第194章

He clasped them yet, and trembled still, as from fear. "Don't let me fall! Don't let me fall" the incessant burden of his cry.

The paroxysm passed. They wiped his brow, and stood looking at him; Wilson with a pursed up mouth, and a peculiar expression of face. She put a spoonful of restorative jelly between his lips, and he swallowed it, but shook his head when she would have given him another. Turning his face to the pillow, in a few minutes he was in a doze.

"What could it have been?" exclaimed Lady Isabel, in an undertone, to Wilson.

"/I/ know," was the oracular answer. "I saw this same sort of an attack once before, madame."

"And what caused it?"

"Twasn't in a child though," went on Wilson--"'twas in a grown person.

But that's nothing, it comes for the same thing in all. I think he was taken for death."

"Who?" uttered Lady Isabel, startled.

Wilson made no reply in words, but she pointed with her finger to the bed.

"Oh, Wilson, he is not so ill as that. Mr. Wainwright said this morning, that he might last a week or two."

Wilson composedly sat herself down in the easiest chair. She was not wont to put herself out of the way for the governess; and that governess was too much afraid of her, in one sense, to let her know her place. "As to Wainwright, he's nobody," quoth she. "And if he saw the child's breath going out before his face, and knew that the next moment would be his last, he'd vow to us all that he was good for twelve hours to come. You don't know Wainwright as I do, madame. He was our doctor at mother's; and he has attended in all the places I have lived in since I went out to service. Five years I was maid at Mrs. Hare's. I came here when Miss Lucy was a baby, and in all my places has he attended, like one's shadow. My Lady Isabel thought great guns of old Wainwright, I remember. It was more than I did."

My Lady Isabel made no response to this. She took a seat and watched William through her glasses. His breathing was more labored than usual.

"That idiot, Sarah, says to me to-day, says she, 'Which of his two grandpapas will they bury him by, old Mr. Carlyle or Lord Mount Severn?' 'Don't be a calf!' I answered her. 'D'ye think they'll stick him out in the corner with my lord?--he'll be put into the Carlyle vault, of course,' It would have been different, you see, Madame Vine, if my lady had died at home, all proper--Mr. Carlyle's wife. They'd have buried her, no doubt, by her father, and the boy would have been laid with her. But she did not."

No reply was made by Madame Vine, and a silence ensued; nothing to be heard but that fleeting breath.

"I wonder how that beauty feels?" suddenly broke forth Wilson again, her tone one of scornful irony.

Lady Isabel, her eyes and her thoughts absorbed by William, positively thought Wilson's words must relate to him. She turned to her in surprise.

"That bright gem in the prison at Lynneborough," exclaimed Wilson. "I hope he may have found himself pretty well since yesterday! I wonder how many trainfuls from West Lynne will go to his hanging?"

Isabel's face turned crimson, her heart sick. She had not dared to inquire how the trial terminated. The subject altogether was too dreadful, and nobody had happened to mention it in her hearing.

"Is he condemned?" she breathed, in a low tone.

"He is condemned, and good luck to him! And Mr. Otway Bethel's let loose again, and good luck to /him/. A nice pair they are! Nobody went from this house to hear the trial--it might not have been pleasant, you know, to Mr. Carlyle; but people came in last night and told us all about it. Young Richard Hare chiefly convicted him. He is back again, and so nice-looking, they say--ten times more so than he was when quite a young man. You should have heard, they say, the cheering and shouts that greeted Mr. Richard when his innocence came out; it pretty near rose off the roof of the court, and the judge didn't stop it."

Wilson paused, but there was no answering comment. On she went again.

"When Mr. Carlyle brought the news home last evening, and broke it to his wife, telling her how Mr. Richard had been received with acclamations, she nearly fainted, for she's not strong yet. Mr. Carlyle called out to me to bring some water--I was in the next room with the baby--and there she was, the tears raining from her eyes, and he holding her to him. I always said there was a whole world of love between those two; though he did go and marry another. Mr. Carlyle ordered me to put the water down, and sent me away again. But I don't fancy he told her of old Hare's attack until this morning."

Lady Isabel lifted her aching forehead. "What attack?"

"Why, madame, don't you know. I declare you box yourself up in the house, keeping from everybody, and you hear nothing. You might as well be living at the bottom of a coal-pit. Old Hare had another stroke in the court at Lynneborough, and that's why my mistress is gone to the Grove to-day."

"Who says Richard Hare's come home, Wilson?"

The question--the weak, scarcely audible question--had come from the dying boy. Wilson threw up her hands, and made a bound to the bed.

"The like of that!" she uttered, aside to Mrs. Vine. "One never knows when to take these sick ones. Master William, you hold your tongue and drop to sleep again. Your papa will be home soon from Lynneborough; and if you talk and get tired, he'll say it's my fault. Come shut your eyes. Will you have a bit more jelly?"

William, making no reply to the offer of jelly, buried his face again on the pillow. But he was grievously restless; the nearly worn-out spirit was ebbing and flowing.

Mr. Carlyle was at Lynneborough. He always had much business there at assize time and the /Nisi Prius/ Court; but the previous day he had not gone himself, Mr. Dill had been dispatched to represent him.

Between seven and eight he returned home, and came into William's chamber. The boy brightened up at the well-known presence.

"Papa!"