A Simpleton Part 29

You never had fifty pounds yet, you didn't fall into temptation. Do pray let me keep it for you; or else sell it--I know how to sell; n.o.body better--and keep the money for a good occasion."

"Is it yours, or mine?" said he, sulkily.

"Why yours, dear; you earned it."

"Then give it me, please." And he almost forced it out of her hand.

So now she sat down and cried over this piece of good luck, for her heart filled with forebodings.

He laughed at her, but at last had the grace to console her, and a.s.sure her she was tormenting herself for nothing.

"Time will show," said she, sadly.

Time did show.

Three or four days he came, as usual, to laugh her out of her forebodings. But presently his visits ceased. She knew what that meant: he was living like a gentleman, melting his diamond, and playing her false with the first pretty face he met.

This blow, coming after she had been so happy, struck Phoebe Dale stupid with grief. The line on her high forehead deepened; and at night she sat with her hands before her, sighing, and sighing, and listening for the footsteps that never came.

"Oh, d.i.c.k!" she said, "never you love any one. I am aweary of my life.

And to think that, but for that diamond--oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!"

Then d.i.c.k used to try and comfort her in his way, and often put his arm round her neck, and gave her his rough but honest sympathy. d.i.c.k's rare affection was her one drop of comfort; it was something to relieve her swelling heart.

"Oh, d.i.c.k!" she said to him one night, "I wish I had married him."

"What, to be ill-used?"

"He couldn't use me worse. I have been wife, and mother, and sweetheart, and all, to him; and to be left like this. He treats me like the dirt beneath his feet."

"'Tis your own fault, Phoebe, partly. You say the word, and I'll break every bone in his carca.s.s."

"What, do him a mischief! Why, I'd rather die than harm a hair of his head. You must never lift a hand to him, or I shall hate you."

"Hate ME, Phoebe?"

"Ay, boy: I should. G.o.d forgive me: 'tis no use deceiving ourselves; when a woman loves a man she despises, never you come between them; there's no reason in her love, so it is incurable. One comfort, it can't go on forever; it must kill me, before my time and so best. If I was only a mother, and had a little Reginald to dandle on my knee and gloat upon, till he spent his money, and came back to me. That's why I said I wished I was his wife. Oh! why does G.o.d fill a poor woman's bosom with love, and nothing to spend it on but a stone; for sure his heart must be one. If I had only something that would let me always love it, a little toddling thing at my knee, that would always let me look at it, and love it, something too young to be false to me, too weak to run away from my long--ing--arms--and--year--ning heart!" Then came a burst of agony, and moans of desolation, till poor puzzled d.i.c.k blubbered loudly at her grief; and then her tears flowed in streams.

Trouble on trouble. d.i.c.k himself got strangely out of sorts, and complained of s.h.i.+vers. Phoebe sent him to bed early, and made him some white wine whey very hot. In the morning he got up, and said he was better; but after breakfast he was violently sick, and suffered several returns of nausea before noon. "One would think I was poisoned," said he.

At one o'clock he was seized with a kind of spasm in the throat that lasted so long it nearly choked him.

Then Phoebe got frightened, and sent to the nearest surgeon. He did not hurry, and poor d.i.c.k had another frightful spasm just as he came in.

"It is hysterical," said the surgeon. "No disease of the heart, is there? Give him a little sal-volatile every half hour."

In spite of the sal-volatile these terrible spasms seized him every half hour; and now he used to spring off the bed with a cry of terror when they came; and each one left him weaker and weaker; he had to be carried back by the women.

A sad, sickening fear seized on Phoebe. She left d.i.c.k with the maid, and tying on her bonnet in a moment, rushed wildly down the street, asking the neighbors for a great doctor, the best that could be had for money.

One sent her east a mile, another west, and she was almost distracted, when who should drive up but Dr. and Mrs. Staines, to make purchases.

She did not know his name, but she knew he was a doctor. She ran to the window, and cried, "Oh, doctor, my brother! Oh, pray come to him. Oh!

oh!"

Dr. Staines got quickly, but calmly, out; told his wife to wait; and followed Phoebe up-stairs. She told him in a few agitated words how d.i.c.k had been taken, and all the symptoms; especially what had alarmed her so, his springing off the bed when the spasm came.

Dr. Staines told her to hold the patient up. He lost not a moment, but opened his mouth resolutely, and looked down.

"The glottis is swollen," said he: then he felt his hands, and said, with the grave, terrible calm of experience, "He is dying."

"Oh, no! no! Oh, doctor, save him! save him!"

"Nothing can save him, unless we had a surgeon on the spot. Yes, I might save him, if you have the courage: opening his windpipe before the next spasm is his one chance."

"Open his windpipe! Oh, doctor! It will kill him. Let me look at you."

She looked hard in his face. It gave her confidence.

"Is it the only chance?"

"The only one: and it is flying while we chatter."

"DO IT."

He whipped out his lancet.

"But I can't look on it. I trust to you and my Saviour's mercy."

She fell on her knees, and bowed her head in prayer.

Staines seized a basin, put it by the bedside, made an incision in the windpipe, and got d.i.c.k down on his stomach, with his face over the bedside. Some blood ran, but not much. "Now!" he cried, cheerfully, "a small bellows! There's one in your parlor. Run."

Phoebe ran for it, and at Dr. Staines' direction lifted d.i.c.k a little, while the bellows, duly cleansed, were gently applied to the aperture in the windpipe, and the action of the lungs delicately aided by this primitive but effectual means.

He showed Phoebe how to do it, tore a leaf out of his pocket-book, wrote a hasty direction to an able surgeon near, and sent his wife off with it in the carriage.

Phoebe and he never left the patient till the surgeon came with all the instruments required; amongst the rest, with a big, tortuous pair of nippers, with which he could reach the glottis, and snip it. But they consulted, and thought it wiser to continue the surer method; and so a little tube was neatly inserted into d.i.c.k's windpipe, and his throat bandaged; and by this aperture he did his breathing for some little time.

Phoebe nursed him like a mother; and the terror and the joy did her good, and made her less desolate.

d.i.c.k was only just well when both of them were summoned to the farm, and arrived only just in time to receive their father's blessing and his last sigh.

Their elder brother, a married man, inherited the farm, and was executor. Phoebe and d.i.c.k were left fifteen hundred pounds apiece, on condition of their leaving England and going to Natal.

They knew directly what that meant. Phoebe was to be parted from a bad man, and d.i.c.k was to comfort her for the loss.

When this part of the will was read to Phoebe, she turned faint, and only her health and bodily vigor kept her from swooning right away.

But she yielded. "It is the will of the dead," said she, "and I will obey it; for, oh, if I had but listened to him more when he was alive to advise me, I should not sit here now, sick at heart and dry-eyed, when I ought to be thinking only of the good friend that is gone."