it four days ago. It had become all at once wrinkled, and hollow, and
haggard--the face of an old man.
"Oh, my dear," she exclaimed, in an accent of genuine distress, "you
_have_ got a bad cold, indeed! Hadn't you better call on the doctor at
once--it won't be much out of our way--and see what he says about it? It
may be nothing, but I think it seems like bronchitis, and it is best to
be on the safe side."
"I think I will," said Mr. Kingston, covering his mouth with his wraps
again. "It seems worse than it was when I started--the cold day, I
suppose. Hang it, I wish you had brought the brougham--it is colder than
ever!"
And he shivered under an accumulation of great-coats and furs that one
would have thought sufficient for the temperature of polar regions.
The carriage was stopped in Collins Street, and remained in the
doctors' quarter until little Alfy fell asleep, and was temporarily put
to bed under the long, soft skirt of his mother's jacket. Then, as the
dusk was falling, Mr. Kingston came back to his place, and tremulously
commanded the coachman to drive home as fast as he possibly could.
"He says it is inflammation of the lungs, Rachel," he whispered
excitedly, "and that I must go to bed at once. Only a touch he called
it, but he didn't look as if he thought it a touch. He is coming up
to-night to do something. He says I ought to have come home the first
day, and not have let it run on. Inflammation of the lungs--that is a
dreadful thing, isn't it? I have never had it, but I have heard of
it--it's a most dangerous complaint!"
"Oh, no, dear, not dangerous, except when people are careless," said
Rachel soothingly, taking his hand under the fur rug and clasping it
between her own. "And now you are home, with me to nurse you, you will
soon get all right. Many people have it slightly--it is quite a common
thing with a bad cold--but when they are well nursed and taken care of,
they soon get all right again."
"Good little woman! you will take care of me, I know."
"Indeed I will," she responded, slipping up one hand under his arm, and
resting her cheek on his coat-sleeve. "I wish you had come back to me
before. But, once I get you fairly into my hands, I'll soon nurse you
round."
However, though she did all that a woman and a wife, and one born to be
the genius of a sick room, could do, she did not nurse him round. By the
time he reached home, where the household was thrown into a panic of
consternation, he was very ill indeed--his fright about himself helping
very much to develop the bad symptoms rapidly; and the doctor, who next
day summoned other doctors in consultation upon the case, pronounced
him--not in words, but by unmistakable signs--to be in a serious and
critical condition. The attack had been severe from the first; it had
been allowed to run on for several days; and the constitution of the
patient, enervated and shattered by years of unwholesome indulgence,
was as little fitted to stand an illness as any constitution could be.
The pain in breathing grew worse and worse, and the fever hotter and
drier; and then stupor came on, and delirium, and exhaustion, and by and
bye a filmy cloud over the sunken eyes, and a dusky pallor over the old,
old, wrinkled face; and, in spite of all the doctors, and all the
nurses, and all that money could do--in spite of the agonised devotion
of his young wife, who never left him for more than five minutes at a
time, taking snatches of sleep only when he slept, sitting by the
bedside, and resting her tired head on the same pillow that she smoothed
for his--it was over in less than a week. And a little paragraph
appeared in "The Argus" one morning, to shock that small world of which
he had so long been a distinguished ornament, with the incomprehensible
intelligence that he was "gone," and would never be seen at a club mess
or in a festive drawing-room again.
On the night of his death, when fever and pain and restlessness were
sinking away with the sinking pulse, and when Rachel, watching beside
him, thought he was past knowing anyone--even her--he looked at her with
a gleam of loving recognition. "Good little woman!" he muttered in a
struggling whisper. "Dear, good little woman!"
She stooped over him at once with a yearning passion of pity and vague
remorse, and kissed him, and laid her white arms about him, raining
tears on his dying face and his cold limp hands.
"Oh, Graham, Graham, I have not been good enough to you!" she cried.
"And you have been so good--so kind--to me!"
He continued to look at her with dull wistful, pathetic eyes.
"Have I?" he gasped, feebly. "Have I?"
And then the gleam died out of his face in the shrouding darkness that
was creeping over him. He was quiet for several minutes, and Rachel laid
her cheek on the pillow beside him, and listened to the faint rattle
which now and then told that the "step or two dubious of twilight"
between sleep and death was not yet crossed, motioning the other
watchers away from the bedside, that he and she might be alone together.
And suddenly he roused himself, and said--panting the words out slowly
and huskily, but evidently with a perfect consciousness of their
meaning--"Rachel--you can--have him--now."
Her arm was under his pillow, and she drew it back to her gently until
his head lay next her breast.
"Hush--hush--hush!" she said, with choking sobs. But he went on
steadily, as if he had not heard her.
"Only tell him--not to--not to--lead little Alfy--into bad ways."
After a pause, he said,
"Do you hear!--tell him--"
"He will not--he could not!" she broke out eagerly. "He is a good, good
man, though people think he is not! He will take care of little Alfy, my
darling--do not be afraid--he will never lead him into bad ways--never
never!"
Ought she to have said it? Had she given him--she, who, at this moment,
would have laid down her life to save his, if that had been
possible--the comfort she had meant to give, or a most cruel, cruel
stab, in his last conscious hour? She looked at him with agonised,
imploring face, which mutely prayed him to try and understand her; and
there came slowly into his sunken eyes a vague intelligence and a dim,
dim smile. He _did_ understand her--better, perhaps, than he had ever
understood her before.
"Good little woman!" he murmured, "Good little girl--to tell the truth."