"Rose!" answered Adeline--and there was a smile on her lip--"if Rose goes off in anything, it will be in a coach-and-four with white favours."
And so the days pass on; Adeline, I fear, not really better. To look at her, she is well--well, and very lovely; but so she was before. If they could but get her to the South! But with this winter weather it is impossible: the doctors say she would die on the road. If they had but taken advantage, while they might have done it, of the glorious summer weather! If!--if!--if! These "ifs" follow too many of us through life; as they may henceforth follow the Signor and Madame de Castella.
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
THE LITTLE CHILD GONE
You have not failed to notice the one item of news in Miss Carr's diary--the death of a little heir--or to recognize it for the young heir of Alnwick.
Since quitting Belport, Mrs. Carleton St. John had pursued the same course of restless motion until within two or three weeks of the final close. Whether she would have arrested her wandering steps then of her own accord, must be a question, but the sick-nurse, Mrs. Brayford, interfered. "You are taking away every chance for his life, madam," she said, one day. "If you persist in dragging the child about, I must leave you, for I cannot stay to see it. It will surely prove fatal to him before his time."
A sharp cry escaped from Mrs. St. John as she listened. The words seemed to tear the flimsy make-believe veil from her eyes: the end was very near: and who knows how long she had felt the conviction? They had halted this time at Ypres, a city of Belgium, or West Flanders, famous for its manufactures of cloths and serges. Handsome apartments were hastily procured, and George was moved into them. Not very ill yet did the child appear; only so terribly worn and weak. Mrs. St. John's anguish, who shall tell of it? She loved this child, as you have seen, with a fierce, jealous love. He was the only being in the world who had filled every crevice of her proud and impassioned heart. It was for his sake she had hated Benja; it was by Benja's death--and she alone knew whether she had in any shape contributed to that death, or whether she was wholly innocent--that he had benefited. That some dread was upon her, apart from the child's state, was evident--clinging to her like a nightmare.
The disease took a suddenly decisive form the second day after their settling down at Ypres, telling of danger, speaking palpably of the end. He could not have been moved from Ypres now, had it been ever so much wished for. Mrs. St. John called in, one after another, the chief doctors of the town; she summoned over at a great expense two physicians from London; she sent an imperative mandate to Mr. Pym; and not one of them saw the slightest chance of saving the boy's life. She watched his fair face grow paler; his feverish limbs waste and become weaker. She never shed a tear. For days together she would be almost unnaturally calm; but once or twice a burst of anguish had broken from her, fearful in itself, painful to witness. One of these paroxysms was yielded to in the presence of the child. Yielded to? Poor thing! perhaps she could not help it! George was frightened almost to death. She flung herself about the large old foreign room as one insane, tearing her hair, and calling upon the child to live--to live.
"Mamma, don't, don't!" panted the little lad, in his terror. "Don't be so sorry for me! I am going to heaven, to be with Benja."
At his first cry she had stopped and fallen on her knees beside him. Up again now; up again at the words, and darting about as if possessed by a demon, her hands to her temples.