by Grant Allen
‘Oh, Tata dear,’ she cried, ‘Sabine’s come; Sabine’s come to you. She’ll never forgive herself, darling, for having left you!’
The child smiled a satisfied smile once more, and fell back, gasping. Sabine caught him up in her arms, all in the wraps as he lay, and carried him over by the fire, and laid him on her lap, and cried and sobbed as if her heart would break over him. She had forgotten everything now — her father, and Paris, and Hubert, and the Simpsons’ party, and her own neglect, and her remorse, and every feeling on earth, save that one wild yearning to save him — to save him!
Oh, that long, long night! Would day never dawn? She looked at the clock. It was close on four. The doctor had said he would come again at seven. She whispered to the nurse:
‘Does he seem much feebler?’
And the nurse, nodding her head, answered low under her breath:
‘Well, I think he’s pretty bad. He can’t ketch his breath. He doesn’t look to me as if he’d live till morning.’
At those words, confirming all her own worst fears, Sabine clasped her bloodless hands together in an agony of anguish.
‘Oh, send for the doctor again!’ she cried. ‘Maria, Maria! send quick — send quick for him!’
It wasn’t a moment too soon, for the child lay choking and struggling now in her arms in the violent effort to breathe through the hideous growth that was slowly strangling him. He reached out his little arms, and called, ‘Sabine! Sabine!’ but Sabine could do nothing for him. Unless help came at once, all would soon be over. Sabine felt convinced the critical instant had just arrived. The disease had matured with alarming haste, and if they waited till morning they might wait for ever.
She whispered again to the nurse. One of the servants went out in breathless haste. Sabine waited for his return in a torment of suspense. It was so terrible to see that helpless little creature writhing and battling in the very clutches of Death, and to know one could do nothing to save or relieve him. She pictured to herself terrible pictures of what must happen if Arthur died. Her love for him grew fervent and unspeakable now. She clasped her hands hard, and held her breath with sympathy. No mother ever watched her own child more tenderly. Oh, why could she do nothing to save or relieve him?
It was hours, whole hours, before the doctor came, though the clock marked it as only twenty minutes. Sabine sat anxiously awaiting his footstep on the stairs. Would he never come? For if only he came she felt all might yet go well with them. In these great emergencies human nature falls back for relief upon such secondary resting-places. The doctor’s arrival becomes in itself the proximate end on which we fix our attention, and beyond which we dare not fear or hope or long for anything.
A hundred times at least she cried, ‘Oh, I wish he would come!’ And a hundred times she thought to herself, with a groan, how foolish, how futile!
As she waited, Arthur looked up at her once and found words a second time. She bent over him and listened.
‘Tata’s dying,’ the child murmured with quivering lips. ‘Sabine, Tata’s dying.’
Sabine pressed him to her breast and felt her heart breaking.
At last a sound of wheels; a creaking of the door; a noise on the landing! That heavy tread resounded in the corridor. Sabine drew a deep breath, a sigh of relief; and the doctor entered.
He pursed his lips as he adjusted his glasses and gazed at the little patient with professional calmness.
‘So, so!’ he said, puckering his eyebrows as he looked. He felt the tiny pulse; he watched with a critical eye the convulsive movements. Then he shook his head gravely, and looked medically wise. ‘You must prepare your mind for the worst, I’m afraid, Miss Venables,’ he murmured with some decent show of polite sympathy. ‘It’s my painful duty to tell you the poor little fellow has a very slight chance indeed of living more than a few minutes.’
Sabine burst into a wild flood of hysterical tears. ‘Oh, don’t say that!’ she cried, pressing the child to her breast. ‘Don’t say that, I implore you! He mustn’t die! He mustn’t! Is there nothing, nothing at all we can do to save him?’
‘Only one thing,’ the doctor answered, looking her full in the face with a very doubtful air, as his brow gathered. ‘And that’s a thing I dare hardly even suggest to you.’
Sabine sprang at his words with almost a mother’s intuition.
‘Oh, I know what you mean!’ she cried, all aglow with the thought that there was still some hope. ‘I’ve heard of it before; and if you’ll tell me how to try, I’m not afraid to try it.’
CHAPTER XXV.
HEROIC REMEDIES.
Below stairs, meanwhile, two or three of the household, sleepily hanging about in the servants’ hall through the small hours of the morning in expectation of orders from the sick-room, were discussing among themselves, with their wonted frankness towards the affairs of their betters, the chances and changes of the situation.
‘What I say is,’ the butler remarked with the air of a person well skilled in diagnosis, ‘Master Arthur he’ll never pull through. He can’t, don’t you see. He ain’t got the constitootion for it. He takes after his mother; that’s where it is. She was a feeble thing, and there ain’t no stamina in him.’
‘He won’t live till morning, I’m afraid,’ the housekeeper responded, shaking her head gloomily, and sipping the tea she had brewed for their joint refreshment. ‘You’re quite right, there, Mr. Sampson. The poor little thing! He won’t live till morning.’
‘An’ a jolly good job too,’ the butler went on, in an argumentative vein, stirring the fire with a vigorous hand. ‘Then things’ll come round as they’d ought to have come round from the very beginning.’
‘Oh, Mr. Sampson, how can you talk so?’ the housekeeper interposed, scandalized, readjusting her head-dress. ‘And the poor dear babe lying dying upstairs there this very minute! Well, there! I do believe you men have no hearts in you.’
‘No, ma’am; I don’t mean to say,’ Mr. Sampson explained, in an apologetic tone of voice, ‘but what I don’t pity the poor little chap, as far as that goes, for his sufferings and such-like; though, as Reece says, he’d never be able to sit a horse right, even if he was to live — he ain’t got the knees for it. But what I do say is this,’ and the butler looked exceedingly wise and oracular, as he eyed the poker sideways. ‘He’d never ought to have come into the family at all, that’s where the truth of it is. He’d never ought to have come into the family at all,’ he repeated slowly, with that love of feebly enforcing an opinion by mere iteration which is instinctive in people at a certain grade of intelligence. ‘He’d never ought to have come into the family at all, upsetting arrangements that was made and done for before he was born, and throwin’ Miss Sabine, as is worth a round dozen of him, into the shade, as you may say — into the sere and yellow leaf, in the manner of speaking.’
‘Miss Sabine’s never complained of him, I’m sure,’ the housekeeper answered with an aggrieved air, as the self-appointed champion of infant innocence, ‘and it ain’t our place to complain for her neither.’
Mr. Sampson paused, and eyed the poker once more.
‘Miss Sabine’s never complained,’ he replied forensically, after a rhetorical lull. ‘She’s too much the lady for that, you may be sure, let alone being so proud and reserved, and haughty-like. She wouldn’t say nothing to demean herself openly; not likely, ma’am, not likely. But before Master Arthur came, you look how it was: Miss Sabine was everybody in the house: it was “Miss Venables wants this,” “Miss Venables would like that,” “Miss Venables will require the carriage at four,” “Miss Venables will ride in the park this morning.” Then this fuzzy-wigged little governess woman — she was trained for a governess, you know, no better nor that, before Mr. Venables married her — this fuzzy-wigged little governess woman, she comes into the house, with her fads and her fancies, and upsets everything, and takes Miss Sabine’s place, and gets Miss Sabine’s position, and makes Miss Sabine, as you may say, into a mere nobody — make
s her just nobody. It was “Mrs. Venables wants this,” “Mrs. Venables wants that,” “Mrs. Venables will require the carriage at four,” “Mrs. Venables will not go out this morning.” You may ask what you like, ma’am — you may say what you like’ — and the butler glowered at her— ‘but it’s a precious come-down in life for a high-spirited young lady like our Miss Sabine, I can tell you, brought up in the very lap of luxury, as the saying is, to have to play second fiddle in her own father’s house to a reduced gentlewoman, with a fuzzy wig, brought up for a governess.’
And Mr. Sampson poked the fire once more, this time quite viciously.
‘Reduced gentlewomen have their feelings as well as the rest of the world,’ the housekeeper remarked, with proper pride; for she had ex-officio pretensions herself to that dubious honour.
‘Well, I don’t say as they haven’t,’ the butler replied, temporizing. ‘In their proper place, I don’t say as they haven’t. Redooced gentlewomen is all very well in their proper place, and in their proper sphere, and there one respects ’em. But to see a common little tuppenny-ha’penny thing of a girl, as was brought up for a governess, with a fuzzy wig, lolling and leaning back on the cushions of the Hurst Croft carriage, with Old Affability hisself a-lolling by her side, while our Miss Sabine sits bolt upright on the second seat with her back to the hosses, why, it’s enough to sicken a man of the hollowness of society, that’s what I say about it — enough to sicken a man of the hollowness of society. And then what does she do?’ the butler continued, delighted with his own phrase. ‘She goes and dies, and leaves this little beggar behind out of spite, just to worry Miss Sabine. It’s enough to sicken any man of the hollowness of society.’
‘Well, that wasn’t her fault, anyhow, poor dear!’ the housekeeper interrupted with virtuous indignation.
‘Who’s a-saying it was?’ the butler responded in a tone of great dignity. ‘An’ who’s a-saying it wasn’t? She goes and dies, I say. That’s all plain and natural. Nobody can’t be blamed for going and dying, except it’s a suicide. An’ a good thing, too, I says at the time; for she’s kep’ Miss Sabine a sight too long out of her own, an’ that’s the truth of it. We shall see our young lady riding now where she’d ought to ride, with her face to the hosses. And so she’d ought to, ma’am; so she’d ought to — so she’d ought to. But what does the fuzzy-wigged governess go and do but leave this sickly little mortal behind her, to cut out Miss Sabine still, and be the heir to the family. Ever since he come, things have been wuss than ever. It’s Master Arthur this, and Master Arthur that, and Master Arthur here, and Master Arthur there, till I’m clean sick and tired of him. It ain’t my place to go waiting on a baby. And now there’s some chance of things coming right again, thank Heaven! as they’d used to be in the beginning. That’s one comfort.’
‘Perhaps it’s providential,’ the housekeeper suggested with an air of resignation; ‘it may be ordered so on purpose.’
‘Perhaps it may,’ Mr. Sampson answered, somewhat dubiously; ‘but, anyhow, there it is, providential or otherwise. Master Arthur, he won’t live through till morning; and Miss Sabine, she’ll come into her own at last, as she’d always ought to have done.’ And the butler drained off his cup of green tea at one gulp, defiantly.
‘Oh, Mr. Sampson,’ one of the women servants said, with face aghast, ‘how ever can you talk so, with your feet on the fender, and that poor dear little soul a-dying all the time in his room up above there? Ain’t you afraid it’ll be visited upon you?’
‘Well, look at the difference he’s made to Miss Sabine,’ the butler responded loyally, for he stuck to his first love with creditable persistence. ‘Before the little governess woman came, she had dooks and lords and earls and barrowknights always a-browsing around her. She might a-married who she liked, the noblest in the land, as the saying goes, as soon as look at ’em. She was always made more of than any young lady in town, and always had the pick of the peerage dangling about after her apron-strings when we went down into Surrey. And now what’s her position? Nobody knows. She ain’t neither an heiress, nor yet not an heiress. Nobody can tell where she stands, one way or the other. But there ain’t no more dooks hanging around after her nowadays. The Dook of Powysland, him as was Bertie Montgomery when he’d used to come so much to Hurst Croft, he’s married an American, same as they all does latterly. And Miss Sabine, she’s left to wither on the bough, in the manner o’ speaking. That’s what’s made her take up with being ladies’ secretary to this here Gordon League that young Harrison manages. Depend upon it, when a young lady takes to charity in a regular way, it means she’s given up her chances of marrying.’
‘Well, it won’t be for long,’ the housekeeper said with a sigh, ‘for Master Arthur won’t live till morning.’
‘And then Miss Sabine’ll come in to her own again,’ the butler repeated with a yawn, for it was sleepy work, this sitting up and waiting. ‘She’ll be her own mistress at last, and marry as she ought to do. I don’t pretend I wouldn’t like to see it. I’d like to see our young lady properly married.’
As he spoke, another of the women servants, straight from the sick-room, entered the hall in search of warm water. All the others turned eagerly to hear the latest news. ‘How does he get on now, Amelia?’ the housekeeper asked with official sympathy.
‘Oh, he’s a little better just this minute,’ Amelia answered carelessly: ‘he seemed to have took a turn. The doctor’s done something to his throat with a instrument, and Miss Sabine, she’ve sucked out the stuff from the bad place, and the doctor says she may have saved his life for him.’
The butler started up with a look of genuine alarm. ‘Miss Sabine’s sucked out the stuff from the throat!’ he cried in a tone of unfeigned horror. ‘You don’t mean to say that, Amelia! Well, I call it shameful. However could the doctor go and let her!’
‘The doctor told her it was dangerous,’ Amelia went on, in the same unconcerned and matter-of-fact voice, ‘but she said that didn’t matter; it was nothing to her; if anything gave her a chance of saving his life, she was bound her best to try and save it. The doctor warned her she might catch the dip-theria herself, and very likely would; but she looked at him as white as a sheet, and said she wasn’t afraid. “I promised Woodbine I’d be a mother to Tata,” she says, “the dear little lamb! and I must keep my promise. And, besides, I could never forgive myself if Tata was to die, for I love him,” she says, clasping her hands like this— “oh, I love him! I love him!” and with that she just took the instrument in her hand, and did at once as the doctor told her.’
‘And I say,’ the butler cried, rising up in his horror, ‘it’s a sin and a shame they should ever have allowed our own young lady to throw away her life like that for the governess woman’s child; an’ if I’d been there to see, she shouldn’t have done it neither. And the governor in Paris, never knowing nothink at all about it. And him to come home and find Miss Sabine dead and gone. Why, whatever does the doctor mean by going and allowing it?’
‘Perhaps it won’t hurt her, poor dear!’ the housekeeper put in. ‘The good Lord would never let her suffer for what she did to save her brother’s life, surely!’
The butler took a more severely causative view of the situation. ‘If she sucks out the disease from the little one, she stands to catch it herself, of course, in the regular run,’ he retorted half angrily. ‘The good Lord don’t guard people against the consequences of their own actions, does He? And to think she should a-done it for a mite of a child like that! It ain’t right, that’s what I say of it; it didn’t ought to be permitted. A grown person didn’t ought to throw away her life for a infant of that age. I call it just suicide. An’ her father’ll say the same, too, I’ll be bound, when he comes to hear of it.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Amelia remarked coolly, turning off the tap of the boiler in the kitchen beyond as she spoke. ‘He spoils Master Arthur so. But I can’t stop now, for I’ve got to go up at once and take ’em this hot water.’
But upstairs in the sick-room, meanwhile, Sabine Venables was sitting back, pale as death, on the sofa, and murmuring to the doctor in an agonized tone of suspense: ‘Do you think he’s better now? Do you think it’s succeeded? Oh, do tell me, do tell me, for heaven’s sake! you think he’s getting better.’
And the doctor, watching him with a judicial eye, gave an affirmative nod. ‘Well, yes, I think so,’ he answered slowly. ‘It seems to have relieved him. It’s difficult to tell, of course, just at first, in these critical stages; but he’s breathing more freely. You’ve saved his life, I believe. He may go on all right now.... It’s yourself we shall have to think most about next, Miss Venables.’
CHAPTER XXVI.
SUCCESS — OR FAILURE?
While the free and independent electors of South Hampstead were still being wooed in due form, Sabine never let Hubert Harrison know the terrible risk to which she had subjected herself. Why mar his chances of success by an additional anxiety? She wrote him a little note early next day, to be sure — such notes were diurnal — but in it she avoided all mention of her own heroic remedy for Arthur’s illness.
‘My darling little brother was taken suddenly with a severe attack of diphtheria, dear Hubert,’ she wrote with simple directness, ‘while I was out last night at the Simpsons’ party (where I more than half expected to meet you). I ought never to have gone, as he complained of sore throat early in the evening. When I got home, I found him in terrible danger, and have sat up all night — an awful night — with him. More than once we despaired of his poor little life, and even Doctor Mortimer feared nothing could save him. But this morning, thank heaven! he’s a trifle better, and we begin to hope he may yet be spared to us. Oh, Hubert, I never knew till now how much I loved him. If he were to be taken away, life would be all a blank to me.’
