Читать книгу The Shadow of Ashlydyat - Henry Mrs. Wood - Страница 8

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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.

She grasped Mr. Snow’s arm. “You must save my child!”

“Higher aid permitting me,” the surgeon answered. “Why do you assume it to be fever? For the last six weeks I have been summoned by timid parents to a score of ‘fever’ cases; and when I have arrived in hot haste, they have turned out to be no fever at all.”

“This is the fever,” replied Lady Sarah. “Had I been more willing to admit that it was, you would have been sent for hours ago. It was Ethel’s fault. She suggested at daylight that it might be fever; and it made my darling girl so angry that she forbid my sending for advice. But she is worse now. Come and see her.”

Mr. Snow laid his hand upon Ethel’s head with a fond gesture, ere he turned to Lady Sarah. All Prior’s Ash loved Ethel Grame.

Tossing upon her uneasy bed, her face flushed, her hair floating untidily about it, lay Sarah Anne, shivering still. The doctor gave one glance at her: it was quite enough to satisfy him that Lady Sarah was not mistaken.

“Is it the fever?” impatiently asked Sarah Anne, unclosing her hot eyelids.

“If it is, we must drive it away again,” said the doctor cheerily.

“Why should the fever have come to me?” she rejoined, her tone rebellious.

“Why was I thrown from my horse last year, and broke my arm?” returned Mr. Snow. “These things come to all of us.”

“To break an arm is nothing—people always recover from that,” irritably answered Sarah Anne.

“And you will recover from the fever, if you will be quiet and reasonable.”

“I am so hot! My head is so heavy!”

Mr. Snow, who had called for water and a glass, was mixing a white powder which he had produced from his pocket. She took it without opposition, and then he lessened the weight of bed-clothes, and afterwards turned his attention to the chamber. It was close and hot; the sun, which had just burst forth brightly from the grey skies, shone full upon it.

“You have that chimney stuffed up!” he exclaimed.

“Sarah Anne will not allow it to be open,” said Lady Sarah. “She is sensitive to cold, dear child, and feels the slightest draught.”

Mr. Snow walked to the chimney, turned up his coat cuff and wristband, and pulled down a bag filled with shavings. Soot came with it, and covered his hand; but he did not mind that. He was as little given to ceremony as Lady Sarah to caution, and he went leisurely up to the wash-hand-stand to remove it.

“Now, if I catch that bag, or any other bag up there again, obstructing the air, I shall attack the bricks next time, and make a good big hole that the sky can be seen through. Of that I give you notice, my lady.”