“Now, my petite, thou wilt be brave,” said the faithful creature, forgetting herself in her anxiety to spare and support Franceline. “Thou wilt stay here and do what is necessary whilst I run and fetch the doctor.”
She poured some eau-de-cologne into a basin of water, and desired her to keep bathing her father’s forehead and chafing his hands until she returned. This, after loosing his cravat and letting in as much air as possible, was all her experience suggested.
Franceline sat down and did as she was told; but the perfect stillness, the deathlike immobility of the face and the form, terrified her. She suspended the bathing to breathe on it, as if her warm breath might bring back consciousness and prove more potent than the cold water. But Raymond remained insensible to all. The silence began to oppress Franceline like a ghastly presence; the cooing of her doves outside sounded like a dirge. Could this be death? His pulse beat so faintly she hardly knew whether it was his or the pulse of her own trembling fingers that she felt. A chill of horror came over her; the first vague dread was gradually shaping itself in her mind to the most horrible of certainties. If he should never awake, never speak again, never open those closed eyes on her with the old tender glance of love that had been as familiar and unfailing as the sunlight to her! Oh! what a fearful awakening came with this first realization of that awful possibility. What vain shadows, what trivial empty things, were those that she had until now called sorrows! What a joy it would be to take them all back again, and bear them, increased tenfold in bitterness, to the end of her life, if this great, this real sorrow might be averted! Franceline dropped on her knees beside the bed, and, clasping her hands, sent up one of those cries that we all of us find in our utmost need, when there is only God who can help us: “O Father! thy will be done. But if it be possible, … if it be possible, … let this cup pass from me!”
There were steps on the stairs. It was Angélique come back. She had only been ten minutes away—the longest ten minutes that ever a trembling heart watched through—but Franceline knew she could not have been to the doctor’s and back so quickly. “I met M. le Vicaire just at the end of the lane, and he is gone for the doctor; he was riding, so he will be there in no time.”
Then she made Franceline go and fetch hot water from the kitchen, and busied her in many little ways, under pretence of being useful, until Dr. Blink’s carriage was heard approaching. The medical man was not alone; Mr. Langrove and Father Henwick accompanied him.
Angélique drew the young girl out of her father’s room, and sent her to stay with Father Henwick, while the doctor, assisted by Mr. Langrove and herself, attended to M. de la Bourbonais.
“Oh! what is it? Did the doctor tell you?” she whispered, her dark eyes preternaturally dilated in their tearless glance, as she raised it to Father Henwick’s face.
“He could say nothing until he had seen him. Tell me, my dear child, did your father ever have anything of this sort happen him before?” inquired Father Henwick, as unconcernedly as he could.
“Never, never that I heard of, unless it may have been when I was too little to remember,” said Franceline; and then added nervously, “Why?”
“Thank God! It is safe, then, not to be so serious,” was the priest’s hearty exclamation. “Please God, you will see him all right again soon; he has been overdoing of late, working too hard, and not taking air or exercise enough. The blade has been wearing out the sheath—that’s what it is; but Blink will pull him through with God’s help.”