Читать книгу Looranna - An Australian Story - M. A. McCarter - Страница 9

Table of Contents

The entrance of Dr. O'Meara into the sickroom has carried Grace's thoughts once more away to the vast fields, and to the winding banks where the River Darling flows away back at her old home. " 'Looranna,' dear old 'Looranna!' " she whispers in her soul; and, in fancy, once more she, with Kathleen O'Meara, the doctor's sister, scampers and plays over the flower-decked fields. In her fancy's dream this man, the doctor, is again their guide, and leads them in their canter over plains and through woods. It was he who first taught Grace and Kathleen how to master the fiery steed—in fact, he was Grace's hero of her childhood days.

When Dr. Frank O'Meara rises from his examination of little Effie, and looks at the nurse, an astonished light for a moment beams in his eyes as he gazes in glad surprise on the kind, womanly face of Grace Moore, and the hands of the two friends meet in the firm clasp of true friendship. (There are many clasps of hands, but theirs is the warm clasp of true and lasting friendship.) The doctor, too, dreams back, and, with the electricity of thought, he is once more a college boy, hastening home for the Christmas vacation, and always to be welcomed by the bright smile and happy laughter of his little friend and neighbour, Grace Moore. As his thoughts fly on, a black cloud darkens his face whilst he thinks, for he can remember, also, one day when he hurried home—this time a man full of hopes, for he had achieved, and won, the highest honours his heart had longed for; but not all—he had not won all his heart had longed for—for this time he had come, with hope in his soul, to ask Grace to be his wife only to find that she was betrothed to Jack Mannering. The cloud still deepens as he turns away.

In a flash the doctor forgets the past, as, with professional concern, he again looks at his little patient, and then at Dr. Ferguson, and shakes his head. "Too late, old man! Too late."

"What?" gasps Harold, in a husky whisper. "My God, man, surely you do not also say too late? She cannot, she must not, die! For God's sake, do not say that?"

"I want my Mamma!" comes a weak, choked, child voice from the bed.

Mrs. Jenkins has been telephoning everywhere, hoping to find Milly, the child's mother, but without success, and her kind face twitches as she once more enters the room and hears the verdict of the great specialist, and hears, too, the little child's craving call. With a broken-hearted sigh she beckons to her son, and again goes out of the room.

He follows her into the corridor.

"Harold, my boy," she whispers, soothingly, "my heart is sorry for you," and the manly head of Harold Jenkins bows to receive his mother's sympathetic kiss and her motherly caress.

"Wherever can Milly be?" asks the mother, as her son roughly dashes away his tears. "We must find her; little Effie calls for her."

"Mother, you know, I have sent Tom Allen with the motor to Eagleson's; he should be back soon. Mrs. Eagleson had some meeting. I believe she is in some way connected with a neglected children's home. I think Milly went to the meeting with her."

"To a meeting for neglected children," repeats Mrs. Jenkins, and there is a world of scorn in her voice. "Milly interested in neglected children! Oh, the inconsistency of it! Surely, Harold, you must mean neglected dogs. But, hark, is not that the sound of our car returning?"

"Yes, mother," and Harold, in his anxiety, hurries along the corridor, followed by his mother.

"No," he mutters despondingly, as he gazes at the newly-arrived motor, which stands throbbing outside the hall door. "It is Mason's. What can be the matter? Surely not," and Harold, trembling, opens a note which the chauffeur hands him. "What can it be?" he wonders, as, with shaking hands, he holds it to the light.

It is just a few lines scrawled in Milly's careless style:

"Dear Harold,—I am staying for the night. Come, like a dear, and bring me a dinner-frock. Miss Moore will select one, and, like a dear, do not forgot to bring my darling little Fido. I want to show him to Lady Emmerson; she is staying here. Tell Rose to wrap him cosily; I am anxious about the dear little pet. Now, hurry up, like a dear boy.—Yours lovingly, Milly."

With an oath Harold crushes the note and throws it from him; then, with a cloud of sorrow in his heart, he turns and hurries back to the sick child.

As Mrs. Jenkins looks after her son she sighs heavily. "And this," she murmurs, "is what they call a happy marriage! This is the society of the day. A wife and a mother gallivanting from house to house with that Mrs. Mason! A woman, certainly a wealthy society lady, but still a woman, whom Harold's wife should not associate with; and yet she is with her, leaving her child sick and uncared for by a mother's hand. Oh, God, my soul is pained—so pained! But I am forgetting. There is the chauffeur in the car waiting for the message," and Mrs. Jenkins hurriedly scrawls a few lines to Milly, and, as she hands the note to the man, "Go," she says—"go for your life and bring Mrs. Harold Jenkins back. Her little one is dying."

For a minute, with hope and despair battling in her soul, she watches after the car, then turns and follows her son to the couch of little Effie.

"Poor little pet!" she murmurs as she helplessly looks at the white-faced little child. Then, "Oh, doctor!" she whispers, and she catches the arm of the specialist, "save her for us. Do ease the little darling."

The spasms are becoming more frequent. "Oh, that is a hard one," says the doctor, as Effie struggles and fights for breath. The little face, in its pain, turns appealingly to Grace, who, all the time, is standing by the cot holding the child's hand.

"Up! Up!" gasps Effie, and she holds out her baby arms.

Grace looks at the doctors, and, as they both nod assent, she tenderly lifts the child-form in her kindly arms. As she does so, Dr. O'Meara whispers, warningly, "Be careful, Grace. Remember the danger."

Mrs. Jenkins hears him. "They are friends," she concludes.

Harold looks at Grace. He cannot thank her for her kindness to his little one, but he presses her hand, and she knows by the pressure of his manly hand that she has won a friend, and the gratitude of his soul.

A cloud of fear darkens Harold's eyes, and an agonising pain pierces his heart as he looks on his little child, struggling and tossing with pain, and a deep agony racks his soul when he hears the spasmodic little cry of Effie as she softly whispers, "Mamma—Mamma! I want my Mamma! Oh, Miss Moore—do bring my beautiful Mamma? Effie wants—to kiss Mamma—kiss Mamma—good-night and Papa, too. Grandma, will you please bring—Mamma? Effie—wants—to kiss— Mamma—good-night."

The child's voice grows weaker, and again the spasms—another spasm—and the two doctors look helplessly on. They know they can do nothing. Human aid availeth not.

"Another like that," Dr. O'Meara whispers, "and, then—"

When the spasm passes, "Mamma," is the whispered sound from the child, and, with a long, yearning look towards the door, the little one softly sighs: "Oh, God, please find—and—and give—me my—Mamma." There is another little struggle, another yearning look, and then—all is quiet.

Two great tears fall from the pitying eyes of Grace Moore, and trickle over the little white face of Effie, who will never more yearn for a kindly look or a loving caress from her "beautiful mother."

Harold kneels beside the little form, and, as Mrs. Jenkins kneels by her son's side, her frame shakes with sobs, and softly a whispered prayer from Grace accompanies the fair, pure soul of little Effie on its way to the Eternal Rest.

The two doctors, so accustomed to scenes of death, stand by in reverential awe. Then they, too, kneel. In the presence of death in any form a strange, weird, awe-inspiring feeling pervades us as we gaze on the empty casket, and we know that a soul is, alone, crossing the Bridge, the Great Dividing Bridge, which leads to Eternity.