Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 51

THE FEAR GROWING GREATER.

We must leap over some months. A story, you know, cannot stand still, any more than we can.

Spring had come round. The sofa belonging to Mrs. Reece's parlour was in Mrs. Halliburton's, and Janey was lying on it--her blue eyes bright, her cheeks hectic, her fair curls falling in disorder. Through autumn, through winter, it had appeared that Dobbs's prognostications of evil for Jane were not to be borne out, for she had recovered from the temporary indications of illness, and had continued well; but, with the early spring weather, Jane failed, and failed rapidly. The cough came back, and great weakness grew upon her. She was always wanting to be at rest, and would lie about anywhere. Spreading a cloak on the floor, with a pillow for her head, Janey would plant herself between her mother and the fire, pulling the cloak up on the side near the door. One day Dobbs came in and saw her there.

"My heart alive!" uttered Dobbs, when she had recovered her surprise; "what are you lying down there for?"

"I am tired," replied Janey; "and there's nowhere else to lie. If I put three chairs together, it is not comfortable, and the pillow rolls off."

"There's the sofa in our room," said Dobbs. "Why don't you lie on that?"

"So I do, you know, Dobbs; but I want to talk to mamma sometimes."

Dobbs disappeared. Presently there was a floundering and thumping heard in the pa.s.sage, and the sofa was propelled in by Dobbs, very red with the exertion. "My missis is indignant to think that the child should be upon the floor," cried she, wrathfully. "One would suppose some folks were born without brains, or the sofa might have been asked for."

"But, Dobbs," said Janey--and _she_ was allowed to "Dobbs" as much as she pleased, unreproved--"what am I to lie on in your room?"

"Isn't there my easy chair, with the high foot-board in front--as good as a bed when you let it out?" returned Dobbs, proceeding to place Janey comfortably on the sofa. "And now let me say what I came in to say, when the sight of that child on the cold floor sent me shocked out again,"

she added, turning to Jane. "My missis's leg is no better to-day, and she has made up her mind to have Parry. It's erysipelas, as sure as a gun. Every other spring, about, she's laid up with it in her legs, one or the other of 'em. Ten weeks I have known her in bed with it----"

"The very best preventive to erysipelas is to take an occasional warm bath," interrupted Jane.

The suggestion gave immense offence to Dobbs. "A warm bath!" she uttered, ironically. "And how, pray, should my missis take a warm bath?

Sit down in a mas.h.i.+ng-tub, and have a furnace of boiling water turned on to her? Those new-fangled notions may do for Londoners, but they are not known at Helstonleigh. Warm baths!" repeated Dobbs, with increased scorn: "hadn't you better propose a water-bed at once? I have heard that they are inventing _them_ also."

"I have heard so, too," pleasantly replied Jane.

"Well, my missis is going to have Parry up, and she intends that he shall see Janey and give her some physic--if physic will be of use,"

added Dobbs, with an incredulous sniff. "My missis says it will. She puts faith in Parry's physic as if it was gold; it's a good thing she's not ill often, or she'd let herself be poisoned if quant.i.ty could poison her! And, Janey, you'll take the physic, like a precious lamb; and heaps of nice things you shall have after it, to drive the taste out. Warm baths!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Dobbs, as she went out, returning to the old grievance. "I wonder what the world's coming to?"

Mr. Parry was called in, and soon had his two regular patients there.

Mrs. Reece was confined to her bed with erysipelas in her leg; and if Janey seemed better one day, she seemed worse the next. The surgeon did not say what was the matter with Jane. He ordered her everything good in the shape of food; he particularly ordered port wine. An hour after the latter order had been given Dobbs appeared, with a full decanter in her hand.

"It's two gla.s.ses a day that she is to take--one at eleven and one at three," cried she without circ.u.mlocution.

"But, indeed, I cannot think of accepting so costly a thing from Mrs.

Reece as port wine," interrupted Jane, in consternation.

"You can do as you like, ma'am," said Dobbs with equanimity. "Janey will accept it; she'll drink her two gla.s.ses of wine daily, if I have to come and drench her with it. And it won't be any cost out of my missis's pocket, if that's what you are thinking of," logically proceeded Dobbs.

"Parry says it will be a good three months before she can take her wine again; so Janey can drink it for her. If my missis grudged her port wine or was cramped in pocket, I should not take my one gla.s.s a day, which I do regular."

"I can never repay you and Mrs. Reece for your kindness and generosity to Jane," sighed Mrs. Halliburton.

"You can do it when you are asked," was Dobbs's retort. "There's the wing and merrythought of a fowl coming in for her dinner, with a bit of sweet boiled pork. I don't give myself the ceremony of cloth-laying, now my missis is in bed, but just eat it in the rough; so the child had better have hers brought in here comfortably, till my missis is down again. And, Janey, you'll come upstairs to tea to us; I have taken up the easy chair."

"Thank you very much, Dobbs," said Janey.

"And don't you let them cormorants be eating her dinners or drinking her wine," said Dobbs, fiercely, as she was going out. "Keep a sharp look-out upon 'em."

"They would not do it!" warmly replied Jane. "You do not know my boys yet, if you think they would rob their sick sister."

"I know that boys' stomachs are always on the crave for anything that's good," retorted Dobbs. "You might skin a boy if you were forced to it, but you'd never drive his nature out of him; and that's to be always eating!"

So she had even _this_ help--port wine! It seemed almost beyond belief, and Jane lost herself in thought.

"Mamma, you don't hear me!"

"Did you speak, Janey?"

"I say I think Dobbs got that fowl for me. Mrs. Reece is not taking meat, and Dobbs would not buy a fowl for herself. She will give me all the best parts, and pick the bones herself. You'll see. How kind they are to me! What should I have done, mamma, if I had only our plain food?

I know I could not eat it now."

"G.o.d is over us, my dear child," was Jane's reply. "It is He who has directed this help to us: never doubt it, Jane. Whether we live or die,"

she added pointedly, "we are in His hands, and He orders all things for the best."

"Can to die be for the best?" asked Janey, sitting up to think over the question.

"Why, yes, my dear girl; certainly it is, if G.o.d wills it. How often have I talked to you about the REST after the grave! No more tears, no more partings. Which is best--to be here, or to go to that rest? Oh, Janey! we can put up surely with illness and with crosses here, if we may only attain to that. This world will last only for a little while at best; but that other will abide for ever and for ever."

A summons from Mr. Parry's boy: Miss Halliburton's medicine had arrived.

Miss Halliburton made a grievous face over it, when her mamma poured the dose out. "I never _can_ take it! It smells so nasty!"

Jane held the wine-gla.s.s towards her, a grave, kind smile upon her face.

"My darling, it is one of earth's little crosses; _try_ and not rebel against it. Here's a bit of Patience's jam left, to take after it."

Janey smiled bravely as she took the gla.s.s. "It was not so bad as I thought, mamma," said she, when she had swallowed it.

"Of course not, Janey; nothing is that we set about with a brave heart."

But, with every good thing, Janey did not improve. Her mother shrank from admitting the fact that was growing only too palpable; and Dobbs would come in and sit looking at Janey for a quarter of an hour together, never speaking.

"Why do you look at me so, Dobbs?" asked Janey, one day, suddenly. "You were crying when you looked at me last night at dusk."

Dobbs was rather taken to. "I had been peeling onions," said she.

"Why do you shrink from looking at the truth?" an inward voice kept repeating in Mrs. Halliburton's heart. "Is it right, or wise, or well to do so?" No; she knew that it could not be.

That same day, after Mr. Parry had paid his visit to Mrs. Reece, he looked in upon Janey. "Am I getting better?" she asked him. "I want to go into the green fields again, and run about."

"Ah," said he, "we must wait for that, little maid."

Jane went out to the door with him. When he put out his hand to say good morning, he saw that she was white with emotion, and could not speak readily. "Will she live or die, Mr. Parry?" was the whispered question that came at last.

"Now don't distress yourself, Mrs. Halliburton. In these lingering cases we must be content to wait the issue, whatever it may be."

"I have had so much trouble of one sort or another, that I think I have become inured to it," she continued, striving to speak more calmly.

"These several days past I have been deciding to ask you the truth. If I am to lose her, it will be better that I should know it beforehand: it will be easier for me to bear. She is in danger, is she not?"