And he shivered under an accumulation of great-coats and furs that one would have thought sufficient for the temperature of polar regions.
The carriage was stopped in Collins Street, and remained in the doctors' quarter until little Alfy fell asleep, and was temporarily put to bed under the long, soft skirt of his mother's jacket. Then, as the dusk was falling, Mr. Kingston came back to his place, and tremulously commanded the coachman to drive home as fast as he possibly could.
"He says it is inflammation of the lungs, Rachel," he whispered excitedly, "and that I must go to bed at once. Only a touch he called it, but he didn't look as if he thought it a touch. He is coming up to-night to do something. He says I ought to have come home the first day, and not have let it run on. Inflammation of the lungs—that is a dreadful thing, isn't it? I have never had it, but I have heard of it—it's a most dangerous complaint!"
"Oh, no, dear, not dangerous, except when people are careless," said Rachel soothingly, taking his hand under the fur rug and clasping it between her own. "And now you are home, with me to nurse you, you will soon get all right. Many people have it slightly—it is quite a common thing with a bad cold—but when they are well nursed and taken care of, they soon get all right again."
"Good little woman! you will take care of me, I know."
"Indeed I will," she responded, slipping up one hand under his arm, and resting her cheek on his coat-sleeve. "I wish you had come back to me before. But, once I get you fairly into my hands, I'll soon nurse you round."
However, though she did all that a woman and a wife, and one born to be the genius of a sick room, could do, she did not nurse him round. By the time he reached home, where the household was thrown into a panic of consternation, he was very ill indeed—his fright about himself helping very much to develop the bad symptoms rapidly; and the doctor, who next day summoned other doctors in consultation upon the case, pronounced him—not in words, but by unmistakable signs—to be in a serious and critical condition. The attack had been severe from the first; it had been allowed to run on for several days; and the constitution of the patient, enervated and shattered by years of unwholesome indulgence, was as little fitted to stand an illness as any constitution could be. The pain in breathing grew worse and worse, and the fever hotter and drier; and then stupor came on, and delirium, and exhaustion, and by-and-bye a filmy cloud over the sunken eyes, and a dusky pallor over the old, old, wrinkled face; and, in spite of all the doctors, and all the nurses, and all that money could do—in spite of the agonised devotion of his young wife, who never left him for more than five minutes at a time, taking snatches of sleep only when he slept, sitting by the bedside, and resting her tired head on the same pillow that she smoothed for his—it was over in less than a week. And a little paragraph appeared in "The Argus" one morning, to shock that small world of which he had so long been a distinguished ornament, with the incomprehensible intelligence that he was "gone," and would never be seen at a club mess or in a festive drawing-room again.
On the night of his death, when fever and pain and restlessness were sinking away with the sinking pulse, and when Rachel, watching beside him, thought he was past knowing anyone—even her—he looked at her with a gleam of loving recognition. "Good little woman!" he muttered in a struggling whisper. "Dear, good little woman!"
She stooped over him at once with a yearning passion of pity and vague remorse, and kissed him, and laid her white arms about him, raining tears on his dying face and his cold limp hands.
"Oh, Graham, Graham, I have not been good enough to you!" she cried. "And you have been so good—so kind—to me!"