Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Harvest/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field."
We are out in the orchard, Wattie and I, among the unripe apples, that are day by day taking new shades of glossy redness on their fat green sides, and announcing to all whom it may concern that after their beautiful youth of pearly blossom, and the long interval of unlovely brownness and uselessness, they are now rapidly nearing the respectability and accomplished work of fruition. They need not be in such a hurry to ripen; they are better off swinging up there on the bough than chopped into small pieces by the cook's knife, or lost to sight through the agency of my young brothers' vigorous teeth and appetites. We have been pelting each other with them, Paul's little son and I, and now he has fallen fast asleep in my arms, and is far away in the unhaunted dreamland of childhood. Nothing, surely, can be fairer than a very handsome child asleep, and Wattie's face might well linger in the memory of any one who saw him at this moment—people, even, who did not see a resemblance, in every lovely curve and haughty trick of feature, to a stern, proud-faced man, whom no one would ever call comely now, who lost his beauty when he lost all the pleasantnesses of his life, many years ago.
It is four weeks since he went away, four weeks since he took my hand in his, and I left it there because I knew that henceforward I was going to make it my care that I should never see his face again. . . . As our eyes met, how the passion and misery leapt straight from his heart to the brown depths; how I trembled, recognizing clearly enough that George had not warned me too soon, or too urgently. . . . He never said a word beyond good-bye, nor did I—people were all about us—but I saw wild words trembling on his lips, words that I thank Heaven he never spoke to me nor I listened to.
Silvia came and wished me good-bye; false to the last, she put her hand in mine (he had not touched it then), and wished me well. And I held my peace and said nothing. I let her think I had never suspected all her vile plots, for if I had spoken the words that lay at my heart, how should I have been able to see Wattie, whom, like any other fashionable, heartless mother, she was leaving to the care of servants? She bade her people bring him to me whenever I liked to have him, and he has come nearly every day. Mr. and Mrs. Vasher went away together, but she was going on some visits, to return here in September, while he was to join the Tempests and papa, later, in Argyllshire; he is with them now, I suppose, as the twelfth is already past. (When he comes back in September I shall be gone to Alice, and it will be a long, long while before I come back again.)
And while our sportsmen are shooting away so contentedly at the grouse, with no other object than to prove themselves good shots, and make a good meal off the poor birds, other men are shooting, hacking, and hewing at each other like madmen, watering the fair lands of France with blood, until they reek, sowing the meadows and valleys with dead bodies thick as the grain of the sower in spring-time. . . . For the greed and pride of two men, for the errors in diplomacy of a few more, the land is made one hideous gaping sepulchre, that opens wide its scarlet mouth, and sends its murdered cry of tens of thousands up before God. . . . How the brain reels and the heart sickens as one reads, day by day, of the success of the infernal weapons forged by man to dash out all semblance of humanity in that which God created in his own image. Is not life sweet to those poor fellows who have to lay it down because one crowned head covets his neighbour's vineyard? Oh! a million desolate wives and mothers, weeping for the husbands and sons who will come back to them never any more, could tell us somewhat of the value to them of those mangled, crushed, mutilated bodies that are set down in the returns under the laconic heading of "losses." The day's paper is by my side, but I do not read it, its accounts turn me sick; the "special correspondent seems to relish his horrors as he writes them down. I used to read his tale of carnage, carnage, carnage! every day, until it rang in my ears like a bell, and my rest was full of blood and slaughter. . . . I never lay me down to rest or enjoy the merest common pleasure, without thinking of these poor Frenchmen fighting this losing game against terrible odds in the burning sun without discipline, proper food, or able directors. I do not know whether the Emperor of France or the King of Prussia is in the wrong; I never did understand anything about politics, and never shall; but I take the side of the French, for a woman's reason, that they are weakest. Thank Heaven, no brother or friend of mine is in the midst of the fighting. I should make so very sure that he would never come back; for to one mother or sister to whom a man will return, will there not be ninety-nine bereft?
God help you! poor mothers, and grant that your agony of waiting be a short one; better far to know that your son is numbered with the dead than be alternating in the intolerable agony of doubts and fears.
Although every tongue in even this remote Silverbridge wags from morning till night of the news of "the war," an enemy, no less fatal to some than the deadly bullets flying in such abundance yonder in la belle France, has crept in upon us and set his mark, first on one, then on another, and drawn them away out of our sight into that straight and narrow bondage that waits for us all, king or pedlar, queen or kitchenmaid, sooner or later. His name is Death, but he comes, not peacefully and naturally, but with a fiery burning breath—with a strong clutch at the throat, and a close, hot grasp, under which his victims burn and faint and wither . . . and his other name is Fever. Since mother and Dolly and little Daisy went away a fortnight ago, four little children, two young girls, and one house-mother have died, so quickly, so mysteriously, that lo! they seemed to be here one moment and gone the next. Mother had no idea that fever was in the village when she went, or she would be in fear about the children, and I have not written to tell her—she so seldom has a holiday, and she would come straight back. Nurse says these things are not to be run away from, and that the boys will do better to stay where they are; and Silverbridge village is more than a mile away, so we are not in the midst of the danger. A terrible pang seizes me as I look down on Wattie's unconscious face, and think that even now the phantom hand may be creeping out of the darkness into the light to touch him, my angel of consolation, who is the one pure and perfect thing my life contains. I lay my hand on his head: it is cool; on his cheek, on which lies the exquisite tint that his mother used to wear (that she has lost so completely lately, whether from pain of mind or body I cannot tell), and that is cool and fresh too.
This child, with his bold, beautiful looks, with his father's eyes and his own winning, lovable ways, is the delight of my days; he is himself and my lost lover in one. It is Paul who looks at me out of the splendid, wilful brown eyes; Paul who lurks in the haughty curves of the little mouth, and smiles at me with all the old resistless magic from these baby lips; and to these he adds his fresh, unsoiled young heart and words, his eager, quick love and childlike trust; and over all is the innocence that only those who have loved very young children can tell of.
I take out my watch—six o'clock, and the nurse ought to have fetched Wattie at five, he should be in bed by now; she is both tiresome and stupid. I am wondering what can have become of her, when Simpkins, that ancient man, appears upon the scene, and his eye betokens trouble.
"What is the matter ?" I ask quickly.
"It's Symonds, Miss Nell; she is down with the fever. She had scarcely got back to The Towers when she fell ill, and—it's a very bad case, the doctor says."
Symonds! Wattie's nurse—the woman in whose charge he has been up to the time she was seized with the fever! Oh, Wattie! Wattie! if my heart could break, I think it would break now, as I listen to Simpkins' words.
"Do you think he looks feverish," I cry, in a sharp voice that does not sound like my own; "do you know how people look when they are going to have the fever?"
"Indeed, Miss Nell, I cannot tell you," he says, sadly. "Their throats just get sore, and their faces flushed, and then God takes them—at least, that was how the other poor souls went in the village."
"Be silent!" cry, harshly. "Do you want to drive me mad?"
I stoop over my darling's face, and my eyes grow to it. Is it here already—does it lurk under this beautiful guise, that deadly, deadly fever?
"You'll not be sending him back to The Towers, Miss Nell?" asks Simpkins, with some hesitation; "it wouldn't be safe—but there are the young gentlemen here to be thought of."
I put my hand to my head in thought.
"He cannot go back there," I say aloud, "so he must stay here. Could he not be put somewhere, a long way from the rest, in case there is any infection?"
(Oh, my darling, my darling, that already it should come to if!)
"There's the room adjoining the school-room as was fitted up as a bedroom for Master Jack last year, when he sprained his ankle," says Simpkins, thoughtfully. "That's a long way from the nurseries, and down a passage; don't you think that might do, Miss Nell?"
"Yes, that will do," I say, feverishly. "Go and have it prepared at once, and ask nurse to have the bed made up instantly; I will come in when all is ready. Oh, Wattie, Wattie!" I say, with a shuddering, long-drawn sob, as Simpkins goes away, "could I bear to lose you, my flower, my angel?"
But his face gives me no answer. The black lashes lie heavy and shadowy on the smooth, fair cheeks: he looks as healthy and strong and vigorous as ever he did in his life before, but somehow, somehow, I seem to see the outstretched hand waiting to touch him. . . . In my agony I clasp him so tightly that he awakes, and opens sleepy, misty eyes that, when they fall on me, smile in concert with his lips. He stretches himself, and kisses me with a child's spontaneous, unasked-for caress, than which nothing more precious can be found on the whole earth, for it can neither be bought, or forced, or stolen.
I was always jealous about the people I loved; I never cared to be liked by people who liked everybody else as well as me—I like to be the only one beloved. It is the most exquisite of flattery to be preferred by one who affords his favours to few; and the fact that Wattie has never been known to volunteer an embrace to any living person save me enhances its value a thousand-fold.
His hand is cool enough as I take it in mine, and we go back through the long shadows to the house. He is backward with his talk yet; but he has a language of his own that I understand, and we talk the funniest shibboleth as we go along.
The house seems very cool and quiet after the outside world, and Wattie is somewhat awed, and takes a firmer clutch at my hand as we go down the long stone passage, on whose matting so many vigorous pairs of feet have stamped up and down in their day, and reach the school-room.
It is a battered old place enough; walls, books, floor, and chairs are the one as disreputable as the other. A little passage runs out of this room into another of the same size, formerly a place of resort for old books, lumber, and sulky or ill-used people; now it is bare and primitive enough, with its four-poster, scanty chairs, plain toilette table, and dingy washstand. The windows, opening to the ground like those of the school-room, and looking out over the court, are open.
The bed is made, and I proceed to undress Wattie, who is evidently much struck by the novelty of everything. He is not afraid though, and he does not cry; he is too brave a boy for that. I am wondering perplexedly what I can put on him in the shape of a nightgown, when nurse comes in with one of Daisy's old night garments for him.
"Eh! Miss Nell," she says, after her old fashion, "and are you going to get yourself into more trouble? The bairn ought to be with his mother."
"Only he is not, you see," I say, tying the strings of Wattie's night-gear. "Nurse, have you heard about Symonds?"
"I have, Miss Nell, and I fear me the poor wean has run a terrible risk."
"Hush!" I cry sharply, just as I bade Simpkins hold his peace. "It is never possible to tell, nurse; you said so yourself the other day. You know it passes over one person to take another, and it is impossible to tell."
"Eh!" she says again, doubtfully; and I could beat her that she will speak to me no word of comfort.
Wattie is ready for bed, but Wattie will not go. He has escaped from me and is dancing to and fro on the carpet, where the sunbeams are playing at hide and seek; his little pink and white toes are like rose leaves flying hither and thither; the boughs without throw their shadows on his eager, delighted, wilful face. Oh, Wattie! through all the years to come shall I ever get you out of my head, as you patter to and fro to-night, a laughing, beautiful little hovering shape in white? Not until the sun in dying has withdrawn his errant sons and daughters does Wattie tire of his play; then I catch him up in my arms, and we roll over and over together on the bed, he shouting with laughter. Then, when he is quieter, to my surprise he scrambles on to my lap, and kneels there; laying his tiny dimpled hands palm to palm, and shutting his eyes tight, he makes his evening prayer, something after this fashion: "Peese Dawd—peese Dawd bess pap-a, mem-a, Lallie; make 'Otty vay dood boy, T'ist's 'ake. Yaymen." Then, being between the sheets, he pulls my head down on the pillow beside him, clasps his arms round my neck, and in another minute is sound asleep with doubled-up fists. After a while I leave him and go to nurse, for there is much to think of and settle. If any other case of fever happens near us, she is to go away with the boys (who are at school all day in Pimpernel); if Wattie (my lips blanche as they utter the possibility) is already infected, she is to go away all the more. She says she shall take me too, but I laugh in her face; it is so likely that I shall leave him here with hirelings to wait upon him.
"And it will be a pleasant little surprise for your mamma to come home and find you dead and buried, Miss Nell," says nurse, in grim conclusion.
"Only wretched people never catch fevers or die of anything but hard old age," I say. "It is the happy ones, who have so much to leave behind, who go."
I sit by Wattie's side far into the night; but his skin is still cool and fresh, he sleeps calmly, and seems to know no uneasiness; and at last I undress and lie down beside him. I awake suddenly, when the light of the moon is still shining in, broad and clear, tracing silver patterns on the carpet and the wall, and bend my head down to look into my darling's face. What if he have sickened while I lay senselessly, dully asleep? But he looks just as he did when I saw his face last, and I go to sleep again with my arms round him. Wattie went to bed with the sunbeams; he wakes with the sunlight, and oh! the happiness that fills my heart as he runs about, active and bright, getting into every bit of mischief, bless him! that the place contains. I wash him, dress him, feed him with the bread and milk nurse brings at seven o'clock; then I dress myself, and we go out together into the glorious morning, among the sparkling dewdrops and early radiance that seem to have no knowledge or thought of disease, pain, and death. And all through the day we are so happy together, he and I. No fits of passion or sulkiness ever deform the character of Paul's little son; he is as spirited as he is gentle, led by a word, turned to iron by an injustice, as his father ever was.
"Symonds is very ill," say the accounts gleaned from a distance. Can it be possible, I ask, trembling, that a woman so thoroughly infected with the fever could avoid giving it to the child she was always with? But the day wears on to eventide, and the roses do not burn too brightly in his cheeks, his steps know no flagging, and he goes to bed as he went last night, against his will.
It must be the very early morning, just when the moonlight has gone and the greyness of the dawn has not yet appeared, that I am awakened by a hoarse little voice asking for "water." It is one of the few words that I have been able to teach Wattie's baby-lips to utter. I do not move for a moment; I am like a dead creature who has been slain by one lightning blow from a two-edged sword—I know what the cry means. . . . I know that Death has called my angel away from me. . . .
Then I rise stiffly, and bring water, which already, already it hurts him to swallow. I lay the little head back upon the pillow, I do not kiss him or speak to him; I fall down on my knees by his side. Wattie! . . . Wattie! . . . God has taken all else on earth from me, and now he is beckoning you . . . my darling! . . . my darling! . . .
Half an hour later and a man has returned from Pimpernel with the doctor; an hour and he is gone again. He can do no more for the only son of Paul Vasher than the son of a cottager; a few days, or hours even, will determine the issue.
"It is in God's hands," say the servants, as they move to and fro, and the words sound to me in my agony like direst mockery. If it be in His hands, why need He have stricken my flower, my treasure, my ewe-lamb? Somebody takes away the telegrams that I send to the father and mother—though why should they come here? They never spoke to my darling in life, why should they come to look on him now he is going away? He is mine now, mine; he wants no one else. And I send the servants and every one away out of the room (I believe they think I am mad), and with the simple remedies they have left for him I take him in my arms and hang over him, hour after hour, watching every change in his face, every throb of his pulses . . . and his beautiful dumb eyes seek mine piteously in his new unknown misery . . . he cannot understand it . . . he never suffered any pain or oppression before . . . he seems puzzled and afraid, and if I leave him for a moment he calls after me, "Lallie! Lallie!" not with the old merry voice, but in a sharp, altered note, that makes my heart stand still.
The doctor comes and goes; he spends half his time fighting with the grim enemy over this little, resisting frame. A nurse takes up her station in the room, but she never touches him; he takes everything alike from my hand. He has still some hopes of the child, the doctor says, and calls in a greater man than he, and the two consult together; but, oh! I know that Wattie has been called, that he is going—I knew it from the very first. . . If no one had cared whether he lived or died, he would have lived; as he is more to me than life itself, he is going fast. His sweet broken babble grows fainter and weaker, then dies altogether. The doctors look down on him in silence. Not all their cunning can breathe life into this beautiful little body—only the Great Physician can do that, and he is drawing hourly nearer; every minute sees a fresh change on the face of my boy.
They go away, these men, saying they will come back presently; they need not come, for they will be wanted by Wattie never any more.
He has always known me right through: he knows me now, and smiles at me with his parched, dried lips, as I give him some cooling drink; he shall be troubled with no more medicine, no more, little Wattie . . . you had little enough of it in your short three-year-old young life. He has never been fretful or wilful, or complaining in this illness as other children are; if he had only shown some of his old masterful little ways, I should not feel so sure . . . but he just lies on my knees, fading away before my eyes, and as he grows fainter and weaker a passionate cry rises from my bitter wrung heart: "If he must go, let me go with him!" But my prayer passes unheeded. I am strong and well, only sick with weeping, worn with watching and fasting, brought to the lowest depths of misery by having the child taken from me; and so it falls that on the third night (he has been very quick about it, my little Wattie, who was always so loth to leave me for an hour even) as he lies on my lap, about six of the clock, he opens his beautiful brown eyes, his hand flutters a little in mine, and as I hang over him in agonized, breathless dread, "Dood-bye, Lallie!" he says; a loving smile flickers over his face for a moment, then . . . he is gone.