‘I am so sorry for him,’ she said. ‘I would do anything in the world to help or to comfort him.’
‘Unhappily, dear madam, you can do neither. ‘When these paroxysms are upon him he will mistake his best friend for his worst enemy — he was quite violent to Towler just now. You can do absolutely nothing, and your presence is even likely to irritate him. He must be given over entirely to his nurses. Towler will obey my directions implicitly, and the female attendant — Mr. Fosbroke tells me he can find a thoroughly competent person — will assist him in carrying them out. If we can stimulate the patient’s vital power, which is just now at the lowest ebb, and if we can induce natural sleep, why, there may still be a favourable result. But I do not conceal from you that Mr. Wendover’s condition is critical — very critical. Lady Palliser, you will insist, I hope, that your daughter removes to an apartment at some distance from her husband’s for the present. A few days hence, when the delirium is subjugated, as I trust it may be, by — ahem — the removal of the exciting cause, Mrs. Wendover may resume her attendance upon her husband. Just at present the less she sees of him the better for both.’
Ida could not disobey this injunction, especially as Lady Palliser and Mrs. Jardine took the matter into their own hands. Jane Dyson was ordered to convey all Mrs. Wendover’s belongings to a room on the second and topmost floor of the mansion, exactly over that she now occupied — a fine airy apartment, with a magnificent view, but less lofty, and less ponderously furnished than the apartments of the first floor. Bessie vowed that this upper chamber, with its French bedstead, and light chintz draperies, and maple furniture, was a much prettier room than the one below. She ran up and down stairs carrying flowers, Japanese fans, tea-tables, and other frivolities, until she made the new room a perfect bower, and then carried Ida off triumphantly to inspect her new quarters.
‘Isn’t it lovely,’ she said, ‘such a nice change? Do let us have our tea up here, if that good Dyson won’t mind bringing it. Nearly six o’clock, and we haven’t had a cup of tea! I do so enjoy thoroughly new surroundings. We’ll have the table just in front of this window. What a sweet architect to give this room windows down to the ground, and a lovely balcony! You must have some large Japanese vases in the balcony, Ida. That lovely deep red, or orange tawny. Oh, you poor pet, how wretched you look!’
‘I have just been talking to the new nurse, Bessie. She seems a good, honest creature. She has nursed other people in the same complaint, and — and — she thinks Brian is desperately ill.’
‘Oh, but he may get over it dear! The London doctor did not give him up; and there is no good in your making yourself ill with worry and fear. If you do, you won’t be able to wait upon Brian when he begins to get better; and convalescents want so much attention, don’t you know.’
The tea came, and Bessie persuaded her friend to take some, prattling on all the time in the hope of diverting Ida from the silent contemplation of her trouble. But the horror of the case had taken too stern a hold upon Ida’s brain. It was the dominant idea; as with the somnambulist whose perceptions are dead to every other subject save the one absorbing thought, and all subsidiary ideas linked with it by the subtle chain of association. Ida smiled a wan smile, and pretended to be interested in Bessie’s parochial anecdotes — the idiosyncrasies of the new curate, the fatuity of every young woman in the parish in running after him.
‘He is such a perfect stick; but then certainly there is no other single man in the parish under forty. He is like Robinson Crusoe. It is an awfully deceptive position for a young man to occupy. I know he is beginning to think himself quite handsome, while as for pimples — well, his face is like a Wiltshire meadow before it has been bush-harrowed.’
Ida did not go down to dinner that evening. She felt utterly unequal to the effort of pretended cheerfulness, and she did not want to inflict a countenance of stony gloom upon Mr. and Mrs. Jardine, or on Vernie, who was going to dine late for the first time since his illness. So she sat by the open window overlooking the woods, gray in the universal twilight grayness, and she read Victor Cousin’s ‘History of Philosophy,’ which was a great deal more comforting than fiction or poetry would have been, as it carried her into regions of abstract thought where human troubles entered not.
For the next three days things went on quietly enough. Brian never left his own apartments, now an ample range, since Ida’s bedroom had been thrown into the suite, so as to give him space and verge enough for his roaming when the restless fit was on him: and, alas! how seldom did he cease from his restlessness. He now saw scarcely anyone but his nurses and Mr. Fosbroke, who called three times a day, and was altogether devoted in his watchfulness of the case.
Ida had not ceased from visiting the invalid until it became too obvious that her presence was irritating to him. He recalled the most painful scenes of their past experience, raved about his marriage, and accused his wife of cruelty and greed of wealth, wept, stormed, blasphemed, until Ida rushed shuddering from the room. To the nurses this wild talk was only part and parcel of the patient’s hallucinations; to Ida it was too real.
Mr. Jardine and his wife stayed till the end of the week, but on Saturday the Vicar was compelled to go back to his parishioners; and although Bessie wanted to remain at Wimperfield, separating herself from her husband for the first time in her wedded life, Ida would not consent to such a sacrifice. Vernon, who was pronounced thoroughly convalescent, was to go back to Salisbury Plain with the Jardines, everybody being agreed that Wimperfield Park was no place for him under existing circumstances. If Brian’s malady were doomed to end fatally, it was well that the boy should be gone before the dreaded guest crossed the threshold.
Ida saw her friends depart with a sense of despair too deep for words. She hugged Vernie with the passionate fervour of one who never hoped to see him more. She felt as if it were she whose hours were numbered, she for whom the thin thread of life was gradually dwindling to nothingness. The very atmosphere was charged with the odour of death. The light was shadowed by the gloom of the grave. Again and again in troubled dreams she had recalled that dreadful scene in the church with Brian; and she had seen the worms crawling out through the mouldering timbers of the church-floor — she had smelt the sickening taint of corruption.
She stood in the portico in the early summer morning, watching Mr. Jardine’s phaeton dwindle to a speck in the distance of the avenue, and then she went slowly back to the house, feeling as if she were quite alone in her misery. It was not that Fanny Palliser was wanting in kindness or sympathy, but she was wanting in comprehension of Ida’s feelings, and the stronger nature could not lean upon the weaker; and then the mother would be absorbed in her grief at the loss of her boy, who had become doubly precious since his illness. No, Ida felt that now John Jardine was gone she must bear her burden alone. Help for her, strength outside her own courageous nature, there was none.
She longed on this exquisite morning to be roaming about the park and woods, or riding far afield; but she had made up her mind that, so long as her husband remained in his present critical condition, it was her duty to stay close at hand, within call, lest at any moment there might be a return to reason, and she might again have power to soothe and support him, as she had done many a time in the long down-hill progress of his malady.
With this idea she spent the greater part of her day in the bedroom which Bessie had made so bright and so comfortable. Here she was within easy reach of the nurse in the rooms below, and could be summoned to her husband without a minute’s delay. Here she had her favourite books, and the view of park and woods in all their summer glory. She could sit out in her balcony, reading, or looking idly at the wide expanse of hill and valley, brooding sadly over days that were gone, full of fear for the immediate present, and not daring to face the dreaded future.
‘Don’t think me unsociable,’ she said to Lady Palliser, before going back to her room after a hasty breakfast; ‘but I am too completely miserable to put on the faintest show of
cheerfulness, and I should only make you wretched if I were with you. Go out for a drive, and pay a few visits, mamma. You have had a trying time, and you must want a little change of scene.’
‘I believe I do, Ida,’ replied Lady Palliser, gravely. ‘I feel that I am below par, and that I really want sea air. What should you think of our going to Bournemouth directly after the funeral?’
‘The funeral!’ murmured Ida, pale as death.
‘Yes, dear. Mr. Fosbroke has quite given up all hope, I know; and after the funeral you will want a change as badly as I do. I thought it would be as well to write to the Bournemouth agent to secure nice apartments, for I shouldn’t care about staying at an hotel.’
‘Oh, mamma, don’t make your plans so much beforehand! Wait till he is dead,’ said Ida, bitterly.
There seemed to her something ghoulish and stony-hearted in this prevision of coming doom, this arrangement for making the best of life and being comfortable when the sufferer upstairs should have ceased from the struggle with man’s last foe.
Lady Palliser contrived to get on without her step-daughter’s society. She had Jane Dyson, who was a person of considerable conversational powers, and who had an inexhaustible well-spring of interesting discourse in her recollections of the Archbishop’s wife’s lingering illness. The mistress and maid spent the morning not unpleasantly in conversation of the charnel house order, and in looking over Lady Palliser’s wardrobe, with a view to discovering what new mourning she would require in the event of Brian’s death. She had liked him, and had been kind to him in life, and she was not going to stint him in death by any false economy in crape or bugles.
CHAPTER XXX.
A FIERY DAWN.
The Jardines had been gone three days, and there was no change either for good or evil in Brian’s condition. Mr. Fosbroke admitted that he was as ill as he could possibly be — the malady must either take a turn for the better, or end fatally within a day or two. The servants all talked of the impending funeral as complacently as Lady Palliser. The event must happen; and it would be as well to make the best of it. They had not yet gone out of mourning for Sir Reginald; and here was another death at hand to start them again with new suits of black. This was one of the advantages of service in a really good family, where the King of Terrors was treated with proper distinction.
It was eleven o’clock at night, and the house was hushed in silence — save in that suite of rooms where the invalid and his nurses were hardly ever at rest. One of the men servants slept in his clothes on a truckle bed in the corridor, ready for service in any emergency. Every one else had gone to bed, except Ida, who sat at her window, looking out at the wild windy sky and the forest trees swaying in the gale.
The day had been rainy and tempestuous, and the wind was still raging — just such a wind as Ida remembered upon Bessie’s birthday, the day of that terrible storm which had cost so many lives, and had made Reginald Palliser master of Wimperfield.
She sat gazing idly at the sky, in sheer despondency and weariness. Her devotional books, which had been her chief comfort in these dark days and nights, lay unopened on her table. The effort to read any other kind of literature had been abandoned for the last day or two. Her mind refused to understand the words which her eyes mechanically perused. She could only read such books as spoke of comfort to a weary soul, of hope beyond a sinful world.
She had eaten hardly anything for the last few days, living on cups of tea, and semi-transparent slices of bread and butter. Her nights had been almost sleepless, her brief snatches of slumber disturbed by hideous dreams. She was thoroughly worn out in body and mind, and as she sat by the open window loosely dressed in a tea gown, with a china-crape shawl wrapped round her shoulders, the monotonous moaning of the wind in the elms had a soothing sound like a lullaby, and hushed her to sleep. She lay back in her low luxurious chair, with her head half buried in the comfortable down pillow, and slept as she had not slept for a month. It was the slumber of sheer exhaustion, deep and sweet, and long — very long; for when she opened her eyes and looked about her, awakened by a strange oppression of the chest, there was the livid light of earliest dawn in the room — a light that changed all at once to a bright red glow, vivid as the sky at sundown.
The oppression of her breath increased, she felt suffocated. The livid dawn, the crimson sunset, changed to gray; the atmosphere around her grew thick; there was a smarting sensation in her eyes, a stifling sensation in her throat. Mechanically, not knowing what she did, she began to grope her way to the door. But in that thickening atmosphere she did not know which was the door — her outspread arms clasped some heavy piece of furniture — the wardrobe. She leaned against it exhausted, helpless stupified by that horrible smoke; and as she leaned there a wild shrill shriek pealed out from below — the cry of ‘Fire!’ Again and again that dreadful cry resounded, in a woman’s piercing treble. Then came a hubbub of other voices — without, within — she could not tell where, or how near, or how far — but all the sounds seemed distant.
She could just see the open window by which she had been sleeping a few minutes ago — she could distinguish it by the red light outside, which was just visible through the dense smoke within, momently thickening.
She made for the window — anything to escape from that suffocating atmosphere; but just as she was approaching that red patch of light shining amidst the blackness, a sudden tongue of flame shot up from below, caught the light chintz drapery, and in an instant the window was framed in fire, The flame ran from one curtain to another; fanned by the wind which was still blowing — valence, draperies, all the ornamentation of the three windows were in a blaze. Ida stood helpless, motionless as Lot’s wife, confronting the flames. To rush through them, to leap through the open window although it were to certain death, was her first impulse. Any death must be better than to fall down suffocated on the floor, and to be burned alive.
Then came the thought of her husband — so weak, and mad, and helpless — of her stepmother. Were they, too, in danger of instant death? Or was she on this upper floor the only victim?
The thin chintz curtains flamed and blazed into nothingness while she was looking at them. The wood-work round the windows crackled and blistered, but the flame died out into ashes. Only the intolerable smoke remained, and the ever-increasing glow of the fire below, more vivid with every moment. She made one mad rush for the balcony. Great Heaven, what a scene greeted her eyes as she looked downwards! Masses of flame, mingled with black smoke clouds, were being vomited out of the lower-windows. There was a little crowd of men below — gardeners, stablemen, who lived close at hand. Some of these were making feeble efforts with garden engines, sending out little jets of water which seemed only to feed the flames as if the water had been oil, while others were trying to adjust a fire escape, deposited in the stables years ago, in the reign of Sir Reginald’s father, and out of working order from long disuse. Three or four grooms were rushing to and fro with buckets, and splashing water against the stone walls, with an utter absence of any effect whatever.
Ida stood in the balcony, leaning against the iron-work, waiting for rescue or death. The atmosphere was a little less stifling here, but every now and then a dense cloud of smoke rolled over her and almost suffocated her before the wind drove it upward. The sky was alight with reflected fire. The burning pyre of Dido or Sardanapalus could hardly have made a grander effect — and far away in the east, against the dark undulations of wooded hills there was another light — the tender roseate flush of summer dawn, full of promise and peace.
Ida stood with clasped hands, and lips moving dumbly in prayer. She gave her soul back to her Creator; she prayed for pardon for her sins; she closed her eyes waiting meekly for death.
Suddenly, as she prayed, full of resignation, the balcony creaked under a footstep — a strong arm was wound round her waist — she was lifted bodily over the iron rail and carried carefully, firmly, easily down a ladder, amidst a shout of rapture from the little crowd b
elow.
Every Englishman is not heroic, but every Englishman knows how to admire heroism in his fellow-man.
Before the bearer of his burden reached the lowest rung of the ladder, Ida was unconscious. She lay lifeless and helpless in her preserver’s arms. When they were on the solid ground, he bent his bare head over hers, which rested on his shoulder, and kissed her on the forehead.
The crowd saw and did not condemn the action.
‘It might be a liberty,’ said the head gardener, ‘but he’d earned the right to do it. None of us could have done what he did.’
When Ida awakened to consciousness she was lying in the lodge-keeper’s little bedroom at the Park gates, and her stepmother was seated at the bedside ready to offer her the usual remedy for all feminine woes — a cup of tea.
‘Thank God, you are safe!’ said Ida, the memory of that terrible dawn quickly recurring to her mind, a little bewildered at the first moment by her strange surroundings. ‘Where is Brian?’
Fanny Palliser burst into tears.
‘Oh, Ida, it was Brian set the house on fire, in one of his mad fits — hunting for some horrible thing behind his bed-curtains; and poor Towler and the nurse were both asleep when it happened — at least, Towler, who was sitting up with him had fallen into a doze, and heard Brian talk about looking for serpents in the curtains, and then about flames and fire — but didn’t take any notice, or so much as open his eyes — for his talk had been so often of fire and flames — poor creature! — and when he woke the whole room was in a blaze, and the fire had spread through the open door to the window curtains in the next room. Towler and the nurse, and Rogers, all did their uttermost, and risked their lives trying to get Brian away; but he wouldn’t leave the burning rooms. He got wilder and wilder; and then, just as they were calling a couple of the stablemen to help them, meaning to get him away by main force, he rushed to the window and threw himself out.’
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 835