The Family at Misrule/Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII.
AMARANTH OR ASPHODEL?
"Falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar stairs,
That slope through darkness up to God."
ALL the way she never stopped once,—it was nearly a mile. Her heart was in her throat, her breath coming in great choking pants; her knees were trembling as she stumbled up against the old Misrule gate, and clung to it blind and giddy for a moment.
There was a step on the footpath—it stopped at the gate. Some one came and peered at her and uttered a cry of surprise.
"Why, Nellie!"
"How—is—she?"
She gasped the words, swayed, and recovered herself.
"I'm just going in again," Alan said. He slipped his arm round her and steadied her—"I told you not to come again, Nellie."
[Illustration: " 'OH, LET ME COME!' SHE IMPLORED."]
"I couldn't help it."
He saw she couldn't, and did not scold her.
"But what am I to do with you?" he said in dismay.
He was anxious to get in, and now here was this poor, trembling, wild-eyed girl on his hands.
"Oh, let me come!" she implored. There was a sob rising in her throat.
Then he did scold her a little. Surely she was not going to trouble them on this terrible night? Meg was all courage, and quite calm, and so relieved to know the children were being well looked after,—she must not fail them all now at the crisis.
The sob was strangled instantly.
"I'll stay," she said,—"only—oh, Alan, come out and tell me soon!"
He promised he would. He drew her just within the gate and wrapped his overcoat round her, for she was jacketless, of course.
"I trust you not to come past the hedge," he said. "See, stand here, and I can find you easily. There now, dear, I must go."
"A minute—is she in—real danger, Alan? Is she going to die?"
Oh the wide, beseeching eyes, full of moonlight and misery!
He had never told a lie in his life,—never even charged one to his medical conscience; but his arm clasped her more strongly, more tenderly.
"She is in danger," he said quietly. "We are afraid she cannot live; but there is always hope, and the next hour will decide."
She pushed him forward.
"Go!" she said, "go!" and he kissed her forehead and went.
She paced up and down by the low pittosporum hedge that divided the garden from the shrubbery next the fence, and she held her hands so tightly together, that she felt the pain as far as her elbows.
It was full moon to-night.
She remembered when it had been new,—a little, friendly, pretty crescent. They had sat out on the verandah—four or five of them—watching it rise, and Alan had said it
"Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf."
But Pip said he thought that man saw things straighter who found "the curled moon more like a bitten biscuit thrown out of a top-story window in a high wind." Meg culled from "Endymion." "The beautiful thing," she said,
"'Only stooped to tie
Her silver sandals, ere deliciously
She bowed into the heavens her timid head."
And Bunty said, "What rot!"
How happy and light-hearted they had been then! Oh the strange and sad and oh the glad things that happen in this world between the crescent moon and the full!
Such a white cold moon it was, so far away, so wondrously large and calm. It suggested the immeasurable vastness of the universe, the infinitesimal smallness of herself. Her heart sickened and died within her,—what use was it for her to pray and weep and beat her hands to such a far-off sky? What madness to suppose the great high awful God beyond it would put forth His saving hand just because one small insignificant creature down on earth prayed to Him! Such a faultful creature too; all her life through she could not remember one really good thing she had done, nothing but wrong-doings, littlenesses, and selfishness came to her mind. She looked away from the sky and scornful moon, she went to and fro with her eyes on the white ground.
"Of course it's no use," she muttered, and held her hands together more tightly.
A buggy stopped at the gate. The old doctor got out; he told the coachman not to drive in, but to wait there.
Two people passing up the road saw him, and crossed over.
"How's the little girl?" they said.
And "Very bad, poor baby," was his answer. "I ought to have been here before, but have been at a deathbed."
"Whose?" they asked, in the lowered tones death claims.
"Mrs. Fitzroy-Browne," he said, and hurried away up to the house.
Nellie went back to the low hedge. From there she could just see the palely-lighted window upstairs, and the large shadows on the blind. She saw Meg move across to the corner where the bed stood, then the nurse's cap was outlined, Alan's head and shoulders, the doctor's.
More and more icy grew the hand at her heart, whiter and whiter shone the moon, longer and longer every minute took to pass. A sudden gust of wind blew over the pampas clumps full into her face, and the air was still again. Perhaps with that very wind Essie had left them.
She fell on her knees with wide, outstretched arms, and dropped her face on the low hedge. The twigs and leaves scratched and pricked her, the ground made her knees ache, the night air was freezing her; but that was happiness. The sky she dare not look at; but she was compelled to pray again, just to say God, God, God! and shiver and writhe and bite her lips. There was no help for her on earth, and she must shriek to God even though He heard not.
Suddenly the moonlight faded, the garden, the silent house, the pale lights.
She was at the top of a hill, and at the foot was the reddest sunset the world had ever seen. She was a little child again, flying from the bark hut and awful gathering shadows to the fence that skirted the road along which help would come. She was a child flinging herself on the ground, face downward, and crying, "Make her better, God!—God, make her better,—oh, can't you make her better!"
But Judy had died. He had not listened to her then, He would not listen now.
She lifted a face of agony and looked at the sky again. It had grown softer, a grey more tender, and deepened with blue; the moon hung lower, a yellow warmth had crept into it.
Her tears gushed out again, and poured in hot streams down her face.
"Dear God!" she whispered,—"oh, my dear, great God, I will be so good—only let her live, just let her live—such a little thing, God, such a little baby thing,—oh, you wouldn't take her from us, my great God—I will give you all my life, God! I will be good always, I will go to church always, and do everything you want me to, only don't take her away, God! Please, Jesus, ask Him,—dear, sweet Jesus, don't let Him take her; oh, my sweet, kind Christ, let her stay here!"
Her face fell into the hedge once more, and her lips babbled the wild, pitiful, bargaining prayer that only One could understand.
It seemed hours that she knelt there, praying, sobbing, and shivering, before Alan came as he had promised.
She heard his step coming down the path, and she struggled to her feet and forced herself forward.
But he was going past her,—had he forgotten her?
No, she knew; the child was dead, and he could not tell her.
He had passed the hedge and was going on to the gate; she stumbled along after him, but he did not seem to hear her.
"Alan!" she said, as he pulled the chain aside to go out. Her voice sounded hollow and far away.
He stopped, but did not look at her.
"I—know," she said.
He nodded.
"Dead—dead—dead!" she said.
But he spoke then.
"Essie is better," he said; "she will live now."
She caught at the palings; all the world was moving about her, the sky, the ground beneath her feet.
"Better," she told herself—"better, better—can't you hear?"
Then she noticed Alan's face. It was deathly white, his lips were trembling and twitching, his eyes were wild.
"What?" she whispered.
"Meg has got it," he said with a great sob in his voice; and he brushed past her and went away.