LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."
CHAPTER XLVII.DANGER.
Lady Lucy Chesney lay in imminent danger. But a few days ill, and her life was despaired of. The anticipations of the surgeons—that she would have the fever badly—had been all too fully borne out. They had done what they could for her, and it was as nothing.
None could say that Mr. Carlton was not a kind and anxious attendant. Lady Jane thanked him in her heart. She began half to like him. That he was most solicitous for Lucy’s recovery was indisputable; and it may be said that she was in his hands, not in Mr. Grey’s, because his opportunities of seeing her were of necessity so much more frequent. Jane sat by the bed, full of grief, but not despairing as those who have no hope. She possessed sure confidence in God; full and perfect trust; she had learnt to commit all her care to Him; and to those who can, and do, so commit it, utter despair never comes. Jane believed that every earthly means which skill could devise was being tried for the recovery of Lucy; and if those means should fail, it must be God’s will; she tried to think, because she knew, that it would still be for the best, although they in their human grief might repine and see it not.
Lady Laura also had taken the fever. But she had it in so very slight a degree that she need not have lain in bed at all; and before the worst had come for Lucy, she was, comparatively speaking, well. Laura was exacting; it was in her nature so to be; and Lady Jane had to quit Lucy’s room for hers, often, when there was not the least necessity for it. Mr. Carlton was anxious and attentive, but he knew from the first there would be no danger, and he told Laura so. The result was that she called him “unfeeling.” An unmerited reproach; if ever man was anxious for the well-doing of his wife, that man was Mr. Carlton.
Frederick Grey went in once with his uncle to Lucy’s chamber, after the danger supervened. She did not know him; and he had only the pain of seeing her turn her head from side to side in the delirium of fever. If Lady Jane did not despair, he did; the sight nearly unmanned him.
“Oh, merciful Heaven, save her!” he murmured. “Save her, if only in compassion to me!”
It was not alone the dreadful grief for Lucy; it was the self-reproach that was haunting him. He assumed that the disorder must have been communicated to Lucy through him, and remorse took hold of him. What could he do?—what could he do? He would have sold his own life willingly then, to save that of Lucy Chesney.
He went straight from the sick-chamber to the telegraph-office at Great Wennock. South Wennock had been in state of resentment some time at having to go so far if it wanted to telegraph, and most certainly Frederick Grey indorsed the indignation now. Then he went back to South Wennock, to Mr. Carlton’s. Jonathan advanced from his post in the hall to the open door: open that day, that there might be neither knock nor ring.
“Do you know how she is now?” he asked, too anxiously excited to speak with any sort of ceremony.
“There’s no change, sir. Worse, if anything.”
He suppressed a groan as he leaned against the pillar. Chary of intruding into Mr. Carlton’s house, after that gentleman’s reception of him the first night of Lucy’s illness, he would not enter now. He tore a leaf from his pocketbook, wrote some words on it in pencil, folded, and gave it to Jonathan.
“Let Lady Jane have this when there’s an opportunity. But don’t disturb the sick-room to give it her.”
The paper, however, soon found its way to Jane. She opened it in some curiosity.
“I have telegraphed for my father. He may not be able to do more than is being done, but it will at least be a satisfaction. He knows Lucy’s constitution, and there’s something in that. If I lose her, I lose all I care for in life.”
Words quiet and composed enough; scant indication did they give of the urgent, impassioned nature of the message gone up to Sir Stephen.
Jane approved of what he had done. Though she put little faith in further advice being of avail, it would, as he said, be a satisfaction. She wished Lady Oakburn was as much within their reach as Sir Stephen Grey; if the worst happened to Lucy, the blow to her almost more than mother would be bitter.
Dangerous illness connected with our history was in another habitation of South Wennock that day. The little boy at Tupper’s cottage, of whom mention has been so frequently made,