“She is rapidly approaching a crisis,” he said. “By the dawn her fate will be decided. She has in her favour youth and a good constitution; but it is impossible to tell what may result from the ravages of so fierce a fever as that under which she is suffering. We must hope for the best, and leave the rest in the hands of God! I think it would be proper to make her friends acquainted with her condition, and the sooner they are here at her bed-side the better will be their chance of taking their last farewell of her.”
Those were dread words: ill-omened shadows did they cast. The woman raised her apron to her eyes, and gulped audibly, once or twice.
“I don’t know where to find her friends, if she has any, poor child!” she said, huskily. “My Jem picked her up, out o’ the fire, and brought her here; nobody’s been to ax after her; and we don’t know where to go. She’s never been in her senses since she was here, else I should have got her to tell me; but, lawk! lawk! it is a sad thing for a poor girl like this to die away from home, and ne’er a friend or relation to close her poor dear eyes. I’m a mother myself, sir! an’ God knows, I should be dreadful wretched if one of my babbies was to die away from me in this lonesome way.”
The poor woman sobbed unaffectedly as she concluded. The doctor, with a glittering tear in the corner of his eye, laid his hand gently upon her shoulder—
“While there is life there is hope, Mrs. Bantom,” he said, kindly. “It is too early to despair yet. Had the young woman nothing about her when your husband saved her?—no letter?”
“Lord bless you, nothing on but those night things you see on her; not a blessed rag else. My Jem has been a trying if he could learn anything about her, but lor! he goes about such matters in sech a bladderheaded sort o’ way, that I don’t wonder at his making a bad out on it. He lurches and prowls about when he goes to ax for his own in sech a way that people are afear’d on him. It was only the other day he went for a little bill, which it was a long time a owin’ an’ we wanted the money badly—when he explained what he’d come for in sech an in and out round about sort a way that the people sent for a policeman believin’ he’d come on the sneak to prig the ’ats and mats in the ’all.”
The doctor could hardly forbear a smile. He turned his eyes, however, on Lotte’s face, and bent his head down closely to listen to her breathing, he felt her pulse, timing its rapid beats by his watch; then he laid down the unresisting hand, and addressed himself to Mrs. Ban tom.
“Poor thing!” he said, “she is very, very ill. If she wakes shortly, give to her a dose of the medicine I have brought with me—she must have it, especially if she be violent, incoherent, and resists your attempts to administer it. Should it not have the effect of pacifying her, send for me at once. Good night, Mrs. Bantom. Pray to God to spare her, for she is on the threshold of death,” he concluded, with much solemnity in his tone. He made his way out of the room. She lighted him down the stairs, and when she heard the street-door close she returned to the sick room to watch by the side of her friendless patient.
Her husband and her children were in bed; he had his long hard day’s work to perform on the morrow, and rest was essential to him. The little colony of children were better where they were than anywhere else; Mrs. Bantom, too, had her share of hard work cut out for her for the next day and required sleep, but she did not heed it. She thought only of the poor young creature who she believed to be rapidly quitting her brief earthly career for one that would have no limit.
By the feeble rays of the miserable rushlight burning, she watched the flushed face of Lotte, perceiving it become each minute more crimson and inflamed-She saw her bosom heave and fall, and she listened with a beating heart to her stertorous breathing. She saw her head roll from side to side, her burning hands open and shut, and clutch at the bed-clothes. She heard with an aching heart the low moan of pain which oozed as it were with prolonged mournful cadence from the lips of the poor girl, and she prepared for the sudden and violent awakening to which the doctor had alluded.