Chapter II

It was autumn weather--October. A lot of us were steaming over to Worcester in the train. Miss Whitney from Cheltenham, and a friend of hers--a maiden lady as ancient as herself, one Miss Conaway, of Devonshire--were staying at the Hall. Miss Conaway did not know Worcester, and was now being taken to see it--especially the cathedral. Lady Whitney, Helen, Anna, and I made up the party, and we filled the carriage. My being with them arose from chance: I had come over accidentally that morning to Whitney Hall. Of course Helen hoped to see something besides the cathedral her curate. For in June Mr. Leafchild, then in priest's orders, entered on his new curacy at Worcester, there to stay until the expected living should fall in.

"How is he?" I asked Helen, bending over the arm of the seat that divided us.

"Working himself to death," she whispered back to me, her tone a cross one.

"He said he was glad there would be plenty of work, you know. And it is a large parish."

"But he need not let it put _everything_ else out of his head."

"Meaning you?"

"I have not heard from him for more than a week. Papa had a letter from Dr. Leafchild this morning. He said in it that Charles, when he last wrote, complained of being poorly."

"A great many curates do get very overtaxed."

"Oh, and what do you think?" went on Helen. "He is actually beginning to have scruples about taking that living, on the score that there'll be hardly any work to do."

"But--he will take it!"

"Yes, I suppose he _will_, because of me; but it will go against the grain, I fancy. I do think one may have too strict a conscience."

It was past one o'clock when we reached Worcester. Lady Whitney complained in the train of having started too late. First of all there was luncheon to be taken at the Star: that brought it to past two. Then various other things had to be done: see the cathedral, and stay the afternoon service, go over the china works at Diglis, and buy a bundle of articles at the linen-draper's. All these duties over, they meant to invade Mr. Leafchild's lodgings in Paradise Row.

They took the draper's to begin with, the whole of them trooping in, one after another, like sheep into a pen: and I vow that they only came out again when the bell was going for three-o'clock service. Helen was not in a genial mood: at this rate there would not be much time left for visiting the curate.

"It was Aunt Ann's fault," she grumbled to me--"and mamma's. They were a good half-hour looking at the stuff for the children's winter frocks. Aunt Ann maintained that cashmere was best, mamma held to merino. All the shelves they had taken down! I would not be a linen-draper's shopman for the world."

Just in time, were we, to get into our seats before the procession of clergy and choristers came in. The chanter that afternoon was Mr. Leafchild's rector: I knew him to speak to. But there's no space to linger upon details.

A small knot of people, ourselves and others, had collected in the transept after service, waiting for one of the old bedesmen to do the honours of the cathedral, when the chanter came down the steps of the south aisle, after disrobing in the vestry.

"Do you know who he is?" I said to Helen, who was standing with me a little apart.

"No--how should I know? Except that he must be one of the minor canons."

"He is Mr. Leafchild's rector."

"Is he?" she eagerly cried, the colour coming into her face. And just then he chanced to look our way, and nodded to me. I went up to him to speak.

"This is a terrible thing about Leafchild," he exclaimed in a minute or two.

"What is it?" I asked, my breath stopping.

Helen, who had slowly paced after me on the white flags, stood stock still and turned as pale as you please.

"Have you not heard of his illness? Perhaps not, though: it has been so sudden. A few days ago he was apparently as well as I am now. But it was only last night that the doctors began to apprehend danger."

"Is it fever?"

"Yes. A species of typhoid, I believe. Whether caught in his ministrations or not, I don't know. Though I suppose it must have been. He is lying at his lodgings in Paradise Row. Leafchild has not seemed in good condition lately," continued the clergyman. "He is most unremitting in his work, fags himself from morning till night, and lives anyhow: so perhaps he was not fortified to resist the attack of an enemy. He is very ill: and since last night he has been unconscious."

"He is _dangerously_ ill, did you say?" spoke poor Helen, biting her lips to hide their tremor.

"Almost more than dangerous: I fear there is little hope left," he answered, never of course suspecting who Helen was. "Good-afternoon."

She followed him with her eyes as he turned to the cloister-door: and then moved away towards the north entrance, looking as one dazed.

"Helen, where are you going?"

"To see him."

"Oh, but it won't do. It won't, indeed, Helen."

"_I am going to see him_," she answered, in her most wilful tone. "Don't you hear that he is dying? I know he is; I feel it instinctively as a sure and certain fact. If you have a spark of goodness you'll come with me, Johnny Ludlow. It's all the same--whether you do or not."

I looked around for our party. They had disappeared up the other aisle under convoy of the bedesman, leaving Helen and myself to follow at our leisure; or perhaps not noticing our absence. Helen, marching away with quick steps, passed out at the grand entrance.

"It is not _safe_ for you to go, Helen," I remonstrated, as we went round the graveyard and so up High Street. "You would catch the fever from him."

"_I_ shall catch no fever."

"He caught it."

"I wish you'd be quiet. Can't you _see_ what I am suffering?"

The sweetest sight to me just then would have been Lady Whitney, or any one else holding authority over Helen. I seemed responsible for any ill that might ensue: and yet, what could I do?

"Helen, pray listen to a word of reason! See the position you put me in. A fever is not a light thing to risk."

"I don't believe that typhoid fever is catching. He did not say typhus."

"Of course it's catching."

"Are you afraid of it?"

"I don't know that I am afraid. But I should not run into it by choice. And I'm sure you ought not to."

We were just then passing that large druggist's shop that the Squire always called Featherstonhaugh's--just because Mr. Featherstonhaugh once kept it. Helen darted across the street and into it.

"A pound of camphor," said she, to the young man behind the right-hand counter.

"A pound of camphor!" he echoed. "Did you say _a pound_, ma'am?"

"Is it too much?" asked Helen. "I want some to put about me: I am going to see some one who is ill."

It ended in his giving her two ounces. As we left the shop she handed part of it to me, stowing the rest about herself. And whether it was thanks to the camphor, I don't know, but neither of us took any harm.

"There. You can't grumble now, Johnny Ludlow."

Paradise Row, as every one knows, is right at the other end of the town, past the Tything. We had nearly reached the house when a gentleman, who looked like a doctor, came out of it.

"I beg your pardon," said Helen, accosting him as he met us, and coughing to hide her agitation, "but we think--seeing you come out of the house--that you may be attending Mr. Leafchild. Is he better?"

The doctor looked at us both, and shook his head as he answered--

"Better in one sense of the word, in so far as that he is now conscious; worse in another. He is sinking fast."

A tremor shook Helen from head to foot. She turned away to hide it. I spoke.

"Do you mean--dying?"

"I fear so."

"Are his friends with him?"

"Not any of them. His father was sent to yesterday, but he has not yet come. We did not write before, not having anticipated danger."

"Why don't they have Henry Carden to him?" cried Helen in passionate agitation as the doctor walked away. "_He_ could have cured him."

"No, no, Helen; don't think that. Other men are just as clever as Henry Carden. They have only one treatment for fever."

A servant-girl answered the door, and asked us into the parlour. She took us for the relations from the north. Mr. Leafchild was lying in a room near--a comfortable bed-chamber. Three doctors were attending him, she said; but just now the nurse was alone with him. Would we like to go in? she added: we had been expected all day.

"Come with me, Johnny," whispered Helen.

He was lying in bed, white and still, his eyes wide open. The nurse, a stout old woman in light print gown and full white apron, stood at a round table in the corner, noiselessly washing a wine-glass. She turned her head, curtsied, and bustled out of the room.

But wasn't he weak, as his poor thin hands clasped Helen's! His voice was hollow as he tried to speak to her. The bitter tears, running down her checks, were dropping on to the bed-clothes.

"You should not have come", he managed to say. "My love, my love!"

"Is there no hope?" she sobbed. "Oh, Charles, is there _no_ hope?"

"May God soothe it to you! May He have you always in His good keeping!"

"And is it no trouble to you to die?" she went on, reproach in her anguished tone. "Have you no regret for the world, and--and for those you leave behind?"

"It is God's will," he breathed. "To myself it is no trouble, for He has mercifully taken the trouble from me. I regret you, my Helen, I regret the world. Or, rather, I should regret it, but that I know I am going to one brighter and better. You will come to me there, my dear one, and we shall live together for ever."

Helen knelt down by the bed; he was lying close on the edge of it; and laid her wet face against his. He held her to him for a moment, kissed her fervently, and then motioned to me to take her away.

"For your own sake, my dear," he whispered. "You are in danger here. Give my dear love to them all."

Helen just waved her hand back at me, as much as to say, Don't _you_ interfere. But at that moment the fat old nurse bustled in again, with the announcement that two of the doctors and Mr. Leafchild's rector were crossing the road. That aroused Helen.

One minute's close embrace, her tears bedewing his dying cheeks, one lingering hand-clasp of pain, and they parted. Parted for all time. But not for eternity.

"God be with you ever!" he breathed, giving her his solemn blessing. "Farewell, dear Johnny Ludlow!"

"I am so sorry! If you could but get well!" I cried, my eyes not much dryer than Helen's.

"I shall soon be well: soon," he answered with a sweet faint smile, his feeble clasp releasing my hand, which he had taken. "But not here. Fare you well."

Helen hid herself in a turn of the passage till the doctors had gone in, and then we walked down the street together, she crying softly. Just opposite Salt Lane, a fly passed at a gallop. Dr. Leafchild sat in it muffled in coats, a cloud of sorrow on his generally pompous face.

* * * * *

And that was the abrupt end of poor Charles Leafchild, for he died at midnight, full of peace. God's ways are not as our ways; or we might feel tempted to ask why so good and useful a servant should have been taken.

And so, you perceive, there was another marriage of Helen Whitney frustrated. Fortune seemed to be against her.

JELLICO'S PACK.