Works of Ellen Wood, page 271
“Do you know where?” inquired Mr. Hastings.
“He said, I b’lieve, but I didn’t catch it. If I stopped to listen to the talk of fevers, and such-like, where would my work be?”
Taking his hat, one of the very clerical shape, with a broad brim, the Rector left his house. He was scarcely without the gates when he saw Mr. Snow, who was the most popular doctor in Prior’s Ash, coming along quickly in his gig. Mr. Hastings threw out his hand, and the groom pulled up.
“Is it true? — this fresh rumour of the fever?”
“Too true, I fear,” replied Mr. Snow. “I am on my way thither now; just summoned.”
“Who is attacked?”
“Sarah Anne Grame.”
The name appeared to startle the Rector. “Sarah Anne Grame!” he repeated. “She will never battle through it!” The doctor raised his eyebrows, as if he thought it doubtful himself, and signed to his groom to hasten on.
“Tell Lady Sarah I will call upon her in the course of the day,” called out Mr. Hastings, as the gig sped on its way. “I must ask Maria if she has heard news of this,” he continued, in soliloquy, as he turned within the Rectory gate.
Maria Hastings had found her way to the study. To dignify a room by the appellation of “study” in a clergyman’s house, would at once imply that it must be the private sanctum of its master, consecrated to his sermons and his other clerical studies. Not so, however, in the Rectory of All Souls. The study there was chiefly consecrated to litter, and the master had less to do with it, personally, than with almost any other room in the house. There, the children, boys and girls, played, or learned lessons, or practised; there, Mrs. Hastings would sit to sew when she had any work in hand too plebeian for the eyes of polite visitors.
Grace, the eldest of the family, was twenty years of age, one year older than Maria. She bore a great resemblance to her father; and, like him, was more practical than imaginative. She was very useful, in the house, and took much care off Mrs. Hastings’s hands. It happened that all the children, five of them besides Maria, were this morning at home. It was holiday that day with the boys. Isaac was next to Maria, but nearly three years younger; one had died between them; Reginald was next; Harry last; and then came a little girl, Rose. They ought to have been preparing their lessons; were supposed to be doing so by Mr. and Mrs. Hastings: in point of fact, they were gathering round Grace, who was seated on a low stool solving some amusing puzzles from a new book. They started up when Maria entered, and went dancing round her.
Maria danced too; she kissed them all; she sang aloud in her joyousness of heart. What was it that made that heart so glad, her life as a very Eden? The ever-constant presence there of George Godolphin.
“Have you come home to stay, Maria?”
“I have come home to go,” she answered, with a laugh. “We start for Scotland on Monday, and I want to hunt up oceans of things.”
“It is fine to be you, Maria,” exclaimed Grace, with a sensation very like envy. “You have all the pleasure, and I have to stop at home and do all the work. It is not fair.”
“Gracie dear, it will be your turn next. I did not ask Lady Godolphin to invite me, instead of you. I never thought of her inviting me, being the younger of the two.”
“But she did invite you,” grumbled Grace.
“I say, Maria, you are not to go to Scotland,” struck in Isaac.
“Who says so?” cried Maria, her heart standing still, as she halted in one corner of the room with at least half a dozen arms round her.
“Mamma said yesterday she thought you were not: that papa would not have it.”
“Is that all?” and Maria’s pulses coursed on again. “I am to go: I have just been with papa and mamma. They know that I have come to get my things for the journey.”
“Maria, who goes?”
“Sir George and my lady, and I and Charlotte Pain.”
“Maria, I want to know why Charlotte Pain goes?” cried Grace.
Maria laughed. “You are like Bessy Godolphin, Grace. She asked the same question, and my lady answered, ‘Because she chose to invite her.’ I can only repeat to you the same reason.”
“Does George Godolphin go?”
“No,” replied Maria.
“Oh, doesn’t he, though!” exclaimed Reginald. “Tell that to the marines, mademoiselle.”
“He does not go with us,” said Maria. “Regy, you know you will get into hot water if you use those sea phrases.”
“Sea phrases! that is just like a girl,” retorted Reginald. “What will you lay me that George Godolphin is not in Scotland within a week after you are all there?”
“I will not lay anything,” said Maria, who in her inmost heart hoped and believed that George would be there.
“Catch him stopping away if Charlotte Pain goes?” went on Reginald. “Yesterday I was at the pastry-cook’s, having a tuck-out with that shilling old Crosse gave me, and Mr. George and Miss Charlotte came in. I heard a little.”
“What did you hear?” breathed Maria. She could not help the question: any more than she could help the wild beating of her heart at the boy’s words.
“I did not catch it all,” said Reginald. “It was about Scotland, though, and what they should do when they were there. Mrs. Verrall’s carriage came up then, and he put her into it. An out-and-out flirt is George Godolphin!”
Grace Hastings threw her keen dark eyes upon Maria. “Do not let him flirt with you,” she said in a marked tone. “You like him; I do not. I never thought George Godolphin worth his salt.”
“That’s just Grace!” exclaimed Isaac. “Taking her likes and dislikes! and for no cause, or reason, but her own crotchets and prejudices. He is the nicest fellow going, is George Godolphin. Charlotte Pain’s is a new face and a beautiful one: let him admire it.”
“He admires rather too many,” nodded Grace.
“As long as he does not admire yours, you have no right to grumble,” rejoined Isaac provokingly: and Grace flung a bundle of work at him, for the laugh turned against her.
“Rose, you naughty child, you have my crayons there!” exclaimed Maria, happening to cast her eyes upon the table, where Rose was seated too quietly to be at anything but mischief.
“Only one or two of your sketching pencils, Maria,” said Miss Rose. “I shan’t hurt them. I am making a villa with two turrets and some cows.”
“I say, Maria, is Charlotte Pain going to take that thoroughbred hunter of hers?” interposed Reginald.
“Of course,” scoffed Isaac: “saddled and bridled. She’ll have him with her in the railway carriage; put him in the corner seat opposite Sir George. Regy’s brains may do for sea — if he ever gets there; but they are not sharp enough for land.”
“They are as sharp as yours, at any rate,” flashed Reginald. “Why should she not take him?”
“Be quiet, you boys!” said Grace.
She was interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Hastings. He did not open the door at the most opportune moment. Maria, Isaac, and Harry were executing a dance that probably had no name in the dancing calendar; Reginald was standing on his head; Rose had just upset the contents of the table, by inadvertently drawing off its old cloth cover, and Grace was scolding her in a loud tone.
“What do you call this?” demanded Mr. Hastings, when he had leisurely surveyed the scene. “Studying?”
They subsided into quietness and their places; Reginald with his face red and his hair wild, Maria with a pretty blush, Isaac with a smothered laugh. Mr. Hastings addressed his second daughter.
“Have you heard anything about this fresh outbreak of fever?”
“No, papa,” was Maria’s reply. “Has it broken out again?”
“I hear that it has attacked Sarah Anne Grame.”
“Oh, papa!” exclaimed Grace, clasping her hands in sorrowful consternation. “Will she ever live through it?”
Just the same doubt, you see, that had occurred to the Rector.
CHAPTER V. THOMAS GODOLPHIN’S LOVE.
For nearly a mile beyond All Souls’ Rectory, as you went out of Prior’s Ash, there were scattered houses and cottages. In one of them lived Lady Sarah Grame. We receive our ideas from association; and, in speaking of the residence of Lady Sarah Grame, or Lady Sarah Anyone, imagination might conjure up some fine old mansion with all its appurtenances, grounds, servants, carriages and grandeur: or, at the very least, a “villa with two turrets and some cows,” as Rose Hastings expressed it.
Far more like a humble cottage than a mansion was the abode of Lady Sarah Grame. It was a small, pretty, detached white house, containing eight or nine rooms in all; and, they, not very large ones. A plot of ground before it was crowded with flowers: far too crowded for good taste, as David Jekyl would point out to Lady Sarah. But Lady Sarah loved flowers, and would not part with one of them.
The daughter of one soldier, and the wife of another, Lady Sarah had scrambled through life amidst bustle, perplexity, and poverty. Sometimes quartered in barracks, sometimes following the army abroad; out of one place into another; never settled anywhere for long together. It was an existence not to be envied; although it is the lot of many. She was Mrs. Grame then, and her husband, the captain, was not a very good husband to her. He was rather too fond of amusing himself, and threw all care upon her shoulders. She passed her days nursing her sickly children, and endeavouring to make one sovereign go as far as two. One morning, to her unspeakable embarrassment, she found herself converted from plain, private Mrs. Grame into the Lady Sarah. Her father boasted a peer in a very remote relative, and came unexpectedly into the title.
Had he come into money with it, it would have been more welcome; but, of that, there was only a small supply. It was a very poor Scotch peerage, with limited estates; and, they, encumbered. Lady Sarah wished she could drop the honour which had fallen to her share, unless she could live a little more in accordance with it. She had much sorrow. She had lost one child after another, until she had only two left, Sarah Anne and Ethel. Then she lost her husband; and, next, her father. Chance drove her to Prior’s Ash, which was near her husband’s native place; and she settled there, upon her limited income. All she possessed was her pension as a captain’s widow, and the interest of the sum her father had been enabled to leave her; the whole not exceeding five hundred a year. She took the white cottage, then just built, and dignified it with the name of “Grame House:” and the mansions in the neighbourhood of Prior’s Ash were content not to laugh, but to pay respect to her as an earl’s daughter.
Lady Sarah was a partial woman. She had only these two daughters, and her love for them was as different as light is from darkness. Sarah Anne she loved with an inordinate affection, almost amounting to passion; for Ethel, she did not care. What could be the reason of this? What is the reason why parents (many of them may be found) will love some of their children, and dislike others? They cannot tell you, any more than Lady Sarah could have told. Ask them, and they will be unable to give you an answer. It does not lie in the children: it often happens that those obtaining the least love will be the most worthy of it. Such was the case here. Sarah Anne Grame was a pale, sickly, fretful girl; full of whims, full of complaints, giving trouble to every one about her. Ethel, with her sweet countenance and her merry heart, made the sunshine of the home. She bore with her sister’s exacting moods, bore with her mother’s want of love. She loved them both, and waited on them, and carolled forth her snatches of song as she moved about the house, and was as happy as the day was long. The servants — they kept only two — would tell you that Miss Grame was cross and selfish; but that Miss Ethel was worth her weight in gold. The gold was soon to be appropriated; transplanted to a home where it would be appreciated and cherished: for Ethel was the affianced wife of Thomas Godolphin.
On the morning already mentioned, when you heard it said that fever had broken out again, Sarah Anne Grame awoke, ill. In her fretful, impatient way, she called to Ethel, who slept in an adjoining room. Ethel was asleep: but she was accustomed to be roused at unseasonable hours by Sarah Anne, and she threw on her dressing-gown and hastened to her.
“I want some tea,” began Sarah Anne. “I am as ill and thirsty as I can be.”
Sarah Anne was really of a sickly constitution, and to hear her com plain of being ill and thirsty was nothing unusual. Ethel, in her loving nature, her sweet patience, received the information with as much concern as though she had never heard it before. She bent over Sarah Anne, inquiring tenderly where she felt pain.
“I tell you that I am ill and thirsty, and that’s enough,” peevishly answered Sarah Anne. “Go and get me some tea.”
“As soon as I possibly can,” said Ethel soothingly. “There is no fire at present. The maids are not up. I do not think it can be later than six, by the look of the morning.”
“Very well!” sobbed Sarah Anne — sobs of temper, not of pain. “You can’t call the maids, I suppose! and you can’t put yourself the least out of the way to alleviate my suffering! You want to go to bed again and sleep till eight o’clock. When I am dead, you’ll wish you had been more like a sister to me. You possess rude health yourself, and you can feel no compassion for any one who does not.”
An assertion unjust and untrue: as was many another, made by Sarah Anne Grame. Ethel did not possess “rude health,” though she was not, like her sister, always ailing; and she felt far more compassion than Sarah Anne deserved.
“I will see what I can do,” she gently said. “You shall soon have some tea.”
Passing into her own room, Ethel hastily dressed herself. When Sarah Anne was in one of her exacting moods, there could be no more sleep or rest for Ethel. “I wonder,” she thought to herself, “whether I could not light a fire, without calling the servants? They had so hard a day’s work yesterday, for mamma kept them both cleaning from morning till night. Yes: if I can only find some wood, I’ll try to light one.”
She went down to the kitchen, hunted up what was required, laid the fire, and lighted it. It did not burn up well. She thought the wood must be damp, and found the bellows. She was on her knees, blowing away at the wood, and sending the blaze up into the coal, when some one came into the kitchen.
“Miss Ethel!”
It was one of the servants: Elizabeth. She had heard movement in the house, and had risen. Ethel explained that her sister felt ill, and tea was wanted.
“Why did you not call us, Miss Ethel?”
“You went to rest late, Elizabeth. See how I have made the fire burn!”
“It is not ladies’ work, miss.”
“I certainly think ladies should put on gloves when they attempt it,” merrily laughed Ethel. “Look at my black hands.”
The tea ready, Ethel carried a cup of it to her sister, with some dry toast that they had made. Sarah Anne drank the tea, but turned with a shiver from the toast. She seemed to be shivering much.
“Who was so stupid as to make that? You might know I should not eat it. I am too ill.”
Ethel began to think that she did look unusually ill. Her face was flushed, shivering though she was, her lips were dry, her heavy eyes were unnaturally bright. She gently laid her hands, washed now, upon her sister’s brow. It felt burning, and Sarah Anne screamed.
“Do keep your hands away! My head is splitting with pain.”
Involuntarily Ethel thought of the fever; the danger from which they had been reckoning had passed away. It was a low sort of typhus which had prevailed; not very extensively, and chiefly amidst the poor: the great fear had been, lest it should turn to a more malignant type. About half a dozen deaths had taken place altogether.
“Would you like me to bathe your forehead with water, Sarah Anne?” asked Ethel kindly. “Or to get you some eau-de-Cologne?”
“I should like you to wait until things are asked for, and not to worry me,” retorted Sarah Anne.
Ethel sighed. Not for the temper: Sarah Anne was always fractious in illness: but for the suffering she thought she saw, and the half doubt, half dread, which had arisen within her. “I think I had better call mamma,” she deliberated to herself. “Though, if she sees nothing unusually the matter with Sarah Anne, she will only be angry with me.”
Proceeding to her mother’s chamber, Ethel knocked softly. Lady Sarah slept still, but the entrance aroused her.
“Mamma, I do not like to disturb you; I was unwilling to do so: but Sarah Anne is ill.”
“Ill again! And only last week she was in bed three days! Poor dear sufferer! Is it her chest again?”
“Mamma, she seems unusually ill. Otherwise I should not have disturbed you. I feared — I thought — you will be angry with me if I say, perhaps?”
“Say what? Don’t stand like a statue, Ethel.”
Ethel dropped her voice. “Dear mamma, suppose it should be the fever?”
For one startling moment, Lady Sarah felt as if a dagger had pierced her: the next, she turned upon Ethel. Fever for Sarah Anne! how dared she prophesy it? A low, common fever, confined to the poor of the town, and which had subsided; or, all but subsided! Was it likely to return again and come up here to attack her darling child? What did Ethel mean by it?
Ethel, the tears in her eyes, said she hoped it would prove to be only an ordinary headache; it was her love for Sarah Anne which awoke her fears. Lady Sarah proceeded to the sick-room; and Ethel followed. Her ladyship was not in the habit of observing caution, and spoke freely of the “fever” before Sarah Anne; apparently for the purpose of casting blame at Ethel.
Sarah Anne did not imbibe the fear; she ridiculed Ethel as her mother had done. For some hours Lady Sarah did not admit it either. She would have summoned medical advice at first, but that Sarah Anne, in her peevishness, protested she would not have a doctor. Later on she grew worse, and Mr. Snow was sent for. You saw him in his gig hastening to the house.
Lady Sarah came forward to receive him; Ethel, full of anxiety, near her. She was a thin woman, with a shrivelled face and a sharp red nose, her grey hair banded plainly under a close white net cap.
