A FALSE ALARM.
The prophets of evil were not deceived; when a kind of general
impression arises in respect to an invalid that a crisis is approaching,
it almost always is justified by the event. During that very night there
was a sudden alarm; Mr. Trevor’s bell rang loudly, awakening all the
house. Lucy flew from her room, hastily gathering her dressing-gown
round her, with her light hair hanging about her shoulders, and Mrs.
Ford appeared in a night-cap, which was an indecorum she recollected
long afterward. The maids naturally, being less interested, were harder
to rouse, and it was Mr. Ford himself who issued forth in the
penetrating chill of the early morning, still quite dark and silent, not
a soul astir, and buttoning himself into his warmest overcoat, went out
in the cold to seek a doctor, who, for his part, was just as unwilling
to be roused out of his slumbers in the middle of the night. Jock,
roused by the sounds, sat up in his little bed, with wide-awake eyes,
hearing the bell still jar and tinkle, and sounds of people running
up-and down-stairs, which half frightened, half reassured him. To hear
other people moving about is always a comfort to a child, and so was the
reflection of the lamp at the gateway of the Terrace, which shone into
his room and kept it light. Jock sat up and gazed with big eyes, and
wondered, but was too much awed and alarmed by the nocturnal disturbance
to move; and, indeed, as it turned out after, there was not much need
for any one to be disturbed. Old Trevor’s explanation was that he had
woke up with a loud singing in his ears and a sense of giddiness, and he
could not articulate at first when, they rushed to his bedside, so that
everybody believed it to be a “stroke.” But when the doctor came he
declared that, though the patient’s blood was running like a river in
flood, yet there was nothing very particular the matter, and that a day
or two’s quiet would make him all right. Mrs. Ford, in her night-cap,
remained by the newly lighted fire in Mr. Trevor’s room to take care of
him, but the rest were all sent back to bed, and when the breakfast-hour
arrived the patient pronounced himself as well as ever. He got up at his
usual hour, and would not even allow that, as Mrs. Ford suggested, he
felt “shaky.”
“Not a bit shaky,” he declared, putting out one shrunken shank to show
how steadily he stood on the other; “but I thought my time was come,” he
said. “I’ll allow I thought I had reached it, after looking for it so
long. It was a queer feeling. I am just as well pleased to put it off a
bit, though it must come soon.”
“That is true,” Ford said, shaking his head; “we must all die; but the
youngest may go off before the oldest, as happens every day.”
These were the words that little Jock heard as they came into the
drawing-room, the old man leaning on the arm of the other. Where was the
youngest to go off to? He understood vaguely, and a momentary thrill ran
through his little veins. Was it he that might “go” before his father?
it was a thing which seemed to lie between the eldest and the youngest
Jock’s mind was full of the plague and all its horrible details, and the
wonder and mystery of thus going “off” chimed in with this gloomy yet
fascinating study; the recollection of the bell tinkling through the
streets, the dead-cart stopping at the door, scared yet excited him. But
there was no plague, no dead-cart, no tinkling bell at Farafield. After
awhile the impression died out of the child’s mind, but scarcely so
quickly as it did out of the mind of his old father, who already
chuckled to himself over the fright he had given the house. Mr. Trevor
did justice to the people who surrounded him.
“When it really comes they will be sorry,” he said; “but it was a
disappointment.”
He liked to think he had disappointed them; even in getting better, a
man can not but feel that his own superior sense and strength of
character have something to do with it. Another man would not have
rallied, would have been capable of dying perhaps, and cutting short all
the interest of his story; but not John Trevor, who knew better what he
was about.
The night alarm, however, soon became known over Farafield, and many
people had sufficient interest in the old man and his daughter to come
or send, and make inquiries. Among these he had one visitor who amused
and one who angered him. The first was a stranger, who sent up a card
with the name of Mr. Frank St. Clair, and a message from Mrs. Stone, who
begged to have the last news of the sufferer. “Show him up, show him
up,” old Trevor said, his keen eyes twinkling with malice and humor; but
when the large figure of the young barrister (for that was Mr. Frank St.
Clair’s profession) entered the room, the old man was impressed, in
spite of himself, by the solidity and imposing proportions of Mrs.
Stone’s nephew and candidate; there was an air of respectability about
him which compelled attention. He was handsome, but he was also serious,
and had that air of a man who has given hostages to society, which
nothing confers so surely as this tendency to a comfortable and
respectable fullness of frame. Old Trevor acknowledged to himself that
this was no young dandy, but a man, possibly, of weight of character as
well as person; his very tendency (to speak politely) to _embonpoint_
conciliated the old man. Schemers are seldom fat. Mr. Frank St. Clair
looked respectable to the tips of his well-brushed boots, and as he
looked at him, old Trevor was mollified in spite of himself.
“Yes, I gave them a fright,” he said. “I thought myself that matters
were coming to a crisis; but it was a false alarm. You may tell your
aunt that I am as well as ever, and as clear in my intellects as
ever--such intellects as I have.”
“Nobody would doubt that, I think,” said St. Clair; and indeed Mr.
Trevor flattered himself that nobody could doubt it. He was as clearly
aware of the effect upon a stranger of his own keen eyes and vivacious
wide-awake aspect as any one could be.
“There’s no telling,” said the old man; “some people think they can
take me in--which is a mistake, Mr. St. Clair--a great mistake.”
“I should think so,” said St. Clair, with easy composure. “If you will
let me, I will sit down,” he said; “if there is nothing to occupy you
for the moment, I wonder if you will let me ask your advice about a
little money I have?”
Again the malicious gleam awoke in old Trevor’s eyes, a mixture of
suspicion, admiration, and interest moved him. Every man who had money
interested him more or less; but if this was a dodge on Mrs. Stone’s
part, the move was one which might have filled any like minded artist
with admiration. He chuckled as he invited the confidence of his
visitor; yet though he thought he saw through the deceit, he respected
St. Clair all the same for having money to invest, even if it were not
his own, but lent to him for the occasion; it threw a halo of interest
round him in old Trevor’s eyes.
“So that’s the first of them,” he said to himself, when St. Clair took
his departure; “that’s number one of the pack. Women are quick about it,
they don’t let the grass grow under their feet. Rushton will keep quiet,
he won’t let his lad show in my sight. But the women are bold--they’re
always bold. And I wonder who my lady will bring forward?” The old man
laughed; he was pleased by the thought of the coming struggle. It did
not give him any concern that his young daughter should be left alone in
the midst of it, to be competed for by so many hungry aspirants. “I’d
like to be there to see the wolves at it,” he said aloud, with a grin on
his face. At the sound of the voice over his head, little Jock turned
round upon his rug. Wolves were in his way; from Red Riding-hood upward,
he knew a great deal about them; he had heard them in the forest
pursuing the travelers, and knew what the howl meant when it occurred in
a story in the midst of the black winter night. He turned right round,
with the “History of the Plague” in his arms, and faced his father,
looking upward from the rug. “What is it about wolves?” said Jock.
No question could have surprised old Trevor more; he looked round him
first in suspicion, to see where the voice came from then looked down
upon the child with a gape of wonder. “Eh! do you know anything about
wolves, my lad?” he said.
“Oh, a great deal!” said Jock, calmly; “I could tell you heaps of
stories about them; the worst of all is that one about the woman and her
children. I told it to Lucy, and she would not let me tell it out. Would
you like me to tell it to you?”
Jock spoke to his father on very much the footing of an equal. They did
not, as a rule, take much notice of each other; but the curious way in
which they pursued their lives together had given the old man and the
little boy a sort of tacit fellowship, not at all like the usual
relation between father and child. Not once in two or three months was
there any conversation between them, and this gave all the more
importance to their occasional intercourse. “There was once a woman,”
said Jock, “traveling through a wild, wild forest, and she had her three
little children with her--quite little, little things, littler than me a
great deal; when all of a sudden she heard pad, pad, something coming
behind her. It wasn’t quite night, but it was getting dark, darker and
darker every moment; and the old white horse got awfully frightened, and
the forest was miles and miles long. She knew she couldn’t come to a
village, or a house, for ever so long. And she heard them coming on
faster and faster, sniffing and panting, and all after her, hundreds and
hundreds of them; they’re like dogs, you know,” said Jock
parenthetically, looking up from the rug, where he lay on his back, with
the “History of the Plague” laid open on his breast; “they bark and they
howl, just like dogs when you hear them far off in the woods; but when
they’re after you, they go straight before them, like the wind blowing,
and never make any sound.”
“And what became of the woman and the children?” said old Trevor, partly
amused, partly impressed.
“The white horse[A] galloped on and on,” said Jock, with the instinct of
a story-teller; “and the wolves came after, pad, pad, all like one,
though there were hundreds and hundreds of them, and the woman in the
sleigh (did I tell you it was a sleigh? but I don’t know rightly myself
what a sleigh is) got wild with fright, and the three little things
cried, and the trees made a noise against the sky; and the wood got
deeper and deeper, and the night darker and darker; and then she heard
them all panting behind her, and their breath hot upon her, and every
moment she thought they would jump up behind and crunch her with their
teeth--”
[A] The poem of Ivan Ivanovitch had not been written in those days, and
perhaps it might have been above Jock’s understanding.
“Go on, child, go on,” said old Trevor. “I think I’ve heard the story;
but I don’t remember how she got out of it.”
“This is what Lucy will never listen to,” said Jock, solemnly; “she says
it can’t be true; she says there never was a woman like that. She says
she’ll beat me if I go on; but it is the real end to the story all the
same. Well, you know, the woman was wild; she didn’t know what she was
doing. Just when they were going to crunch her with their teeth in her
neck, she turned round, and she took up one of the children and flung it
out into the middle of the wolves; and the little thing gave just one
more cry (he was crying, you know, before), and the wolves caught him in
their big teeth, and tore him, one a piece here, and another a piece
there, hundreds and hundreds of them; and the old white horse galloped
on and on.
“Well, but then that was only one,” said Jock, resuming after
a pause; “when they had eaten that little thing all up, they were not
half satisfied, and they said to each other, ‘Come on,’ and two minutes
after, what should the woman hear but the whole mob of them after her
again, and the sound of them panting and their breaths on her neck. And
she took hold of another little child--”
“You needn’t tell me any more,” said the old man; “where did you get
these dreadful stories; they turn one sick.”
“She threw them all out, the first, and the second, and the third,”
cried the boy, making haste to complete his narrative, “and then she was
saved herself. Lucy never gets further than the first; but you’ve heard
the second. And she says it can’t be true; but it is true,” said Jock,
severely; “many people have told it. I’ve read another story--”
“Hold your tongue, child,” said the old man.
Which Jock did at once. He was ready to come forward, to recount his
experience, or instruct others by his large amount of miscellaneous
reading whenever it was necessary, but he did not thrust his information
upon unwilling ears. He turned round again promptly, and, laying his
book down on the white rug, supported himself on his elbows and resumed
his reading. Jock had a perfectly good conscience, and could hear any
number of parables (though he was always suspicious of them) without
turning a hair.
But old Trevor was not equally innocent; he trembled a little within
himself at that story of remorseless self-preservation. The wolves were
the image he had himself used, and when he remembered that he had looked
forward to their struggle with amusement, and indeed done his utmost to
draw them together, without much regard for the lamb who was to escape
as she could from their clutches, a momentary tremor of conscience came
over him. But it did not last long; impressions of this kind seldom do;
and when he received a second visit in the evening, this time from
Philip Rainy, who expressed much solicitude about his health, old Trevor
had ceased to feel any compunctions about the fierce competition to
which he was going to expose his child. But he was firmly determined
that the first and most natural competitor, the man who was of the
family, and had a sort of claim to everything that belonged to the name,
should not be, so to speak, in the running at all.
“I am very well,” he said, “quite well, thank you; there is nothing the
matter with me. If people say to the contrary, they’re lying, or at best
they’re fools meddling in other folks’ affairs. It’s nothing to any one
if I’m ill or well.”
“You must pardon me, uncle,” said Philip, “but it is something to me.”
The familiar grin came upon the old man’s face; but it was not
accompanied with a chuckle of not unkindly mirth, as it had been in the
case of Mrs. Stone’s nephew, in whose favor there was no such potent,
argument.
“I don’t know what it should be to you,” he said, “Mr. Philip Rainy: if
you had been waiting for my shoes I could have understood; but you’ve
got ’em, you’ve got ’em, more fool I; and if you think there is anything
more coming to you when I die, you’re mistaken, that’s all I’ve got to
say. My will’s made--and there’s no legacies in it, not one. My money
goes to them that have a right to it. There’s no fancy items to satisfy
those that have gone out of their way, or thought they’d gone out of
their way, to flatter an old man. So that it’s no good, no possible
good, to take that friendly interest in me.”
Lucy, who was sitting by when this was said, started and got up from her
knitting, and went once more behind her father, where she stood looking
pitifully at Philip, clasping her hands together, and imploring him with
her eyes not to be angry. That would have been inducement enough to bear
with the old man’s brutal incivility, if there had been nothing more. He
gave her a slight, almost imperceptible nod, reassuring her, and
answered with a calmness which did him infinite credit, and indeed cost
him a great effort.
“I am sorry you think so badly of me,” he said, “but I will not defend
myself, I am waiting for no old shoes, heaven knows. I should like to be
of use to my relations--to you or to Lucy. But if you will not let me, I
must put up with it. And I will not stay longer now, since you have so
poor an opinion of me. Good-night, I am going away; but I shall not
cease to think about you, though I do not see you. You have been very
kind to me, substantially kind,” said Philip, rising slowly with a
lingering look at the father and daughter, “I owe all that I am, and
something of what I may be, to you, and I want no more, Mr. Trevor, no
legacies, nothing but a way of showing my gratitude. If I am not to be
allowed to do this, why, I must submit. Good-night.”
There was a quaver of real feeling in the young man’s voice. It was true
enough, and if there was something more that was likewise true, the
_suppressio veri_ is in some cases a very venial fault. As for Lucy,
what with sympathy, and indignation and shame for her father’s conduct,
she was more tenderly inclined toward Philip than she had ever been in
her life. Thus opposition usually works. She cast an indignant look at
her father, and a strenuous protest in the shape of an exclamation,
“Papa!” which spoke volumes; and then in spite of his call to her to
remain she followed Philip as he went down-stairs, appealing to him
also, in a different way, with the tears in her eyes.
“You will not mind, Philip; but please don’t stop coming or quarrel
because he is cross. He is ill, that is the reason, he is not himself;
but I am sure you are too sensible to mind.”
Philip shook his head with a smile. “I fear I am not so sensible,” he
said. “I do mind; but Lucy, if you will always speak to me as kindly I
shall not mind what any one else may say,” he added, with fervor. He had
never gone so far, or felt inclined to go so far before.
Lucy was surprised by this new tone, and looked at him, not with alarm,
but with a mild astonishment. However, as it did not occur to her that
there could be any special meaning in it, she gave him her hand kindly
as usual, nay, a little more kindly, in that her father had used him so
badly.
“It does not matter very much about me,” she said, “but I am very, very
sorry papa has been so--strange. It is only because he is ill, very ill
still. They all think he is better, but I don’t think so; his hand is so
hot and trembling, and there is such a wild sort of brightness in his
eyes. I am not easy about him, but very unhappy. I wish to-night was
over,” she said, the tears falling in a little shower from her eyes.
“Lucy! let me stay; will you let me stay? He need not know that I am
here, but I could sit up down-stairs and be ready to run for the doctor,
or to do anything.”
“It is very good of you, Philip; but how would you be fit for your work
if you sat up all night? No, no, I can not let you do that. And perhaps
it will not be so bad; perhaps I am--silly,” said Lucy, with a dolorous
attempt at a smile.
“What does the doctor say?” Philip asked.
He was very sorry for her in all truth and sincerity, besides having a
sense that it would be very good for him to be thus identified with her,
and show himself as her chief comforter and support at this serious
moment of her life.
Mrs. Ford came out from her parlor as she heard the conversation
outside. She was Philip’s relation too, and she had decided that nothing
could be more suitable, if-- But like so many other good women, she could
not let well alone, and to Philip’s great vexation here came out, adding
her portly presence to the scene.
“The doctor is quite satisfied,” said Mrs. Ford, “_quite_ satisfied. He
is going on as nicely as possible; you must help me to persuade Lucy,
Philip, that she must not sit up as she is talking of doing. Why should
she sit up? I shall be there to do whatever is wanted, and to call her
if it should be necessary. At her age it is a killing thing to sit up
all night.”
“I have been begging her to let me stay and watch instead,” said Philip;
“a chair in your parlor would be all I should want, and I should be
ready to run for the doctor.”
“Oh, no, no,” Lucy said.
Mrs. Ford wavered for a moment, thinking that a young man was much more
fit for this duty than her respectable husband, but finally decided that
it was not to be thought of, remembering Mr. Trevor’s dislike to Philip;
and then the bell was heard to ring, and Lucy ran upstairs anxiously.
Mrs. Ford’s parting words, however, were very encouraging.
“Don’t you take any notice,” she said, “but come and see her, whether
you see him or not. He will go some day or other, that’s certain, in one
of these fits.”
“Poor little Lucy!” Philip said.
“Yes, it is true, it will be sad for her,” said Mrs. Ford, not half sure
of what she was saying; “but yet Lucy will have a great deal to be
thankful for, whatever happens,” she added, as she again bade him
good-night.