CHAPTER XXXVIII.
DEATH AND SICKNESS.
Alas! what was this that she beheld, and that turned every vein in her body to ice? It was death for the first time. There before her, in the small cot, lay a little still figure, with closed eyes and folded hands, a lily between them; the bed around it—yes, it was now it—already strewn with white flowers, on which the morning dew still lingered. Who strews white flowers on the living? Yes, Harry was dead! There was no look of suffering now on the little brow; he seemed as if he was sleeping; his soft fair curls fell naturally over his forehead; his long dark lashes swept his cheek. He might be asleep! But why was he so still? No breath, no gentle rising and falling disturb his tiny crossed hands, so lately full of life and mischief—and now!
With a low cry Madeline fell upon her knees beside the child, and laid her lips on his. How cold they were! But, no he could not be dead! “Harry, Harry,” she whispered. “Harry, I have come. Open your eyes, darling, for me, only one moment, and look at me, or I shall go mad!”
“So you have come,” said a voice close to her, and starting round she saw Laurence, pale and haggard from a long vigil, and stern as an avenging angel. “It was hardly worthwhile now; there is nothing to need your care any longer. Poor little child! he is gone. He wanted you; he called as long as he could articulate for his ‘mummy’—his ‘pretty, pretty mummy.’” Here his faltering voice broke, and he paused for a second, then continued in a sudden burst of indignation. “And whilst he was dying, his mother was dancing!” glancing as he spoke at her visible, and incriminating white satin shoes.
“I only got the telegram this morning at six o’clock,” returned Madeline with awful calmness. The full reality had not come home to her yet.
“You were summoned when the child was first taken ill. Yes, I know you had a great social part to play—that you dared not be absent, that you dared not tell your father that another, the holiest, nearest, dearest of claims, appealed to you,” pointing to the child. “You have sacrificed us, you have sacrificed all, to your Moloch—money. But it is not fitting that I should reproach you here; your conscience—and surely you are not totally hardened—will tell you far sadder, sterner truths than any human lips.” She stood gazing at him vacantly, holding the brass bar at the head of the bed in both hands. “It may be some poor consolation to you to know that, although your presence would have been a comfort, nothing could have saved him. From the time the change set in last evening, the doctor pronounced the case hopeless.”
Madeline still stood and looked at the speaker as if she were in a trance, and he, although he spoke with a certain sort of deliberation, and as if he was addressing one whose mind found it difficult to grasp a subject, surveyed her with a pale set face, and his eyes shone like a flame.
“There is no occasion for you to remain; I will make all arrangements. The tie between us is severed: you and I are as dead to one another as the child is to us both. We have nothing now in common but a grave.” His grief and indignation left no room for pity.
Incidents which take some time to describe, are occasionally almost instantaneous in action. It was barely five minutes since Madeline had entered the farmhouse, and become aware of her loss, and now she was looking with stony eyes upon the destruction of everything that in her inmost soul she valued. Her child had wound himself into her heart. He was dead; he had died in a stranger’s arms, neglected by his own mother. Laurence was also lost to her for ever!
“Have you nothing to say?” he asked at last, as she still remained silent and immovable.
She clutched the brass rail fiercely in her grasp; there was a desperate expression in her face. She looked like some guilty, undefended prisoner, standing at the bar of judgment.
“Have you no feeling, no words—nothing?”
Still she stared at him wildly—speechless. He scrutinized her sharply. Her lips were parched and open. There was acute suffering in her pallid face, and dazed, dilated eyes. And, before he had time to realize what was about to happen, she had fallen in a dead faint.
Mrs. Holt was hastily summoned, and she was laid upon Mrs. Holt’s spare bed, whilst burnt feathers were applied to her nostrils; her hands were violently rubbed, and every old-fashioned remedy was exhausted. The farmer’s wife could scarcely contain her resentment against this young woman, who had not deserved to be the mother of her dead darling, especially as she took notice of the diamonds still glittering in her ears, and of her white silk stockings and satin shoes. These latter items outraged her sense of propriety even more than Madeline’s absence the previous night. She lifted up one of these dainty slippers from where it had fallen on the floor, as its owner was being carried to bed, and surveyed it indignantly.
“It’s danced a good lot, this ’ere shoe! Look at the sole. Look at the satin, there; it’s frayed, and it was new last night, I’ll be bound! It’s a pretty little foot, though; but you need not fear for her, Mr. Wynne. It’s not grief as ails her as much as you think. She never was one as had much feeling—it’s just dancing! She’s been on the floor the whole night, and she is just about done.” And, tossing the miserable tell-tale shoe indignantly to one side, she added, “It’s dancing—not grief!”
When Madeline recovered consciousness, she could not at first remember where she was, but gradually the dreadful truth dawned upon her mind; yet, strange to say, she never shed one single tear.
“No; not one tear, as I live by bread,” Mrs. Holt reported truthfully. “Her face was as dry as a flint. Did ever any one know the like?” The worthy woman, who had wept copiously herself, and whose eyes and nose testified to the fact for days, did not know, had never yet seen “the grief too deep for tears.”
Madeline went—her husband having returned to town—and locked herself into the room, and sat alone with the little corpse. Her sorrow was stony-eyed and hard; her grief the worst of grief—the loss of a child. And it was edged with what gave it a searching and agonizing point—remorse. Oh, that she might have him back—half her life for half a day—to look in his eyes, to whisper in his ears! But those pretty brown eyes were closed for ever; that little waxen ear would never more listen to a human voice. Surely she was the most unhappy woman who ever walked the earth, for to her was denied the comfort of atonement! She had been weak, wicked, unnatural; she had been a neglectful mother to her poor little son. And now, that she was yearning to be all that a mother should, now that she would verily give her life for his, it was too late!
So long did she remain still and silent, so long was there no sound, not even of sobs, in that darkened room, that Mrs. Holt became alarmed; and towards sundown came authoritatively to the door with loud knocks and a cup of tea.
“A fly had arrived to take her back to the station. Mr. Wynne had ordered it, and she must come out and have a cup of tea and go. She would do no good to any one by making herself ill.”
And, by reason of her importunities, Mrs. Holt prevailed. The door was thrown back, and Mrs. Wynne came out with a face that—the farmer’s wife subsequently described—fairly frightened her. She had to stand over her and make her drink the tea, and had all the work in the world to prevail on her and coax her to go back to town. No, she would remain; she was determined to remain.
However, Mrs. Holt had a still more robust will, and gradually coaxed her guest into returning home for just that one night. Anyway, she must go and fetch her clothes. She would be coming for the funeral. Mr. Wynne had said something about Friday. She could return. Best go now.
“Yes,” answered Madeline, leaning against the doorway from pure physical weakness, and speaking in a curious, husky voice. “I am going to tell my father all, and I shall return to-morrow.”
And then she went reluctantly down the walk, looking back over and over again at a certain window with a drawn blind, still wearing her white shoes—Mrs. Holt’s were three sizes too large for her—and, still without one single tear, she got into the fly and was driven away.
When she returned to Belgrave Square—haggard, distraught, and ghastly in colour—she found that Mr. West had kept his room the whole day; that the house had returned to its normal condition, the palms and awnings were gone, and “dinner was laid in the library.” Thus she was blandly informed by the butler as she passed upstairs, the butler being far too gentlemanly a person to even hint his amazement at her appearance by look or tone.
But Miss West did not dine in the library. She went to bed, which she never left for six long weeks. Diphtheria developed itself. The drains of 365, Belgrave Square, were unjustly blamed. Miss West had got a chill the night of the dance, and it was known in society that for many, many days the charming hostess lay between life and death.
Josephine, a romantic and imaginative Gaul, had long believed that her mistress had a secret love affair. She drew her own inferences; she sympathized, and she commanded the household to keep silence respecting Miss West’s mysterious errand. The morning after the ball, when diphtheria developed, the house was rapidly emptied. Even Josephine fled, and left her lady in the hands of trained nurses. Mr. West and a few domestics stuck to their posts, the infected quarter being rigorously isolated by means of sheets dipped in disinfectant fluid.
Few of the gay guests ventured to leave cards at the house. Diphtheria is an awful scourge, and this is the age of microbes. In old times ignorance was bliss.
Many kind inquiries and anxious messages came by letter, and not a few men questioned Mr. West at his club. His daughter was such a lovely creature, so full of vitality, she enjoyed every moment of her life. Oh, it would be a thousand pities if she were to die!
Strange as it seemed, there was no more regular inquirer than Mr. Wynne. On the day when Madeline was at her worst, when three grave doctors consulted together in her boudoir, Mr. Wynne actually came to the house; and later he appeared to be continually in the club—which was more or less empty. The season was past. People were on the wing for the seaside or the moors; but Mr. Wynne still lingered on in town. Mr. West was constantly knocking up against him in the club hall or reading-room, and the more he saw of him the better he liked him. He was always so sympathetic somehow about Madeline, although he had scarcely known her, and took a sincere interest in hearing what the doctors said, and how they could not understand how or where she had caught the infection. There was not a single case of diphtheria in their neighbourhood.
And his daughter’s dangerous illness was not the little man’s only anxiety. Part of his great fortune was also in a very dangerous condition. The panic in Australia was spreading, and though he bore a stout heart and refused to sell—indeed, it was impossible to dispose of much of his stock—yet he never knew the hour or day when he might not find himself a comparatively poor man. As soon as Madeline was better and fit to move he would go to Sydney, and look after his own affairs. Meanwhile he began to retrench; he withdrew his commission for the lease of a moor, for a diamond and emerald parure; he put down all his horses but two; and he placed the Belgrave mansion on the market. The house was too large to be comfortable, and the sanitary arrangements were apparently unsafe.
As soon as the invalid was pronounced fit to move she was taken to Brighton, where, there being no risk of infection, Mr. and Miss West and suite were comfortably established in one of the best hotels, and at first the invalid made tolerable progress towards recovery. By the 1st of September she was permitted to go out in a bath-chair, or even to take a short drive daily. All who saw her agreed that her illness had told upon her most terribly. Her colour had departed, her eyes and cheeks were hollow; her beauty was indeed a faded flower—a thing of the past!