CHAPTER XIII.HOPING AGAINST HOPE.
Harold Pennington passed rapidly from one alarming stage of illness to another. He was in a high fever when Polly arrived to crouch down by his bedside, and when the doctor came to pay a third visit in the same day, his face alone conveyed to the girl how justly founded had been her despairing cry that there was no hope. Hope, indeed, there was none. The case proved most complicated. By nighttime the temperature had risen still higher, and symptoms of pneumonia had developed.
Grace never left the other girl, and Polly turned to her as though they had been friends all their lives. It was, indeed, in such moments as these that Grace demonstrated her full beauty and wealth of heart and sympathy. She had bitterly reproached herself at first with lack of thought for the boy.
“I ought not to have taken him out,” she said to Polly, her eyes full of tears. “I ought to have known that this cold weather would try him.”
“Don’t say these things,” Polly whispered. “It was bound to come. I have felt all along that there was real danger to be feared in his future, and if he were to be a sufferer all his life, I—I almost rejoice that this has come. I grieve more for my mother now. He was her baby. Oh! she loves him so dearly.”
As the hours wore away thought of her mother pressed most hardly on the girl, and Grace hardly knew how to console her. In one of her quiet moments with Valentine in the corridor outside the sick room, Grace asked him how they should act.
“I can see that her heart is riven. She wants to spare her mother, and yet the truth must be told, for,” Grace added, in a lower voice, “Dr. Smythson fears the very worst. What can we do, Val?”
Valentine answered slowly that he should go himself to London and break the news to the mother, and also bring down other advice.
“Smythson may be mistaken,” he said, but Grace shook her head.
“Alas!” she answered, “I don’t need Dr. Smythson, or any other doctor, to tell me how poor a chance the boy has. Oh! Val, if only I had not taken him out yesterday!”
Valentine drew his sister toward him and kissed her brow.
“You distress yourself needlessly, dear,” he told her. “This has not come through any fault of yours. The boy was doomed to go, and go quickly. I saw it the first time my eyes rested upon him.”
He changed the subject here, and spoke of Polly. He was full of solicitude for the girl.
“Has she eaten sufficient food? Try and make her rest a little. Tell her to remember how important it is that she should keep up her strength. I want you to be very good to her, Grace.”
Grace returned his kiss.
She misread the meaning of those last few words, and took them to be only the expression of anxiety for one who was his guest, even under such sorrowful conditions, and Valentine did not enlighten her further, did not tell her that the girl sitting, heavy-eyed, with a breaking heart, beside her brother’s bed, was to him the sweetest, dearest creature the world could hold.
It was so hard for him to stand outside the door and know that she was within, fighting down so grim and terriblea grief. He longed to range himself beside her, to take from her the weight and the burning anguish of this moment.
At such a time his size, his great physical strength, seemed almost a mockery. Of what use to be so big, so powerful, when he could not even stand forward and protect one whom he loved from all sorrow?
Grace stole back into the silent room, and whispered to Polly her news.
“He will be with your mother in a few hours,” she said.
Polly thanked her softly, and turned her eyes from gazing on Harold’s white face.
“Don’t let her come here. It may be cruel in one sense, but it is kind in another. I want her to remember him as she has always known him, not as he is now. He used to be such a pretty boy,” Polly said, slowly, as if to herself.
She refused to leave his room even to rest for an hour.
“The time is short,” she told Grace. “It may be hours and it may be only moments. I must be here in case he needs me. He has recognized me, and just before you came I thought he smiled. I am not tired or hungry. I only want to be with him.”
Grace left her reluctantly. Duties in the house claimed her from time to time. Death may creep slowly up to the threshold, but life demands attention incessantly.
There were many things Grace had to do.
Valentine was going to London. He must have luncheon, and Sacha, too, did not quite understand why his home should be turned upside down for strangers. All these mundane things fell naturally to Grace’s lot to arrange.
In her hurry to see to Valentine’s comfort, she had not time to realize the lack of sympathy that characterized Sacha’s attitude at this moment.
It, therefore, came upon her with a shock, a few hourslater, when Ellen, her faithful maid and helper, informed her that Mr. Sacha had ordered her to pack a portmanteau, and then had been driven up to Sunstead to remain there for the time being.
“Sir Mark wants me to paint his portrait also, and this is as good an opportunity as any,” the young man had told the servant, as she obeyed his orders silently. “And I am quite sure Miss Grace will be glad to get me out of the house,” he had added.
Grace made no remark when Ellen brought her this information.
It shocked her sharply for a moment to think that the heart of her younger brother could prove itself so insensible to the sufferings of others, but almost immediately her love began to frame an explanation, if not an excuse, of Sacha’s conduct. She translated his selfishness to signify a desire to save her any extra trouble.
“He thinks he will be better out of the way, that with so much to do in the house he will be only an additional worry. I am sorry he should have gone without speaking to me first; and I am more sorry still he should have gone to Sunstead, especially just now; but,” Grace added in her thought, “it is hardly just to expect Sacha to quarrel with Mark because Mark has quarreled with us. Will she come here?” was Grace’s next thoughts. “Surely her hardness must give way at such a time as this. Though I have no wish to come in contact with her again, I still hope she will remember she is this poor boy’s sister, and that her place is near him now.”
Unconsciously Grace found herself saying this to the old servant.
“And when Lady Wentworth comes, Ellen,” she said, “you must let me know at once. This is not the moment to remember angry or hurt feelings.”
Ellen replied to this quietly and decisively.
“Lady Wentworth will not come, my dear,” she said. “She cares just as much whether her brother lives or dies as the greatest stranger might care. Sir Mark’s wife, Miss Grace, will only come to your house when she can do or say something to make you uncomfortable, and that’s just the plain truth.”
Grace flushed at this.
“I hope you are wrong, Ellen,” she said. “I should not care to think so badly of Lady Wentworth, or any other person.”
“I hope I am wrong, but I know I am right,” Ellen said, with obstinacy; then her voice changed as she talked of Polly.
“What a difference. Is it possible they can be sisters, Miss Grace? Poor little creature, it makes my heart ache to see her face. She looks very ill herself. I don’t think she is fit to sit in that close room, but there’s no way of moving her. Is Mr. Valentine going to bring the mother with him, Miss Grace?”
Grace shook her head.
“No; Mrs. Pennington is too much of an invalid. Valentine is going to break the news to her as gently as he can. Miss Polly has entreated him to prevent her mother coming.”
“I don’t see how he can stop her,” Ellen said, thoughtfully. “She may be delicate, but it’s only fair and right she should come and look on her boy before he goes. If I know anything of a mother’s nature, I warrant you Mrs. Pennington will come back with Mr. Valentine to-night. I had better prepare Mr. Sacha’s room for her in case I am right, had I not?”
Grace sanctioned this, feeling that there was wisdom in Ellen’s suggested preparation, though she hoped, as Polly did, that the mother might not come.
This wish was doomed to be set aside unfulfilled.
That same night, very late, a cab drove up to the door, and Valentine almost lifted out a fragile woman’s figure.
“She is quite exhausted,” he whispered in Grace’s ear.
Grace put her arms about Mrs. Pennington, and led her into the nearest room, while Valentine followed, looking strangely white and worn.
“I fear I am not a good emissary,” he said, sorrowfully, to his sister; “but when she pleaded to be allowed to come to her boy, it was impossible to refuse her. Shall I go and tell Miss Pennington?”
Grace merely nodded her head. She had all her work cut out, she saw at a glance, to minister to this poor, broken-hearted mother, whose haggard eyes and frail look brought the tears in a hot flood to her own eyes.
She had Ellen at hand to help her, and the two women vied with each other in doing all their hearts could suggest to give some strength to the overtaxed frame.
The journey from town, the cold and the aching anxiety had reduced poor Mrs. Pennington to an almost fainting condition, and though her eyes looked pleadingly into Grace’s face, she was forced by her weakness to rest before going upstairs.
Valentine stood a moment watching her, then turned and went to find Polly.
He went slowly. He felt truly that the sight of her mother so prostrate with grief would be the last drop in the girl’s cup of sorrow, and once again he felt his whole being go out in one despairing, eager desire to stand between Polly and all grief.
As he mounted the stairs slowly he heard a slight noise ahead of him, and looking upward he saw her standing at the top of the stairs.
Valentine could not have told how it was that he divined what news she had to give. He knew nothingdefinitely but that he stood beside her, holding her two small, cold hands in his.
Polly’s eyes were dry, but her voice was as hoarse as though she had shed innumerable tears.
“It came so softly—the end,” she said, speaking slowly and with difficulty. “There seemed to be no pain—only just one long, deep sigh, and then another—and then—silence. I waited half an hour, thinking it might be sleep, then I bent over him, and saw that he was indeed asleep, and that he will never waken here again.”
Valentine pressed the trembling fingers in his. It was the first time in his life that tears had shut out his sight. He conquered his feelings with difficulty as he led her down the stairs.
“Your mother is here; she has need of you,” he said. It was the only thing he could say.