Mohawks: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3

It was the one only thing his money could do for that perishing child. He bent down and kissed the dry lips, inhaling the putrid breath, almost wishing that it might poison him if she were not to recover, and that they two might be laid in the same grave with the young mother. And then he left the sick-room, ordered a horse for himself, and another for his groom. The groom was to gallop on ahead to the market-town, and order a post-chaise to be in readiness for his master. The Squire was in London soon after nightfall, and at his club, inquiring for the doctor who was cleverest in fever cases. He was told of Dr. Denbigh in Covent Garden, a youngish man, but a great authority on fevers; and to Covent Garden he went between eleven o'clock and midnight.

Dr. Denbigh was a student, and given to working late. He answered the door himself, in dressing-gown and slippers, and on the Squire's urgent entreaty consented to start at once, or as soon as post-horses could be got ready. He could return in the morning early enough to see his gratis patients, who came to him in flocks. He was known in all the vilest slums and alleys of London, and was the beloved of the London poor.

It was a three hours' journey, with good horses and short stages, to Fairmile Court; and it was the dead of the night when Bosworth and the physician stole softly into the children's sick-chamber, where nurse Bridget was dozing in her armchair, while Mrs. Layburne sat bolt upright beside Rena's bed, watching the child's troubled slumbers.

"What an atmosphere!" cried Dr. Denbigh. "Draw back those curtains, madam, if you please; open yonder window."

"The doctor forbade us to open door or window."

"That is a fine old-fashioned style of treatment, madam, which has helped to people our churchyards. You needn't be afraid of the night air. It is a fine dry night, and as wholesome as the day. Pray let those poor children have some fresh air."

Barbara Layburne obeyed, deeming herself the unwilling accessory to a murder. Bridget had rubbed her eyes, and was staring wonderingly at the strange doctor. The village nurse was snoring rhythmically in an adjoining room.

Dr. Denbigh seated himself between the two little beds, and examined the sufferers, each in turn, with ineffable gentleness, with thoughtful patient care.

"The symptoms are exactly the same," he said gravely, "but they are severest here."

It was on Rena that his hand rested. The Squire groaned aloud.

"Shall I lose her?" he asked. "She is my all."

"The child is very ill. What does your doctor call the malady?"

"Scarlet fever."

"Scarlet fever! Why, there is no rash!"

"He tells me that in some cases the rash does not appear – in some of the worst cases."

"This is no scarlet fever, sir. It is typhus – commonly called gaol fever – distinctly marked. It is a low form of putrid fever. Your child and her companion must have been visiting some of the poor folks' cottages, where the disease is often found."

"They have not been beyond the park-gates. You have not taken them among the cottagers, have you, Bridget? You have not disobeyed my strict orders?"

"Never, sir. The little dears will tell you themselves, when they have got their senses back, that I never took them nowheres."

"Have you had any fever case lately among your servants, indoors or out?"

"Mrs. Layburne, yonder, can answer that question better than I."

"No, there has been no such illness," said Barbara.

"Strange," said the doctor; "the fever is gaol fever, and no other."

He wrote a prescription, ordered an entire change of treatment: wine, brandy, the strongest soup that could be made – a chicken boiled down to a breakfast-cupful of broth – and, above all, cleanliness and fresh air. He gave many directions for the comfort of the children, and left within the hour of his arrival, promising to come again in three days, when he would confer with the local doctor. He would write fully to that gentleman next morning, to explain his change of treatment.

"I have no doubt I shall induce him to concur with me," he said.

Mr. Bosworth followed him to the chaise.

"Tell me the truth, for God's sake," he said. "Is there any hope for my child?"

The physician shook his head with a sorrowful air.

"She is very ill; they are both dangerously ill," he answered. "I would not trifle with you for worlds. You are a man, and can meet misfortune with courage and firmness. I doubt if either of those children will recover; but I will do my utmost to save both. If the nurses follow out my instructions exactly, there may be a change for the better within forty-eight hours; if not, the case is hopeless. I would have you prepared for the worst."

They clasped hands and parted. It was some hours before Roland Bosworth went back to the house. He roamed about the park in the cold starry night, brooding over past and future. For the last fifteen years he had given himself up to the pursuit of money for its own sake. He had haunted the City and the Exchange; he had speculated successfully in many a hazardous enterprise at home and abroad. At a period when speculation was but a science in the bud, he had shown himself far in advance of his class. He had added thousand to thousand, gloating over every increase of his capital, every lucky transaction on 'Change; and now it dawned upon him all at once that in the very pursuit of wealth he had lost the faculty for enjoying it; that he had fallen unawares into the miser's sordid habits – had lost all gusto for pleasure, all delight in life. Nothing remained to him but the abstract idea of wealth, and the knowledge that he could leave it behind him as a monument of his own individual greatness when he should be dust. He could only thus leave it – only secure his grip upon the future – through that little child who lay dying yonder within those dimly-lighted windows. Again and again during those melancholy hours he had drawn near the house, had stood for a little while below those lighted windows, looking up at the open lattice, and listening for some sound from within. But there had been nothing – a solemn stillness, as it were the silence of death.

And now, when the first sign of daybreak showed cold and pale above the eastern side of the park, a long gray streak against which the topmost boughs of oak and elm showed inky black, Mr. Bosworth went back to the house from a still wider circuit, and looked up again at the open window. Suddenly as he stood there a long shrill shriek rose on the silent air like a wild appeal to heaven; and then another and another shriek; and then a burst of passionate sobbing.

"It means death," said the Squire, nerving himself like a stoic. "The end has come quickly."

It was Bridget who had screamed. She was sitting on the floor with one of the children on her lap, dead. A handkerchief had been hastily flung over the dead face, upon which Bridget's tears were streaming. Barbara Layburne sat beside the other bed, Rena's bed, soothing the little sufferer.

The Squire stood on the threshold.

"Is my child still alive?" he asked, hardly daring to enter that room of horror.

"Yes. She is a shade better, I think," answered Barbara; "the cold lotions have relieved her head. Poor little Linda changed for the worse soon after the doctor left. We have had a terrible night with her. Her struggling and restlessness at the last were awful. We could not hold her in her bed, and she died in Bridget's arms ten minutes ago."

"O my darling, my darling, my precious pet!" wailed the nurse, with her face bent over that marble face under the handkerchief.

Roland Bosworth gave a long sigh, significant of intense relief; yet this was but a reprieve after all, perhaps. One blossom had withered and fallen from the stem: the other would follow.

"Dr. Denbigh told me that my child was in more imminent danger than the other," he said.

"Ay, but fevers are so capricious," answered Barbara, calm and unshaken in this hour of sorrow, "and with children no one can be sure of anything. Yesterday Rena seemed the worst, but after Dr. Denbigh left Linda began to sink rapidly. We gave her brandy and beaten eggs at half-hour intervals; we cut off her hair and applied the cooling lotion to her head; it was not for want of care that she died."

"What will Rena do without her?" exclaimed the Squire, thinking more of the living than the dead. Linda had never been more to him than a chattel – something bought for his daughter's pleasure.

He went over to the bed, and sat beside it in the faint gray morning light. The candles had guttered and burnt low in the sockets of the massive old silver candlesticks. The morning looked in at the open casement, pale and cold.

They had cropped the child's golden hair close to her head. Pinched with illness and thus shorn of its luxuriant curls, the whole character of the face seemed altered.

"Why did you cut off her hair?" asked the Squire.

"It was by the doctor's orders. Did not you hear him tell us?"

"Ay, to be sure. My wits were wool-gathering."

He bent down and kissed the fevered lips as he had done before. The child was lying in a kind of stupor, neither sleep nor waking.

"Try to save her for me," said Bosworth, as he rose and left the room.

The village nurse was still asleep in the next room; she had watched two nights running, and was indemnifying herself for those two vigils. Bridget and Barbara laid out their dead in another room before they awakened the nurse. The doctor came at nine o'clock, heard what Dr. Denbigh had said, and shrugged his shoulders unbelievingly. He was disposed to ascribe Linda's death to that most reckless opening of a window between midnight and morning. He even affected to disapprove of those shorn tresses which lay in a golden heap upon the dressing-table, Linda's and Rena's so near in tint that it was not easy to distinguish one from the other.

"We shall see the effect of this new-fangled treatment," he said, looking at the prescription. "If Squire Bosworth were a man of society, he would not have committed such a breach of manners as to post off to town and bring down a strange doctor without conferring with me."

"He wanted to save his child," said Barbara.