CHAPTER II.
"BEFORE THE NIGHT BE FALLEN ACROSS THY WAY."
A sudden end to a happy day-dream. A hurried preparation and a swift departure. Allan had just time to write to Suzette while his servant was packing a portmanteau and the dog-cart horse was being harnessed for the drive to the station.
He loved his father too well to have room for any selfish thoughts about his own disappointment; but he tried to be hopeful and to think that his mother's alarm had exaggerated the evil, and that the word "dangerously" was rather the expression of her own panic than of the doctor's opinion. It was only natural that she should summon him, the only son, to his father's sick-bed. The illness must be appalling in its suddenness; for in her letter, written on the previous day, she had described him as in his usual health. The suddenness of the attack was in itself enough to scare a woman of Lady Emily's temperament.
Allan telegraphed from Liverpool Street, and was met at the quiet little terminus, where the tiny branch line came to an end on the edge of a meadow, and a hundred yards from a rustic road. The journey to Cambridge had been one of the swiftest, the twenty miles on the branch line of the slowest; a heart-breaking journey for a man whose mind was racked with fears.
It was dark when he arrived; but out of the darkness which surrounded the terminus there came the friendly voice of a groom and the glare of carriage-lamps.
"Ah, is that you, Moyle? Is my father any better?"
His heart sank as he asked the question, with agonizing dread of the reply.
"No, sir; I'm afraid he ain't no better. The doctor from Abbeytown is coming again to-night. Will you drive, sir?"
"No. Get me home as fast as you can, for God's sake!"
"Yes, sir. I brought your old bay mare. She's the fastest we've got."
"Poor old Kitty! Good to the last, is she? Get on."
They were bowling along the level road behind bay Kitty, the first hunter Allan had bought on his own account in his old college days, when his liberal allowance enabled him to indulge his taste in horseflesh. Kitty had distinguished herself in a small way as a steeplechaser before Allan picked her up at Tattersall's, and she was an elderly person when he came into his fortune; so he had left her in the home stables as a general utility horse.
Kitty carried him along the road at a splendid pace, and hardly justified impatience even in the most anxious heart.
His mother was waiting in the porch when he alighted.
"Dear mother," he said, as he kissed and soothed her and led her into the house, "why do you stand out in the cold? You are shivering."
"Not with cold, Allan."
"Poor mother! Is he very ill? Is it really so serious?"
"It could not be more serious, Allan. They thought this morning that he was dying. They told me—to be prepared—for the worst."
The sentence was broken by sobs. She hid her face on her son's breast and sobbed out her grief unchecked by him, only soothed by the gentle pressure of his arm surrounding and, as it were, protecting her from the invincible enemy.
"Doctors are such alarmists, mother; they often take fright too soon."
"Not in this case, Allan; I was with him all through his sufferings. I saw him struggling with death. I knew how near death was in those dreadful hours. It is his heart, Allan. You remember Dr. Arnold's death—how we have cried over the story in Stanley's book. It was like that—sudden, intense suffering. Yesterday he was sitting in his library, placid and at ease among his books. We dined together last night. He was cheerful and full of interesting talk. And this morning at daybreak he was fighting for his life. It was terrible."
"But the danger is past, mother. The struggle is over, please God, and he will be well again."
"Never, never again, Allan. The doctors hold out little hope of that. The awful agony may return at any hour. The mischief is deep seated. We have been living in a fool's paradise. Oh, my dear son, I never knew how fondly I have loved your father till to-day. I thought we should grow old together, go down to the grave hand-in-hand."
"Dear mother, hope for the best. I cannot think—remembering how young a man he seemed the other day at Beechhurst—I cannot think that we are to lose him."
Tears were streaming down Allan's cheeks, tears of which he was unconscious. He dearly loved the father whose mild affection had made his childhood and youth so smooth and easy, the father who had understood every youthful desire, every unexpressed feeling, who in his tenderness and forethought had been as sympathetic as a loving woman.
"Oh, Allan, you will find him aged by ten years since those happy days at Beechhurst. One day of suffering has altered him. It seems as if some invisible writing—the lines of disease and death—had come suddenly out upon his face—lines I never saw till this day."
"Mother, we won't despair. We are passing through the valley of the shadow of death, perhaps—but only passing through. The fight may be hard and bitter; but we shall conquer the enemy; we shall carry our dearest safely over the dark valley. May I see him? I will be very calm and quiet. I am so longing to see him, to hold his dear hand."
"We ought to wait for the doctors, Allan. They both warned me that he must be kept as quiet as possible. He is terribly exhausted. They will be here at eleven o'clock. It might be safer to wait till then."
"Yes, I will wait. Who is with him now?"
"A nurse from the Abbeytown hospital."
"And he is out of pain, and at rest?"
"He was sleeping when I left him—sleeping heavily, worn out with pain, and under the influence of opium."
"Well, we must wait. There is nothing to be done."
Mother and son waited patiently, almost silently, through the slow hours between eight and eleven. They sat together in Lady Emily's morning-room, which was next to the sick man's bedroom. There was a door of communication, and though this was shut, they could hear if there were much movement in the adjoining room.
Lady Emily mooted the question of dinner for the traveller. She urged him to go down to the dining-room and take some kind of meal after his journey; but he shook his head with the first touch of impatience he had shown since his arrival.
"You will wear yourself out, Allan?" she remonstrated.
"No, mother—there is plenty of wear in me. I almost hate myself for being so strong and so full of life while he is lying there——"
Tears ended the sentence.
At last the hands of the clock, which mother and son had both been watching, pointed to eleven, and the hour struck with slow and silvery sound. Then came ten minutes of expectancy, and then the cautious tread of the family practitioner and the consulting physician coming upstairs together.
Allan and his mother went out to the corridor to see them. A few murmured words only, and the two dark figures vanished through the door of the sick-room, and mother and son were alone once more, waiting, waiting with aching hearts and strained ears, that listened for every sound on the other side of the closed door.
The doctors were some time with the patient, and then they went downstairs, and were closeted together in the library for a time that seemed very long to those who waited for the result of their consultation. Those anxious watchers had followed them downstairs, and were standing beside the expiring fire in the hall, waiting as for the voice of fate. The dining-room door was open. A table laid for supper, with glass and silver shining under the lamplight, and the glow of a blazing fire, suggested comfort and good cheer—and seemed to accentuate the gloom in the hearts of the watchers.
What were they talking about, those two in the closed room yonder, Allan wondered. Was their talk all of the sufferer upstairs, and the means of alleviating pain and staving off the inevitable end? or did they wander from that question of life and death to the futilities of everyday conversation—and so lengthen out the agony of those who were waiting for their verdict? At last the door opened, and the two doctors came out into the hall, very grave still, but less gloomy than they had looked in the morning, Lady Emily thought.
"He is better—decidedly better than he was twelve hours ago," said the physician. "We have tided over the immediate peril."
"And he is out of danger?" questioned Allan, eagerly.
"He is out of danger for the moment. He may go on for some time without a recurrence of this morning's attack; but I am bound to tell you that the danger may recur at any time. What has happened must be regarded—I am sorry to be obliged to say it—as the beginning of the end."
There was a silence, broken only by the wife's stifled sobs.
"My God, how sudden it is! and you say it is hopeless?" said Allan, stunned by the sentence of doom.
"To you the thing is sudden; but the mischief is a work of many years. The evil has been there, suspected by your father, but never fully realized. He consulted me ten years ago, and I gave him the best advice the case allowed—prescribed a regimen which I believe he carefully followed—a regimen which consisted chiefly in quietness and careful living. I told him as much as it was absolutely necessary to tell, taking care not to frighten him."
"You did not tell me that he was a doomed man," Lady Emily said reproachfully.
"My dear lady, to have done that would have been to lessen his chance of cheerful surroundings, to run the risk of sad looks where it was most needful he should find hopefulness. Besides, at that stage of the disease, one might hope for the best—even for a long life, under favourable conditions."
"And now—what is the limit of your hope?" asked Allan.
"I cannot measure the sands in the glass. Another attack like that of to-day would, I fear, be fatal. It is a wonder to me that he survived the agony of this morning."
"And you have told us—that agony may return at any hour. Nothing you can do can prevent its recurrence?"
"I fear not; but we shall do the uttermost."
"May I see him?"
"Not till to-morrow. He is still under the influence of an opiate. Let him rest for to-night undisturbed by one agitating thought. His frame is exhausted by suffering. Mr. Travers will be here again early to-morrow; and if he find his patient as I hope he will find him, then you and Lady Emily can see him for a few minutes. But I must beg that there may be no emotional talk, and that he may be kept very quiet all to-morrow. I will come again early on Saturday."
Mother and son hung upon the physician's words. He was a man whom both trusted, and even in this great strait the idea of other help hardly occurred to either. Yet in the desire to do the uttermost, Allan ventured to say—
"If you would like another opinion, I would telegraph for any one you might suggest—among London specialists."
"A specialist could do nothing more than we have done. The battle is fought and won so far—and when the fight begins again the same weapons will have to be used. The whole college of physicians could do nothing to help us."
And then the doctors went into the dining-room, the physician to fortify himself for a ten-mile drive, the family practitioner to prepare himself for the possibilities of the night. Allan went in with them, at his mother's urgent request, and tried to eat some supper; but his heart was heavy as lead.
He thought of Mrs. Wornock—remembering that pale face looking out of the autumn night, so intense in its searching gaze, the dark grey eyes seeming to devour the face they looked upon—his father sitting unconscious all the while—knowing not how near love was—the romantic love of his younger years, the love which still held all the elements of poetry, the love which had never been vulgarized or out-worn by the fret and jar of daily life.
He would die, perhaps, without ever having seen the face of his early love, without ever having heard the end of her history—die, perhaps, believing that she had given him up easily because she had never really cared for him. The son had felt it in somewise his duty to keep those two apart for his mother's sake; but now at the idea that his father might die without having seen his early love or heard her story from her own lips, it seemed to him that he had acted cruelly and treacherously towards the parent he loved.
There was a further improvement in the patient next morning, and Allan spent the greater part of the day beside his father's bed. There was to be very little conversation; but Allan was told he might read aloud, provided the literature was of an unemotional character. So at his father's request Allan read Chaucer, and the quaint old English verse, with every line of which the patient was familiar, had a soothing and a cheering influence on the tired nerves and brain. There was progress again the day after, and the physician and local watch-dog expressed themselves more than satisfied. The patient might come downstairs on Sunday—might have an airing on the sunniest side of the garden, should there be any sunshine on Monday; but everything was to be done with precautions that too plainly indicated his precarious condition.
"Do you take a more hopeful view than you did the other night?" Allan asked the physician, after the consultation.
"Alas! no. The improvement is greater than I expected; but the substantial facts remain the same. There is deep-seated mischief, which may culminate fatally at any time. I should do wrong to conceal the nature of the case—or its worst possibilities—from you. It is best you should be prepared for the end—for Lady Emily's sake especially, in order that you may lighten the blow for her."
"And the end is likely to come suddenly?"
"Most likely—better perhaps that it should so come. Your father is prepared for death. He is quite conscious of his danger. Better that the end should be sudden—if it spare him pain?"
"Yes, better so. But it is a hard thing. My father is not forty-eight years of age—in the prime of life, with a fine intellect. It is a hard thing."
"Yes, it is hard, very hard. It seems hard even to me, who have seen so many partings. I think you ought to spare your mother as much as you can. Spare her the agony of apprehension; let her have her husband's last days of sunshine and peace. But it is best that you should know. You are a man, and you can suffer and be strong."
"Yes, I can suffer. He seemed so much better this morning. Might he not go on for years, with the care which we shall take of him?"
"He might—but it is scarcely probable."
"We were to have had a young lady visitor here to-day," said Allan, with some hesitation, "the lady who is to be my wife. Her visit has been postponed on account of my father's illness; but I am very anxious that she should know more of my father and mother, and I have been wondering if next week we might venture to have her here. She is very gentle and sympathetic, and I know her society would be pleasant to my father."
"I would not risk it, Mr. Carew, if I were you."
"You think it might be bad for my father?"
"I think it might be hazardous for the young lady. Were a fatal end to come suddenly, you would not like the girl you love to be subjected to the horror of the scene, to be haunted perhaps for years by the memory of that one tragic hour. There is no necessity for her presence here. You can go and see her."
"Yes, and risk being absent in my father's dying hours."
"Better that risk than the risk of her unhappiness, should the end come while she were in the house."
"Yes, I suppose that is so; but I can't help hoping that the end may be far off."
The doctor pressed his hand in silence, and nodded good-bye as he stepped into his carriage. It was not for him to forbid hope, even if he knew that it was a delusive hope.