Chapter 10 A Bevy of Girls by L. T. Meade
An Alarming Attack
Marcia did not know why her heart felt like lead as she walked back the short distance between the railway station and her father’s house; why all the joy seemed to have gone out of her, when there was no apparent reason. It was a glorious summer evening, the sky was studded with innumerable stars, which would shine more brightly in an hour or so, as soon as the rays of the sun had quite departed from the western horizon. There was not a cloud anywhere. Nevertheless, a very dense cloud rested over the girl’s heart.
She went into the house, and the first thing she noticed was the fact that there were no lights burning anywhere. She glanced up at the invalid’s room; there was no light in the window, no brightness. What could be wrong? Oh, nothing, of course. Nesta might not be a good nurse, but she could not be so careless as that.
She let herself in with her latch key, and was met by Susan in the hall. Susan had her hat on.
“What is it, Susan?”
“I beg your pardon, Miss? I have only just come in. It was my evening out. I came back a whole hour before my time because I was anxious about Missis. I suppose cook has seen to her.”
“Cook? But where are the young ladies? Where is Miss Nesta?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? And where are the other young ladies?”
“I don’t know either. Oh, yes, though, they had tea in the garden with the Misses Carter and young Mr Carter, and then they went a bit of the way home with them. I ran down the garden and brought in the best china, they would have it from the drawing room, and then I slipped out, for I didn’t want to lose any of my time. It was such a good opportunity, you see, Miss, for master and Mr Horace were both dining out at the Club this evening, and I thought the young ladies could manage to light up for themselves.”
“They don’t seem to have done so. How is my mother? How long has she been alone?”
“I don’t know, Miss. Shall I run up and see?”
“No, light up as quickly as you can, please. Get cook to help you if necessary. Don’t be out of the way. I will go to my mother.”
Marcia had called Mrs Aldworth mother on many occasions; but there was a new tone in the way in which she said “my mother,” which fell upon the servant’s ears with a feeling of reproach.
“I wonder now—” she thought. “I wouldn’t have gone out, but she was in such a beautiful sleep; I just crept in on tiptoe and there she was smiling in her sleep and looking as happy as happy could be. So I said to myself—‘Miss Nesta’ll be in in no time, and if not there are the other young ladies.’ So I went to cook and said—‘Cook, be sure you run up to Missis when she rings her bell.’”
Susan had now returned to the kitchen.
“You didn’t hear Missis ring by any chance, did you, Fanny?” she said to her fellow servant.
“No, I said I’d go up to her if she did ring.”
“Then it’s all right,” said Susan.
“Why, what’s the matter? How white you are.”
“I—I don’t quite know. But Miss Marcia came back and seemed in no end of a taking, at the house not being lit up.”
“Let Miss Marcia mind her own business,” said Fanny, in a temper.
“Don’t you say anything against her, Fanny. Oh, my word, there’s the bell, now. I hope to goodness there’s nothing wrong.”
Susan rushed upstairs; her knees, as she expressed it, trembling under her. She burst open the door.
“Send Fanny for the doctor at once. Get me some hot water and some brandy. Be quick; don’t wait a moment. Above all things, send Fanny for the doctor. Tell her to take a cab and drive to Dr Anstruther’s house. Be as quick as ever you can.”
Marcia had turned on the gas in her mother’s room and lit it, and now she was bending over that mother and holding her hand. The poor woman was alive, but icy cold and apparently quite unconscious. The girl felt herself trembling violently.
“They have neglected her; I can see that by the look of the room,” she thought. “The window still open, the blinds still up, the position of this sofa—all show that she was neglected. And I, too, left her. Why did I go? Oh, poor mother; poor mother.”
Tears streamed from Marcia’s eyes; they fell upon the cold hand. Marcia put her fingers on the pulse; it was still beating, but very feebly.
Susan hurried up with a great jug of hot water, and the brandy bottle.
“Mix some brandy quickly for me, Susan; make it strong. Now, then, give it to me.”
With some difficulty Marcia managed to put a few drops between the blue lips, and the next minute the invalid opened her eyes. She fixed them on Marcia, smiled, shuddered, and closed them again, collapsing once more into unconsciousness.
It was in this condition that Dr Anstruther found her when he entered the house a quarter of an hour later.
“I feared it,” he paid, just glancing at Marcia.
“No, it is not death,” he added, seeing the look of appeal and self-reproach in the girl’s eyes; “but it might have been. Had you been a few minutes later we could have done nothing. Now, then, we will get her into bed.”
He managed very skilfully, with Marcia’s help and with that of the repentant and miserable Susan, to convey the poor invalid to a bed, which had already been warmed for her. She then sat by her, administering brandy and water at short intervals, and holding her wrist between his fingers and thumb.
“That’s better,” he said, after a time. “Now, then, Miss Marcia, will you go downstairs and prepare a nice cup of bread and milk and bring it up to me? she must manage to eat it. She has been absolutely starved; she has had nothing at all since her early dinner.”
Marcia flew out of the room.
“Susan,” she said, “Susan, what is the meaning of this?”
“Don’t ask me, Miss; ’tain’t my fault. When young ladies themselves are born without natural affection, what can a poor servant gel do? Do you think I’d leave my mother? No, that I wouldn’t. Poor lady, and she that devoted to them. To be sure she have her little fads and fancies, and her little crotchets, as what invalid but wouldn’t have? But, oh, Miss, to think of their unkindness.”
“Don’t think of it now; they will be sorry enough by-and-by,” said Marcia. “Help me to get some bread and milk ready.”
She brought it up a few minutes later, steaming hot and tempting looking. The invalid was conscious again now, and her cheeks were flushed with the amount of brandy she had taken. She began to talk in a weak, excited manner.
“I had such a long sleep and got so dreadfully cold,” she said. “I thought I was climbing up and up a hill, and I could never get to the top. It was a horrid dream. Marcia, dear, is that you? How nice you look in your grey dress, so quiet looking.”
“Hush, Mrs Aldworth,” said the doctor, in a cheerful voice, “you must not talk too much just now. You must lie quiet.”
“Oh, doctor, I’ve been lying quiet so long, so many hours. Oh, yes, I remember—it was Molly. She had on a blue dress, a blue muslin and forget-me-not bows, and she looked so sweet, and she said the Carters were here—the Carters and—and—she was very anxious to go down to them. It was natural, wasn’t it, doctor?”
“Yes, yes. Aren’t you going to eat your bread and milk?”
“I’ll feed you, mother,” said Marcia.
She knelt by her and put the nourishment between the blue lips.
“You are such a good girl, Marcia; so kind to me.”
“Everybody ought to be kind to you,” said Marcia, “and everybody will be,” she murmured under her breath.
“Marcia is an excellent girl; you have never said a truer word, Mrs Aldworth,” remarked the doctor.
“It was very disagreeable—that dream,” continued the invalid, her thoughts drifting into another quarter. “I thought—I thought I was climbing up and up, and it was very cold as I climbed, and I thought I was amongst the ice, and the great snows, and Molly was there, but a long way down, and I was falling, and Molly would not come to help me. Then it was Nesta, and she would not help me either, Nesta only laughed, and said something about Flossie—Flossie Griffiths. Marcia, have you seen Flossie Griffiths? You know I don’t like her much, do you?”
“I have not seen her, dear. Don’t talk too much. It weakens you.”
“But I’m not really ill, am I?”
“Oh, no, Mrs Aldworth,” said the doctor. “You have just had an attack of weakness, but you are better; it is passing off now, and you have a grand pulse. I wish I had as good a one.”
He smiled at her in his cheery way, and by-and-by he went out of the room. Marcia followed him.
“Some one must sit up with her all night,” said the doctor, “and I will stay in the house.”
“Oh, doctor,” said Marcia, “is it as bad as all that?”
“It is so bad that if she has another attack we cannot possibly pull her through. If she survives until the morning, I will call in Dr Benson, the first authority in Newcastle. The thing is to prevent a recurrence of the attack. The longer it is stared off the greater probability there is that there will be no repetition.”
“I will sit up with her, of course,” said Marcia. “She would rather have me than any hired nurse.”
“I know that. I am glad. But some one must see your sisters when they come in.”
It was just at that moment that a girl, somewhat fagged, somewhat shabby looking, with a face a good deal torn, for she had got amongst briars and thorns and underwood on her way home, crept up the narrow path towards the house. This girl was her mother’s darling, Nesta, the youngest of the family, the baby, as she was called. Her time with Flossie had, after all, been the reverse of agreeable. They had begun their tea with every prospect of having a good time; but soon the mob of rough people who had come to witness the donkey races discovered them, and so terrified both little girls that they ran away and hid, leaving all Flossie’s property behind them.
This was thought excellent fun by the roughs of Newcastle; they scoured the woods, looking for the children, and as a matter of fact, poor Nesta had never got a greater fright than when she crouched down in the brambles, devoutly hoping that some of the rough boys would not pull her out of her lair.
Eventually she and Flossie had escaped with only a few scratches and some torn clothes, but she was miserably tired and longing for comfort when she approached the house. So absorbed was she with her own adventures that she absolutely forgot the fact that she had run away and left her mother to the care of the others. As she entered the house, however, it flashed upon her what might be thought of her conduct.
“Dear, dear!” she thought, “I shall have a time of it with Molly to-night; but I don’t care. I’m not going to be bullied or browbeaten. I’ll just let Miss Molly see that I’m going to have my fun as well as another. I wish though, I didn’t sleep in the room with them; they’ll be as cross and cantankerous as two tabby cats.”
Nesta entered the house. Somehow the house did not seem to be quite as usual; the drawing room was not lit up; it had not been used that evening. She poked her head round the dining-room door. There was no appetising and hearty meal ready for tired people when they returned home. What was the matter? Why, her father must be back by this time. She went into the kitchen.
“Cook!” she said.
“Keep out of my way, Miss Nesta,” said the cook.
“What do you mean? Where is my supper? I want my supper. Where are all the others? Where’s Molly? Where’s Ethel? I suppose that stupid old Marcia is back now? Where are they all?”
“That’s more than I can tell you,” said cook, and now he turned round and faced the girl. “I only know that it’s ten o’clock, and that you have been out when you ought to be in, and as to Miss Molly and Miss Ethel, I don’t want to have anything to do with them in the future. Here’s Susan—she’ll tell you why there ain’t no supper for you—she’ll speak a bit of her mind. Susan, here’s Miss Nesta, come in as gay as you please, and asks for her supper. And where are the others, says she, and where’s Marcia, says she. And is she back, says she. Miss Marcia is back, thank the Lord; that’s about the only thing we have to be thankful for in this house to-night.”
“Dear me, cook, I think you are remarkably impertinent. I shall ask mother not to keep you. Mother never would allow servants to speak to us in that tone. You forget yourself, Susan.”
“It’s you that forgets yourself, Miss Nesta,” said Susan. “There; where’s the use of stirring up ill will? Ain’t there sorrow enough in this house this blessed night?”
“Sorrow,” said Nesta, now really alarmed. “What is it?”
“It’s your mother, poor soul,” said Susan. She looked into Nesta’s face and there and then determined not to spare her.
“Mother? Mother?”
For the first time the girl forgot herself. There fell away from her that terrible cloak of selfishness in which she had wrapped herself.
“Mother? Is anything wrong with her?”
“Dr Anstruther is upstairs, and he is going to spend the night here, and Miss Marcia is with her, and not a living soul of you is to go near her; you wouldn’t when you might, and now you long to, you won’t be let; so that’s about the truth, and if the poor darling holds out till the morning it’ll be something to be thankful for. Why, she nearly died, and for all that I can tell you, she may be dying now.”
“Nonsense!” said Nesta. “What lies you tell!”
She stalked out of the kitchen. For the life of her she could not have gone out in any other fashion. Had she attempted any other than the utmost bravado, she must have fallen. In the hall she met Molly and Ethel coming in; their faces were bright, their eyes were shining. What a good time they had had. That supper! That little impromptu dance afterwards! The tennis before supper! The walk home with Jim and Harry. Jim escorted Molly home; he had quite forgiven her, and Harry was untiring in his attentions to Ethel. Oh, what a glorious, glorified world they had been living in. But, now, what was the matter! They saw Nesta and looked into her face. Full of wrath they pounced upon her.
“Don’t,” said Nesta. “Don’t speak. Come in here.”
She took both their hands, dragged them into her father’s study, and shut the door.
“Look here, both of you,” she said, “I’ve been beast; I’ve been the lowest down sort of a girl that ever lived, but you have been a degree worse, and we have killed mother. Yes, we have killed her.”
Ethel dropped into a chair and clasped her side with one hand.
“You needn’t believe me, but it’s true. She was alone all the afternoon, and Marcia came home, and she saw mother, who was nearly gone, and the doctor is here and he is going to stay all night, and perhaps she’ll be dead in the morning, and we have done it—we are her own children and we have done it. You and Molly and I; we have all done it; we are monsters; we are worse than beasts. We are horrors. I hate us! I hate us! I hate us!”
Each hate as it was hurled from her young lips was uttered with more emphasis than the last, and now she flung herself full length on the carpet—the dirty, faded carpet, and sobbed as though her heart would break.
“We’re not to go to her—she won’t have any of us near her. She won’t have us now—we gave her up—she was alone all the afternoon, and now we are not to go to her, we are to stay away; that’s what we are to do.”
Molly was the first to recover her voice.
“It can’t be as bad as that,” she said.
Ethel looked up with a scared face. Molly’s face was just as scared as her sisters’. As she uttered the words she sank, too, in a limp fashion, on the nearest chair. Then she unpinned her hat and flung it from her to the farthest end of the room.
“You may stay there, you horrid thing,” she said. Her gloves were treated in the same manner. She looked down at the bows on her dress and began unfastening them.
“I hate them,” she said. “Mother called them pretty. I hate them!”
“What’s the good of undressing yourself in that fashion?” said Ethel.
“She had the beginning of the attack when I was with her,” said Molly. “I am worse than you, Nesta, worse than you, Ethel, for you did not see her. I gave her some sal volatile, and she got sleepy, and I put a shawl over her and left her. I am worse than either of you.”
“Well,” said Ethel, rousing herself, “I don’t believe it is as bad as this. I don’t think it can be. I’ll go up and find out.”
She went out of the room, but she tottered very badly as she went up the stairs, glancing behind her as though fearful of her own shadow. There was a light in the spare room; the door was partly open. She peeped in. Dr Anstruther was there. He was pacing up and down.
“Ah!” he said, when he saw Ethel’s face. “Come in.”
He looked at her again, and then said quietly—“Sit down.”
He went to the table, poured something into a glass, mixed it with water, and brought it to the girl.
“Drink this,” he said.
“I don’t want to,” replied Ethel.
“Drink it at once,” said the doctor.
She obeyed; it was strong sal volatile and water.
“Now,” he said, “you clearly understand that the duty you have to perform to-night in this house, is absolutely to forget yourself—obliterate yourself if necessary. Don’t do one single thing that you are told not to do, and if you can, keep your sisters in the background. You may all be wanted at any moment, or you may not. You are not, any of you, to go to your mother’s room without my permission. Don’t think of yourselves at all. If there is any way in which you can help the servants, do it, but do it quietly, and don’t become hysterical; don’t add to the trouble in the house to-night.”
“But we have all neglected her—”
“You can tell your clergyman that in the morning—you can tell your God to-night—it is not my affair. I have to do with the present. Act now with obedience, with utter quiet, with calm, with self-restraint. Go down now and tell your sisters what I have said.”
“I will,” said Ethel. She went out of the room.
“Poor child!” thought Dr Anstruther. “I had to be hard on her to keep her up; she’d have broken down otherwise. God grant that those girls have not a rude awakening—they very nearly did have it—God help them, poor things.”
When Mr Aldworth and Horace returned late that evening, it was the doctor who drew the poor husband into his own study and told him the truth. He concealed as much as possible of the girls’ conduct; he admitted that Mrs Aldworth had been neglected during the day, but he made the best of it.
“In any case,” he said, “this attack was quite likely to come. Had there been any one near her it might not have been so prolonged, and the consequences would not have been so serious; but it was bound to come.”
“And Marcia?” said the father then.
“Oh, she is all right, she is a brick—she is one in a thousand.”