Part 11

"To-morrow we go to Musseerabad, where the garrison is that your father has to take notes about; then on to Oodeypore; after that I am not certain of the programme, only--don't all exclaim at once, or I shall hear even at this distance--we cannot possibly be back in the time we said. Your father has written for two months' extension, and really, though of course I want to see you all, and ache sometimes for a sight of my baby's little dear dirty face, I shouldn't like to come without seeing more. Fancy if we had to come back without visiting the Taj Mahal! My only anxiety is that any one should be ill; but then, again, I don't see why any one should be so inconsiderate,--you've all managed to keep in splendid health for years; just keep a clean bill till I get back, and then you shall all take it in turns if you like. Dear Meg, keep Essie's hands from picking and stealing. I dreamt the other night she ate a cocoanut and went in a fit. And Peter, my precious son, don't climb the pine tree till mum comes back--if you must break your dear little collar bone at least give me the satisfaction of seeing it done. Of course there is no earthly reason why any of you should be ill, but I worry a little at times; I suppose it is because of the difficulty in getting letters. We never know where we are going next, so they can't send on the mails from Bombay to us till we write for them. I will send you, by the next mail, an address to write to: we have not decided yet whether we are going to Hyderabad, Madras, or Calcutta. We are picking up presents for you all,--the loveliest chessmen for Pip, a wonderful cabinet of Bhoondee carving for Meg, moonstones from Ceylon for Nell,--something for every one. Such a box we shall have.

"Good-bye, my chickies all; take care of yourselves, and have as good a time as you can. If you should be just a little extravagant with the housekeeping money, Meg, I won't scold you much; you can let Bennett's bill run if you like, and have a little garden party or jollification. Every one kiss my little one daughter for me.

"Your loving old mother, "ESTHER."

It was only the last part they heeded. What were descriptions of old temples to them with that little tossing head on the pillow?

"Oh, Esther,--poor, poor Esther!" Meg said, with the first sob in her throat since Alan had pronounced it to be the fever--"oh, _if_ she knew!" But she was mercifully spared that knowledge. They held a grave consultation together, Meg, Nell, Pipi and the family doctor, while Alan stayed at the bedside. It really seemed useless to send for the travellers to come home. If it was only a slight attack the child would be quite well again by the time they returned; if--there was a catching of breaths--if even the very worst should happen, still they could not be home in time, and oh! what agony of mind they would have during the long voyage. It was even no use sending a cable until they received Esther's next letter, for they had no address.

The doctor decided the matter.

"Don't send," he said; "please God we'll have the little woman up and well in no time. I will send in a trained nurse, she shall have every care possible. Mrs. Woolcot could not do anything further if she were here herself. Now about the other little folks."

It had been decided at once to send the others away from fear of infection. Pip had even suggested packing them off by the early morning train to Yarrahappini.

But the doctor shook his head. There was the chance that they had the germs in their systems even now; it was neither fair to send them into other families, nor yet wise to allow them to go far from home nursing.

There was a furnished cottage about half a mile up the road: he advised that Poppet, Peter, and Bunty should be removed there until all danger of infection was over.

"This young lady might go to look after them," he said, laying his hand on Nellie's shoulder. "They will want some one, of course, and Miss Margaret will be quite sufficient to help the lady I shall send in."

Nellie lifted great beseeching eyes, rimmed with the shadows of a sleepless night.

"Oh, let me stay! oh, I must stay,--it would kill me to have to go!" she said, with a great sob.

"Of course you will have to go, Nellie," Pip said hastily; "don't make extra trouble by being tiresome,--surely you have done enough."

"Oh, hush!" said Meg.

Pip knew now how the infection had been brought, and could not find any excuse for his sister.

But Meg saw the wince of pain that his words caused the poor girl, and knew a little what an agony of remorse she was suffering.

"She'll be out of the danger, too," Pip added, a little ashamed of himself when he saw the beautiful, miserable eyes.

Out of the danger! And the girl was in such a frenzy of repentance and grief, she would gladly have laid down her life just to see Essie go flying down the drive in a losing race with Flibbertigibbet.

She caught the doctor's arm.

"I would watch night and day--I would do anything in the world, anything--oh! _let_ me stay," she said.

"Poor little girl!" he answered, and patted her bright head; he had learnt something of the heart apart from its physiological formation during his long practice. "Poor little girl! standing still is very hard work, isn't it? But all soldiers can't fight at the same time, you know.

"'Yours not to reason why, Yours but to do or die.

That's not for sword-soldiers only, little girl."

Poor Nellie! no punishment on earth could have been harder for her. To die--that would be quite easy, pleasant even; but to remain passive--oh! it needed greater courage than hers.

To go away, to leave the house, and not even venture past the gates again for weeks, not to see the little sweet sister upon whom her wilfulness alone had brought this suffering, not even to have the relief of spending her strength in nursing! To go away, and eat and sleep and pass the time doing ordinary things, and trying to keep Bunty, and Poppet, and Peter comfortable and happy!

No one would ever know quite what it cost the girl, but it had to be done.

"Mayn't I just see her for one minute, Meg?" she said, her courage failing her at the last minute.

It almost made Meg cry to see the utter despair and misery on her face, and to have to refuse her.

"Alan shall tell you every day how she is. Dear Nell, you know I dare not let you go into the room."

Then she went away to take up her post with the nurse. And Nellie, with that unutterable ache at her heart, had to go and collect the clothes they would all need, the books, playthings,--everything.

She and Poppet, with Bunty's help, were to do the work of the cottage between them. At first, Meg had thought of letting Martha go with them, but afterwards it occurred to her it might be better to let Nellie cook, wash up, and see to everything, just to keep her time occupied.

Bunty was to go to school daily, but Miss Monson relinquished her duties for a time. She had two little sisters and a baby brother at home; no one could say that Peter or Poppet would not sicken personally, and she dare not run the risk. "But Nellie can easily manage the little ones," she said, "and even keep up her own studies; she will have plenty of time."

The little sick child was put into Esther's room, and a bed made up on the sofa for Meg or the nurse. The window looked straight to the gate, and could be seen through a gap in the acacias. They arranged a code of signals to be waved by Meg through it three times a day. She kept a walking-stick of the Captain's just near the window, and with it a white towel, an old red dressing-gown of Poppet's, and a black wool shawl belonging to Martha. The black signal meant "Better,"--not for worlds would they have used the black for "Worse"; the white meant "No change"; the red, "Not so well."

And when that was settled, and every other little matter, and the dogcart filled and sent off with the luggage, then the four sorrowful little figures walked slowly down the drive, waved with wet eyes to Meg at the window, and disappeared round the bend in the road.

And Misrule, strangely quiet for days and days, saw only the silent-footed nurse in her grey dress and cap, and poor Meg with her young shoulders weighed down with the responsibility; the two doctors, Alan and the old one, on occasion, and the maids. Nobody shouted in the nursery or quarrelled and laughed along the passages; no little girls ran lightly down the stairs; no boys tramped up with muddy boots. No ringing voices floated from the grounds through the open windows; no flying figures and yelping dogs went down the drive.

Meg's face grew grave and old-looking those long, slow, silent days when there was so little to be done and so much to fight for. She lost her old trick of dimpling when she smiled--she almost lost the trick of smiling at all. Always there was a picture before her eyes,--Esther coming towards her, radiant with the happiness of home-coming, Esther with outstretched arms and bright eyes with no shadow of suspicion in them.

Always the picture was speaking--

"Meg, where is Essie?--what have you done with my baby, Meg?"

*CHAPTER XXI.*

*THE SEVENTH DAY.*

"When the heart is sick, And all the wheels of Being slow."

Seven leaden days had come and gone. To-night they said the little child would die or live. But the second would need almost a miracle.

All day the red signal had drooped out of a front upstairs window of Misrule. Five times had the children from the cottage trailed with sick hearts up the long red road to the house, and each time had that sorrowful signal been there.

Meg's heart had bled as she floated it out in the morning; only that they had her faithful promise they should not be deceived, she could not have borne to put it there. "Not so well," they had agreed it should mean, but her heart said "Dying" as she fastened it, and she knew the little anxious-eyed group at the gate would read it so.

Such a tiny darling it was, such a wee frail body for the fierce fever to feed upon. How could it stretch out its little listless hands and grasp strongly at that strange thing Life that was slipping so fast away? And ah, God! that those standing by so wild with grief might not put out their eager hands and seize it for her!

After the fifth sad journey the children dragged to the cottage again and cried themselves sick. Poppet began. The minute they got inside the little front room she dropped down in a heap on the oilcloth and sobbed in a wild hysterical way that shook her poor little body all over. Peter fell down beside her and cried in the bitter, astonished, whole-souled fashion of very small children. And Bunty put his rough head down on the table with both his arms round it. Nellie walked past them all into her tiny bedroom, and only God saw her despairing grief. They had had tea before they went the last time, and the early winter darkness had fallen already, though it was only seven o'clock.

Alan had promised to come in at nine and give them the latest report, but how could any of them see the end of that interval with such wet eyes? Time seemed to have ceased for them altogether just now.

After a time, however, Peter sat up straight and looked around; childish tears, thank Heaven, dry quickly. There was one of his little tin soldiers on the hearthrug, and he picked it up gratefully and held it in his small warm hand. Near the fender two of the horsemen with red caps were lying; he would like to have reached them as well, only Poppet's chest was on his other arm, and he could not bear to disturb her.

Five more minutes ticked away by the funny old clock on the mantelpiece. It pointed to a quarter to eight, and had just struck eleven; they all knew by that it was about twenty minutes past seven.

Peter sighed, and very, very softly withdrew his small cramped arm; he waited a minute or two longer, and then crawled over to the horsemen. He felt a chastened joy to find all the boxful in the fender just as he had left them yesterday after the war against the Matabele tribes. He had painted one of them black for Lobengula, and it reminded him of the exciting game he had had over his capture. He wondered, poor little tear-weary boy, would Essie mind very much if he had a little, only a little, game very quietly on the floor now; the oilcloth had beautiful yellow squares, all ready for the different detachments.

Poppet's head was turned the other way; he fancied she was asleep, she lay so still; Bunty at the table had stopped breathing loudly; perhaps he was asleep too; and Nellie was in her room.

He marshalled the little figures up in rows, army against army; the brass toy cannon he gave to the English, but to make up, he put a few more men on the side of the Matabeles. He always felt secretly sorry for them, and often gave Lobengula loopholes of escape that he did not permit to Nelson, Gordon, and Marlborough, who, with small-boy enthusiasm, he had placed in command of his British forces.

The clock struck six, indicated eight, and meant half-past seven. Then the stillness of the little lamp-lit room was suddenly broken.

"Nelthonth copped the Impith! hurrah--hip, hip, hur----"

Poppet sat up speechless. Poor little sinful Peter lowered his head at her accusing eyes and whimpered softly.

"You _cwuel_ boy!" she said

"I wath only picking them up," he returned, so bitterly ashamed he could not be quite truthful.

"_I've_ been cwying hard all the time," was Poppet's sorrowfully superior answer; she was feeling disappointed with herself at being so near her own last tear, and it made her more severe with him. "I don't b'leeve you care a _bit_."

"I'm thorrier than you, tho there!" he retorted tearfully.

"Why, you've hardly cwied at all!"

"I have, I cried for hourth,--you're a thtory, Poppet."

Bunty bade them hold their tongues. He got up and reached "Hereward the Wake" off the side table to try to occupy his thoughts with; he was half through "Tom Floremall's School Days," and it lay open on the same table, but he felt it would have been unfeeling to read anything so light.

The example, however, encouraged the children. Poppet put out her hand and caught the black kitten that had tapped her shoulder temptingly once or twice; she cuddled down on the hearthrug with it, after giving Peter a kiss of forgiveness.

And Peter, utterly relieved, banged Marlborough and Lobengula together in such fierce single combat that it is wonderful neither of them was decapitated.

The door handle turned and Nellie came in again, Nellie with a sheet-white face, heavy wet lashes, and swollen eyes.

"I'm going up again," she said.

"Tho 'm I," said Peter, springing to his feet.

"An' me," Poppet cried.

"Come on," said Bunty, picking up his hat.

But Nellie shook her head.

"You know your cold's bad again, Poppet; and, Peter dear, it's after your bedtime,--you _must_ stay," she said. "Oh, Bunty, _do_ stop with them."

"I'm sure----" Bunty answered, with contradictory accent.

Nellie caught a sob.

"I shall _die_ if I don't go this minute," she said passionately.

She moved to the door, but Bunty had gone before her.

"We _can't_ leave them,--oh, _Bunty_, if only you'd stay!" She held his coat sleeve and tried to force him back.

"I want to hear as much as you do," he said, with all his old gruffness; "here, let go."

"I tell you I shall go mad--_mad_--if I don't go!" the girl said wildly. He saw the burning look in her eyes, the pain at her lips, and fell back suddenly, awkwardly.

"All right, go on," he said.

Then his just wakening brotherly-protection ideas occurred to him.

"I say, you can't go," he said; "don't be a silly. You're only a girl, and it's dark,--let me go, Nell; I'll run all the way, and come straight back and tell you."

"I _must_ go," she repeated hoarsely. "Make them go to bed; give Poppet her medicine; don't leave the matches near Peter."

She slipped off his detaining hand, and the next minute was flying up the road through the cold white moonlight; a small dark figure with desperate eyes, and the wretchedest little heart in the world.

*CHAPTER XXII.*

*AMARANTH OR ASPHODEL?*

"Falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar stairs, That slope through darkness up to God."

All the way she never stopped once,--it was nearly a mile. Her heart was in her throat, her breath coming in great choking pants; her knees were trembling as she stumbled up against the old Misrule gate, and clung to it blind and giddy for a moment.

There was a step on the footpath--it stopped at the gate. Some one came and peered at her and uttered a cry of surprise.

"Why, Nellie!"

"How--is--she?"

She gasped the words, swayed, and recovered herself.

"I'm just going in again," Alan said. He slipped his arm round her and steadied her--"I told you not to come again, Nellie."

"I couldn't help it."

He saw she couldn't, and did not scold her.

"But what am I to do with you?" he said in dismay.

He was anxious to get in, and now here was this poor, trembling, wild-eyed girl on his hands.

"Oh, _let_ me come!" she implored. There was a sob rising in her throat.

Then he did scold her a little. Surely she was not going to trouble them on this terrible night? Meg was all courage, and quite calm, and so relieved to know the children were being well looked after,--she must not fail them all now at the crisis.

The sob was strangled instantly.

"I'll stay," she said,--"only--oh, _Alan_, come out and tell me soon!"

He promised he would. He drew her just within the gate and wrapped his overcoat round her, for she was jacketless, of course.

"I trust you not to come past the hedge," he said. "See, stand here, and I can find you easily. There now, dear, I _must_ go."

"A minute--is she in--real danger, Alan? Is she going to die?"

Oh the wide, beseeching eyes, full of moonlight and misery!

He had never told a lie in his life,--never even charged one to his medical conscience; but his arm clasped her more strongly, more tenderly.

"She is in danger," he said quietly. "We are afraid she cannot live; but there is always hope, and the next hour will decide."

She pushed him forward.

"Go!" she said, "go!" and he kissed her forehead and went.

She paced up and down by the low pittosporum hedge that divided the garden from the shrubbery next the fence, and she held her hands so tightly together, that she felt the pain as far as her elbows.

It was full moon to-night.

She remembered when it had been new,--a little, friendly, pretty crescent. They had sat out on the verandah--four or five of them--watching it rise, and Alan had said it

"Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf."

But Pip said he thought that man saw things straighter who found "the curled moon more like a bitten biscuit thrown out of a top-story window in a high wind." Meg culled from "Endymion." "The beautiful thing," she said,

"'Only stooped to tie Her silver sandals, ere deliciously She bowed into the heavens her timid head."

And Bunty said, "What rot!"

How happy and light-hearted they had been then! Oh the strange and sad and oh the glad things that happen in this world between the crescent moon and the full!

Such a white cold moon it was, so far away, so wondrously large and calm. It suggested the immeasurable vastness of the universe, the infinitesimal smallness of herself. Her heart sickened and died within her,--what use was it for her to pray and weep and beat her hands to such a far-off sky? What madness to suppose the great high awful God beyond it would put forth His saving hand just because one small insignificant creature down on earth prayed to Him! Such a faultful creature too; all her life through she could not remember one really good thing she had done, nothing but wrong-doings, littlenesses, and selfishness came to her mind. She looked away from the sky and scornful moon, she went to and fro with her eyes on the white ground.

"Of _course_ it's no use," she muttered, and held her hands together more tightly.

A buggy stopped at the gate. The old doctor got out; he told the coachman not to drive in, but to wait there.

Two people passing up the road saw him, and crossed over.

"How's the little girl?" they said.

And "Very bad, poor baby," was his answer. "I ought to have been here before, but have been at a deathbed."

"Whose?" they asked, in the lowered tones death claims.

"Mrs. Fitzroy-Browne," he said, and hurried away up to the house.

Nellie went back to the low hedge. From there she could just see the palely-lighted window upstairs, and the large shadows on the blind. She saw Meg move across to the corner where the bed stood, then the nurse's cap was outlined, Alan's head and shoulders, the doctor's.

More and more icy grew the hand at her heart, whiter and whiter shone the moon, longer and longer every minute took to pass. A sudden gust of wind blew over the pampas clumps full into her face, and the air was still again. Perhaps with that very wind Essie had left them.

She fell on her knees with wide, outstretched arms, and dropped her face on the low hedge. The twigs and leaves scratched and pricked her, the ground made her knees ache, the night air was freezing her; but that was happiness. The sky she dare not look at; but she was compelled to pray again, just to say God, God, God! and shiver and writhe and bite her lips. There was no help for her on earth, and she must shriek to God even though He heard not.

Suddenly the moonlight faded, the garden, the silent house, the pale lights.

She was at the top of a hill, and at the foot was the reddest sunset the world had ever seen. She was a little child again, flying from the bark hut and awful gathering shadows to the fence that skirted the road along which help would come. She was a child flinging herself on the ground, face downward, and crying, "Make her better, God!--God, make her better,--oh, _can't_ you make her better!"

But Judy had died. He had not listened to her then, He would not listen now.

She lifted a face of agony and looked at the sky again. It had grown softer, a grey more tender, and deepened with blue; the moon hung lower, a yellow warmth had crept into it.

Her tears gushed out again, and poured in hot streams down her face.

"Dear God!" she whispered,--"oh, my dear, great God, I will be so good--only let her live, just let her live--such a little thing, God, such a little baby thing,--oh, you wouldn't take her from us, my great God--I will give you all my life, God! I will be good always, I will go to church always, and do everything you want me to, only don't take her away, God! Please, Jesus, ask Him,--dear, sweet Jesus, don't let Him take her; oh, my sweet, kind Christ, let her stay here!"

Her face fell into the hedge once more, and her lips babbled the wild, pitiful, bargaining prayer that only One could understand.

It seemed hours that she knelt there, praying, sobbing, and shivering, before Alan came as he had promised.

She heard his step coming down the path, and she struggled to her feet and forced herself forward.

But he was going past her,--had he forgotten her?

No, she knew; the child was dead, and he could not tell her.

He had passed the hedge and was going on to the gate; she stumbled along after him, but he did not seem to hear her.

"Alan!" she said, as he pulled the chain aside to go out. Her voice sounded hollow and far away.

He stopped, but did not look at her.

"I--know," she said.

He nodded.

"Dead--dead--dead!" she said.

But he spoke then.

"Essie is better," he said; "she will live now."

She caught at the palings; all the world was moving about her, the sky, the ground beneath her feet.