Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 56

"Ah! what will you give me for letting you off?" said the Doctor.

Jock uttered a sound of relief, then, rather distrustfully, asked--"Why?"

"We can only get bearers enough for one; and as it is most important to move your brother, while you will gain by a night's rest, he must have the first turn."

"And welcome," said Jock; "my mother will stay with me."

"That's the very point," said Dr. Medlicott. "I want you not only to give her up, but to do so cheerfully."

"I'm sure mother wants to stay with me. Armine does not need her half so much."

"He does not require the same kind of attention; but he is in so critical a state that I do not think I ought to separate her from him."

"Why, what is the matter with him?" asked Jock, startled.

"Congestion of the right lung," said the doctor, seeing that he was strong enough to bear the information, and feeling the need of rousing him from his monopolising self-absorption.

"People get over that, don't they?" said Jock, with an awestruck interrogation in his voice.

"They _do_; and I hope much from getting him into a warmer atmosphere, but the child is so much reduced that the risk is great, and I should not dare not to have his mother with him." Then, as Jock was silent, "I have told you because you can make a great difference to their comfort by not showing how much it costs you to let her go."

Jock drew the bed clothes over his face, and an odd stifled sound was heard from under them. He remained thus perdu, while directions were being given to John for the night, but as the doctor was leaving the room, emerged and said--

"Bring him in before he goes."

In a short time, for it was most important not to lose the fine weather, the doctor carried Armine in swathed in rugs and blankets, a pale, sunken, worn face, and great hollow eyes looking out at the top.

The mother said something cheerful about a live mummy, but the two poor boys gazed at one another with sad, earnest, wistful eyes, and wrung one another's hands.

"Don't forget," gasped Armine, labouring for breath.

And Jock answered--

"All right, Armie; good-bye. I'm coming to morrow," with a choking, quivering attempt at bravery.

"Yes, to-morrow," said poor Mother Carey, bending over him. "My boy--my poor good boy, if I could but cut myself in two! I can't tell you how thankful I am to you for being so good about it. That dear good Johnny will do all he can, and it is only till tomorrow. You'll sleep most of the time."

"All right, mother," was again all that Jock could manage to utter, and the kisses that followed seemed to him the most precious he had known.

He hid his face again, bearing his trouble the better because the lull of violent pain quelled by opiates, so that his senses were all as in a dream bound up. When he looked up again at the clink of gla.s.s, it was Cecil whom he saw measuring off his draught.

"You!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, Medlicott said I might stay till four, and give the Monk a chance of a sleep. That fellow can always snooze away off hand, and he is as sound as a top in the next room; but I was to give you this at two."

"You're sure it's the right stuff?"

"I should think so. We've practice enough in the family to know how to measure off a dose by this time."

"How is it you are out here still? This is Thursday, isn't it? We meant to have been half way home, to be in time for the matches."

"I'm not going back this half, worse luck. They were mortally afraid these measles would make me get tender in the chest, like all the rest of us, so I've got nothing to do but be dragged about with Fordham after churches and picture galleries and mountains," said Cecil, in a tone of infinite disgust. "I declare it made me half mad to look at the Lake of Lucerne, and recollect that we might have been in the eight."

"Not this year."

"No, but next."

In this contemplation Cecil was silent, only fondling Chico, until Jock, instead of falling asleep again, said, "Evelyn, what does your doctor really think of the little chap?"

Cecil screwed up his face as if he had rather not be asked.

"Never you think about it," he said. "Doctors always croak. He'll be all right again soon."

"If I was sure," sighed Jock; "but you know he has always been such a religious little beggar. It's a horrid bad sign."

"Like my brother Walter," said Cecil gravely. "Now, Duke can be ever so snappish and peevish; I'm not half so much afraid for him."

"You never heard anything like the little fellow that night," said Jock, and therewith he gave his friend by far the most connected account of the adventure that had yet been arrived at. He even spoke of the resolution to which he had been brought, and in a tone of awe described how he had pledged himself for the future.

"So you see I'm in for it," he concluded; "I must give up all our jolly larks."

"Then I shan't get into so many rows with my mother and uncle," said Cecil, by no means with the opposition his friend had antic.i.p.ated.

"Then you'll stand by me?" said Jock.

"Gladly. My mother was at me all last Easter, telling me my goings on were worse to her than losing George or Walter, and talking about my Confirmation and all. She only let me be a communicant on Easter Day, because I did mean to make a fresh start--and I did mean it with all my heart; only when that supper was talked of, I didn't like to stick out against you, Brownlow; I never could, you know, and I didn't know what it was coming to."

"Nor I," said Jock; "that's the worst of it. When a lark begins one doesn't know how far one will get carried on. But that night I thought about the Confirmation, and how I had made the promise without really thinking about it, and never had been to Holy Communion."

"I meant it all," said Cecil, "and broke it, so I'm worst."

"Well!" said Jock, "if I go back from the promise little Armie made me make about being Christ's faithful soldier and servant I could never face him again--no, nor death either! You can't think what it was like, Evelyn, sitting in the dead stillness--except for an awful crack and rumbling in the ice, and the solid snow fog shutting one in. How ugly, and brutish, and horrid all those things did look; and how it made me long to have been like the little fellow in my arms, or even this poor little dog, who knew no better. Then somehow came now and then a wonderful sense that G.o.d was all round us, and that our Lord had done all that for my forgiveness, if I only meant to do right in earnest. Oh!

how to go on meaning it!"

"That's the thing," said Cecil. "I mean it fast enough at home, and when my mother talks to me and I look at my brothers' graves, but it all gets swept away at Eton. It won't now, though, if you are different, Brownlow. I never liked any fellow like you I knew you were best, even when you were worst. So if you go in for doing right, I shan't care for anyone else--not even Cressham and Bulford."

"If they choose to make a.s.ses of themselves they must," said Jock. "It will be a bore, but one mustn't mind things. I say, Evelyn, suppose we make that promise of Armine's over again together now."

"It is only the engagement we made when we were sworn into Christ's army at our baptism," said the much more fully instructed Cecil. "We always were bound by it."

"Yes, but we knew nothing about it then, and we really mean it now,"

said Jock. "If we do it for ourselves together, it will put us on our honour to each other, and to Christ our Captain, and that's what we want. Lay hold of my hand."

The two boys, with clasped hands, and grave, steadfast eyes, with one voice, repeated together--

"We, John Lucas Brownlow and Cecil Fitzroy Evelyn, promise with all our hearts manfully to fight under Christ's banner, and continue His faithful soldiers and servants to our lives' end. Amen."

Then Cecil touched Lucas's brow with his lips, and said--

"Fellow-soldiers, Brownlow."