by Ellen Wood
And Mr. Fauntleroy, in the flush of his great victory, in the plenitude of his gratitude to the boy whose singular evidence had caused him to win the battle, went down that same day to Peter Arkell’s and forgave him the miserable debt that had so long hampered him. For once in his life, the lawyer showed himself generous. People used to say that such was his nature before the world hardened him.
So, taking one thing with another, it was a satisfactory termination to the renowned cause, Carr versus Carr.
It was a large state dinner at the deanery. But the chief thing that Henry Arkell saw at it was, that Mr. St. John sat by Georgina Beauclerc. The judges — who did not appear in their wigs and fiery gowns, to the relief of private country individuals of wide imaginations, that could not usually separate them — were pleasant men, and their faces did not look so yellow by candle-light. They talked to Henry a great deal, and he had to rehearse over, for the general benefit, all the scene of that past night in St. James’s Church. Mrs. Beauclerc, usually so indifferent, was aroused to especial interest, and would not quit the theme; neither would Lady Anne St. John, now visiting at the Palmery, and who was present with Mrs. St. John.
But Georgina — oh, the curious wiles of a woman’s heart! — took little or no notice of Henry. They had been for some time in the drawing-room before she came near him at all — before she addressed a word to him. At dinner she had been absorbed in Mr. St. John: gay, laughing, animated, her thoughts, her words, were all for him. Sarah Beauclerc, conspicuous that night for her beauty, sat opposite to them, but St. John had not the opportunity of speaking to her, beyond a passing word now and again. In the drawing-room, no longer fettered — though perhaps the fetters had been willing ones — St. John went at once to Sarah, and he did not leave her side. Ah! Henry saw it all: both those fair girls loved Frederick St. John! What would be the ending?
Georgina sat at a table apart, reading a new book, or appearing to read it. Was she covertly watching that sofa at a distance? It was so different, this sitting still, from her usual restless habits of flitting everywhere. Suddenly she closed her book, and went up to them.
“I have come to call you to account, Fred,” she began, speaking in her most familiar manner, but in a low tone. “Don’t you see whose heart you are breaking?”
He had been sitting with his head slightly bent, as he spoke in a whisper to his beautiful companion. Her eyes were cast down, her fingers unconsciously pulled apart the petals of some geranium she held; her whole attitude bespoke a not unwilling listener. Georgina’s salutation surprised both, for they had not seen her approach. They looked up.
“What do you say?” cried St. John. “Breaking somebody’s heart? Whose? Yours?”
She laughed in derision, flirting some of the scent out of a golden phial she had taken up. “Sarah, you should have more consideration,” she continued. “It is all very well when Lady Anne’s not present, but when she is — There! you need not go into a flaming fever and fling your angry eyes upon me. Look at Sarah’s face, Mr. St. John.”
Mr. St. John walked away, as though he had not heard. Sarah caught hold of her cousin.
“There is a limit to endurance, Georgina. If you pursue this style of conversation to me — learnt, as I have repeatedly told you, from the housemaids, unless it is inherent,” she added, in deep scorn— “I shall make an appeal to the dean.”
“Make it,” said Georgina, laughing. “It was too bad of you, Sarah, with his future wife present. She’ll go to bed and dream of jealousy.”
Quitting her cousin, she went straight up to Henry Arkell. “Why do you mope like this?” she cried.
“Mope!” he repeated.
He had been at another table leaning his head upon his hand. It was aching much: and he told her so.
“Oh, Harry, I am sorry; I forgot your fall. Will you sing a song?”
“I don’t think I can to-night.”
“But papa has been talking to the judges about it. I heard him say your singing was worth listening to. I suppose he had been telling them all about you, and the whole romance, you know, of Mrs. Peter Arkell’s marriage, for one of them — it was the old one — said he used to be intimate with her father, Colonel Cheveley. Here comes the dean! that’s to ask you to sing.”
He sat down at once, and sang a song of the day. Then he went on to one that I dare say you all know and like— “Shall I, wasting in despair.” At its conclusion one of the judges — it was the old one, as Georgina irreverently called him — came to him at the piano, and asked if he could sing Luther’s Hymn.
A few chords by way of prelude, lasting some few minutes, probably played to form a break between the worldly song and the sacred one — for if anyone was ever endowed with an innate sense of what was due to sacred things, it was Henry Arkell — and then the grand old hymn, in all its beautiful simplicity, burst upon their ears. Never had it been done greater justice to than it was by that solitary college boy. The room was hushed to stillness; the walls echoed with the sweet sounds; the solemn words thrilled on the listeners’ hearts, and the singer’s whole soul seemed to go up with them. Oh, how strange it was, that the judge should have called for that particular, sacred song!
The echoes of it died away in the deepest stillness. It was broken by Henry himself; he closed the piano, as if nothing else must be allowed to come after that; and the tacit mandate was accepted, and nobody thought of inquiring how he came to assume the liberty in the dean’s house.
Gradually the room resumed its humming and its self-absorption, and Georgina Beauclerc, under cover of it, went up to him.
“How could you make the excuse that your head was aching? None, with any sort of sickness upon them, could sing as you have just done.”
“Not even with heart sickness,” he answered.
“Now you are going to be absurd again! What do you mean?”
“To-night has taught me a great deal, Georgina. If I have been foolish enough — fond enough, I might say — to waver in my doubts before, that’s over for ever.”
“So much the better; you will be cured now.”
She had spoken only lightly, not meaning to be unkind or unfeeling; but she saw what she had done, by his quivering lip. Leaning across him as he stood, under cover of showing him something on the table, she spoke in a deep, earnest tone.
“Henry, you know it could never be. Better that you should see the truth now, than go on in this dream of folly. Stay away for a short while if you will, and overget it; and then we will be fast friends as before.”
“And this is to be the final ending?”
She stole a glance round at him, his voice had so strange a sound in it. Every trace of colour had faded from his face.
“Yes; it is the only possible ending. If you get on well and become somebody grand, you and I can be as brother and sister in after life.”
She moved away as she spoke. It may be that she saw further trifling would not do. But even in the last sentence, thoughtlessly though she had spoken it, there was an implied consciousness of the wide difference in their social standing, all too prominent to that sensitive ear.
A minute afterwards St. John looked round for him, and could not see him.
“Where’s Henry Arkell?” he asked of Georgina.
She looked round also.
“He is gone, I suppose,” she answered. “He was in one of his stupid moods to-night.”
“That’s something new for him. Stupid?”
“I used the word in a wide sense. Crazy would have been better.”
“What do you mean, Georgina?”
“He is a little crazy at times — to me. There! that’s all I am going to tell you: you are not my father confessor.”
“True,” he said; “but I think I understand without confession. Take care, Georgina.”
“Take care of what?”
“Of — I may as well say it — of exciting hopes that are most unlikely to be realized. Better play a true part than a false one.”
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She laughed a little saucy laugh.
“Don’t you think I might turn the tables and warn you of that? What false hopes are you exciting, Mr. St. John?”
“None,” he answered. “It is not in my nature to be false, even in sport.”
Her laugh changed to one of derision; and Mr. St. John, disliking the sound, disliking the words, turned from her, and joined the dean, who was then deep in a discussion with one of the judges.
CHAPTER IX.
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
The days went on; and the dull, heavy pain in the head, complained of by Henry Arkell, increased in intensity. At first his absence from his desk at school, his vacant place at college, excited comment, but in time, as the newness of it wore off, it grew to be no longer noticed. It is so with all things. On the afternoon of the fall, the family surgeon was called in to him: he saw no cause for apprehension, he said; the head only required rest. It might have been better, perhaps, had the head (including the body and brain) been able to take the recommended rest; but it could not. On the Monday morning came the excitement of the medal affair, as related to him by Mr. St. John, and also by many of the school; in the evening there occurred the excitement of that business of the register; the interview with the Prattletons, and subsequently with Mr. Fauntleroy. On the next day he had to appear as a witness; and then came the deanery dinner in the evening and Georgina Beauclerc. All sources of great and unwonted excitement, had he been in his usual state of health: what it was to him now, never could be ascertained.
As the days went on, and the pain grew no better, but worse, and the patient more heavy, it dawned into the surgeon’s mind that he possibly did not understand the case, and it might be as well to have the advice of a physician. The most clever the city afforded was summoned, and he did not appear to understand it either. That there was some internal injury to the head, both agreed; but what it might be, it was not so easy to state. And thus more days crept on, and the doctors paid their regular visits, and the pain still grew worse; and then the half-shadowed doubt glided into a certainty which had little shadow about it, but stern substance — that the injury was rapidly running on to a fatal issue.
He did not take to his bed: he would sit at his chamber window in an easy chair, his poor aching-head resting on a pillow. “You would be better in bed,” everybody said to him. “No, he thought he was best up,” he answered; “it was more change: when he was tired of the chair and the pillow, he could lie down outside the bed.” “It is unaccountable his liking to be so much at the window,” Mrs. Peter Arkell remarked to Lucy. To them it might be; for how could they know that a sight of one who might pass and cast a glance up to him, made his day’s happiness?
That considerable commotion was excited by the opinion of the doctors, however cautiously intimated, was only to be expected. Mr. Arkell heard of it, and brought another physician, without saying anything beforehand at Peter’s. But it would seem that this gentleman’s opinion did not differ in any material degree from that of his brethren.
The Reverend Mr. Wilberforce sat at the head of his dinner-table, eating his own dinner and carving for his pupils. His face looked hot and angry, and his spectacles were pushed to the top of his brow, for if there was one thing more than another that excited the ire of the master, it was that of the boys being unpunctual at meals, and Cookesley had this day chosen to be absent. The second serving of boiled beef was going round when he made his appearance.
“What sort of behaviour do you call this, sir?” was the master’s salutation. “Do you expect to get any dinner?”
“I am very sorry to be so late, sir,” replied Cookesley, eyeing the boiled beef wishfully, but not daring to take his seat. “I went to see Arkell, and — —”
“And who is Arkell, pray, or you either, that you must upset the regulations of my house?” retorted the master. “You should choose your visiting times better, Mr. Cookesley.”
“Yes, sir. I heard he was worse; that’s the reason I went; and when I got there the dean was with him. I waited, and waited, but I had to come away without seeing Arkell, after all.”
“The dean with Arkell!” echoed Mr. Wilberforce, in a disbelieving tone.
“He is there still, sir. Arkell is a great deal worse. They say he will never come to school or college again.”
“Who says so, pray?”
“Everybody’s saying it now,” returned Cookesley. “There’s something wrong with his head, sir; some internal injury caused by the fall; but they don’t know whether it’s an abscess, or what it is. It will kill him, they think.”
The master’s wrath had faded: truth to say, his anger was generally more fierce in show than in reality. “You may take your seat for this once, Cookesley, but if ever you transgress again —— Hallo!” broke off the master, as he cast his eyes on another of his pupils, “what’s the matter with you, Lewis junior? Are you choking, sir?”
Lewis junior was choking, or gasping, or something of the sort, for his face was distorted, and his eyes were round with seeming fright. “What is it?” angrily repeated the master.
“It was the piece of meat, sir,” gasped Lewis. A ready excuse.
“No it wasn’t,” put in Vaughan the bright, who sat next to Lewis junior. “Here’s the piece of meat you were going to eat; it dropped off the fork on to your plate again; it couldn’t be the meat. He’s choking at nothing, sir.”
“Then, if you must choke, you had better go and choke outside, and come back when it’s over,” said the master to Lewis. And away Lewis went; none guessing at the fear and horror which had taken possession of him.
The assize week had passed, and the week following it, and still Henry Arkell had not made his appearance in the cathedral or the school. The master could not make it out. Was it likely that the effects of a fall, which broke no bones, bruised no limbs, only told somewhat heavily upon his head, should last all this while, and incapacitate him from his duties? Had it been any other of the king’s scholars, no matter which of the whole thirty-nine Mr. Wilberforce would have said that he was skulking, and sent a sharp mandate for him to appear in his place; but he thought he knew better things of Henry Arkell. He did not much like what Cookesley said now — that Arkell might never come out again, though he received the information with disbelief.
Mr. St. John was a daily visitor to the invalid. On the day before this, when he entered, Henry was at his usual post, the window, but standing up, his head resting against the frame, and his eyes strained after some distant object outside. So absorbed was he, that Mr. St. John had to touch his arm to draw his attention, and Henry drew back with a start.
“How are you to-day, Harry? Better?”
“No, thank you. This curious pain in my head gets worse.”
“Why do you call it curious?”
“It is not like an ordinary pain. And I cannot tell exactly where it is. I cannot put my hand on any part of my head and say it is here or it is there. It seems to be in the centre of the inside — as if it could not be got at.”
“What were you watching so eagerly?”
“I was looking outside,” was Henry’s evasive reply. “They had Dr. Ware to me this morning; did you know it?”
“I am glad of that!” exclaimed Mr. St. John. “What does he say?”
“I did not hear him say much. He asked me where my head was struck when I fell, but I could not tell him — I did not know at the time, you remember. He and Mr. — —”
Henry’s voice faltered. A sudden, almost imperceptible, movement of the head nearer the window, and a wild accession of colour to his feverish cheek, betrayed to Mr. St. John that something was passing which bore for him a deep interest. He raised his own head and caught a sufficient glimpse: Georgina Beauclerc.
It told Mr. St. John all: though he had not needed to be told; and Miss Beauclerc’s mysterious words, and Henry’s past conduct became clear to him. So! the boy’s heart had been thus early awakened — and crushed.
“
The heart that is soonest awake to the flowers Is always the first to be touched by the thorns,”
whistled Mr. St. John to himself.
Ay, crushing is as sure to follow that early awaking, as that thorns grow on certain rose-trees. But Mr. St. John said nothing more that day.
On the following day, upon going in, he found Henry in bed.
“Like a sensible man as you are,” quoth Mr. St. John, by way of salutation. “Now don’t rise from it again until you are better.”
Henry looked at him, an expression in his eyes that Mr. St. John did not like, and did not understand. “Did they tell you anything downstairs, Mr. St. John?” he inquired.
“I did not see anyone but the servant. I came straight up.”
“Mamma is lying down, I dare say; she has been sitting with me part of the night. Then I will tell it you. I shall not be here many days,” he whispered, putting his hand within Mr. St. John’s.
Mr. St. John did not take the meaning: that the case would have a fatal termination had not yet crossed his mind. “Where shall you be?” cried he, gaily, “up in the moon?”