Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  THE SICK CHAMBER.

  “DRAW aside the curtain, Rose,” said Adeline de Castella, feebly. “The sun has passed.”

  You can take a look at her as she lies. Some few weeks have passed since the sad occurrence just related, but there is no visible improvement in her appearance. Her face is wan, thinner than it was then, and dark circles have formed round her eyes. There had been no recurrence of the alarming symptoms from the lungs: indeed, the hurt seemed to have healed itself immediately; but a great deal of fever had supervened, and this had left her in a sad state of weakness. The doctors seemed a little puzzled at this condition of fever and its continuance; some of those around her were not, but knew it for the result of her unhappy state of mind. That consumption had set its seal upon her, there was no longer any doubt, but it was thought probable the disease might linger in its progress.

  Rose and Mary were with her still. Adeline could not bear to hear of their leaving. “They must spare you to me until the end,” she said, alluding to their friends, and the young ladies seemed quite willing to accept the position. They were her chief companions; the French nurse remained, but her office was partly a sinecure, and just now she was occupied with Madame de Beaufoy, who was confined to her bed with illness. Signor de Castella was in Paris on business — he always seemed to have business on hand, but no one could ever quite find out what it was. Agnes de Beaufoy sat much with her mother. Madame de Castella was almost as ill as Adeline; grieving, fretting, repining continually. She paid frequent visits to Adeline’s room, but seldom stayed in it long, for she was apt to suffer her feelings to get ahead, and to become hysterical. A frequent visitor to it was Father Marc; the most cheerful, chatty, pleasant of all. He brought her no end of entertaining anecdotes of the neighbourhood, and sometimes succeeded in winning a smile from her lips. He never entered with her upon religious topics, so far as the two young ladies saw or heard; never appeared to anticipate that the end of life’s race was entered upon. Rose had put aside much of her giddy vanity, and they all loved her. She was in bitter repentance for her unnecessary and exaggerated revelations touching Sarah Beauclerc; — there, in her knowledge of that, lay the keenest sting of Adeline’s misery, Adeline remained silent as to her inward life, silent as the grave; but something had been gathered of it. She had more than once fallen into a sort of delirium — I don’t know any better name for it; partly sleep, partly a talking and waking dream, and some painful thoughts had been spoken in it. It always occurred at the dusk of evening, and Adeline herself seemed unconscious of it when she woke up to reality. You may meet with such a case yourselves; when you do, suspect the patient’s state of alarming bodily weakness.

  Adeline’s former chamber had been changed for one with a southern aspect. The bed was in a recess, as is customary in the country, or rather in a smaller room, for there were windows and two doors in it. A large cheerful chamber, or sitting-room, the chief, the windows lofty, the fire-place handsome, the little Turkey-carpet mats, scattered on the polished floor, of bright colours. Adeline’s sofa just now faced the windows; it was light, and could be turned easily any way on its firm castors; Madame de Castella leaned back in an easy-chair, nearly as pale and worn as Adeline; Mary Carr was working; Rose listlessly turned over the leaves of one of the pretty books lying on the large round table.

  “Draw aside the curtain, Rose,” Adeline said. “The sun has passed.”

  Rose drew it aside. An hour or so before, the weak, watery sun had come forth from behind the lowering grey clouds and sent his beams straight into Adeline’s eyes, so they had shut him out. Diminished in force though the rays were, they were yet too bright for the invalid’s sight. Surely, when you come to think of it, there was a singular affinity between the weather and Adeline’s health and happiness. Cold, wet, boisterous, and gloomy had it been in the spring, during the time of her long illness, up to the period, within a few days, of her arrival at Beaufoy and commencing intimacy with Frederick St. John; warm, brilliant and beautiful it was all through the months of that intimacy; but with its abrupt termination, the very day subsequent to the miserable one of his departure and of Adeline’s dangerous accident, it had abruptly changed, and become cold, wet, dreary again. Weeks, as you have heard, had elapsed since, and the weather still wore the same gloomy aspect, in which there seemed no prospect of amendment on this side winter. A feeling of awe, almost of superstition, would creep over Mary Carr, as she sat by Adeline’s bedside in the dim evenings, listening to the moaning, sighing wind, as it swept round the unprotected château and shook off the leaves from the nearly bare trees on the western side. It sounded so like a dirge for the dying girl who was passing from them! The watchers would look up with a shiver, and say how dreary it was, this gloomy weather, and wish it would change, forgetting that the sweetest summer’s day, the brightest skies, cannot bring joy to a house where joy exists not, or renew the peace of a heart from which hope has flown. Very fanciful all this, no doubt, you will say; what has the weather to do with events in this busy world of ours? Nothing, of course. Still, it had been a curious year; winter, summer, and now winter again; but neither spring nor autumn.

  As Rose drew aside the curtain, humming a scrap of a song at the same time, for she was always gay, and nothing could take it out of her, Adeline left the sofa where she had been lying, and sat down near the fire in any easy-chair of white dimity.

  “Mamma,” she said, catching sight of Madame de Castella’s lifeless, sickly aspect, “why do you not go out? It is not raining to-day, and the fresh air would do you good.”

  “Oh, Adeline,” sighed the unhappy mother, “nothing will do me good while I see you as you are.”

  “Now, Madame de Castella!” remonstrated Rose. “You persist in taking a wrong view of things! Adeline is getting better and stronger every day.”

  True, in a degree. But would it last? Perhaps Rose herself, in her inmost heart, knew that it would not. Madame de Castella rose abruptly, and quitted the room; and Rose gave a shrug to her pretty shoulders. There were times, as she privately confided to Mary Carr, when she could have shaken Madame for her line of conduct. She vented her anger just now on the pillow behind Adeline’s back, knocking it unmercifully, under the plea of smoothing it to comfort.

  “I’m putting it straight for you, Adeline.”

  “No matter, dear Rose. It will do very well. Thank you all the same.”

  “I wish you’d taste this jelly; it’s delicious.”

  “But I don’t care for it; I don’t care to eat,” was the apathetic reply.

  “Shall I read to you?” asked Rose.

  “As you will, dear Rose; it seems all one to me. But thank you very much.”

  Thus had she been all along; thus she continued. Quiet, passive, grateful for their cares, but showing no interest in any earthly thing. No tidings whatever had been heard of Mr. St. John since he left; what quarter of the known world he might be in, whether or not he was aware of Adeline’s state, they could not conjecture. It was assumed that he was in London; Adeline, for one, never thought of doubting it. All this while, and not a single remembrance from him!

  Rose went to the table, turned over the books collected there, and took up a volume of Tennyson.

  “Not that,” said Adeline, quickly glancing up with a faint colour. “Something else.”

  No, not that. He had given her the book, and been accustomed to read it to her. How could she bear to hear it read by another?

  Rose tried again: Béranger. “That won’t do,” she said. “A pretty laugh you would have at my French accent!”

  “Your accent is not a bad one, Rose.”

  “It may pass in conversation. But to read poetry aloud in any language but one’s own, is — What’s this?” continued Rose, interrupting herself as she opened another volume; which she as quickly dropped again. It was Bulwer’s “Pilgrims of the Rhine.”

  “That will do as well as another,” said Adeline.

  �
��No,” shortly answered Rose, avoiding the book with a gesture that was half a shrug and half a shudder. Adeline stretched out her hand and drew her near, speaking in a low murmuring tone.

  “You fear to remind me of myself, Rose, in telling of Gertrude. Indeed, there is no analogy to be traced between the cases,” she added, with a bitter smile, “save in the nature of the disease; and that we must both die. One might envy her fate.”

  “I don’t like the book,” persisted Rose.

  “I do,” said Adeline. “One tale in it I could never be tired of. I forget its title, but it begins, ‘The angels strung their harps in Heaven, and the—’”

  “I know,” interrupted Rose, rapidly turning over the pages. “Here it is. ‘The Soul in Purgatory; or, Love stronger than Death.’ It is a tale of woman’s enduring love.”

  “And its reward sighed Adeline. “Read it. It is very short.”

  Rose began her reading. It was quite impossible to tell whether Adeline listened or not: she sat silent, in her chair, her hand over her face; and, when it was over, she remained in the same position, making no comment, till the nurse came in to give the medicine.

  “I’m not wanted in there just now,” said she, with that freedom of manner which is so characteristic of the dependents in a French family, but which is never offensive, or even borders on disrespect; “so I’ll sit here a bit.”

  “You can wheel the sofa nearer to the fire, nurse,” said Adeline. —

  It was done, and Adeline lay down upon it. Rose began another tale, and read till dusk.

  “Shall I stir the fire into a blaze, Adeline, and finish it now; or wait until candle-light?”

  There came no answer. Mary Carr stole forward and bent over Adeline. She had fallen asleep. Stay: not sleep; but into one of those restless, dreamy stupors akin to it. The thought had more than once crossed them — did that Odesque doctor, who chiefly saw to the medicine, put laudanum in it, and were these feverish wanderings the result? The uncertain light of the wood fire played fitfully upon Adeline’s face, revealing its extreme beauty of feature and its deathly paleness. Rose closed her book; and Mary left Adeline’s sofa, and stood looking through the window on the dreary night. The nurse, who had dropped into a doze herself, soothed by the monotonous and incomprehensible tones of the foreign tongue, rose and went downstairs for some wood.

  Mary Carr had laid her finger with a warning gesture on Rose Darling’s arm, for sounds were heard from Adeline. Turning from the darkened window where they had been holding a whispered colloquy, they held their breath to listen. Very distinct were the words in the silence of the room:

  “Don’t say it! don’t say it! “ murmured Adeline. “I tell you there is no hope. He has been gone too long: one — two — three — four — do you think I have not counted the weeks? — Why does he not come? — Why does he not write? — What’s this? My letters? thrust back upon me with scorn and insult! — What is he whispering to Sarah Beauclerc? Oh, mercy! mercy!”

  The nurse re-entered the room, her arms laden with wood. By some mishap she let a log fall to the floor, and the noise aroused Adeline. Rose ran to the sofa, her eyes full of tears.

  “Oh, Adeline,” she sighed, leaning over her, “you should not take it so heavily to heart. If things were at an end between you and Mr. St. John, there was something noble rather than the contrary in his returning you your letters. Indeed, we have always seen him honourable in all he does. Another might have kept them — have boasted of them — have shown them to the world. I only wish,” broke off Rose, going from Adeline’s affairs to her own, in the most unceremonious way, “that I could get back all the love-letters I have written! What a heap there’d be of them!”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Adeline, sitting up on the sofa in her alarm. “Have I been saying anything in my sleep?”

  “Not much — only a few words,” said Mary Carr, stepping forward and speaking in a calm, soothing tone, a very contrast to Rose’s excited one. “But we can see how it is about Mr. St. John, Adeline. He left in ill-feeling, and the inward grief is killing you by inches. If your mind were at rest, time might restore you to health; but, as it is, you are giving yourself no chance of life.”

  “There is no chance for me,” she answered; “you know it. If I were happy as I once was, as I once thought I should be; if I were even married to Mr. St. John, there would be no chance of prolonged life for me; none.”

  Mary Carr did know it; but she strove to soothe her still.

  “I might have expected all that has happened to me,” smiled Adeline, trying to turn the subject to a jest, the first approach to voluntary smile or jest they had marked on her lips. “Do you remember your words, Rose, on that notable first of January, my ball-night — that some ill-fate was inevitably in store for me?”

  “Rubbish!” said Rose. “I was an idiot, and a double idiot: and I don’t remember it.”

  But Rose did remember it, all too vividly. She remembered how Adeline had laughed in ridicule, had spurned her words, then; in her summer-tide of pride and beauty. It was winter with her now!

  There could be no further erroneous opinions on the point. Physically, she was dying of consumption, as a matter of course, and as the doctors said: but was she not just as much dying of a broken heart? The cruel pain was ever torturing her: though her lungs had been strong and healthy, it might have worked its work.

  I hardly know how to continue this portion of the history, and feel a great temptation to make a leap at once to its close. Who cares to read of the daily life of a sick-chamber? There is so little variation in it: there was so little in hers. Adeline better or worse; the visits of the doctors, and their opinions; a change in her medicine, pills for mixture, or mixture for pills; and there you have about the whole history. Which medicine, by the way, was ordered by the English physician. A French one never gives any. He would not prescribe one dose, where the English would choke you with five hundred. It is true. Pills, powders, mixture; mixture, powders, pills: five hundred at the very least, where a Frenchman would give none. Warm baths and fasting in abundance they order, but no medicine. They are uncommonly free with the lancet, however; with leeches; with anything else that draws blood. The first year Eleanor Seymour (if you have not forgotten her) was at school at Madame de Nino’s, an illness broke out amidst the pupils, and the school medical attendant was sent for. It was this very Dr. Dorré, now attending Adeline de Castella. Five or six of the younger girls seemed heavy and feverish, and there were signs of an eruption on the skin. Monsieur le docteur thought it would turn out to be measles or scarlatina, he could not yet pronounce which; and he ordered them to bed and to take a few quarts of eau sucrée: he “then sent for the rest of the pupils one by one, and bled them all round. (NOTE: A fact in all its details) “A simple measure of precaution,” he said to Madame.

  If this history of the sick-chamber is to be continued, we must borrow some extracts from the diary of Mary Carr. A good thing she kept one: otherwise there would have been little record of this earlier period in the closing scenes of life.

  Meanwhile it may be as well to mention that a sort of wild wish — in its fervour it could be called little else — had taken hold of Adeline: she wanted to return to Belport. Every one at first opposed it. The cold would be greater in the seaport town than it was at Beaufoy; and the journey might do her harm. There appeared to be only one consideration in its favour; but that was a strong one: they would be on the spot with the doctors. She seemed to get better and stronger. Signor de Castella came home and was astonished at the improvement. Perhaps it was what he had not looked for.

  EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF MARY CARR.

  Nov. 3rd. — What can make her so anxious to return to Belport? She is growing feverish about it, and the Signor and Madame see that she is. Rose has been offering to bet me a pair of gloves that it will end in our going. I hope it will. This house seems to be dedicated to illness. Madame de Beaufoy does not improve, and one of the servants has taken gastric
fever.

  Belport, Belport! It is the one wish of her existence; the theme of her daily prayer. Has she an idea that she may there be in the way of hearing of him, perhaps of seeing him? Or is it that she would bid adieu to this place, hoping to bid adieu at the same time to its remembrances?

  She is so much better! She comes downstairs now, dressed as she used to be, except the hair. It is braided under a pretty little lace cap: the French are such people for keeping the head warm! Often on her shoulders she wears a light cashmere shawl: the one she put on the night when she attempted to go away with Mr. St. John. “I wonder if she thinks of it?” I said yesterday to Rose. “What a donkey you are!” was the complimentary reply: “as if she did not think of that miserable night and its mishaps continually!”

  We now know that Mr. St. John is in London. In looking over the Times — which comes regularly to Madame de Beaufoy — I saw his name amidst a host of others, as having attended a public meeting: Frederick St. John, Esq., of Castle Wafer. I put the paper into Adeline’s hand, pointing to the list, and then quitted the room. On my return to it the journal was lying on the table, and her face was buried amidst the cushions of the armchair.

  Is this improvement to turn out a deceitful one? It might not, but for the ever-restless, agitated mind. A calm without, a torrent within! The weakness is no longer apparent; the cough is nearly gone. But she is inert and indifferent as ever; buried within herself. This apparently languid apathy, this total indifference to life and its daily concerns, is set down by her friends to bodily weakness; and so they let it remain unchecked and unaroused, and she indulges, unmolested, in all the bitter feelings of a breaking heart.

  6th. — These last few fine days have afforded the pretext for complying with Adeline’s wish, and here we are, once more, at Belport, she wonderfully improved. Still better, still better! for how long? Rose has resumed her wild gaiety of spirits, and says she will sing a Te Deum for having left the dreary old château and its ghosts behind us.