by Ouida
There she lay; and as if in pity for this fair, fragile, human thing, the summer winds sighed softly over her, and touched her brow with cool caresses as they played among her wet and golden curls. She had no power to move, to stir even a limb; terror, fatigue, that horrible and breathless race through the pitiless storm, had beaten all the young life out of her. Nature could do no more; the spirit could no longer bear up against the suffering of the body; where she had fallen she lay, broken and worn out; if Castleton had been upon her she could not have risen or dragged herself one other step. She was but half conscious; wild thoughts, vague horrors, loathsome sights and sounds, indistinct with the unembodied terrors of night-dreams, flickered at times before her closed eyes, and hovered on the borders of her brain; still she lay there, powerless to move from the phantasms of her mind, equally powerless to repel them with her will. All volition was gone; terror and bodily fatigue had done their work, till the mind itself at last succumbed, outwearied, and a heavy, dreamless sleep stole on her, the sleep of nature utterly worn out There she lay on the cold, dank moss, the dark brushwood waving over her, above her the silent heavens, with their chill, pale stars, while the great boughs of the forest stirred with a mournful shiver, and through their silent glades moved, with melancholy sigh and measure, the wind of the summer night
CHAPTER IX.
Between Life and Death.
THE morning dawned; the herds of deer rose from their fern couches, and trooped down to the pools for their morning drink, and fragrance rose up from the wet grass that sparkled in the light after the storm of the past day, and from the deep dells, and shadowy glades, and sunny knolls of the Royal Forest One of the rangers, a white-haired old man, who had lived in the stately woodlands till he loved them almost as men love their own ancestral homes, was going home for his breakfast, when he caught sight of something gleaming white among the brushwood on the outskirts of the forest, and drawing near, saw Alma as she slept He was going to awaken her somewhat roughly perhaps, but her attitude touched him, and as he stooped over her and marked the fine texture of the dress, soaked through with mud and rain, her delicate hands, the circles under the eyes dark as the lashes resting on them, and the parted lips, through which every breath came with feverish and painful effort, he shrank involuntarily from touching harshly what seemed so fragile and at his mercy.
He stooped over her perplexed. He did not like to leave her; he did not like to move her.
“Poor pretty child!” he muttered, drawing her thick golden hair through his rough fingers. “Who’s sent her to such a bed, I wonder? If she’s been lying out all night, she’s caught her death of cold. I should like to take her home, poor young thing; but what would the old woman say!”
The worthy man, being a trifle henpecked, paused at this view of the question; his charity halting before the dread of another’s condemnation of it, as charity in the great world shrinks and hides her head before the dread of the “qu’en dira-t-on!” He wavered; he could not leave her there; he was afraid, poor fellow, to take her home, lest a hissing voice should condemn his folly, and a shrew’s vituperations reward him for his Samaritanism; and his dog, with the true instinct and ready kindness with which animals often shame their owners, began to lick the burning hands with his great tongue in honest well-meaning to do good, and to offer what help lay in his power.
As his master wavered, ashamed to leave, afraid to take her with him, a lady and two little girls, a governess and her pupils, walking before their breakfast, drew near too. The keeper knew them, and looked up as they approached, for they were astonished as well as he at this woman’s form, with the white dress and golden hair, lying down on the dark dank moss.
“Dear me, Reuben — dear me, what is this!” asked the governess, a little, tremulous, shy person, while the children’s eyes grew round and bright, with wonder and pleasure at seeing something strange to tell when they reached home.
“It’s a girl, ma’am,” responded the keeper, literally, while the lady drew near a little cautiously; for, though a good-hearted, gentle creature, she was a woman, and by no means exempt from the peculiar theories of her sex; and no lady, we know, will look at another, however in distress or want, unless she knows she is “proper” for her own pure eyes to rest upon.
“It’s a woman,” went on Reuben. “She looks like a lady, too, ma’am — leastways her face and her hands do — and her dress is like them bits of cobweb that fine ladies wear, that are no good at all for wind and weather. If she’s been lying here all night, sure she’ll die afore long; by the look on her, I fear she’s been out in all the rain last evening. She’s only asleep now, ma’am, though she do look like a corpse, and you see it ain’t a little thing for poor people like us to get an invalid into our house for, maybe, two or three months, and a long doctor’s bill, and perhaps in the end nothing to pay it with; and as for the workhouse—”
“Couldn’t we take her home with us? I am sure mamma would let us. Don’t you think we might, Miss Russel?” asked the younger girl “Hush, Cecy! Don’t be silly. How could we take a person home that we know nothing about? She can’t be a very nice person, you are sure, Cecy, or she wouldn’t be out here all alone,” said her elder sister, reprovingly, who had already learnt her little lesson in the world’s back-reading of charity, and had already a special little jury of her own for haranguing and converting people according to the practices she saw around her.
“Let me look at her, poor young creature. Let me look at this poor young thing!” said the governess, her compassion getting the better of her prudence. She stooped over the figure that lay so motionless amidst all their speculations upon her, turned her face gently towards the light, and, as the sun-rays fell upon it, cried out in bitter horror, “Alma! Alma! How can she have come here?” And, to the children’s wonder, their governess sank on her knees, by the girl, pushing the damp hair off her forehead, kissing and weeping over her in her astonishment and her sorrow.
“Do you know her, ma’am?” asked the keeper. “Do you know her?” cried the children, in shrill chorus of surprise and curiosity. The poor lady could not answer them at first; she was speechless with bewilderment to find her darling lying here sleeping, with the damp earth for her pillow, out under the morning skies, with nothing to shelter her from night dew or noontide sun, as lonely, as wretched, as homeless as the most abject outcast flying for her life.
Whether she woke or not she could not tell; a heavy, struggling sigh heaved her chest; she tried to turn, but had no power; then her eyes unclosed, but there was no consciousness in them; the lids dropped again immediately; a shiver of icy cold ran through her; she lay motionless as the dead.
“What can we do with her?” cried poor Miss Russel, half beside herself with grief for the girl and powerlessness to aid her, for in her own home she was but a dependent. “What shall we do?” cried the poor lady. “She will die, if she is half an hour longer without medical aid. Poor little darling, what can ever have brought her to this—”
“I’ll take her to our house,” said Reuben’ decided at last “Since you know her, ma’am, that’ll be everything to my missis.”
“Do, pray do,” assented the governess, eagerly; she would have done anything that anybody could have suggested, no matter how much to her own hindrance, but by nature she was nervous, timid, and undecided. “Take her at once, and pray move her tenderly. I must see the young ladies home, but I shall be at your cottage as soon as you are. Take her up gently. My poor darling!”
Reuben lifted the girl in his arms, and laid the golden head with no harsh touch against his shoulder. They might have taken her where they would, Alma knew nothing of it Miss Russel looked at her lingeringly a moment; she longed to go with her, but she dared not take her pupils to see a girl whom their reverend father “did not know.” She retraced her steps rapidly, and Reuben went onwards with his burden.
She was as good as her promise. The keeper’s wife, with no over good grace, had but just received her
new charge, with much amazement and grumbling, when the governess came, and helped her to lay Alma on the couch, bathe her burning temples, bind up her long, damp hair, and then wait — wait, unable to do more, till medical aid should arrive.
For six weeks Alma lay on that bed, unable to move hand or foot, unconscious to everything surrounding her, her brow knit with pain, her eyes wide open, without sense or thought, a burning glare in her aching eyeballs, her cheeks flushed deeply, her long hair wet with the ice laid on her temples — her mind gone, not in raving or chattering delirium, but into a strange, dull, voiceless unconsciousness, in which the only tie that linked her to life and reason was that one name which now and then she murmured faint and low, “Sir Folko! — Granville!”
The night out in the forest brought on inflammation of the lungs; and against her danger, her own youth, and the skill that grappled for her with death, alone enabled her to battle. At last youth and science conquered; at last the bent brow grew calm, the crimson flush paled upon her face, her breathing grew more even, her voice ceased to murmur its piteous wail, and she slept “She will live now,” said her doctor, watching that calm and all-healing sleep.
“Who is that man whose name she mutters so constantly?” asked Montressor, the doctor, outside her door, while Alma slept Miss Russel was somewhat embarrassed to reply; her calm and prudent nature had puzzled in vain over Alma’s strange, expansive attachment, half childish in its frankness, but so wildly passionate in its strength.
“Really I can hardly tell. I fancy — I believe — she means a friend of Mr. Tressillian’s, of whom I know she was very fond.”
Montressor smiled.
“Can we find him? He should be within call, for if she has wanted him so much in unconsciousness, she had better not be excited by asking for him in vain when she awakes. What is he?”
“An officer in the Army — in the Cavalry I believe,” answered the governess, much more inclined to keep De Vigne away than to bring him there.
“A soldier? Oh, we can soon learn his whereabouts, then. What is his name, do you know?”
“Major De Vigne,” said the governess, reluctantly. Montressor put the name in his note-book. Two days after he called on Miss Russel:
“I wrote to the Horse Guards for Major De Vigne’s address. They tell me he is gone to the Crimea. Tiresome fellow! he would have been my best tonic.”
The doctor might well say so, for when at length she awoke from the lengthened sleep that had given her back life, enfeebled as she was, so much so that for many days she lay as motionless, though not as unconscious as before, the first words she spoke, which scarcely stirred the air, were:
“Where is he? Bring him here. Pray do; he will come if you tell him I am ill. Go and find him. Go!”
And little as the governess could sympathize with or comprehend this to her strangely reprehensible attachment for a man who, as she thought, had never said a word of affection in return, who certainly had never offered to make Alma his wife — the only act on a man’s part that could possibly justify a woman in liking him, according to that prudent and tranquil lady’s theory — she grieved solely to have no answer with which to relieve that ceaseless and plaintive question, “Why does he not come? Why don’t you send for him?” and, far from quick at a subterfuge, and loathing a falsehood, she was obliged to have recourse to an evasion.
And Alma, too weak to rebel, too exhausted still to recall anything of the past, burst into tears, and lay with her face to the wall, weeping low, heart-broken sobs that went to the heart of those who heard them.
“She will never get well like this,” said Montressor, in despair at seeing his victory of science over death being undone again as fast as it could. “Who is this Major de Vigne? Deuce take the man, why did he go away just when one wanted him the most? Was Miss Tressillian engaged to him?”
“Not that I ever heard,” replied Miss Russel, sorely troubled with the subject. “But, you see, Mr. Montressor, she has very strong affections, and she has led a strange, solitary life, and Major De Vigne was her grandpapa’s friend and has been very kind to her since she came to England, but — you know — it would hardly be correct, if he were in England, for him to come here—”
“Correct!” repeated Montressor, with a smile that the man of the world could not for the life of him repress at the good governess’s prudery, “we medical men, my dear lady, have no time to stop for conventionalities when life is in the balance. If Major de Vigne were anywhere in this country I would make him come and quiet my patient by a sight of him; all she does is to sob quietly, and murmur that man’s name to herself, and if we cannot get at the mind we cannot work miracles with the body. Any shock would be better than this dreamy lethargy; there is no knowing to what mischief it may not lead. I shall tell her he is gone to the Crimea!”
“Whom do you wish so much to see!” asked Montressor, gently, when he visited Alma on the morrow and found her lying in the same despondent attitude, no colour in her cheek, no light in her sunk eyes.
Alma’s mind was not yet wholly awake, but dim memories of what had passed, and what had brought her there, hovered round her brain, entangled with the phantasma of delirium. All she was fully awake to, and vividly conscious of, was her love for De Vigne: so strong was that that she started up in her bed when Montressor asked the question her eyes getting back some of their old luminous light, “Sir Folko — Granville! I am sure they have not told him I am ill, or he would have come. If I could see my old nurse she would tell him — where is she, tool it is so strange — so very strange! Will you tell him! do, pray do!” And Alma sank back upon her pillows with a heavy, weary sigh.
Montressor put his hand upon her pulse and kept it there.
“Do you love this friend of yours so much then?” he asked her, gently still.
Alma looked at him a moment; then her eyes drooped, her mind was dawning, and with it dawned the recognition of Montressor as a stranger, and that reluctance to speak of De Vigne to others which was blended with her demonstrative frankness to him. She answered him more calmly, with a simplicity and fervour which touched Montressor, though the unmasked human nature which his profession had often shown him had made him naturally sceptical of many of the displays of feeling that he saw.
“Yes,” said Alma, lifting her eyes to his face. “Yes, he is all I have on earth! and he will come to me — he will, indeed — if you will only let him know. I cannot think why he is not here. I wish I could remember—”
She pressed her hands to her forehead — the history of the last two months began to come to her, but still slowly and confusedly.
“Keep quiet, and you will remember everything.”
Alma shook her head with a faint sign of dissent “Not if you keep him away from me — it is a plot, I know it is a plot! Why am I to lie here and never see him? It is cruel! I cannot think why you all try to keep him away—”
She was getting excited; two feverish spots burned in her cheeks, and her eyes glowed luridly.
“No one is trying to keep him away,” said Montressor, gravely and slowly. “Who should plot against you, poor child? But your friend is a soldier, and soldiers cannot always be where they would. There is a war, you know, between England and Russia, and Major de Vigne has been sent off to the Crimea.”
He spoke purposely in few and simple words, not to confuse her with lengthened sentences or verbose preparation. As he expected it took instant effect. Alma sprang up in her bed.
“Gone — gone — away from met.”
Montressor looked at her kindly and steadily:
“Yes; it was his duty as a soldier.”
“Gone! — gone! Oh, my God! And to war! Gone! and he never came for one farewell. He may be ill, and I shall not be there; he may die, and I shall not know it; he may lie in his grave, and I shall not be with him! Gone! — gone! If it be true, let me go to him; God will give me strength, and I love him too well for death to have power over me till I meet him once again.”
“Lie still, and listen to me. It is true Major de Vigne is gone to the Crimea; probably he was ordered off, as officers often are, on a moment’s notice. He may have sent to you, he may have gone to take leave of you, but that would have been at your home, he could not tell that you were here. If you wish to see him again — if you wish, as you say, to follow him to the Crimea — you must calm yourself. If you love your friend, you must do what I am sure he would wish you — your utmost to be quiet and to recover.”