Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 52

Was it for death or life? They would not call his mother for that terrible, doubtful minute; but she could not long stay away. When Jock's fingers first relaxed on hers, she crept to the door of the other room, to see Armine upheld on Johnny's breast, with heaving chest and working features, but with eyes opening: yes, and meeting hers.

Johnny always held that he never had so glad a moment in all his life as that when he saw her countenance light up.

The first word was "Jock!"

Armine's full perceptions were come back, unlike those of Jock, who was moaning and wandering in his talk, fancying himself still in the desolation of the moraine, with Armine dead in his arms, and all the miseries, bodily, mental and spiritual, from which he had suffered were evidently still working in his brain, though the words that revealed them were weak and disjointed. Besides, he screamed and moaned with absolute and acute pain, which alarmed them much, though Armine was sufficiently himself to be able to a.s.sure them that there had been no hurt beyond the strain.

It was well that Armine was both rational and unselfish, for nothing seemed to soothe Jock for a moment but his mother's hand and his mother's voice. It was plain that fever and rheumatism had a hold upon him, and what or who was there to contend with them in this wayside inn?

The rooms, though clean, were bare of all but the merest necessaries, and though the young hostess was kind and anxious, her maids were the roughest and most ignorant of girls, and there were no appliances for comfort--nothing even to drink but milk, bottled lemonade, and a tisane made of yellow flowers, horrible to the English taste.

And Jock, ill as he was, did not fill his mother with such dread for the future as did Armine, when she found him, quiet indeed, but unable to lie down, except when supported on John's breast and in his arms--with a fearful oppression and pain in his chest, and every token that the lungs were suffering. He had not let them call her. Jock's murmurs and cries were to be heard plainly through the wooden part.i.tion, and the little fellow knew she could not be spared, and only tried to prevent John and Mr. Graham from alarming her. "She--can't--do--any--good," he gasped out in John's ear.

No, n.o.body could, without medical skill and appliances. The utmost that the house could do was to produce enough mustard to make two plasters, and to fill bottles with hot water, to warm stones, and to wrap them in blankets. And what was this, in such cold as penetrated the wooden building, too high up in the mountains for the June sun as yet to have full power? The snow kept blinding and drifting on, and though everyone said it could not last long at that time in the summer, it might easily last too long for Armine's fragile life. Here was evening drawing on and no change outside, so that no offer of reward could make it possible for any messenger to attempt the Gemmi to fetch advice from Leukerbad.

Caroline could not think. She was in a dull, dreary state of consternation, and all she could dwell on was the immediate need of the moment, soothing Jock's terrors, and, what was almost worse, his irritable rejection of the beverages she could offer him, and trying to relieve him by rubbing and hot applications. If ever she could look into Armine's room, she was filled with still greater dismay, even though a sweet, patient smile always met her, and a resolute endeavour to make the best of it.

"It--does--not--make--much--difference," gasped Armine. "One would not like anything."

John came out in a character no one could have expected. He showed himself a much better nurse, and far more full of resource than the traveller. It was he who bethought him of keeping a kettle in the room over the inevitable charcoal, so as slightly to mitigate the chill of the air, or the fumes of the charcoal, which were equally perilous and distressing to the labouring lungs. He was tender and handy in lifting, tall and strong, so as to be efficient in supporting, and then Armine and he understood one another. They had never been special companions; John had too much of the Kencroft muscularity about him to accord with a delicate, imaginative being like Armine, but they respected one another, and made common cause, and John had more than once been his little cousin's protector. So when they were so much alone that all reserves were overcome, Armine had comfort in his cousin that no one else in the place could have afforded him. The little boy perfectly knew how ill he was, and as he lay in John's arms, breathed out his messages to Babie as well as he could utter them.

"And please, you'll be always mother's other son," said Armine.

"Won't I? She's been the making of me every way," said John.

"If ever--she does want anybody--" said Armine, feeling, but not uttering, a vague sense of want of trust in others around her.

"I will, I will. Why, Armie, I shall never care for any one so much."

"That's right."

And again, after an interval, Armine spoke of Jock, saying, "You'll help him, Johnny. You know sometimes he can be put in mind--"

John promised again, perhaps less hopefully, but he saw that Armine hoped.

"Would you mind reading me a Psalm," came, after a great struggle for breath. "It was so nice to know Babie was saying her Psalms at night, and thinking of us."

So the evening wore away and night came on, and John, after full six-and-twenty hours' wakeful exertion and anxiety, began to grow sleepy, and dozed even as he held his cousin whenever the cough did not shake the poor little fellow. At last, with Armine's consent, or rather, at his entreaty, Mr. Graham, though knowing himself a bad subst.i.tute, took him from the arms of the outwearied lad, who, in five minutes more, was lying, dressed as he was, in the soundest of dreamless slumbers.

When he awoke, the sun was up, an almost midsummer sun, streaming on the fast-melting snow with a dazzling brilliancy. Armine was panting under the same deadly oppression on his pillows, and Mother Carey was standing by him, talking to Mr. Graham about despatching a messenger to Leukerbad in search of one of the doctors, who were sure to be found at the baths.

How haggard her face looked, and Armine gasped out--

"Mother, your hair."

The snow had been there; the crisp black waves on her brow were quite white. Jock had fallen into a sort of doze from exhaustion, but moaning all the time. She could call him no better, and Armine's sunken face told that he was worse.

John went in search of more hot water, and on the way heard voices which made him call Mr. Graham, who knew more of the vernacular German patois than himself, to understand it. He thought he had caught something about English, and a doctor at Kandersteg. It was true. A guide belonging to the other side of the pa.s.s, who had been weather-bound at Kandersteg, had just come up with tidings that an English party were there, who had meant to cross the Gemmi but had given it up, finding it too early in the season for the kranklicher Milord who was accompanied by his doctor.

"An English doctor! Oh!" cried John, "there's some good in that. Some one must take a note down to him at once."

But after some guttural conversation of which he understood only a word or two, Mr. Graham said--

"They declare it is of no use. The carriage was ordered at nine. It is past seven now."

"But it need not take two hours to go that distance downhill, the lazy blackguards!" exclaimed John.

"In the present state of the path, they say that it will," said Mr.

Graham. "In fact, I suspect a little unwillingness to deprive their countrymen of the job."

"I'll go," said John, "then there will be no loss of time about writing.

You'll look after Armine, sir, and tell my aunt."

"Certainly, my boy; but you'll find it a stiffish pull."

"I came in second for the mile race last summer at Eton," said Johnny.

"I'm not in training now; but if a will can do it--"

"I believe you are right. If you don't catch him, we shall hardly have lost time, for they say we must wait an hour or two for the Gemmi road to get clear of snow. Stay; don't go without eating. You won't keep it up on an empty stomach. Remember the proverb."

Prayer had been with him all night, and he listened to the remonstrance as to provender enough to devour a bit of bread, put another into his pocket, and swallow a long draught of new milk. Mr. Graham further insisted on his taking a lad to show him the right path through the fir woods; and though Johnny looked more formed for strength than speed, and was pale-cheeked and purple-eyed with broken rest, the manner in which he set forth had a purpose-like air that was satisfactory--not over swift at the outset over the difficult ground, but with a steadfast resolution, and with a balance and knowledge of the management of his limbs due to Eton athletics.

Mr. Graham went up to encourage Mrs. Brownlow. She clasped her hands together with joy and grat.i.tude.

"That dear, dear boy," she said, "I shall owe him everything."

Jock had wakened rational, though only to be conscious of severe suffering. He would hardly believe that Armine was really alive till Mr.

Graham actually carried in the boy, and let them hold each other's hands for a moment before placing Armine on the other bed.

Indeed it seemed that this might be the poor boys' last meeting.

Armine could only look at his brother, since the least attempt to speak increased the agonised struggle for breath, which, doctor or no doctor, gave Mr. Graham small expectation that he could survive another of these cold mountain nights.

Their mother was so far relieved to have them together that it was easier to attend to them; and Armine's patient eyes certainly acted as a gentle restraint upon Jock's moans, lamentations, and requisitions for her services. It was one of those times that she only pa.s.sed through by her faculty of attending only to present needs, and the physical strength and activity that seemed inexhaustible as long as she had anything to do, and which alone alleviated the despair within her heart.

Meantime John found the rock slippery, the path heavy, and his young guide a drag on him. The path through the fir woods which had been so delightful two days (could it be only two days?) ago, was now a baffling, wearisome zigzag; yet when he tried to cut across, regardless of the voice of his guide, he found he lost time, for he had to clamber, once fell and rolled some distance, happily with no damage as he found when he picked himself up, and plodded on again, without even stopping to shake himself.

At last came an opening where he could see down into the Kandersteg valley. There was the hotel in clear sunshine, looking only too like a house in a German box of toys, and alas! there was also a toy carriage coming round to the front!

Like the little foot-page of old ballads, John "let down his feet and ran," ran determinately on, down the now less precipitous slope--ran till he was beyond the trees, with the summer sun beating down on him, and in sight of figures coming out from the hotel to the carriage.

Johnny scarce ventured to give one sigh. He waved his hat in a desperate hope of being seen. No, they were in the carriage. The horses were moving!

But he remembered a slight steep on the further road where they must go slower. Moreover, there were a few curves in the horse-road. He set his teeth with the desperate resolution of a moment, clenched his hands, intensified his mental cry to Heaven, and with the dogged determination of Kencroft dashed on, not daring to look at the carriage, intent only on the way.

He was past the inn, but his breath was short and quick; his knees were failing, an invisible hand seemed to be on his chest making him go slower and slower; yet still he struggled on, till the mountain tops danced before his eyes, cascades rushed into his ears, the earth seemed to rise up and stop him; but through it all he heard a voice say, "Hullo, it's the Monk! What is the matter?"

Then he knew he was on the ground on his face, with kind but tormenting hands busy about him, and his heart going so like a sledge hammer, that the word he would have given his life to utter, would not come out of his lips, and all he could do was to grasp convulsively at something that he believed to be a garment of the departing travellers.

"Here, the flask! Don't speak yet," said a man's voice, and a choking stimulant was poured into his mouth. When the choking spasm it cost him was over, his eyes cleared, and he could at least gasp. Then he saw that it was his housemate, Evelyn, at whom he was clutching, and who asked again in amaze--