Chronicles of Dustypore Part 24

'Now,' she cried, 'tell me the truth. Have you told me all?'

'No, I have not. I can hardly bear to tell you; but you have sense and courage, and would rather hear the truth. _He is down with cholera._'

The words went like a sword through Maud's heart. A blank horror seized her. This, then, had been the meaning of her dream. The blow came crashing down upon her, and body and soul seemed to reel before it. She sank like a crushed, terrified child on the sofa, and, covering her face in her hands, hid herself, speechless, motionless, as from an ill that was too great to bear.

'Let me send for Mrs. Vereker,' said Boldero.

'No!' cried Maud, starting up, 'pray do not. Leave me for a minute or two. I shall be better directly. Will you come back in a quarter of an hour?'

'I will do anything you bid me,' said Boldero frightened at the task he had in hand and its probable results, and thinking that perhaps the best thing he could do was to leave Maud to deal with her sorrow alone.

So Boldero went out into the moonlight, and strolled about the pathway, now so silent, where so many joyous footsteps used to press, and Maud was left to herself with her first great trouble.

It was significant of the real nature of her relations to Mrs. Vereker that she shrank especially from seeking her now, in her time of sorrow, or following her counsel. Mrs. Vereker was essentially a fine-weather friend. The task which Maud had now in hand was something deeper and graver than anything that the other's feelings reached. What lay before her now to do, or to endure, was something between her husband and herself, and it would be profanity for a stranger to come into that sacred region. Mrs. Vereker's advice would, Maud knew instinctively, be all wrong. She herself felt already what she ought to do. She knelt weeping on the sofa, and the thoughts of sorrow, humiliation, remorse, came pouring thick upon her troubled mind. To what a precipice's edge had not her folly and madness brought her! her fair fame darkened, her husband's name dishonoured, her vows of love and honour how badly kept!

Oh, how unutterably weak, faithless, heartless she had been! How ghastly all the afternoon's adventures, the evening's folly, seemed! how wicked, how base, how altogether bad! She had felt the thought stinging all the while, but other, stronger feelings had helped her to ignore it and forget. Now there was no other feeling, and it was overwhelming.

There was only one thing left to do, one good, one hope left--to fly to her husband's side, to pour out the pent-up stream of confession, repentance, and love, and, if only G.o.d would spare him, never, never leave him again!

When Boldero came in again Maud was herself again. 'I am better and stronger now,' she said; 'the news came upon me too suddenly, but now I am calm. I have settled what I ought to do, and you must help me. I shall go down to him at once.'

'Indeed, you cannot do that,' Boldero said, decisively; 'it would be excessively wrong.'

'Indeed, indeed I will!' cried Maud; 'I feel that I ought and must. What is there to stop me?'

'It is out of the question,' said the other; 'you will be running into a great deal of danger unnecessarily.'

'I have no strength to talk about it,' said Maud, 'but I must go or I shall die, and you must help me. Do you mean me to stay quietly here, and Jem dying by himself? My G.o.d, my G.o.d! why did I ever leave him?'

Here Maud threw herself on the sofa, and cried a longer, sadder, more heartfelt cry than ever in her life before. Boldero went again into the garden in despair, for it was in vain, he saw, to try to soothe her.

It ended, of course, in Boldero telegraphing for two relays of horses to be sent out from the Camp, and sending out two more as fast as possible, to get as far as might be on the way for the forced march of fifty miles which Maud and he were, it was settled, at once to undertake. She was to rest for a few hours, start at three o'clock, get on as far as they could in the cool, rest through the day, and complete the remainder of the journey the following night. They would be at the Camp, Boldero reckoned, by the morning of the day after to-morrow.

It required all his official resources to organise such a journey, but a Collector on his march can do anything; and Boldero, with whom Maud was by a sudden reaction of sentiment rapidly being promoted from heroine to saint, was determined that her journey, so far as in him lay, should be as comfortable as money and care could make it.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

FLIGHT.

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand, and led them away from the City of Destruction. We see no white winged angels now; but yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward.

Maud effected a speedy reconciliation with Mrs. Vereker, who had entrenched herself in her bedroom with a French novel till such time as Maud should have recovered her equanimity. Mrs. Vereker at once forgot her grievance, listened with real concern to Maud's alarming tidings, and lent herself with great alacrity to a.s.sist in the preparations for a hasty departure. Boldero had gone off and was to get coolies[5] together as speedily as possible, so as to be well on the way during the cool hours of the early morning, before the heat of the day would render travelling a work of distress.

By three o'clock, accordingly, a little army was collected in front of Mrs. Vereker's door. The urgent demands of the Collector and the subsequent zeal of his subordinates had done wonders, and some forty men had been a.s.sembled at an hour's notice for the task of carrying down Maud, her servant and her various belongings.

The moon had sunk and the torches glared fitfully with dreadful smell and smoke. The figures looked weird and strange and, to Maud's eye, horribly numerous. The arrangement of each box involved enormous discussion as to how the burden of carrying it could best be shared. At last all was ready; Maud was established in a palanquin; the carriers kept time to the cadence of a wild refrain; the torch-bearers shuffled along in front, relays of coolies came behind; close at her side rode the faithful Boldero, marshalling the little force, and ever on the watch to shield her from any possible annoyance. Maud appreciated his fidelity, and felt that she had never liked him half well enough before.

Her conscience smote her for all her rude speeches, slighting acts and unkind looks; she determined henceforth to be very kind indeed. Boldero, accordingly, though in a great state of agitation and distress about his friend's condition, found the journey not quite without its charm. He had telegraphed to the Camp for Sutton's two horses to be sent out, and both of them were well accustomed to carry Maud when occasion offered. A messenger was to be sent up to each halting-place, so that Maud had not an hour longer to wait for news than was absolutely necessary. It was a relief, hour by hour, to find the distance growing less and the messages more recent; still the tidings were very grievous. Sutton, it was clear, was very ill. He had been thoroughly knocked up beforehand, and agitated and distressed about something, the doctors thought, and this no doubt had helped the evil. This was a cruel stab for Maud. For a few days, said the letter, it would be rash to say what turn the case might take; still there was reason to be hopeful: he was a very strong man, and very temperate, and these points, of course, were greatly in his favour. The mortality, however, had been terrible at the Camp, and the men were greatly disheartened. They were now marching every day, in hopes of keeping clear of their own infection.

An hour or two later the two travellers came to a halt. Maud found some early tea awaiting her, and joyfully exchanged the tiring captivity of the palanquin for the horse which had been hurried on for her use for this stage of the journey.

'I have been fast asleep,' she said, as Boldero and she rode down the hillside together and watched the faint glow in the east warming gradually into day, 'and this is very refreshing. The darkness, the crowd, the blazing torches, the confusion, the babel of tongues we had last night seem like a horrid dream. I was never more thankful for the light. I feel as if I were escaping; and, Mr. Boldero, you are my deliverer. I shall be grateful to you all my life. You must have had so much trouble and have done it all so kindly and like yourself.'

'Do not talk of that,' said the other; 'what are friends for but to serve us when we need them?'

'And to forgive us when we wrong them?' said Maud, whose conscience was goading her to confession; 'I know I have behaved ill to you--to you and to everybody. Now I am going to try to do better, if only I can get the chance--if only G.o.d in His goodness will grant me that.'

'I am hopeful,' said Boldero, 'for both of you. Sutton, I feel, has something greater yet to do. We have often laughed and said that nothing can kill him. You know in cholera it is as much mind as body: courage, calmness, and determination are half the battle.'

'Then,' said Maud, with enthusiasm, faith, and hopefulness glowing in her face, 'I am sure he will do well. His body is his soul's servant, you cannot fancy how completely; it does its bidding as a matter of course. I do not think it would even die without his leave. Have you telegraphed to say that I am coming?'

'Yes, but leaving it to the doctors to tell him when they think best; or not at all, if they fear the intelligence will excite him. Very likely they will be afraid to do so.'

'They will do wrong,' said Maud, who knew her husband's temperament better even than Boldero; it will not agitate him, and it will make him resolve to live. He _will_ live, I believe, if it is only in order to forgive me.'

'Do not say "to forgive,"' said the other, who, in a generously enthusiastic mood, began to think that Maud was pressing with undue severity against herself; 'to tell you all that you have been to him and all the sunshine you have brought into his life.'

'All I have been!' cried Maud, with a vehement remorse; 'I could tell him that best. You could tell him. I mean to tell him the first moment I can--and I am in an agony till I can do so. I have been mad, Mr.

Boldero, or in a dream, I think, and you tried in vain to wake me. Now I am awake, and know the truth. All the things and people we have left behind are merely shadows, and I mistook them for realities; only one thing in the world is real for me: my love for my husband. Other people flatter and excite and amuse one, and one is carried away with all sorts of follies; but my heart never moves and never can. It is his and his only, and I never knew it fully till last night. My life, I find, is centred in his.'

'I pray G.o.d,' said Boldero devoutly, 'we may find him better; and somehow I believe we shall.'

A level stretch of valley lay before them, and allowed them to push sharply over the next five or six miles. By ten o'clock they arrived at their halting-place, where Boldero proposed that they should wait till the afternoon. Maud, however, was too restless to halt.

'Suppose,' she said, 'we push on another stage? The sun is not so very dreadful, after all.'

'The next two stages are bad ones,' said Boldero. 'Don't you remember that long, troublesome valley with the rocks on either side?--by twelve o'clock they will be all red-hot.'

'Well,' said Maud, 'we will tie a wet towel over my head. Will it do you any harm? or the horses?'

'Me!' cried Boldero, in a tone which at once rea.s.sured his companion that no danger need be apprehended so far as he was concerned; 'as for my horses, they can, of course, go as many stages as you like.'

So they dressed and breakfasted and Maud declared herself quite ready for an immediate start. Boldero brought in a great plantain-leaf from the garden of the little inn, and they tied this under her wide pith hat; then Maud armed herself with an enormous umbrella, and 'Now,' she said, 'I am prepared for anything.'

By the end of the stage, however, her strength was spent: she sank into the first chair that offered itself, and acquiesced thankfully, like a tired child, in Boldero's decision that they should not move again till the day's fierce glare was past. There was no need to hurry, for she was now within a night's march of her husband, and by the morrow's morning would have known and seen the worst.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN.

Thus 'twas granted me To know he loved me to the depth and height Of such large natures, ever competent With grand horizons, by the land or sea, To love's grand sunrise. Small spheres hold small fires, But he loved largely.