THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
After this it may perhaps be surprising to hear that Lucy did nothing to
carry out that great trust with which she had been charged. She had
felt, and did feel at intervals, for a long time afterwards, as if God
Himself had warned her what might come upon her if she neglected her
duty. But if you will reflect how very difficult that duty was, and how
far she was from any opportunity of being able to discharge it! In early
days, when she was fresh from her father's teaching, and deeply
impressed with the instant necessity of carrying it out, Providence
itself had sent the Russell family, poor and helpless people, who had
not the faculty of getting on by themselves, into her way, and Lucy had
promptly, or at least as promptly as indignant guardians would permit,
provided for them in the modest way which was all her ideas reached to
at the time. But around the Hall there was nobody to whom the same
summary process could be applied. The people about were either working
people, whom it is always easy to help, or well-off people, who had no
wants which Lucy could supply. And this continued to be so even after
her fright and determination to return to the work that had been
allotted to her. No doubt, could she have come down to the hearts and
lives of the neighbours who visited Lady Randolph on the externally
equal footing which society pretends to allot to all gentlefolks, she
would have found several of them who would have been glad to free her
from her money; but then she could not see into their hearts. She did
not know what a difficult thing it was for Mr. Routledge of Newby to pay
the debts of his son when he had left college, or how hardly hit was
young Archer of Fordham in the matter of the last joint-stock bank that
stopped payment. If they had not all been so determined to hold up their
heads with the best, and keep up appearances, Lucy might have managed
somehow to transfer to them a little of the money which she wanted to
get rid of, and of which they stood so much in need. But this was not to
be thought of; and when she cast her eyes around her it was with a
certain despair that Lucy saw no outlet whatever for those bounties
which it had seemed to her heaven itself was concerned about, and had
warned her not to neglect. Many an anxious thought occupied her mind on
this subject. She thought of calling her cousin Philip Rainy, who was
established and thriving at Farafield, and whose fortune had been
founded upon her liberality, to her counsels. But if Sir Tom had
disliked the confidences between her and her brother, what would he
think of Philip Rainy as her adviser? Then Lucy in her perplexity turned
again to the thought of Jock. Jock had a great deal more sense in him
than anybody knew. He had been the wisest child, respected by everybody;
and now he was almost a man, and had learned, as he said, a great deal
at school. She thought wistfully of the poor curate of whom Jock had
told her. Very likely that poor clergyman would do very well for what
Lucy wanted. Surely there could be no better use for money than to endow
such a man, with a whole family growing up, all the better for it, and a
son on the foundation! And then she remembered that Jock had entreated
her to do nothing till he came. Thus the time went on, and her
passionate resolution, her sense that heaven itself was calling upon
her, menacing her with judgment even, seemed to come to nothing--not out
of forgetfulness or sloth, or want of will--but because she saw no way
open before her, and could not tell what to do. And after that miserable
night when Ellen Bailey's baby died, and death seemed to enter in, as
novel and terrible as if he had never been known before, for the first
time into Lucy's Paradise, she had never said anything to Sir Tom. Day
after day she had meant to do it, to throw herself upon his guidance, to
appeal to him to help her; but day after day she had put it off,
shrinking from the possible contest of which some instinct warned her.
She knew, without knowing how, that in this he would not stand by her.
Impossible to have been kinder in that crisis, more tender, more
indulgent, even more understanding than her husband was; but she felt
instinctively the limits of his sympathy. He would not go that length.
When she got to that point he would change. But she could not have him
change; she could not anticipate the idea of a cloud upon his face, or
any shadow between them. And then Lucy made up her mind that she would
wait for Jock, and that he and she together, when there were two to talk
it over, would make out a way.
All was going on well again, the grass above little Willie's grave was
green, his mother consoled and smiling as before, and at the Hall the
idea of the Christmas party had been resumed, and the invitations,
indeed, were sent off, when one morning the visitor whom Lucy had
anticipated with such dread came out of the village, where infantile
diseases always lingered, and entered the carefully-kept nursery. Little
Tom awoke crying and fretful, hot with fever, his poor little eyes heavy
with acrid tears. His mother had not been among the huts where poor men
lie for nought, and she saw at a glance what it was. Well! not anything
so very dreadful--measles, which almost all children have. There was no
reason in the world why she should be alarmed. She acknowledged as much,
with a tremor that went to her heart. There were no bad symptoms. The
baby was no more ill than it was necessary he should be. "He was having
them beautiful," the nurse said, and Lucy scarcely allowed even her
husband to see the deep, harrowing dread that was in her. By and by,
however, this dread was justified; she had been very anxious about all
the little patients in the village that they should not catch cold,
which in the careless ignorance of their attendants, and in the limited
accommodation of the cottages, was so usual, so likely, almost
inevitable. A door would be left open, a sudden blast of cold would come
upon the little sufferer; how could any one help it? Lucy had given the
poor women no peace on this subject. She had "worrited them out o' their
lives." And now, wonder above all finding out, it was in little Tom's
luxurious nursery, where everything was arranged for his safety, where
one careful nurse succeeded another by night and by day, and Lady
Randolph herself was never absent for an hour, where the ventilation was
anxiously watched and regulated, and no incautious intruder ever
entered--it was there that the evil came. When the child had shaken off
his little complaint and all was going well, he took cold, and in a few
hours more his little lungs were labouring heavily, and the fever of
inflammation consuming his strength. Little Tom, the heir, the only
child! A cloud fell over the house; from Sir Tom himself to the lowest
servant, all became partakers, unawares, of Lucy's dumb terror. It was
because the little life was so important, because so much hung upon it,
that everybody jumped to the conclusion that the worst issue might be
looked for. Humanity has an instinctive, heathenish feeling that God
will take advantage of all the special circumstances that aggravate a
blow.
Lucy, for her part, received the stroke into her very soul. She was
outwardly more calm than when her heart had first been roused to terror
by the death of the little child in the village. That which she had
dreaded was come, and all her powers were collected to support her. The
moment had arrived--the time of trial--and she would not fail. Her hand
was steady and her head clear, as is the case with finer natures when
confronted with deadly danger. This simple girl suddenly became like one
of the women of tragedy, fighting, still and strong, with a desperation
beyond all symbols--the fight with death. But Sir Tom took it
differently. A woman can nurse her child, can do something for him; but
a man is helpless. At first he got rid of his anxieties by putting a
cheerful face upon the matter, and denying the possibility of danger.
"The measles! every child had the measles. If no fuss was made the
little chap," he declared, "would soon be all right. It was always a
mistake to exaggerate." But when there could no longer be any doubt on
the subject, a curious struggle took place in Sir Tom's mind. That
baby--die? That crowing, babbling creature pass away into the solemnity
of death! It had not seemed possible, and when he tried to get it into
his mind his brain whirled. Wonder for the moment seemed to silence even
the possibility of grief. He had himself gone through labours and
adventures that would have killed a dozen men, and had never been
conscious even of alarm about himself; and the idea of a life quenched
in its beginning by so accidental a matter as a draught in a nursery
seemed to him something incomprehensible. When he had heard of a child's
death he had been used to say that the mother would feel it, no doubt,
poor thing; but it was a small event, that scarcely counted in human
history to Sir Tom. When, however, his own boy was threatened, after the
first incredulity, Sir Tom felt a pang of anger and wretchedness which
he could not understand. It was not that the family misfortune of the
loss of the heir overwhelmed him, for it was very improbable that poor
little Tom would be his only child; it was a more intimate and personal
sensation. A sort of terrified rage came over him which he dared not
express; for if indeed his child was to be taken from him, who was it
but God that would do this? and he did not venture to turn his rage to
that quarter. And then a confusion of miserable feelings rose within
him. One night he did not go to bed. It was impossible in the midst of
the anxiety that filled the house, he said to himself. He spent the
weary hours in going softly up and down stairs, now listening at the
door of the nursery and waiting for his wife, who came out now and then
to bring him a bulletin, now dozing drearily in his library downstairs.
When the first gleams of the dawn stole in at the window he went out
upon the terrace in the misty chill morning, all damp and miserable,
with the trees standing about like ghosts. There was a dripping thaw
after a frost, and the air was raw and the prospect dismal; but even
that was less wretched than the glimmer of the shaded lights, the
muffled whispering and stealthy footsteps indoors. He took a few turns
up and down the terrace, trying to reason himself out of this misery.
How was it, after all, that the little figure of this infant should
overshadow earth and heaven to a man, a reasonable being, whose mind and
life were full of interests far more important? Love, yes! but love must
have some foundation. The feeling which clung so strongly to a child
with no power of returning it, and no personal qualities to excite it,
must be mere instinct not much above that of the animals. He would not
say this before Lucy, but there could be no doubt it was the truth. He
shook himself up mentally, and recalled himself to what he attempted to
represent as the true aspect of affairs. He was a man who had obtained
most things that this world can give. He had sounded life to its depths
(as he thought), and tasted both the bitter and the sweet; and after
having indulged in all these varied experiences it had been given to
him, as it is not given to many men, to come back from all wanderings
and secure the satisfactions of mature life, wealth, and social
importance, and the power of acting in the largest imperial concerns.
Round about him everything was his; the noble woods that swept away into
the mist on every side; the fields and farms which began to appear in
the misty paleness of the morning through the openings in the trees. And
if he had not by his side such a companion as he had once dreamed of,
the beautiful, high-minded ideal woman of romance, yet he had got one
of the best of gentle souls to tread the path of life along with him,
and sympathise even when she did not understand. For a man who had not
perhaps deserved very much, how unusual was this happiness. And was it
possible that all these things should be obscured, cast into the shade,
by so small a matter as the sickness of a child? What had the baby ever
done to make itself of so much importance? Nothing. It did not even
understand the love it excited, and was incapable of making any
response. Its very life was little more than a mechanical life. The
woman who fed it was far more to it than its father, and there was
nothing excellent or noble in the world to which it would not prefer a
glittering tinsel or a hideous doll. If the little thing had grown up,
indeed, if it had developed human tastes and sympathies, and become a
companion, an intelligence, a creature with affections and
thoughts,--but that the whole house should thus be overwhelmed with
miserable anxiety and pain because of a being in the embryo state of
existence, who could neither respond nor understand, what a strange
thing it was! No doubt this instinct had been implanted in order to
preserve the germ and keep the race going; but that it should thus
develop into an absorbing passion and overshadow everything else in life
was a proof how the natural gets exaggerated, and, if we do not take
care, changes its character altogether, mastering us instead of being
kept in its fit place, and in check, as it ought to be by sense and
reason. From time to time, as Sir Tom made these reflections, there
would flit across his mind, as across a mirror, something which was not
thought, which was like a picture momentarily presented before him. One
of the most persistent of these, which flashed out and in upon his
senses like a view in a magic lantern, was of that moment in the midst
of the flurry of the election when little Tom, held up in his mother's
arms, had clapped his baby hands for his father. This for a second would
confound all his thoughts, and give his heart a pang as if some one had
seized and pressed it with an iron grasp; but the next moment he would
pick up the thread of his reflections again, and go on with them. That,
too, was merely mechanical, like all the little chap's existence up to
this point. Poor little chap! here Sir Tom stopped in his course of
thought, impeded by a weight at his heart which he could not shake off;
nor could he see the blurred and vague landscape round him--something
more blinding even than the fog had got into his eyes.
Then Sir Tom started and his heart sprang up to his throat beating
loudly. It was not anything of much importance, it was only the opening
of the window by which he himself had come out upon the terrace. He
turned round quickly, too anxious even to ask a question. If it had been
a king's messenger bringing him news that affected the whole kingdom, he
would have turned away with an impatient "Pshaw!" or struck the intruder
out of his way. But it was his wife, wrapped in a dressing-gown, pale
with watching, her hair pushed back upon her forehead, her eyes
unnaturally bright. "How is he?" cried Sir Tom, as if the question was
one of life or death.
Lucy told him, catching at his arm to support herself, that she thought
there was a little improvement. "I have been thinking so for the last
hour, not daring to think it, and yet I felt sure; and now nurse says so
too. His breathing is easier. I have been on thorns to come and tell
you, but I would not till I was quite sure."
"Thank God! God be praised!" said Sir Tom. He did not pretend to be a
religious man on ordinary occasions, but at the present moment he had no
time to think, and spoke from the bottom of his heart. He supported his
little wife tenderly on one arm, and put back the disordered hair on her
forehead. "Now you will go and take a little rest, my darling," he said.
"Not yet, not till the doctor comes. But you want it as much as I."
"No; I had a long sleep on the sofa. We are all making fools of
ourselves, Lucy. The poor little chap will be all right. We are queer
creatures. To think that you and I should make ourselves so miserable
over a little thing like that, that knows nothing about it, that has no
feelings, that does not care a button for you and me."
"Tom, what are you talking of? Not of my boy, surely--not my boy!"
"Hush, my sweet. Well," said Sir Tom, with a tremulous laugh, "what is
it but a little polypus after all? that can do nothing but eat and
sleep, and crow perhaps--and clap its little fat hands," he said, with
the tears somehow getting into his voice, and mingling with the
laughter. "I allow that I am confusing my metaphors."
At this moment the window opening upon the terrace jarred again, and
another figure in a dressing-gown, dark and ghost-like, appeared
beckoning to Lucy, "My lady! my lady!"
Lucy let go her husband's arm, thrust him away from her with passion,
gave him one wild look of reproach, and flew noiselessly like a spirit
after the nurse to her child. Sir Tom, with his laugh still wavering
about his mouth, half hysterically, though he was no weakling, tottered
along the terrace to the open window, and stood there leaning against
it, scarcely breathing, the light gone out of his eyes, his whole soul
suspended, and every part of his strong body, waiting for what another
moment might bring to pass.