Speed, Melise, speed! such cause of hasteThine active sinews never braced,Bend ‘gainst the steepy hill thy breast,Burst down like torrent from its crest.Scott.
“Hark!”
The guides and the one other traveller, a Mr. Graham, who had been at the inn, were gathered at the border of the Daubensee, entreating, almost ready to use force to get the poor mother home before the snow should efface the tracks, and render the return to Schwarenbach dangerous.
Ever since the alarm had been given there had been a going about with lights, a shouting and seeking, all along the road where she had parted with her sons. It was impossible in the fog to leave the beaten track, and the traveller told her that rewards would be but temptations to suicide.
Johnny had fortunately been so tired out that he had gone to bed soon after coming in, and had not been wakened by the alarm till eleven o’clock. Then, startled by the noises and lights, he had risen and made his way to his aunt. Substantial help he could not give—even his German was halting, but he was her stay and help, and she would—as she knew afterwards—have been infinitely more desolate without him. And now, when all were persuading her to wait, as they said, till more aid could be sent for to Kandersteg, he knew as well as she did that it was but a kindly ruse to cover their despair, and was striving to insist that another effort in daylight should be made.
He it was who uttered the “Hark,” and added, “That is Chico!”
At first the tired, despairing guides did not hear, but going along the road by the lake in the direction from which the sound came, the prolonged wail became more audible.
“It is on the moraine,” the men said, with awe-struck looks at one another.
They would fain not even have taken John with them, but with a resolute look he uttered “Ich komm.”
Mr. Graham, an elderly man, not equal to a moraine in the snow, stayed with the mother. He wanted to take her back to prepare for them, as he said—in reality to lesson any horrors there might be to see.
But she stood like a statue, with clasped hands and white face, the small feathery snow climbing round her feet and on her shoulders.
“O God, spare my boys! Though I don’t deserve it—spare them!” had been her one inarticulate prayer all night.
And now—shouts and yodels reach her ears. They are found! But how found! The cries are soon hushed. There is long waiting—then, through the snow, John flashes forward and takes her hand. He does not speak—only as their eyes meet, his pale lips tremble, and he says, “Don’t fear; they will revive in the inn. Jock is safe, they are sure.”
Safe? What? that stiff, white-faced form, carried between two men, with the arm hanging lifelessly down? One man held the smaller figure of Armine, and kept his face pressed inwards. Kind words of “Liebe Frau,” and assurances that were meant to be cheering passed around her, but she heard them not. Some brandy had, it seemed, been poured into their mouths. They thought Jock had swallowed, Armine had not.
At intervals on the way back a little more was administered, and the experienced guides had no doubt that life was yet in him. When they reached the hotel the guides would not take them near the stove, but carried them up at once by the rough stair to the little wood-partitioned bedrooms. There were two beds in each room, and their mother would have had them both together; but the traveller, and the kindly, helpful young landlady, Fraulein Rosalie, quietly managed otherwise, and when Johnny tried to enforce his aunt’s orders, Mr. Graham, by a sign, made him comprehend why they had thus arranged, filling him with blank dismay.
A doctor? The guides shook their heads. They could hardly make their way to Leukerbad while it was snowing as at present, and if they had done so, no doctor could come back with them. Moreover the restoratives were known to the mountaineers as well as to the doctors themselves, and these were vigorously applied. All the resources of the little way-side house were put in requisition. Mr. Graham and Johnny did their best for Jock, his mother seemed to see and think of nothing but Armine, who lay senseless and cold in spite of all their efforts.
It was soon that Jock began to moan and turn and struggle painfully back to life. When he opened his eyes with a dazed half-consciousness, and something like a word came from between his lips, Mr. Graham sent John to call the mother, saying very low, “Get her away. She will bear it better when she sees this one coming round.”
John had deep and reverent memories connected with Armine. He knew—as few did know—how steadfastly that little gentle fellow could hold the right, and more than once the two had been almost alone against their world. Besides, he was Mother Carey’s darling! Johnny felt as if his heart would break, as with trembling lips he tried to speak, as if in glad hope, as he told his aunt that Jock was speaking and wanted her, while he looked all the time at the still, white, inanimate face.
She looked at him half in distrust.
“Yes! Indeed, indeed,” he said, “Jock wants you.”
She went; Johnny took her place. The efforts at restoration were slackening. The attendants were shaking their heads and saying, “der Arme.”
Mr. Graham came up to him, saying in his ear, “She is engrossed with the other. He will not let her go. Let them do what is to be done for this poor little fellow. So it will be best for her.”
There was a frantic longing to do something for Armine, a wild wonder that the prayers of a whole night had not been more fully answered in John’s mind, as he threw himself once more over the senseless form, propped with pillows, and kissed either cheek and the lips. Then suddenly he uttered a low cry, “He breathed. I’m sure he did; I felt it! The spoon! O quick!”
Mr. Graham and the Fraulein looked pitifully at one another at the delusion; but they let the lad have the spoon with the drops of brandy. He had already gained experience in giving it, and when they looked for disappointment, his eyes were raised in joy.
“It’s gone down,” he said.
Mr. Graham put his hand on the pulse and nodded.
Another drop or two, and renewed rubbing of hands and feet. The icy cold, the deadly white, were certainly giving way, the lips began to quiver, contract, and gasp.
Was it for death or life? They would not call his mother for that terrible, doubtful minute; but she could not long stay away. When Jock’s fingers first relaxed on hers, she crept to the door of the other room, to see Armine upheld on Johnny’s breast, with heaving chest and working features, but with eyes opening: yes, and meeting hers.
Johnny always held that he never had so glad a moment in all his life as that when he saw her countenance light up.
The first word was “Jock!”
Armine’s full perceptions were come back, unlike those of Jock, who was moaning and wandering in his talk, fancying himself still in the desolation of the moraine, with Armine dead in his arms, and all the miseries, bodily, mental and spiritual, from which he had suffered were evidently still working in his brain, though the words that revealed them were weak and disjointed. Besides, he screamed and moaned with absolute and acute pain, which alarmed them much, though Armine was sufficiently himself to be able to assure them that there had been no hurt beyond the strain.
It was well that Armine was both rational and unselfish, for nothing seemed to soothe Jock for a moment but his mother’s hand and his mother’s voice. It was plain that fever and rheumatism had a hold upon him, and what or who was there to contend with them in this wayside inn? The rooms, though clean, were bare of all but the merest necessaries, and though the young hostess was kind and anxious, her maids were the roughest and most ignorant of girls, and there were no appliances for comfort—nothing even to drink but milk, bottled lemonade, and a tisane made of yellow flowers, horrible to the English taste.
And Jock, ill as he was, did not fill his mother with such dread for the future as did Armine, when she found him, quiet indeed, but unable to lie down, except when supported on John’s breast and in his arms—with a fearful oppression and pain in his chest, and every token that the lungs were suffering. He had not let them call her. Jock’s murmurs and cries were to be heard plainly through the wooden partition, and the little fellow knew she could not be spared, and only tried to prevent John and Mr. Graham from alarming her. “She—can’t—do—any—good,” he gasped out in John’s ear.
No, nobody could, without medical skill and appliances. The utmost that the house could do was to produce enough mustard to make two plasters, and to fill bottles with hot water, to warm stones, and to wrap them in blankets. And what was this, in such cold as penetrated the wooden building, too high up in the mountains for the June sun as yet to have full power? The snow kept blinding and drifting on, and though everyone said it could not last long at that time in the summer, it might easily last too long for Armine’s fragile life. Here was evening drawing on and no change outside, so that no offer of reward could make it possible for any messenger to attempt the Gemmi to fetch advice from Leukerbad.
Caroline could not think. She was in a dull, dreary state of consternation, and all she could dwell on was the immediate need of the moment, soothing Jock’s terrors, and, what was almost worse, his irritable rejection of the beverages she could offer him, and trying to relieve him by rubbing and hot applications. If ever she could look into Armine’s room, she was filled with still greater dismay, even though a sweet, patient smile always met her, and a resolute endeavour to make the best of it.
“It—does—not—make—much—difference,” gasped Armine. “One would not like anything.”
John came out in a character no one could have expected. He showed himself a much better nurse, and far more full of resource than the traveller. It was he who bethought him of keeping a kettle in the room over the inevitable charcoal, so as slightly to mitigate the chill of the air, or the fumes of the charcoal, which were equally perilous and distressing to the labouring lungs. He was tender and handy in lifting, tall and strong, so as to be efficient in supporting, and then Armine and he understood one another. They had never been special companions; John had too much of the Kencroft muscularity about him to accord with a delicate, imaginative being like Armine, but they respected one another, and made common cause, and John had more than once been his little cousin’s protector. So when they were so much alone that all reserves were overcome, Armine had comfort in his cousin that no one else in the place could have afforded him. The little boy perfectly knew how ill he was, and as he lay in John’s arms, breathed out his messages to Babie as well as he could utter them.
“And please, you’ll be always mother’s other son,” said Armine.
“Won’t I? She’s been the making of me every way,” said John.
“If ever—she does want anybody—” said Armine, feeling, but not uttering, a vague sense of want of trust in others around her.
“I will, I will. Why, Armie, I shall never care for any one so much.”
“That’s right.”
And again, after an interval, Armine spoke of Jock, saying, “You’ll help him, Johnny. You know sometimes he can be put in mind—”
John promised again, perhaps less hopefully, but he saw that Armine hoped.
“Would you mind reading me a Psalm,” came, after a great struggle for breath. “It was so nice to know Babie was saying her Psalms at night, and thinking of us.”
So the evening wore away and night came on, and John, after full six-and-twenty hours’ wakeful exertion and anxiety, began to grow sleepy, and dozed even as he held his cousin whenever the cough did not shake the poor little fellow. At last, with Armine’s consent, or rather, at his entreaty, Mr. Graham, though knowing himself a bad substitute, took him from the arms of the outwearied lad, who, in five minutes more, was lying, dressed as he was, in the soundest of dreamless slumbers.
When he awoke, the sun was up, an almost midsummer sun, streaming on the fast-melting snow with a dazzling brilliancy. Armine was panting under the same deadly oppression on his pillows, and Mother Carey was standing by him, talking to Mr. Graham about despatching a messenger to Leukerbad in search of one of the doctors, who were sure to be found at the baths. How haggard her face looked, and Armine gasped out—
“Mother, your hair.”
The snow had been there; the crisp black waves on her brow were quite white. Jock had fallen into a sort of doze from exhaustion, but moaning all the time. She could call him no better, and Armine’s sunken face told that he was worse.
John went in search of more hot water, and on the way heard voices which made him call Mr. Graham, who knew more of the vernacular German patois than himself, to understand it. He thought he had caught something about English, and a doctor at Kandersteg. It was true. A guide belonging to the other side of the pass, who had been weather-bound at Kandersteg, had just come up with tidings that an English party were there, who had meant to cross the Gemmi but had given it up, finding it too early in the season for the kranklicher Milord who was accompanied by his doctor.
“An English doctor! Oh!” cried John, “there’s some good in that. Some one must take a note down to him at once.”
But after some guttural conversation of which he understood only a word or two, Mr. Graham said—
“They declare it is of no use. The carriage was ordered at nine. It is past seven now.”
“But it need not take two hours to go that distance downhill, the lazy blackguards!” exclaimed John.
“In the present state of the path, they say that it will,” said Mr. Graham. “In fact, I suspect a little unwillingness to deprive their countrymen of the job.”
“I’ll go,” said John, “then there will be no loss of time about writing. You’ll look after Armine, sir, and tell my aunt.”
“Certainly, my boy; but you’ll find it a stiffish pull.”
“I came in second for the mile race last summer at Eton,” said Johnny. “I’m not in training now; but if a will can do it—”
“I believe you are right. If you don’t catch him, we shall hardly have lost time, for they say we must wait an hour or two for the Gemmi road to get clear of snow. Stay; don’t go without eating. You won’t keep it up on an empty stomach. Remember the proverb.”
Prayer had been with him all night, and he listened to the remonstrance as to provender enough to devour a bit of bread, put another into his pocket, and swallow a long draught of new milk. Mr. Graham further insisted on his taking a lad to show him the right path through the fir woods; and though Johnny looked more formed for strength than speed, and was pale-cheeked and purple-eyed with broken rest, the manner in which he set forth had a purpose-like air that was satisfactory—not over swift at the outset over the difficult ground, but with a steadfast resolution, and with a balance and knowledge of the management of his limbs due to Eton athletics.
Mr. Graham went up to encourage Mrs. Brownlow. She clasped her hands together with joy and gratitude.
“That dear, dear boy,” she said, “I shall owe him everything.”
Jock had wakened rational, though only to be conscious of severe suffering. He would hardly believe that Armine was really alive till Mr. Graham actually carried in the boy, and let them hold each other’s hands for a moment before placing Armine on the other bed.
Indeed it seemed that this might be the poor boys’ last meeting. Armine could only look at his brother, since the least attempt to speak increased the agonised struggle for breath, which, doctor or no doctor, gave Mr. Graham small expectation that he could survive another of these cold mountain nights.
Their mother was so far relieved to have them together that it was easier to attend to them; and Armine’s patient eyes certainly acted as a gentle restraint upon Jock’s moans, lamentations, and requisitions for her services. It was one of those times that she only passed through by her faculty of attending only to present needs, and the physical strength and activity that seemed inexhaustible as long as she had anything to do, and which alone alleviated the despair within her heart.
Meantime John found the rock slippery, the path heavy, and his young guide a drag on him. The path through the fir woods which had been so delightful two days (could it be only two days?) ago, was now a baffling, wearisome zigzag; yet when he tried to cut across, regardless of the voice of his guide, he found he lost time, for he had to clamber, once fell and rolled some distance, happily with no damage as he found when he picked himself up, and plodded on again, without even stopping to shake himself.
At last came an opening where he could see down into the Kandersteg valley. There was the hotel in clear sunshine, looking only too like a house in a German box of toys, and alas! there was also a toy carriage coming round to the front!
Like the little foot-page of old ballads, John “let down his feet and ran,” ran determinately on, down the now less precipitous slope—ran till he was beyond the trees, with the summer sun beating down on him, and in sight of figures coming out from the hotel to the carriage.
Johnny scarce ventured to give one sigh. He waved his hat in a desperate hope of being seen. No, they were in the carriage. The horses were moving!
But he remembered a slight steep on the further road where they must go slower. Moreover, there were a few curves in the horse-road. He set his teeth with the desperate resolution of a moment, clenched his hands, intensified his mental cry to Heaven, and with the dogged determination of Kencroft dashed on, not daring to look at the carriage, intent only on the way.
He was past the inn, but his breath was short and quick; his knees were failing, an invisible hand seemed to be on his chest making him go slower and slower; yet still he struggled on, till the mountain tops danced before his eyes, cascades rushed into his ears, the earth seemed to rise up and stop him; but through it all he heard a voice say, “Hullo, it’s the Monk! What is the matter?”
Then he knew he was on the ground on his face, with kind but tormenting hands busy about him, and his heart going so like a sledge hammer, that the word he would have given his life to utter, would not come out of his lips, and all he could do was to grasp convulsively at something that he believed to be a garment of the departing travellers.
“Here, the flask! Don’t speak yet,” said a man’s voice, and a choking stimulant was poured into his mouth. When the choking spasm it cost him was over, his eyes cleared, and he could at least gasp. Then he saw that it was his housemate, Evelyn, at whom he was clutching, and who asked again in amaze—
“What is up, old fellow?”
“Hush, not yet,” said the other voice; “let him alone till he gets his breath. Don’t hurry, my boy,” he added, “we will wait.”
Johnny, however, felt altogether absorbed in getting out one panting whisper, “A doctor.”
“Yes, yes, he is,” cried Evelyn. “What’s the matter? Not Brownlow!”
“Both—oh,” sobbed John in the agony of contending with the bumping, fluttering heart whichwouldnot let him fetch breath enough to speak.
“You will tell us presently. Don’t be afraid. We will wait,” said the voice of the man who, as John now felt, was supporting him. “Hush, Cecil, another minute, and he will be able to tell us.”
Indeed the rushing of every pulse was again making it vain for Johnny to try to utter anything, and he shut his eyes in the realisation that he had succeeded and found help. If his heart would have not bumped and fluttered so fearfully, it would have been almost rest, as he was helped up by those kind, strong arms. It was really for little more than five seconds before he gathered his powers to say, still between gasps—
“Out all night—the moraine—fog—snow—Jock—very bad—Armine—worse—up there.”
“At Schwarenbach?”
“Yes. Oh, come! They are so ill.”
“I am sure Dr. Medlicott will do all he can for them,” said another voice, which John saw proceeded from a very tall, slight youth, with a fair, delicate, girlish face. “Had he not better get into the carriage and return to the hotel?”
“By all means.”
And John found himself without much volition lifted and helped into the carriage, where Cecil Evelyn scrambled up beside him, and put an arm round him.
“Poor old Monk, you are dead beat,” he said, as the carriage turned, the other two walking beside it. “Did you come that pace all the way down?”
“Only after the wood.”
“Well, ‘twas as plucky a thing as I ever saw. But is Skipjack so bad?”
“Dreadful! Light-headed all yesterday—horrid pain! But not so bad as Armine. If something ain’t done soon—he’ll die.”
“Poor little Brownlow! You’ve come to the right shop. Medlicott is first rate. Did you know it was we?”
“No—only—an English doctor,” said John.
“Mother sent us abroad with him, because they said Fordham must have Swiss air; and poor old Granny still goes on in the same state,” said Cecil. “We got here on Tuesday evening, and saw your names; but then the fog came, and it snowed all yesterday, and the doctor said it would not do for Fordham to go so high. And the more I wanted them to come up with you, the more they would not. Were they out in that snow?”
Here came an order from the doctor not to make his friend talk, and Johnny was glad to obey, and reserve his breath for the explanation. He did not hear what passed between the other two, as they walked behind the carriage.
“A fine fellow that! Is he Cecil’s friend?”
“No, I wish he were. However, it can’t be helped now, in common humanity; and my mother will understand.”
“You mean that it was her wish that we should avoid them.”
“She thinks the influence has not been good for Cecil.”
“That was the reason you gave up the Gemmi so easily.”
“It was. But, as I say, it can’t be helped now, and no harm can be done by going to see whether they are really so ill.”
“Brownlow is the name. I wonder if they are any relation to a man I once knew—a lecturer at one of the hospitals?”
“Not likely. These are very rich people, with a great house in Hyde Park regions, and a place in the country. They are always asking Cecil there; only my mother does not fancy it. It is not a matter of charity after the first stress. They can easily have advice from England, or anywhere they like.”
By this time they reached the hotel, and John alighted briskly enough, and explained the state of affairs in a few words.
“My dear boy,” said Dr. Medlicott, “I’ll go up at once, as soon as I can get at our travelling medicine-chest. Luckily we have what is most likely to be useful.”
“Thank you,” said Johnny, and therewith he turned dizzy, and reeled against the wall.
“It is nothing—nothing,” he said, as the doctor having helped him into a sitting-room, laid his hand on his pulse. “Don’t delay about me! I shall be all right in a minute.”
“They are getting down the boxes. No time is lost,” said the doctor, quietly. “See whether they can let us have some soup, Cecil.”
“I couldn’t swallow anything,” said Johnny, imploringly.
“Have you had any breakfast this morning?”
“Yes, a bit of bread and a drink of milk. There was not time for more.”
“And you had been searching all one night, and nursing the next?”
“Most of it,” was the confession. “But I shall be all right—if there is any pony I could ride upon.”
“You shall by-and-by; but first, Reeves,” as a servant with grizzled hair and moustache brought in a neatly-fitted medicine-chest, “I give this young gentleman into your care. He is to lie down on my bed for half an hour, and Mr. Evelyn is not to go near him. Then, if he is awake—”
“If—” ejaculated John.
“Give him a basin of soup—Liebig, if you can’t get anything here.”
“Liebig!” broke out John. “Oh, please take some. There’s nothing up there but old goat, and nothing to drink but milk and lemonade, like beastly hair-oil; and Jock hates milk.”
“Never fear,” said Dr. Medlicott; “Liebig is going, and a packet of tea. Mrs. Evelyn does not send us out unprovided. If you eat your soup like a good boy, you may then ride up—not walk—unless you wish to be on your mother’s hands too.”
“She’s my aunt; but it is all the same. Tell her I’m coming.”
“I shall go with you, doctor,” said Cecil. “I must know about Brownlow.”
“Much good you’ll do him! But I’d rather leave this fellow in Fordham’s charge than yours.”
So Johnny had no choice but to obey, growling a little that it was all nonsense, and he should be all right in five minutes, but that expectation continued, without being realised, for longer than Johnny knew. He awoke with a start to find the Liebig awaiting him; and Lord Fordham’s eyes fixed on him, with (though neither understood it) the generous, though melancholy envy of an invalid youth for a young athlete.
“Have I been asleep?” he asked, looking at his watch. “Only ten minutes since I looked last? Well, now I am all right.”
“You will be when you have eaten this,” said Lord Fordham.
Johnny obeyed, and ate with relish.
“There!” said he; “now I am ready for anything.”
“Don’t get up yet. I’ll go and order a horse for you.”
When Lord Fordham came back from doing so, he found his patient really fast asleep, and with a little colour coming into the pale cheeks. He stole back, bade that the pony should wait, went on writing his letter, and waited till one hour, two, three hours had passed, and at last the sleeper woke, greatly disgusted, willing to accept the bath which Lord Fordham advised him to take, and which made him quite himself again.
“You’ll let me go now,” he said. “I can walk as well as ever.”
“You will be of more use now, if you ride,” said Lord Fordham. “There, I hear our luncheon coming in. You must eat while the pony is coming round.”
“If it won’t lose time—thank you,” said Johnny, recovered enough now to know how hungry he was, “But I ought not to have stayed away. My aunt has no one but me.”
“And you can really help her?” said Lord Fordham, with some experience of his brother’s uselessness.
“Not well, of course,” said Johnny; “but it is better than nobody; and Armine is so patient and so good, that I’m the more afraid. Is not it a very bad sign,” he added, confidentially; for he was quite won by the youth’s kind, considerate way, and evident liking and sympathy.
“I don’t know,” faltered Lord Fordham. “My brother Walter was like that! Is this the little fellow who is Cecil’s fag?”
“Yes; Jock asked him to take him, because he was sure never to bully him or lick him when he wouldn’t do things.”
This not very lucid description rejoiced Lord Fordham.
“I am glad of that,” he said. “But I hope the little boy will get over this. My mother had a very excellent account of Dr. Medlicott’s skill; and you know an illness from a misadventure is not like anything constitutional.”
“No; but Armine is always delicate, and my aunt has had to take care of him.”
“Do you live with them?”
“O no; I have lots of people at home. I only came with them because I had had these measles at Eton; and my aunt is—well, the very jolliest woman that ever was.”
Lord Fordham smiled.
“Yes, indeed she is. I don’t mean only kind and good-natured. But if you just knew her! The whole world and everything else have just been something new and glorious ever since I knew her. I seem to myself to have lived in a dark hole till she made it all light.”
“Ah! I understand that you would do anything for her.”
“ThatI would, if there was anything I could do,” said Johnny, hastily finishing his meal.
“Well, you’ve done something to-day.”
“That—oh, that was nothing. I shouldn’t have made such a fool of myself if I hadn’t been seedy before. I hear the pony,” he added. “Excuse me.” And, with a murmured grace, he rose. Then, recollecting himself, “No end of thanks. I don’t know how to thank you enough.”
“Don’t; I’ve done nothing,” said Lord Fordham, wringing his hand. “I only hope—”
The words stuck in his throat, and with a sigh he watched the lad ride off.
Soldier now and servant true;Earth behind and heaven in view.Isaac Williams.
Marmaduke Alwyn Evelyn, Viscount Fordham, was the fourth bearer of that title within ten years. His father had not lived to wear it, and his two elder brothers had both died in early youth. His precarious existence seemed to be only held on a tenure of constant precaution, and if his mother ventured to hope that it might be otherwise with the two youngest of the family, it was because they were of a shorter, sturdier, more compact form and less transparent complexion than their elders, and altogether seemed of a different constitution.
More delicate from the first than the two brothers who had gone before him, Lord Fordham had never been at school, had studied irregularly, and had never been from under his mother’s wing till this summer, when she was detained by the slow decay of his grandmother. Languor and listlessness had beset the youth, and he had been ordered mountain air, and thus it was that Mrs. Evelyn had despatched both her sons to Switzerland, under the attendance of a highly recommended physician, a young man bright and attractive, who had over-worked himself at an hospital, and needed thorough relaxation. Rightly considering Lucas Brownlow as the cause of most of Cecil’s Eton follies, she had given her eldest son a private hint to elude joining forces with the family, and he was the most docile and obedient of sons. Yet was it the perversity of human nature that made him infinitely more animated and interested in John Brownlow’s race and the distressed travellers on the Schwarenbach than he had been since—no one could tell when?
Perhaps it was the novelty of being left alone and comparatively unwatched. Certain it was that he ate enough to rejoice the heart of his devoted and tyrannical attendant Reeves; and that he walked about in much anxiety all the afternoon, continually using his telescope to look up the mountain wherever a bit of the track was visible through the pine woods.
In due time Cecil rode back the pony which John had taken up. The alacrity with which the long lank bending figure stepped to meet him was something unwonted, but the boy himself was downcast and depressed.
“I’m afraid you’ve nothing good to tell.”
Cecil shook his head, and after some more seconds broke out—
“It’s awful!”
“What is?”
“Brownlow’s pain. I never saw anything like it!”
“Rheumatism? If that is from the exposure, I hope it will not last long.”
“No. They’ve sent for some opiates to Leukerbad, and the doctor says that is sure to put him to sleep.”
“Medlicott stays there?”
“Yes. He says if little Armine is any way fit, he must move him away to-morrow at all risks from the night-cold up there, and he wants Reeves to see about men to carry him, that is if—if to-night does not—”
Cecil could not finish.
“Then it is as bad as we heard?”
“Quite,” said Cecil, “or worse. That dear little chap, just fancy!” and his eyes filled with tears. “He tried to thank me for having been good to him—as if I had.”
“He was your fag?”
“Yes; Skipjack asked me to choose him because he’s that sort of little fellow that won’t give into anything that goes against his conscience, and if one of those fellows had him that say lower boys have no business with consciences, he might be licked within an inch of his life and he’d never give in. He did let himself be put under a pump once at some beastly hole in the country, for not choosing to use bad language, and he has never been so strong since.”
“Mother would be glad that at least you allowed him the use of his conscience.”
“I’m glad I did now,” said Cecil, with a sigh, “though it was a great nuisance sometimes.”
“Was the Monk, as you call him, one of that set?”
“Bless you, no, he’s a regular sap, as steady as old time.”
“I wonder if he is the son of the doctor whom Medlicott talks of.”
“No; his father is alive. He is a colonel, living near their place. The other two are the doctor’s sons; their mother came into the property after his death. Their Maximus was in college at first, and between ourselves, he was a bit of a snob, who couldn’t bear to recollect it.”
“Not your friend?”
“No, indeed. The eldest one, who has left these two years, and is at Christchurch.”
“I am sure the one who came down here was a gentleman.”
“So they are, all three of them,” said Cecil, who had never found his brother so ready to hear anything about his Eton life, since in general accounts of the world, from which he was debarred, so jarred on his feelings that he silenced it with apparent indifference, contempt, or petulance. Now, however, Cecil, with his heart full of the Brownlows, could not say more of them than Fordham was willing to hear; nay, he even found an amused listener to some of his good stories of courageous pranks.
Fordham was not yet up the next morning when there was a knock at his door, and the doctor came in, answering his eager question with—
“Yes, he has got through this night, but another up in that place would be fatal. We must get them down to Leukerbad.”
“Over that long precipitous path?”
“It is the only chance. I came down to look up bearers, and rig up a couple of hammocks, as well as to see how you are getting on.”
“Oh! I’m very well,” said Lord Fordham, in a tone that meant it, sitting up in bed. “We might ride on to Leukerbad with Reeves, and get rooms ready.”
“The best thing you could do,” said Dr. Medlicott, joyfully. “When we are there we can consider what can be done next; and if you wish to go on, I could look up some one there in whose charge to leave them till they could get advice from home; but it is touch and go with that little fellow.”
“I’m in no particular hurry,” said Lord Fordham, answering the doctor’s tone rather than his words. “I would not do anything hasty or that might add to their distress. Are there likely to be good doctors at this place?”
“It is a great watering-place, chiefly for rheumatic complaints, and that is all very well for the elder boy. As to the little one, he is in as critical a state as I ever saw, and—His mother is an excellent linguist, that is one good thing.”
“Yes; it would be very trying for her to have a foreigner to attend the boy in such a state, however skilled he might be,” said Lord Fordham. “I think we might make up our minds to stay with them till they can get some one from England.”
Dr. Medlicott caught at the words.
“It rests with you,” he said. “Of course I am your property and Mrs. Evelyn’s, but I should like to tell you why this is more to me than a matter of common humanity. I went up to study in London, a simple, foolish lad, bred up by three good old aunts, more ignorant of the world than their own tabby cat. Of course I instantly fell in with the worst stamp of fellows, and was in a fair way of being done for, body and soul, if one of the lecturers, after taking us to task for some heartless, disgusting piece of levity, seeing perhaps that it was more than half bravado on my part and nearly made me sick, managed to get me alone. He talked it out with me, found out the innocent-hearted fool I was, cured me of my false shame at what the good old souls at home had taught me, showed me what manhood was, found a good friend and a better lodging for me, in short, was the saving of me. He died three months after I first knew him, but whatever is worth having in me is owing to him.”
“Was he the father of these boys?”
“Yes; I saw a likeness in the nephew who came down yesterday, and I see it in both the others.”
“Of course you would wish to do all that is possible for them?”
“I should feel it the greatest honour. Still my first duty is to you, and you have told me that your mother wished you to keep your brother out of the way of his schoolfellow.”
“My mother would not wish to deprive her worst enemy of your care in such need as this,” said Lord Fordham, smiling. “Besides if this friend of Cecil’s were ever so bad, he couldn’t do him much harm while he is ill, poor boy. We will at any rate stay to get them through the next few days, and then we can judge. I will settle it with my mother.”
“I knew you would say so,” rejoined the doctor. “Thank you. Then it seems to me that the right course will be to write to Mrs. Evelyn, inclosing a note to Dr. Lucas—who it seems is Mrs. Brownlow’s chief reliance—asking him to find someone to send out. She, can send it on to him if she disapproves of our remaining together longer than is absolutely necessary, or if Leukerbad disagrees with you. Meantime, I’ll go and see whether Reeves has found any men to carry the poor boys.”
Unfortunately it was too early in the season for the hotels to have marshalled their full establishment, and such careful and surefooted bearers as the sufferers needed could not be had in sufficient numbers, so that Dr. Medlicott was forced to decide on leaving the elder patient for a night at Schwarenbach. The move might be matter of life or death to Armine; but Jock was better, the pain could be somewhat allayed by anodynes, the fever was abating, and he would rather gain than lose by another day of rest, provided he would only accept his fate patiently, and also if he could be properly attended to. If Mr. Graham would stay with him—
So breakfast was eaten, bills were paid, horses hired, and the whole cavalcade started from Kandersteg in time to secure the best part of a bright hot day for the transit.
They met Mr. Graham, who had been glad to escape as soon as Mrs. Brownlow had found other assistance, so that the doctor was disappointed in his hope of a guardian for Jock. Lord Fordham offered to lend Reeves, but that functionary absolutely refused to separate himself from his charge, observing—
“I am responsible for your lordship to your mamma, and it does not lie within my province to leave you on any account.”
Reeves always called Mrs. Evelyn “your mamma” when he wished to be particularly authoritative with his young gentlemen. If they were especially troublesome he called her “your ma.”
“And after all,” said the doctor, “I don’t know what sort of preparations the young gentlemen would make if we let them go by themselves. A bare room, perhaps—with no bed-clothes, and nothing to eat till the table d’hote”
Reeves smiled. He had found the doctor much less of a rival than he had expected, and he was a kind-hearted man, so long as his young lord was made the first object; so he declared his willingness to do anything that lay in his power for the assistance of the poor lady and her sons. He would gladly sit up with them, if it were in the same house with his lordship.
No one came out to meet the party. John was found with Armine, who had been taken back at night to his own room; Mrs. Brownlow, as usual, with Jock, who would endure no presence but hers, and looked exceedingly injured when, sending Cecil in to sit with him, the doctor called her out of the room.
It was a sore stroke on her to hear that her charges must be separated; and there was the harrowing question whether she should stay with one or go with the other.
“Please, decide,” she said.
“I think you should be with the most serious case.”
“And that, I fear, means my little Armine. Yes, I will do as you tell me. But what can be done for Jock?—poor Jock who thinks he needs me most. And perhaps he does. You know best, though, Dr. Medlicott, and you shall settle it.”
“That is a wise nurse,” said he, kindly; “I wish I could take your place myself, but I must be with the little fellow myself; and I am afraid we can only leave his brother to your nephew for this one night. Should you be afraid to be sole nurse?” he added, as Johnny came to Armine’s door.
“I think I know what to do, if Jock can stand having me,” said Johnny, stoutly, as soon as he understood the question.
“Mother!” just then shouted Jock, and as Johnny obeyed the call, he began—“I want my head higher—no—I say not you—Mother Carey!”
“She is busy with the doctor.”
“Can’t she come and do this? No, I say,” and he threw the nearest thing at hand at him.
“Come,” said Cecil, “I’m glad you can do such things as that.”
But Jock gave a cry of pain, and protested that it was all John’s fault for making him hurt himself instead of fetching mother.
“You had better let me lift you,” said John, “you know she is tired, and Ireallyam stronger.”
“No, you shan’t touch me—a great clumsy lout.”
In the midst of these amenities, the doctor appeared, and Jock looked slightly ashamed, especially when the doctor, instead of doing what was wanted, directed John where to put an arm, and how to give support, while moving the pillow, adding that he was a handy fellow, more so than many a pupil after half a year’s training at the hospital, and smiling down Jock’s growls and groans, which were as much from displeasure as from pain. They were followed by some despairing sighs at the horrors of the prospect of being moved.
“Ah! what will you give me for letting you off?” said the Doctor.
Jock uttered a sound of relief, then, rather distrustfully, asked—“Why?”
“We can only get bearers enough for one; and as it is most important to move your brother, while you will gain by a night’s rest, he must have the first turn.”
“And welcome,” said Jock; “my mother will stay with me.”
“That’s the very point,” said Dr. Medlicott. “I want you not only to give her up, but to do so cheerfully.”
“I’m sure mother wants to stay with me. Armine does not need her half so much.”
“He does not require the same kind of attention; but he is in so critical a state that I do not think I ought to separate her from him.”
“Why, what is the matter with him?” asked Jock, startled.
“Congestion of the right lung,” said the doctor, seeing that he was strong enough to bear the information, and feeling the need of rousing him from his monopolising self-absorption.
“People get over that, don’t they?” said Jock, with an awestruck interrogation in his voice.
“Theydo; and I hope much from getting him into a warmer atmosphere, but the child is so much reduced that the risk is great, and I should not dare not to have his mother with him.” Then, as Jock was silent, “I have told you because you can make a great difference to their comfort by not showing how much it costs you to let her go.”
Jock drew the bed clothes over his face, and an odd stifled sound was heard from under them. He remained thus perdu, while directions were being given to John for the night, but as the doctor was leaving the room, emerged and said—
“Bring him in before he goes.”
In a short time, for it was most important not to lose the fine weather, the doctor carried Armine in swathed in rugs and blankets, a pale, sunken, worn face, and great hollow eyes looking out at the top.
The mother said something cheerful about a live mummy, but the two poor boys gazed at one another with sad, earnest, wistful eyes, and wrung one another’s hands.
“Don’t forget,” gasped Armine, labouring for breath.
And Jock answered—
“All right, Armie; good-bye. I’m coming to morrow,” with a choking, quivering attempt at bravery.
“Yes, to-morrow,” said poor Mother Carey, bending over him. “My boy—my poor good boy, if I could but cut myself in two! I can’t tell you how thankful I am to you for being so good about it. That dear good Johnny will do all he can, and it is only till tomorrow. You’ll sleep most of the time.”
“All right, mother,” was again all that Jock could manage to utter, and the kisses that followed seemed to him the most precious he had known. He hid his face again, bearing his trouble the better because the lull of violent pain quelled by opiates, so that his senses were all as in a dream bound up. When he looked up again at the clink of glass, it was Cecil whom he saw measuring off his draught.
“You!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, Medlicott said I might stay till four, and give the Monk a chance of a sleep. That fellow can always snooze away off hand, and he is as sound as a top in the next room; but I was to give you this at two.”
“You’re sure it’s the right stuff?”
“I should think so. We’ve practice enough in the family to know how to measure off a dose by this time.”
“How is it you are out here still? This is Thursday, isn’t it? We meant to have been half way home, to be in time for the matches.”
“I’m not going back this half, worse luck. They were mortally afraid these measles would make me get tender in the chest, like all the rest of us, so I’ve got nothing to do but be dragged about with Fordham after churches and picture galleries and mountains,” said Cecil, in a tone of infinite disgust. “I declare it made me half mad to look at the Lake of Lucerne, and recollect that we might have been in the eight.”
“Not this year.”
“No, but next.”
In this contemplation Cecil was silent, only fondling Chico, until Jock, instead of falling asleep again, said, “Evelyn, what does your doctor really think of the little chap?”
Cecil screwed up his face as if he had rather not be asked.
“Never you think about it,” he said. “Doctors always croak. He’ll be all right again soon.”
“If I was sure,” sighed Jock; “but you know he has always been such a religious little beggar. It’s a horrid bad sign.”
“Like my brother Walter,” said Cecil gravely. “Now, Duke can be ever so snappish and peevish; I’m not half so much afraid for him.”
“You never heard anything like the little fellow that night,” said Jock, and therewith he gave his friend by far the most connected account of the adventure that had yet been arrived at. He even spoke of the resolution to which he had been brought, and in a tone of awe described how he had pledged himself for the future.
“So you see I’m in for it,” he concluded; “I must give up all our jolly larks.”
“Then I shan’t get into so many rows with my mother and uncle,” said Cecil, by no means with the opposition his friend had anticipated.
“Then you’ll stand by me?” said Jock.
“Gladly. My mother was at me all last Easter, telling me my goings on were worse to her than losing George or Walter, and talking about my Confirmation and all. She only let me be a communicant on Easter Day, because I did mean to make a fresh start—and I did mean it with all my heart; only when that supper was talked of, I didn’t like to stick out against you, Brownlow; I never could, you know, and I didn’t know what it was coming to.”
“Nor I,” said Jock; “that’s the worst of it. When a lark begins one doesn’t know how far one will get carried on. But that night I thought about the Confirmation, and how I had made the promise without really thinking about it, and never had been to Holy Communion.”
“I meant it all,” said Cecil, “and broke it, so I’m worst.”
“Well!” said Jock, “if I go back from the promise little Armie made me make about being Christ’s faithful soldier and servant I could never face him again—no, nor death either! You can’t think what it was like, Evelyn, sitting in the dead stillness—except for an awful crack and rumbling in the ice, and the solid snow fog shutting one in. How ugly, and brutish, and horrid all those things did look; and how it made me long to have been like the little fellow in my arms, or even this poor little dog, who knew no better. Then somehow came now and then a wonderful sense that God was all round us, and that our Lord had done all that for my forgiveness, if I only meant to do right in earnest. Oh! how to go on meaning it!”
“That’s the thing,” said Cecil. “I mean it fast enough at home, and when my mother talks to me and I look at my brothers’ graves, but it all gets swept away at Eton. It won’t now, though, if you are different, Brownlow. I never liked any fellow like you I knew you were best, even when you were worst. So if you go in for doing right, I shan’t care for anyone else—not even Cressham and Bulford.”
“If they choose to make asses of themselves they must,” said Jock. “It will be a bore, but one mustn’t mind things. I say, Evelyn, suppose we make that promise of Armine’s over again together now.”
“It is only the engagement we made when we were sworn into Christ’s army at our baptism,” said the much more fully instructed Cecil. “We always were bound by it.”
“Yes, but we knew nothing about it then, and we really mean it now,” said Jock. “If we do it for ourselves together, it will put us on our honour to each other, and to Christ our Captain, and that’s what we want. Lay hold of my hand.”
The two boys, with clasped hands, and grave, steadfast eyes, with one voice, repeated together—
“We, John Lucas Brownlow and Cecil Fitzroy Evelyn, promise with all our hearts manfully to fight under Christ’s banner, and continue His faithful soldiers and servants to our lives’ end. Amen.”
Then Cecil touched Lucas’s brow with his lips, and said—
“Fellow-soldiers, Brownlow.”
“Brothers in arms,” responded Jock.
It was one of those accesses of deep enthusiasm, and even of sentiment, which modern cynicism and false shame have not entirely driven out of youth. Their hearts were full; and Jock, the stronger, abler, and more enterprising had always exercised a fascination over his friend, who was absolutely enchanted to find him become an ally instead of a tempter, and to be no longer pulled two opposite ways.
“Ought we not to say a prayer to make it really firm? We can’t stand alone, you know,” he said, diffidently.
“If you like; if you know one,” said Jock.
Cecil knelt down and said the Lord’s Prayer and the collect for the Fourth Epiphany Sunday.
“That’s nice,” was Jock’s comment. “How did you know it?”
“Mother made us learn the collects every Sunday, and she wrote that in my little book. I always begin the half with it, but afterwards I can’t go on.”
“Then it doesn’t do you much good,” was the not unnatural remark.
“I don’t know,” said Cecil, hesitating; “may be all this—your getting right, I mean, is the coming round of prayers—my mother’s, I mean, for if you take this turn, it will be much easier for me! Poor mother! it’s not for want of her caring and teaching.”
“My mother doesn’t bother about it.”
“I wish she did,” said Cecil. “If she had gone on like mine, you would have been ever so much better than I.”
“No, I should have been bored and bothered into being regularly good-for-nothing. You don’t know what she’s really like. She’s nicer than anyone—as jolly as any fellow, and yet a lady all over.”
“I know that,” said Cecil; “she was uncommonly jolly to me at Eton, and I know my mother and she will get on like a house on fire. We’re too old to have a scrimmage about them like disgusting little lower boys,” he added, seeing Jock still bristling in defence of Mother Carey.
This produced a smile, and he went on—
“Look here, Skipjack, we will be fellow-soldiers every way. My Uncle James can do anything at the Horse Guards, and he shall have us set down for the same regiment. I’ll tell him you are my good influence.”
“But I’ve been just the other way.”
“Oh, but you will be—a year or two will show it. Which shall it be? Do you go in for cavalry or infantry? I like cavalry, but he’s all for the other.”
Jock was wearied enough not to have much contribution to make to the conversation, and he thus left Cecil such a fair field as he seldom enjoyed for Uncle James’s Indian and Crimean campaigns, and for the comparative merits of the regiments his nephew had beheld at reviews.
He was interrupted by a message from the guide that there was a cloud in the distance, and the young Herr had better set off quickly unless he wished to be weather-bound.
Johnny was on his feet as soon as there was a step on the stairs, and was congratulated on his ready powers of sleeping.
“It’s in the family,” said Jock. “His brother Rob went to sleep in the middle of the examination for his commission.”
“Then I should think he could sleep on the rack,” said Cecil.
“I’m sure I wish I could,” rejoined Jock.
“What a sell for the torturers, to get some chloroform!” said John. And so Cecil departed amid laughter, which gave John little idea how serious the talk had been in his absence.
The rain came on even more rapidly than the guide had foretold, and it was a drenched and dripping object that rode into the court of the tall hotel at Leukerbad, and immediately fell into the hands of Dr. Medlicott and Reeves, who deposited him ignominiously in bed, in spite of all his protestations and murmurs. However, he had the comfort of hearing that his little fag was recovering from the exhaustion of the journey. He had at first been so faint that the doctor had watched, fearing that he would never revive again, and he had not yet attempted to speak; but his breathing was certainly already less laboured, and the choking, struggling cough less frequent. “He really seems likely to have a little natural sleep,” was Lord Fordham’s report somewhat later, on coming in to find Cecil sitting up in bed to discuss a very substantial supper. “I hope that with Reeves and the doctor to look to him, his mother may get a little rest to-night.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Only for a moment or two, poor thing; but I never did see such eyes or such a wonderful sad smile as she tried to thank us with. Medlicott is ready to do anything for her husband’s sake; I am sure anyone would do the same for hers. To get such a look is something to remember!”
“Well done, Duke!” ejaculated Cecil under his breath, for he had never seen his senior so animated or so enthusiastic. “Then you mean to stay, and let Medlicott look after them?”
“Of course I do,” said Fordham, in a much more decided tone than he had used in the morning. “I’m not going to do anything so barbarous as to leave them to some German practitioner; and when we are here, I don’t see why they should have advice out from home—not half so good probably.”
“You’re a brick, Duke,” uttered Cecil; and though Fordham hated slang, he smiled at the praise.
“And now, Duke, be a good fellow, and give me some clothes. That brute Reeves has not brought me in one rag.”
“Really it is hardly worth while. It is nearly eight o’clock, and I don’t know where your portmanteau was put. Shall I get you a book?”
“No; but if you’d get me a pen and ink, I want to write to mother.”
Such a desire was not too frequent in Cecil, and Fordham was glad enough to promote it, bringing in his own neat apparatus, with only a mild entreaty that his favourite pen might be well treated, and the sheets respected. He had written his own letter of explanation of his first act of independence, and he looked with some wonder at his brother’s rapid writing, not without fear that some sudden pressure for a foolish debt might have been the result of his tete-a-tete with his dangerous friend. Cecil’s letters were too apt to be requests for money or confessions of debts, and if this were the case, what would be Mrs. Evelyn’s view of the conduct of the whole party in disregarding her wishes?
Had he been with his mother, he would have probably been called into consultation over the letter, but he was forced to remain without the privilege here offered to the reader:—