Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood

Armine only spoke one word; the Name that is above every name.

“Yes, you always cared! But I never cared for anything but fun! Never went to Communion at Easter. It is too late.”

“Oh, no, no!” cried Armine, rousing up, “not too late! Never! You are His! You belong to Him! He cares for you!”

“If He does, it makes it all the worse. I never heeded; I thought it all a bore. I never let myself think what it all meant. I’ve thrown it all away.”

“Oh! I wish I wasn’t so stupid,” cried Armine, with a violent effort against his exhaustion. “Mother loves us, however horrid we are! He is like that; only let us tell Him all the bad we’ve done, and ask Him to blot it out. I’ve been trying—trying—only I’m so dull; and let us give ourselves more and more out and out to Him, whether it is here or there.”

“That I must,” said Jock; “it would be shabby and sneaking not.”

“Oh, Jock,” cried Armine, joyfully, “then it will all be right any way;” and he raised his face and kissed his brother. “You promise, Jock. Please promise.”

“Promise what? That if He will save us out of this, I’ll take a new line, and be as good as I know how, and—”

Armine took the word, whether consciously or not: “And manfully to fight under His banner, and continue Christ’s faithful soldiers and servants unto our lives’ end. Amen!”

“Amen,” Jock said, after him.

After that, Jock found that the child was repeating the Creed, and said it after him, the meanings thrilling through him as they had never done before. Next followed lines of “Rock of Ages,” and for some time longer there was a drowsy murmur of sacred words, but there was no eliciting a direct reply any more; and with dull consternation, Jock knew that the fatal torpor could no longer be broken, and was almost irritated that all the words he caught were such happy, peaceful ones. The very last were, “Inside angels’ wings, all white down.”

The child seemed almost comfortable—certainly not suffering like himself, bruised and strained, with sharp twinges rending his damaged foot; his limbs cramped, and sensible of the acute misery of the cold, and the full horror of their position; but as long as he could shake even an unconscious murmur from his brother, it seemed like happiness compared with the utter desolation after the last whisper had died away, and he was left intolerably alone under the solid impenetrable shroud that enveloped him, and the senseless form he held on his breast. And if he tried to follow on by that clue which Armine had left him, whirlwinds of dismay seemed to sweep away all hope and trust, while he thought of wilfulness, recklessness, defiance, irreverence, and all the yet darker shades of a self-indulgent and audacious school-boy life!

It was a little lighter, as if dawn might be coming, but the cold was bitterer, and benumbing more than paining him. His clothes were stiff, his eyelashes white with frost, he did not feel equal to looking at his watch, he would not see Armine’s face, he found the fog depositing itself in snow, but he heeded it no longer. Fear and hope had alike faded out of his mind, his ankle seemed to belong to some one else far away, he had left off wishing to see his mother, he wanted nothing but to be let alone!

He did not hear when Chico, finding no comfort, no sign of life in his masters, stood upon them as they lay clasped together in the drift of fine small snow, and in the climax of misery he lifted up the long and wretched wailing howlings of utter dog-wretchedness.

CHAPTER XX. – A RACE

     Speed, Melise, speed! such cause of haste     Thine active sinews never braced,     Bend ‘gainst the steepy hill thy breast,     Burst down like torrent from its crest.                                          Scott.

“Hark!”

The guides and the one other traveller, a Mr. Graham, who had been at the inn, were gathered at the border of the Daubensee, entreating, almost ready to use force to get the poor mother home before the snow should efface the tracks, and render the return to Schwarenbach dangerous.

Ever since the alarm had been given there had been a going about with lights, a shouting and seeking, all along the road where she had parted with her sons. It was impossible in the fog to leave the beaten track, and the traveller told her that rewards would be but temptations to suicide.

Johnny had fortunately been so tired out that he had gone to bed soon after coming in, and had not been wakened by the alarm till eleven o’clock. Then, startled by the noises and lights, he had risen and made his way to his aunt. Substantial help he could not give—even his German was halting, but he was her stay and help, and she would—as she knew afterwards—have been infinitely more desolate without him. And now, when all were persuading her to wait, as they said, till more aid could be sent for to Kandersteg, he knew as well as she did that it was but a kindly ruse to cover their despair, and was striving to insist that another effort in daylight should be made.

He it was who uttered the “Hark,” and added, “That is Chico!”

At first the tired, despairing guides did not hear, but going along the road by the lake in the direction from which the sound came, the prolonged wail became more audible.

“It is on the moraine,” the men said, with awe-struck looks at one another.

They would fain not even have taken John with them, but with a resolute look he uttered “Ich komm.”

Mr. Graham, an elderly man, not equal to a moraine in the snow, stayed with the mother. He wanted to take her back to prepare for them, as he said—in reality to lesson any horrors there might be to see.

But she stood like a statue, with clasped hands and white face, the small feathery snow climbing round her feet and on her shoulders.

“O God, spare my boys! Though I don’t deserve it—spare them!” had been her one inarticulate prayer all night.

And now—shouts and yodels reach her ears. They are found! But how found! The cries are soon hushed. There is long waiting—then, through the snow, John flashes forward and takes her hand. He does not speak—only as their eyes meet, his pale lips tremble, and he says, “Don’t fear; they will revive in the inn. Jock is safe, they are sure.”

Safe? What? that stiff, white-faced form, carried between two men, with the arm hanging lifelessly down? One man held the smaller figure of Armine, and kept his face pressed inwards. Kind words of “Liebe Frau,” and assurances that were meant to be cheering passed around her, but she heard them not. Some brandy had, it seemed, been poured into their mouths. They thought Jock had swallowed, Armine had not.

At intervals on the way back a little more was administered, and the experienced guides had no doubt that life was yet in him. When they reached the hotel the guides would not take them near the stove, but carried them up at once by the rough stair to the little wood-partitioned bedrooms. There were two beds in each room, and their mother would have had them both together; but the traveller, and the kindly, helpful young landlady, Fraulein Rosalie, quietly managed otherwise, and when Johnny tried to enforce his aunt’s orders, Mr. Graham, by a sign, made him comprehend why they had thus arranged, filling him with blank dismay.

A doctor? The guides shook their heads. They could hardly make their way to Leukerbad while it was snowing as at present, and if they had done so, no doctor could come back with them. Moreover the restoratives were known to the mountaineers as well as to the doctors themselves, and these were vigorously applied. All the resources of the little way-side house were put in requisition. Mr. Graham and Johnny did their best for Jock, his mother seemed to see and think of nothing but Armine, who lay senseless and cold in spite of all their efforts.

It was soon that Jock began to moan and turn and struggle painfully back to life. When he opened his eyes with a dazed half-consciousness, and something like a word came from between his lips, Mr. Graham sent John to call the mother, saying very low, “Get her away. She will bear it better when she sees this one coming round.”

John had deep and reverent memories connected with Armine. He knew—as few did know—how steadfastly that little gentle fellow could hold the right, and more than once the two had been almost alone against their world. Besides, he was Mother Carey’s darling! Johnny felt as if his heart would break, as with trembling lips he tried to speak, as if in glad hope, as he told his aunt that Jock was speaking and wanted her, while he looked all the time at the still, white, inanimate face.

She looked at him half in distrust.

“Yes! Indeed, indeed,” he said, “Jock wants you.”

She went; Johnny took her place. The efforts at restoration were slackening. The attendants were shaking their heads and saying, “der Arme.”

Mr. Graham came up to him, saying in his ear, “She is engrossed with the other. He will not let her go. Let them do what is to be done for this poor little fellow. So it will be best for her.”

There was a frantic longing to do something for Armine, a wild wonder that the prayers of a whole night had not been more fully answered in John’s mind, as he threw himself once more over the senseless form, propped with pillows, and kissed either cheek and the lips. Then suddenly he uttered a low cry, “He breathed. I’m sure he did; I felt it! The spoon! O quick!”

Mr. Graham and the Fraulein looked pitifully at one another at the delusion; but they let the lad have the spoon with the drops of brandy. He had already gained experience in giving it, and when they looked for disappointment, his eyes were raised in joy.

“It’s gone down,” he said.

Mr. Graham put his hand on the pulse and nodded.

Another drop or two, and renewed rubbing of hands and feet. The icy cold, the deadly white, were certainly giving way, the lips began to quiver, contract, and gasp.

Was it for death or life? They would not call his mother for that terrible, doubtful minute; but she could not long stay away. When Jock’s fingers first relaxed on hers, she crept to the door of the other room, to see Armine upheld on Johnny’s breast, with heaving chest and working features, but with eyes opening: yes, and meeting hers.

Johnny always held that he never had so glad a moment in all his life as that when he saw her countenance light up.

The first word was “Jock!”

Armine’s full perceptions were come back, unlike those of Jock, who was moaning and wandering in his talk, fancying himself still in the desolation of the moraine, with Armine dead in his arms, and all the miseries, bodily, mental and spiritual, from which he had suffered were evidently still working in his brain, though the words that revealed them were weak and disjointed. Besides, he screamed and moaned with absolute and acute pain, which alarmed them much, though Armine was sufficiently himself to be able to assure them that there had been no hurt beyond the strain.

It was well that Armine was both rational and unselfish, for nothing seemed to soothe Jock for a moment but his mother’s hand and his mother’s voice. It was plain that fever and rheumatism had a hold upon him, and what or who was there to contend with them in this wayside inn? The rooms, though clean, were bare of all but the merest necessaries, and though the young hostess was kind and anxious, her maids were the roughest and most ignorant of girls, and there were no appliances for comfort—nothing even to drink but milk, bottled lemonade, and a tisane made of yellow flowers, horrible to the English taste.

And Jock, ill as he was, did not fill his mother with such dread for the future as did Armine, when she found him, quiet indeed, but unable to lie down, except when supported on John’s breast and in his arms—with a fearful oppression and pain in his chest, and every token that the lungs were suffering. He had not let them call her. Jock’s murmurs and cries were to be heard plainly through the wooden partition, and the little fellow knew she could not be spared, and only tried to prevent John and Mr. Graham from alarming her. “She—can’t—do—any—good,” he gasped out in John’s ear.

No, nobody could, without medical skill and appliances. The utmost that the house could do was to produce enough mustard to make two plasters, and to fill bottles with hot water, to warm stones, and to wrap them in blankets. And what was this, in such cold as penetrated the wooden building, too high up in the mountains for the June sun as yet to have full power? The snow kept blinding and drifting on, and though everyone said it could not last long at that time in the summer, it might easily last too long for Armine’s fragile life. Here was evening drawing on and no change outside, so that no offer of reward could make it possible for any messenger to attempt the Gemmi to fetch advice from Leukerbad.

Caroline could not think. She was in a dull, dreary state of consternation, and all she could dwell on was the immediate need of the moment, soothing Jock’s terrors, and, what was almost worse, his irritable rejection of the beverages she could offer him, and trying to relieve him by rubbing and hot applications. If ever she could look into Armine’s room, she was filled with still greater dismay, even though a sweet, patient smile always met her, and a resolute endeavour to make the best of it.

“It—does—not—make—much—difference,” gasped Armine. “One would not like anything.”

John came out in a character no one could have expected. He showed himself a much better nurse, and far more full of resource than the traveller. It was he who bethought him of keeping a kettle in the room over the inevitable charcoal, so as slightly to mitigate the chill of the air, or the fumes of the charcoal, which were equally perilous and distressing to the labouring lungs. He was tender and handy in lifting, tall and strong, so as to be efficient in supporting, and then Armine and he understood one another. They had never been special companions; John had too much of the Kencroft muscularity about him to accord with a delicate, imaginative being like Armine, but they respected one another, and made common cause, and John had more than once been his little cousin’s protector. So when they were so much alone that all reserves were overcome, Armine had comfort in his cousin that no one else in the place could have afforded him. The little boy perfectly knew how ill he was, and as he lay in John’s arms, breathed out his messages to Babie as well as he could utter them.

“And please, you’ll be always mother’s other son,” said Armine.

“Won’t I? She’s been the making of me every way,” said John.

“If ever—she does want anybody—” said Armine, feeling, but not uttering, a vague sense of want of trust in others around her.

“I will, I will. Why, Armie, I shall never care for any one so much.”

“That’s right.”

And again, after an interval, Armine spoke of Jock, saying, “You’ll help him, Johnny. You know sometimes he can be put in mind—”

John promised again, perhaps less hopefully, but he saw that Armine hoped.

“Would you mind reading me a Psalm,” came, after a great struggle for breath. “It was so nice to know Babie was saying her Psalms at night, and thinking of us.”

So the evening wore away and night came on, and John, after full six-and-twenty hours’ wakeful exertion and anxiety, began to grow sleepy, and dozed even as he held his cousin whenever the cough did not shake the poor little fellow. At last, with Armine’s consent, or rather, at his entreaty, Mr. Graham, though knowing himself a bad substitute, took him from the arms of the outwearied lad, who, in five minutes more, was lying, dressed as he was, in the soundest of dreamless slumbers.

When he awoke, the sun was up, an almost midsummer sun, streaming on the fast-melting snow with a dazzling brilliancy. Armine was panting under the same deadly oppression on his pillows, and Mother Carey was standing by him, talking to Mr. Graham about despatching a messenger to Leukerbad in search of one of the doctors, who were sure to be found at the baths. How haggard her face looked, and Armine gasped out—

“Mother, your hair.”

The snow had been there; the crisp black waves on her brow were quite white. Jock had fallen into a sort of doze from exhaustion, but moaning all the time. She could call him no better, and Armine’s sunken face told that he was worse.

John went in search of more hot water, and on the way heard voices which made him call Mr. Graham, who knew more of the vernacular German patois than himself, to understand it. He thought he had caught something about English, and a doctor at Kandersteg. It was true. A guide belonging to the other side of the pass, who had been weather-bound at Kandersteg, had just come up with tidings that an English party were there, who had meant to cross the Gemmi but had given it up, finding it too early in the season for the kranklicher Milord who was accompanied by his doctor.

“An English doctor! Oh!” cried John, “there’s some good in that. Some one must take a note down to him at once.”

But after some guttural conversation of which he understood only a word or two, Mr. Graham said—

“They declare it is of no use. The carriage was ordered at nine. It is past seven now.”

“But it need not take two hours to go that distance downhill, the lazy blackguards!” exclaimed John.

“In the present state of the path, they say that it will,” said Mr. Graham. “In fact, I suspect a little unwillingness to deprive their countrymen of the job.”

“I’ll go,” said John, “then there will be no loss of time about writing. You’ll look after Armine, sir, and tell my aunt.”

“Certainly, my boy; but you’ll find it a stiffish pull.”

“I came in second for the mile race last summer at Eton,” said Johnny. “I’m not in training now; but if a will can do it—”

“I believe you are right. If you don’t catch him, we shall hardly have lost time, for they say we must wait an hour or two for the Gemmi road to get clear of snow. Stay; don’t go without eating. You won’t keep it up on an empty stomach. Remember the proverb.”

Prayer had been with him all night, and he listened to the remonstrance as to provender enough to devour a bit of bread, put another into his pocket, and swallow a long draught of new milk. Mr. Graham further insisted on his taking a lad to show him the right path through the fir woods; and though Johnny looked more formed for strength than speed, and was pale-cheeked and purple-eyed with broken rest, the manner in which he set forth had a purpose-like air that was satisfactory—not over swift at the outset over the difficult ground, but with a steadfast resolution, and with a balance and knowledge of the management of his limbs due to Eton athletics.

Mr. Graham went up to encourage Mrs. Brownlow. She clasped her hands together with joy and gratitude.

“That dear, dear boy,” she said, “I shall owe him everything.”

Jock had wakened rational, though only to be conscious of severe suffering. He would hardly believe that Armine was really alive till Mr. Graham actually carried in the boy, and let them hold each other’s hands for a moment before placing Armine on the other bed.

Indeed it seemed that this might be the poor boys’ last meeting. Armine could only look at his brother, since the least attempt to speak increased the agonised struggle for breath, which, doctor or no doctor, gave Mr. Graham small expectation that he could survive another of these cold mountain nights.

Their mother was so far relieved to have them together that it was easier to attend to them; and Armine’s patient eyes certainly acted as a gentle restraint upon Jock’s moans, lamentations, and requisitions for her services. It was one of those times that she only passed through by her faculty of attending only to present needs, and the physical strength and activity that seemed inexhaustible as long as she had anything to do, and which alone alleviated the despair within her heart.

Meantime John found the rock slippery, the path heavy, and his young guide a drag on him. The path through the fir woods which had been so delightful two days (could it be only two days?) ago, was now a baffling, wearisome zigzag; yet when he tried to cut across, regardless of the voice of his guide, he found he lost time, for he had to clamber, once fell and rolled some distance, happily with no damage as he found when he picked himself up, and plodded on again, without even stopping to shake himself.

At last came an opening where he could see down into the Kandersteg valley. There was the hotel in clear sunshine, looking only too like a house in a German box of toys, and alas! there was also a toy carriage coming round to the front!

Like the little foot-page of old ballads, John “let down his feet and ran,” ran determinately on, down the now less precipitous slope—ran till he was beyond the trees, with the summer sun beating down on him, and in sight of figures coming out from the hotel to the carriage.

Johnny scarce ventured to give one sigh. He waved his hat in a desperate hope of being seen. No, they were in the carriage. The horses were moving!

But he remembered a slight steep on the further road where they must go slower. Moreover, there were a few curves in the horse-road. He set his teeth with the desperate resolution of a moment, clenched his hands, intensified his mental cry to Heaven, and with the dogged determination of Kencroft dashed on, not daring to look at the carriage, intent only on the way.

He was past the inn, but his breath was short and quick; his knees were failing, an invisible hand seemed to be on his chest making him go slower and slower; yet still he struggled on, till the mountain tops danced before his eyes, cascades rushed into his ears, the earth seemed to rise up and stop him; but through it all he heard a voice say, “Hullo, it’s the Monk! What is the matter?”

Then he knew he was on the ground on his face, with kind but tormenting hands busy about him, and his heart going so like a sledge hammer, that the word he would have given his life to utter, would not come out of his lips, and all he could do was to grasp convulsively at something that he believed to be a garment of the departing travellers.

“Here, the flask! Don’t speak yet,” said a man’s voice, and a choking stimulant was poured into his mouth. When the choking spasm it cost him was over, his eyes cleared, and he could at least gasp. Then he saw that it was his housemate, Evelyn, at whom he was clutching, and who asked again in amaze—

“What is up, old fellow?”

“Hush, not yet,” said the other voice; “let him alone till he gets his breath. Don’t hurry, my boy,” he added, “we will wait.”

Johnny, however, felt altogether absorbed in getting out one panting whisper, “A doctor.”

“Yes, yes, he is,” cried Evelyn. “What’s the matter? Not Brownlow!”

“Both—oh,” sobbed John in the agony of contending with the bumping, fluttering heart which would not let him fetch breath enough to speak.

“You will tell us presently. Don’t be afraid. We will wait,” said the voice of the man who, as John now felt, was supporting him. “Hush, Cecil, another minute, and he will be able to tell us.”

Indeed the rushing of every pulse was again making it vain for Johnny to try to utter anything, and he shut his eyes in the realisation that he had succeeded and found help. If his heart would have not bumped and fluttered so fearfully, it would have been almost rest, as he was helped up by those kind, strong arms. It was really for little more than five seconds before he gathered his powers to say, still between gasps—

“Out all night—the moraine—fog—snow—Jock—very bad—Armine—worse—up there.”

“At Schwarenbach?”

“Yes. Oh, come! They are so ill.”

“I am sure Dr. Medlicott will do all he can for them,” said another voice, which John saw proceeded from a very tall, slight youth, with a fair, delicate, girlish face. “Had he not better get into the carriage and return to the hotel?”

“By all means.”

And John found himself without much volition lifted and helped into the carriage, where Cecil Evelyn scrambled up beside him, and put an arm round him.

“Poor old Monk, you are dead beat,” he said, as the carriage turned, the other two walking beside it. “Did you come that pace all the way down?”

“Only after the wood.”

“Well, ‘twas as plucky a thing as I ever saw. But is Skipjack so bad?”