Chapter XIII Near Death’s Door
Leaving Ben and his comrades to continue their sad procession to the village, Mrs. Power and one of the men made their way straight to Farncourt, carrying little Julius with them. The boy was evidently very ill, and quite unconscious of what was passing around him.
It grieved Madelaine sorely when she had to give up her charge at the door of the large comfortless house, where no mother awaited the child to give him the gentle care he so much needed.
“Of course he will have the best doctors and attendance in the kingdom, and everything that money can provide,” she said to herself as she walked down the drive, “but something more is wanted than that. I can’t bear to think of that poor little fellow with no loving woman’s face bending over him to draw him back into life again.”
Certainly, as Madelaine had surmised, nothing was left untried which skill could suggest or riches procure. A famous London physician was summoned, regardless of cost, to the bedside of the child, and trained nurses watched unceasingly day and night, combating the fever that threatened to sap the strength from out the feeble frame.
The horrors of that awful race against the tide, combined with the drenching sustained both from sea and rain, proved almost more than the boy’s body and mind could withstand. Again and again he screamed aloud in his terror, calling out that the waves had got hold of him, and starting up in his bed, he would try to escape from the clutches of the monsters he seemed always to have before his eyes, ready to seize him in their deadly grasp.
When at length the frenzy passed away and reason appeared to be returning once more to the overwrought brain, the efforts of his attendants were still baffled by a strange restlessness which took possession of the little invalid and which all their care could not dispel.
“He is always repeating the same words,” said the nurse in charge, to Mr. Field, when he enquired anxiously for the boy. “I wonder whether you could give me a clue to what he means, so that we might know how to quiet him. Often in an illness of this sort the mind dwells on something that took place immediately before the fever came on.”
“What are the words?” asked Mr. Field.
“He is continually saying ‘I want to make him my friend,’” answered the nurse. “All last night he did nothing but moan out this one sentence. It was quite pitiful to hear him, poor child.”
Mr. Field’s heart smote him. “He was very disobedient the day of the catastrophe,” he said. “Perhaps he is still thinking of it, and is afraid of my anger—I know I have sometimes been harsh with the boy. Do you suppose if I went to him and told him it was all right, that the fear would be allayed?”
“It may be that,” replied the nurse, “at any rate it is worth trying. There, do you hear him?” she added, as they entered the darkened room and advanced towards the small tossing figure on the bed.
Vainly did the poor father stand at his son’s side and assure him of his love and forgiveness. The unnaturally bright eyes which were fixed upon him softened with no answering light, and to his distress, the weak voice took up once again its monotonous refrain.
“Whom can he mean?” pondered Mr. Field. “I wonder if he wants the lad who was with him that dreadful afternoon. I remember Burns told me they had often played together. I forbade Julius ever to speak to him, but if anyone could do my boy good, I should welcome him, even if he were a chimney sweep.”
A polite note was at once written to Mrs. Power, requesting that Robin might be allowed to come up to Farncourt, in the hope that his little companion’s presence might satisfy the restless longings of the child.
A faint smile played over Julius’ features as Robin entered the room, and for a moment a gleam of recognition leapt into his eyes, but it soon faded away, and the pathetic moan recommenced—the feverish limbs moving wearily to and fro upon the couch.
“If he could only get some sleep he would do well,” remarked the nurse, “but I fear his strength will not hold out if this goes on much longer.”
“We had hoped the sight of your little boy would have soothed Julius, but it seems to have done no good,” said Mr. Field, as he led Robin back to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Power awaited his return. “We thought he missed his playfellow, for he never ceases speaking of someone he wants as his friend. If only we could find out what he desires, we might manage to bring peace to his mind.”
“I know what he means,” replied Madelaine with a sudden inspiration. “If you will let me go up to him, I believe I shall be able to help.”
Gladly did the stricken father retrace his steps to the sick chamber, and as Mrs. Power followed, her heart was lifted up in prayer to God that she might be given the right words to say. Unhesitatingly she went up to the bed and knelt beside the child. Taking his burning hands in hers, she held them firmly as she looked into his face.
“I want to make him my friend,” reiterated the boy.
“It is God Whom you want to make your Friend, is it not, little Julius?” asked Madelaine.
A relieved expression flashed across the sufferer’s countenance as the question seemed to reach him through the darkness of his delirium, and a look of intelligence dawned in the poor anxious eyes.
“Yes,” he answered, “I want Him very much.”
“He is your Friend already, Julius,” continued Mrs. Power. “He loved us so much that He sent His Son to die for us. He has been your Friend all along, Julius. It is you who have been running away from Him.”
“Do you mean God really wanted to be my Friend all along?” questioned the boy earnestly.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Power, “that is the comfort of it. Just say to yourself, ‘God loves me,’ and ask Him to wash away your sins, and to keep you for Jesus Christ’s sake. Only a Friend can love, Julius, so you need not be afraid of Him.”
“God loves me,” repeated the child. “God loves me. He was my Friend all along, only I didn’t know.”
He closed his eyes contentedly, and nestled his head into the pillow. Mrs. Power held his hands in hers for a few minutes longer, and then gently laid them down upon the bed. “I think he is sleeping,” she whispered, as she rose to her feet.
The nurse nodded silently with a pleased smile, and Madelaine noiselessly left the room.
Many an anxious hour was still to come as Julius slowly struggled back to health and strength, but as the doctor said, it was to that sleep the child owed his life. There were no more objections made by Mr. Field to the intercourse between Farncourt and the dwellers in Sea View Cottage. Every morning did Robin and his mother walk up to enquire for the invalid, and as often as not, one or both of them stayed with him for the rest of the day. Mr. Field indeed was not often present when Mrs. Power sat with his son, but he would constantly join the two boys as they played together, watching them as they made endless scrapbooks out of old illustrated papers, or constructed wonderful models with bits of wood and an unlimited supply of glue.
The great London physician came no longer to look wisely over his gold-rimmed spectacles at the now convalescent lad, but the village doctor still made friendly visits, to the benefit of his patient as well as of his own pocket.
“We’ll soon have you flying about as lively as ever,” he said cheerily to Julius during one of these calls. “You’ve got on quicker than the other patient I was summoned to attend the same day that you got bowled over.”
“Who was that?” asked Mrs. Power, who was standing near. “I had not heard that any of the villagers were ill just now.”
“I know how good you are in going to see the sick ones,” responded the doctor, “and I longed to ask you to minister to this poor fellow, but he’s a queer self-contained mortal, and apparently prefers to be left to himself. He is a stranger here—arrived the night of the storm—and appeared, sopping wet and utterly tired out at Mrs. Potter’s door, with no luggage but a knapsack, being apparently upon some sort of walking tour. She let him in out of pity, and he’s been laid up at her house ever since. It’s the Mrs. Potter who lives on the high road just beyond the wood. She’s a good soul, and has done all she could for him, but it’s been a close shave, his getting through at all.”
The boys exchanged glances.
“I expect it’s the tramp,” whispered Julius. “I’m glad he’s got a real bed to sleep in, and that he didn’t have to stay in the hut while he was ill.”
“Our nice house is all broken down now,” replied Robin. “The rain of that night beat it to pieces. The roof fell in, and the wall gave way, and the moss floor got into a nasty sloppy mess. I looked for my text, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I think it must have been completely washed away.”
“I shouldn’t be afraid of that text now,” remarked Julius. “I have told father all about my going to make Peter’s hutch, and our house in the wood, and our games and everything. He wasn’t a bit angry, only sorry I had deceived him so often. I’m not going to do sneaky things again, but I’m jolly glad he doesn’t mind me playing with you now, Robin.”
During the anguish of the first days of Julius’ illness, Mr. Field’s thoughts were concentrated wholly upon his suffering boy, but as the tension became relaxed and the child regained his vigour, the terrible time which he had spent in the wood came back with full force and vividness to his mind.
“Could I have been mad for the moment?” he would ask himself again and again. “First the words—and then the face! It was too awful. People used to have visions in the old days—is it possible that they sometimes come to men still?”
He had never believed in ghosts, but he felt curiously nervous now as the dusk gathered round, and to Burn’s astonishment, gave orders that the electric light was to be left on all night in the passages and hall. It had never been his custom to wander much alone even within the borders of his own property, but since that memorable evening he had taken exercise only upon the terrace in front of the house, and when obliged to go to Westmarket upon business, had motored in with the hood up and the blinds drawn.
“I have got bad neuralgia,” he explained by way of excuse, “and the glare hurts my eyes.”
“I wonder why he wants such an illumination at night then?” remarked the butler. “I can’t tell what’s come to him lately. It seems almost as if he were going crazy.”
Do what he could, Mr. Field was unable to banish the unpleasant adventure from his thoughts. Night and day his mind was filled with strange and terrifying questionings, which he sought to meet by commonplace answers and logical explanations, but all in vain.
“It must just have been some fellow seeking shelter from the rain, as I was doing myself,” he would argue. “There is no doubt there was an extraordinary likeness, but it cannot be anything more. Probably if I had seen the same face in broad daylight it would have had no effect upon me, but that night my nerves were completely unhinged by the storm. I wish I could get the dreadful death-look of those eyes out of my mind. There is only one other face that would be worse to see again, and I think I should go off my head altogether if that appeared to me in the same manner as this one did. It is bad enough to be obliged to meet it in my dreams.”
Once the thought crossed Mr. Field’s brain that the apparition was some prank of Ben’s, another practical joke, based upon some shrewd supposition, and perpetrated in order to extort more money out of the apparently bottomless coffers of his prey. Some judicious questioning, however, set his fears at rest in that quarter.
“If Ben did know all, it would be far too good a lever not to make use of against me, and he is not the man to hesitate to try it,” Mr. Field decided. “If he hasn’t played his trump-card by this time, I don’t think he’s got one in his hand at all. It’s my belief that there is more bluff than anything else in what he says, and if so, why should I knuckle under to him every time he comes sponging on me as he does. I have been far too weak with him in the past. I shall see what effect a little firmness will have upon my gentleman. I don’t so much mind having to pay for what he knows, but I do draw the line at giving anything for threats in the dark.”