Chapter III The Awakening
It was Colonel Goff who met me at the door of The Manor when I called the next night. Marget and Tammas were both there, silent, and with awed, sorrowful faces. Two doctors were in the house, for Elsie’s life and mind lay in the balance, and it seemed that a straw would turn them either way.
It was Marget who spoke first. “Ay, Jackie—Jackie—’tis as I hinted to you, lad,” said she, “it was in the blood of the Carfaxes, and but for your ride and leap, lad, our lassie had done what two of her grandames, two of the ladies of Carfax, did before her.”
Tammas, tears standing in his eyes, could only hold my hand.
Colonel Goff led me into the library. For a while he was silent, his stolid face expressionless. Then he said very quietly, “Jack, the chances are all against her, one way or the other; it looks as if my little lassie is doomed to go the way of her house. If she survives the shock I am afraid her mind will not; that is what is hinging now, that is why we have sent for you again. It is only a chance—one chance in ten—but the doctors thought—as the shock that unminded her came through you, that you might—”
I nodded. “I understand. I would give my life for her.”
He pressed my hand, his voice choking. “You proved that, my boy, you proved that. How you escaped, how that horse ever cleared that fence and cliff—
“Jack,” he went on, turning impulsively, “I am a blunt man, plain and not farseeing in things like all of these, that have come to me so swift and fast. I don’t mean these accidents—I’m used to them—life and the whole little game of it is all a blind chance. I have taken mine all my life—and—and—well, they’ve always been against me, Jack—always, even now. I’ve lost—always—even as I shall lose now—Elsie. The great hand of Fate that flings the dice for us has always thrown them loaded for me—Jack.”
He was silent. I thought of God and the Butterfly. I pitied him, seeing nothing as he did.
“No, I am not farseeing—not farseeing—in things like the other side of all this—not the blind chance side which has always been mine—but the side you make yourself, someway, somehow, like this.”
He drew a blurred and crumpled note from his pocket. It was Eloise’s. I had seen it last when, holding it to my breast, I had fallen asleep that afternoon under the trees.
“This kind of a little thing, Jack,” he said, handing me the little relic. “I am a blundering fool—and I have to tell you so—to tell you what an unseeing fool I have been. I see it all now—and yet I’d never have seen. I found this clutched in Elsie’s hand. This was her shock—this was my folly—my unseeing folly. No, no,” he cried quickly, seeing I was about to say something. “No, no, Jack, I see it all—don’t say a word. You’ve been a man all through it—a white man, Jack. I am not talking to put you on trial. I’m passing judgment on myself for your sake, my boy; that you may understand what a selfish, unseeing fool I have been.
“Well, it’s down to this—it’s all past—let it go,” he added. “But Elsie—she is of the living present. You must help me, help me a little yet awhile Jack—till—till the crisis is past.”
I pressed his hand silently. “Thank you,” he said simply, “and now just a word of explanation. This trouble of hers runs in the blood of the Carfaxes. My grandmother, my own sister, went this way. They are keyed high, and if a shock like this comes, it’s death or an unbalancing. When she read that,” he said, “which unseeing one that I have been, was all my fault, when she read it, Jack, she lost her reason, she was temporarily insane when she made that leap. She is conscious now and stronger; but still she remembers nothing up to that mental shock, the shock of that note, that showed her all, and—oh well, I’m only a blunt kind of a man—I can’t tell it—you alone could do that. But it’s this now, Jack, you go in and talk to her. You stay with her—till we get her right—and we’ve a chance to yet—Jack, until we get her right—just let her believe—believe— Oh, you know, Jack!”
The tears were in his eyes as he led me into Elsie’s room.
Tammas and Marget were by the bed. Elsie lay amid her pillows, a strange startled look in her eyes.
“You and the old people, Jack,” whispered the doctor, rising and taking Goff by the arm, “you all just talk to her, get her back to the dairy and the old ways again, if you can. If she can be quieted and her mind bridged over the shock, she’ll be all right again. And to-night will tell,” he added quietly, “so be very calm. I have given her all the morphine she’ll stand, tried everything, but if she can’t be made to sleep she’ll lose her mind and if she doesn’t sleep to-night her mind is doomed.”
I was not certain, but I had always suspected that I possessed the power of suggestion. I had felt it in dealing with dumb animals and weaker people.
I sat by her, talking to her in the old way. “It is Jack, Elsie,” I said, “your own Jack. We’ve met in our old trysting place. We are under our old trees, and Tammas and Marget are here and you are tired and are going to sleep while your head is on my lap. I’ll watch you sleep—sleep now,” I said softly, stroking her forehead.
There was a deep sigh, then the frightened wild look died out of her eyes and with a smile like her old one she slept.
The doctor beckoned me. “That’s good,” he said in the hallway. “Just let the nurse and Marget stay with her, let her sleep all night if she will.”
“But I will have to waken her,” I said.
He smiled. “Oh no; she’ll waken herself.”
“I’ll stay here all night, Colonel Goff,” I assured her father.
“Thank you, Jack,” he said, his face brightening for the first time. “Of course you will stay with her.”
“The crisis will come with her awakening,” said the doctor. “She will awaken sound of mind and at death’s door, or she will awaken to live, her mind gone. It is all in her sleeping, and to-night will decide it. I will retire, waken me if I am needed.”
All night Colonel Goff and I sat up. Every little while we went into her room to see Elsie sleeping, Marget by her side, the nurse asleep on the cot.
Twice the doctor came in. “Her pulse and temperature are normal,” he would say. “That’s good. Let her sleep.”
But Colonel Goff and I could not sleep. All night he smoked, talked and walked the floor. He told me his life’s story, and in the hopefulness of Elsie’s sleeping he seemed to have taken a new hold of things. “If the hand that has flung the loaded dice for me all my life will only give me one clean deal now,” he cried, as he paced the floor with his steady military stride.
“It will,” I said, “Colonel Goff. It gives a clean deal to a clean heart always, and yours is a different heart now. I see it; you are a different man now. Now, I would give my very life for you and my poor little Elsie.”
There was deep emotion in the man before me, his eyes were moist. “Great God, Jack, do you mean that, man? Do you know you have said it? It is even so—I see it—have seen it all night—wondering, how—
“God help me,” he went on, “and save Elsie as He has saved me—from myself—through it all. I see it now—through all my life—my own fool will, my obstinacy, madness, sin—unseeingness: brought me through it all, back to my own, my family name, my earldom—my own—Great God, think of it—what has been done to unseeing, uncaring me! How much I have received—how little I have earned!”
I left him a strong man pacing the floor, his face aglow with a new life.
Elsie had slept twelve hours.
“We can’t awaken her,” said the doctor as I went in after a short sleep. “I suspect you possess unconsciously hypnotic power, Jack. It all looks like it. You must awaken her if you can. I don’t wish to use heroic means.”
“If I have,” I said, “I am not aware of it. But let me talk to her. And if you please I would rather only Marget stayed.”
“Surely,” he said nodding. “If she wakens we want no one with her but you. And you’ll just keep her thinking she’s at her old place by the dairy.”
I sat down by her, taking her hand in the old way. She was smiling in her sleep. Then I said laughingly in her ear, slapping her cheek with the back of my hand, “Wake up, little Heart’s Ease; we are going to the spring. It’s Jack. I will not go unless you go with me, to gather the Bluebells of Scotland on the hills—come—wake up!”
Instantly she sat up, her blue eyes resting calmly on me.
“Jack,” she said, putting her arms about my neck, “I had wondered—I have worried because—for so long a time I seem not to be able to remember—where you were.”
I laughed. “Nonsense; you have only dreamed a bad dream last night,” said I.
Marget was bustling around the room pretending to clean up. Her voice choked so that she could scarcely speak and yet she said bravely, “Surely, Elsie. It is as Mr. Jack says. You’ve been sick a little and had bad dreams.”
Elsie clung to me sobbing. “Jack, my bonny Jack,” she said, “it’s good of you, but I am all right now; I am strong again, so much stronger than you would ever believe.”
“You must not let yourself think of anything unpleasant,” I said quietly, “for my sake now, Elsie, and daddy’s.”
“I couldn’t, Jack,” she said with all her old frank candor, “with you here. It all came because I thought you were gone. Call Daddy in,” she said firmly, “I want to talk to you all.”
Colonel Goff was already in the room, the smile on his face telling of his great joy. He knelt by the bedside, kissing her. He was laughing boyishly. “Bless me, but my Lady Elsie is feeling fine, isn’t she?” said he.
Elsie nodded happily.
“And you and I have been so blind, Daddy,” she said, laying her hand on mine. “So blind, both of us. Now, you know what we are going to do? I am going to be very strong and well in a few days and then we are all going to our English home, you and me, Marget and Tammas, and we are going to find Eloise. Find her, Daddy, and make her well—for Jack—if it takes half of all that earldom of yours.”
Colonel Goff kissed her again and again, and reaching out, gripped my hand. “Thank God, Jack! Elsie,” he added, “you’re not to talk now, but sleep again. I’ll do as you say.”
“Now look here,” she said in her old teasing way, “don’t you for a moment—don’t you try any funny things on me. I’m as well as any of you, and I’m going to get up, right soon. And I don’t want ever to hear of that dream I had again,” she said, raising a commanding little finger at us.
“We have both been very foolish, Daddy, you and me,” she went on, “foolish and unseeing; but now we’re both going to be very sensible and brave, so you’ll all go out but Marget, and Mr. Jack.” She turned to me, her eyes smiling in the old way, “You’ll kiss me good-by now till you come to see us at Carfax Hall—you and—and—” She clasped my neck, kissing me quickly, “Good-by, my bonny, bonny Prince! I’ll bring her back to you, see if I don’t!”