“From Captain Chancellor to Rev. F. Thurston.
“Is it possible for Sydney to come at once? E— is very ill.”
The husband and wife looked at each other.
“My poor Sydney,” said Frank, “it is very hard upon you.”
Within an hour, Sydney was on her way to Halswood. It was a strange, melancholy journey. Arrived at Chilworth, she found the Halswood carriage in waiting, on the chance of her early arrival, and drove off at once. How pretty and fresh, how mockingly bright, the country looked, in its as yet unsullied spring dress! How beautiful the park was, when the carriage turned in at the lodge, and there stretched out before her view, on each side, the broad, undulating sweep of grassy land, fringed round with noble trees! Sydney was town-bred; she loved the country with the yearning, enthusiastic, half-reverent love of one who seldom breathes the fresh, pure air, to whom the country sights and sounds are fascinatingly unfamiliar. In a moment’s forgetfulness she glanced at the baby by her side, asleep in the nurse’s arms: “How fortunate Eugenia is,” she thought, “to have her home here—to be able to look forward to bringing up her children in this lovely place.” Then she remembered all, leant back in her seat, and was conscious of no other feeling save the gnawing anxiety that had accompanied her all the way.
When she reached the house, she learnt, somewhat to her surprise, that her brother-in-law was not in. He had only gone out for a stroll in the park, by the doctor’s advice, having been up for two nights and being much fatigued—of course, not thinking it would be possible for Mrs Thurston to arrive so early—was what Blinkhorn informed her, adding, in answer to her eager inquiry, as he condescendingly showed her into the morning-room, that his mistress was “Better—decidedly better. Good hopes were now entertained of her recovery.”
Then Sydney had an interview with Mrs Grier, in her element of lugubrious excitement. In somewhat less sanguine terms, she confirmed the favourable report. “But the baby,” she went on to say, “was in a very sad way, poor lamb!—only just alive, and no more.”
“The baby!” repeated Sydney, in amazement. “I had no idea—I had no thought of a baby for a long time to come.”
“I or any one else, ma’am. It is very hard upon it, poor innocent! to have been hurried into this sad world, this valley of tears, so long before it should have been. But it cannot live, ma’am—they say it is quite impossible; and I am sure there are many of us—myself for one—that will feel it is to be envied.”
“Has my sister seen it? A boy, is it?” asked Sydney.