The Clever Woman of the Family [155]
o'clock when Alexander Keith drove from the door. It was a moonlight night, and he was sure to spare no speed, but he could hardly be at Avoncester within an hour and a half, and the doctor would take at least two in coming out. Mrs. Kelland was the companion of Rachel's watch. The woman was a good deal subdued. The strangeness of the great house tamed her, and she was shocked and frightened by the little girl's state as well as by the young lady's grave, awe-struck, and silent manner. They tried all that Captain Keith had suggested, but the child was too weak and spent to inhale the steam of vinegar, and the attempts to make her swallow produced fruitless anguish. They could not discover how long it was since she had taken any nourishment, and they already knew what a miserable pittance hers had been at the best. Mrs. Kelland gave her up at once, and protested that she was following her mother, and that there was death in her face. Rachel made an imperious gesture of silence, and was obeyed so far as voice went, but long-drawn sighs and shakes of the head continued to impress on her the aunt's hopelessness, throughout the endeavours to change the position, the moistening of the lips, the attempts at relief in answer to the choked effort to cough, the weary, faint moan, the increasing faintness and exhaustion. One o'clock struck, and Mrs. Kelland said, in a low, ominous voice, "It is the turn of the night, Miss Rachel. You bad best leave her to me." "I will never leave her," said Rachel impatiently. "You are a young lady, Miss Rachel, you ain't used to the like of this." "Hark!" Rachel held up her finger. Wheels were crashing up the hill. The horrible responsibility was over, the immediate terror gone, help seemed to be coming at the utmost speed, and tears of relief rushed into Rachel's eyes, tears that Lovedy must have perceived, for she spoke the first articulate words she had uttered since the night-watch had begun, "Please, ma'am, don't fret, I'm going to poor mother." "You will be better now, Lovedy, here is the doctor," said Rachel, though conscious that this was not the right thing, and then she hastened out on the stairs to meet the gaunt old Scotsman and bring him in. He made Mrs. Kelland raise the child, examined her mouth, felt her feet and hands, which were fast becoming chill, and desired the warm flannels still to be applied to them. "Cannot her throat be operated on?" said Rachel, a tremor within her heart. "I think we could both be depended on if you wanted us." "She is too far gone, poor lassie," was the answer; "it would be mere cruelty to torment her. You had better go and lie down, Miss Curtis; her mother and I can do all she is like to need." "Is she dying?" "I doubt if she can last an hour longer. The disease is in an advanced state, and she was in too reduced a state to have battled with it, even had it been met earlier." "As it should have been! Twice her destroyer!" sighed Rachel, with a bursting heart, and again the kind doctor would have persuaded her to leave the room, but she turned from him and came back to Lovedy, who had been roused by what had been passing, and had been murmuring something which had set her aunt off into sobs. "She's saying she've been a bad girl to me, poor lamb, and I tell her not to think of it! She knows it was for her good, if she had not been set against her work." Dr. Macvicar authoritatively hushed the woman, but Lovedy looked up with flushed cheeks, and the blue eyes that had been so often noticed for their beauty. The last flush of fever had come to finish the work. "Don't fret," she said, "there's no one to beat me up there! Please, the verse about the tears." Dr. Macvicar and the child both looked towards Rachel, but her whole memory seemed scared away, and it was the old Scotch army surgeon that repeated-- "'The Lord God shall wipe off tears from all eyes.' Ah! poor little one, you are going from a world that has been full of woe to you." "Oh, forgive me, forgive me, my poor child," said Rachel,