Chapter XIV: An Eventful Evening

THE Colonel found himself in for a month of nursing, or of something nearly approaching thereto. It was a novel position for him. He had always abhorred invalids and eschewed sick-rooms, with the self-indulgence of a man whose own comfort is his prime consideration.

And here he was suddenly, not far from his sixtieth year, after a long and undisturbed bachelor-life, with a frail little creature on his hands, broken-hearted at losing her mother, positively ill from mental stress, entirely dependent on the Colonel's generosity, and unconsciously able to turn him to right and to left with one glance of her sweet sad eyes.

The Colonel succumbed to the new condition of things, once and for all; and Mrs. Burrell had no choice but to follow suit. She was privately wrathful at times, declaring to her daughter and niece that "everything in the house had to give way to that child, whether or no!" meaning, doubtless, "whether or no she herself approved."

But she attempted no open resistance; not even when Colonel Smyth desired that Bertha should sleep in the back bedroom with Rhona, and be considered her special attendant. He offered additional remuneration for the same; and Mrs. Burrell liked the remuneration though not the arrangement. Bertha undertook her share of the matter with silent rapture, and a warm affection sprang up between her and the child.

"You nice Bertha!" Rhona would call her often, in grateful tones.

Of course the Colonel was direfully ignorant as to children's needs and sick people's ways. Hothouse grapes in profusion were all very well, but he was impressed with the necessity for lollypops and bulls-eyes for infant delectation. And his anxiety to "feed up" Rhona upon the rich soups, stews and curries, in which he himself delighted, was only equalled by his astonishment at finding them rejected.

"Mother wouldn't let me," in the child's languid voice, always put an end to persuasions.

But he gave way reluctantly, and found her tastes enigmatical.

Rhona had no appetite and no spirit. She lay day after day upon the sofa, sometimes in her own bedroom, more often in the Colonel's sitting-room, always greeting him with a smile, but unable to employ herself. She had evidently accepted the thought that her mother would not return; and with this acceptance, all interest in life seemed to have died away.

After the first storm of sorrow, there were no more outbreaks; only she would often lie with closed eyes, slow tears stealing from beneath her lashes, while the broad brow was dented with pain. French exercises were no longer attempted; and even story-books, though gratefully received, were not read.

Mrs. Burrell recommended calling in a doctor, but the Colonel was averse to this.

"There was nothing the matter with the child, only fretting," he said. "She would get over it in time."

He did not realise that persistent fretting might at last end in positive illness; and he had an odd feeling that to summon a doctor would imply a need for anxiety. Colonel Smyth did not wish to be made anxious about Rhona, for she was twining herself round his heart. It was curious to see how he shortened his daily walks, and absented himself from his usual outdoor resorts that he might spend hours beside the child.

Mr. Powis came in now and then to visit her, though not greatly encouraged by the Colonel. But as yet, Rhona could say little to either of them. She seemed to want only to lie still.

It came to the Colonel's hearing one day, as a result of his inquiries, that just about the date of Mrs. Mordaunt's disappearance, the body of a woman had been found in a certain canal,—a young woman, dark-haired, slender, dressed in mourning, apparently most respectable, perhaps even a lady, but having about her no name or address. The place was at a considerable distance where the body was discovered, but higher up in its course that same canal passed within a mile and a half of Mrs. Howard's house. The poor young woman had received Parish burial; and beyond these facts the Colonel could find out little. He had, however, small doubt from that hour that his conjecture as to drowning in the fog was correct, and thenceforth, he began to count little Rhona indeed his own.

It was not his intention that Rhona should ever hear this sad tale. But his resolution to keep silence was shaken.

"Rhona, I wish I knew what would do you good," he said one afternoon.

He had taken her on his knee, and she was lying in his arms, sadly silent as usual. The stir of her eyelashes showed that she was not sleeping. Colonel Smyth had a strange sense of pleasure in the feeling of the little head resting on his shoulder. He began to wonder how he had managed to live alone so many years.

"I wish I knew what would do you good," he repeated. "I don't like to see my little girl always so white and tired."

"I shan't be tired—some day—perhaps," murmured the child.

"But I want to know of something that will make you less tired now," he said.

"There isn't anything—except—" Rhona said.

He felt the sigh which finished her broken utterance.

"My little pet, I should like to see you happier," said the Colonel.

"I don't think I am exactly unhappy," said Rhona, with a singular sedateness. "I think I am happy."

Colonel Smyth lifted her up, and looked earnestly into the pale face, with its large wistful eyes.

"No, no, no," he said. "That is not happiness. I want to see you merry and gay like other children—able to jump, and laugh, and play. But it is too soon yet, isn't it? Now, now, don't cry—" as two or three glittering drops fell. "Crying always brings on the pain in this poor little head, and that makes you feel so dull."

"I can't help it when I think of mother," whispered Rhona, with an evident struggle to speak. "It is so—'so' dreadful not to know. If only I just knew! If only I just knew!" And she wrung her hands together.

"Just knew?" repeated the Colonel.

"Where she is!" Rhona answered, with bitter tears. "If only I could know!"

"It is worse being uncertain than not knowing,—even if you had to be sure of the very worst?" the Colonel said questioningly.

"Yes,—oh yes," sobbed the poor child. "I can't bear not to know. I do so want to go to her—and take care of her—if she is ill."

"You poor little mite, you want taking care of yourself," said the Colonel.

And then he debated the matter silently, plunging at length into a sentence, without much idea of how it was to end—

"Rhona, your mother was a good woman, very good,—and she was lonely and had a great many troubles, I suspect. Suppose it was as we fear, that some accident had happened in that fog, and so she never could come back. I don't say it is so, but suppose it were? Mother would be safe in heaven then, wouldn't she? Don't you think she would be very happy there, much happier than she was here?"

The Colonel felt uncomfortable at his own words; for certainly the very last happiness he desired for himself was the happiness of heaven. But he guessed rightly that no other line of argument would avail to comfort Rhona.

"She wouldn't be glad to leave me," the poor little lips faltered.

"But she would be happy there, Rhona—I suppose—with your father, you know. People are always happy in heaven," said the Colonel, vaguely trying to administer the right sort of spiritual consolation.

"Oh yes,—yes," Rhona answered. "If only I knew!"

"It would make you feel easier in mind to picture your mother as in heaven, instead of perhaps suffering among strangers," suggested the Colonel. "Then I can tell you more than you know yet. Can you bear to hear the worst, my little girl? There was somebody found drowned in a canal, soon after that foggy day, and she was dressed in black and had no name upon her. I think it must have been your mother, Rhona. I think she must have lost her way in the fog, and have wandered to the canal and fallen in. They say that drowning is a very painless death,—much more painless than being run over, for instance. And now she will never have any more troubles, you know."

The child heard in absolute silence. He could not detect even a quiver of her eyelids. The Colonel waited silently the space of two minutes, and then grew alarmed. Had she fainted?

"Rhona, my dear! Rhona!" he said. "You are not asleep, my dear?"

"Oh no. I am so glad you have told me," Rhona answered in a low unchildlike voice, full of sorrow, and joy. "I am so glad I know,—so glad I know."

"And you will not fret so much, my little girl," said the Colonel. "You are going to belong to me now, and I am going to take care of you for mother's sake. You will try to love me, Rhona."

"Oh yes, I do love you," Rhona answered in same strange voice, and she sat upright on his knee, deathly pale. "I am so glad."

"Not glad of what I have told you! Impossible, my dear," expostulated the Colonel, not liking the unnatural light in her eyes.

"Oh no!"

He did not know what to make of the child. "Put your head down here, and try to go to sleep," he said coaxingly.

She went back to her former position in obedient fashion, but presently he heard her murmur,—"God's will—"

"Yes,—" said Colonel Smyth uneasily.

"Mother said I must love His will,—every bit of it. I couldn't till now."

"People are not expected to like trouble, Rhona."

"No, not trouble," Rhona replied in sweet grave tones. "But God's will."

"I suppose that sometimes comes to the same thing," said the Colonel.

Rhona did not attempt to disentangle the matter for him; perhaps she did not even see his difficulty. Her next remark startled him considerably.

"I wish it was time for me to go too!"

"To go to bed?"

She fairly smiled. "Oh no. I meant, to go to heaven."

"My dear, you must not talk like that. It is positively wrong," said the Colonel. "I never heard of such a thing! A little girl of your age wanting to be dead! It is quite wicked."

"Is it? Mother didn't tell me so," soberly answered Rhona, less affected by the Colonel's energetic protest than he had intended her to be.

A happy thought struck the Colonel. "I am sure your friend, Mr. Powis, would say the same. You talk of liking God's will, and then you want to die in a hurry before your right time. Why, the two things are incompatible. Of course it is not the Divine Will that everybody should die directly trouble comes. People must show submission and bear up courageously, or the world would come to a standstill. You ought to wish to live, and to do your duty in your station, and to be—ahem—a useful member of society," concluded the Colonel, looking down with a rather odd feeling upon the pure and peaceful little face.

"Yes," answered Rhona meekly. "I suppose I didn't think of all that. I only wanted so much to be with mother. But I should like to be a 'useful member' very much,—only I don't exactly know what it means."

The Colonel's lips twitched under his moustache.

Rhona had her most thoughtful look.

"Oh, I know—" she said after a pause. "There's a chapter in the Bible, with ever so much about members, and one member feeling with the rest. Mother talked about that sometimes. She said all the members might be useful in their own ways."

The Colonel grunted a monosyllabic answer.

"But I don't see how I can be useful to you," said Rhona gently.

"You shall mend my gloves for me, some day,—when you are well. I have never had anybody to do that for me since—"

"Since you were at home and your own sisters did it?" suggested Rhona.

"No, not my sisters. I meant somebody else," said the Colonel, in a constrained voice.

"Was it a great friend? Somebody that you loved very much?" asked Rhona, deeply interested.

The Colonel's sunburnt face changed a little. "Yes," he said. "But that is a long while ago."

"And was she very fond of you?" asked Rhona.

"I thought so—at one time," muttered the Colonel.

"And did she always go on mending your gloves as long as she lived?" pursued the child.

"Oh dear, no,—not nearly so long. She grew tired of me," said the Colonel, with a thin disguise of outside indifference, penetrated at once by Rhona.

She gave him one sorrowful look, and then clasped his arm.

"I don't like her at all. She ought not to have got tired. You are so good and so kind. But I shall always, always like to mend your gloves, uncle. And I shall always love you."

"You are my own dear little girl!" whispered the Colonel.

He sat up late that evening, alone in the drawing-room, with a book on his knees which he could not read. Memories of olden days were stirred,—memories of one, once dear to him, nay always dear, though the love which still lived in his heart was mingled with bitterness. Colonel Smyth was one of those rare specimens of mankind, with whom to be once deceived is to be always deceived, once disappointed always disappointed. Not that his had been an unhappy life. He had found other interests, had made other friends. But no second woman could fill the place once held in his heart by a certain Margaret Willis; no later love could usurp the place of his first love. His brother officers had found him brave and true; not a religious man, even in profession, but morally irreproachable; and among them he had been as a rule popular. Towards women, however, his ordinary manners had been marked by a brusquerie which in the opinion of some amounted even to bearishness,—until little Rhona won her way into his affections, putting aside all barriers.

"Would she be like the rest of them?" he sometimes inquired mentally, jumbling "the rest of them" dismally together in the grey light of his own early disappointment. Would she ever become fickle and uncertain, ever learn to rejoice in her womanly power to wound? He put this question to himself now, sitting alone in the lamplight, and his own answer was an emphatic negative. A vision rose in his mind of a fair and brilliant face, side by side with Rhona's placid brow and sweet eyes.

"No, no, no,—wonderfully alike, but not the same. And Rhona has had a different training. Too much religious talk of course; but something genuine below."

From memories of Margaret Willis, he passed by an easy transition to yet earlier recollections. He felt himself once again a little boy at his mother's knee,—a peculiar and wilful child understood by no one except that mother, so early taken away. His life after her death had been a continuous knocking of his own hard corners against those of other people, more especially in the home-circle.

He could hardly have told at first what had called up these pictures, till he seemed suddenly to hear his mother's soft voice asking,—"Does my Harry love Jesus?" That was the association; Rhona's reverent utterance of the holy Name.

Everybody else in the house had gone to bed; and still the Colonel sat on, plunged in deep reverie. The reverie unexpectedly became slumber.

Had Colonel Smyth not been thus stirred and roused, so as to break through his usual habits, they might have all been burnt to death in their beds that night. It was one of those merciful mysterious Providences, which we may note but cannot explain, except by ascribing them to Divine watchfulness and Fatherly care.

The Colonel slept long and soundly, leaning back in his comfortable easy-chair. But by-and-by a dream began to trouble him.

He thought himself sailing on the high seas, going out to India, young again in years, with hopes for the future bright and strong within him. He was not alone, for two women stood, one on either side of him; on the right his mother, as he dimly remembered her, soft and tender and shadowy; on the left a young girl, brilliantly fair and beautiful, so like little Rhona in feature that she might be Rhona grown up, only 'not' Rhona.

"She is mine now,—my own," Colonel Smyth murmured. "Mine always. No one can ever take her from me."

He would have clasped her hand, but the fingers round which his own closed were cold as ice, and seemed to shrink out of his grasp. Then as he looked at her, she slowly faded and changed, till Margaret was gone, and little Rhona stood there in her stead, looking up with wistful eyes, and saying, "I shall always love you, uncle."

Even in his sleep, Colonel Smyth sighed bitterly, though he laid a kind hand on the child's head.

Then suddenly, he saw red flames springing from the deck, in front and on either side, and the air was thick with smoke. None but himself seemed to see the peril they were in. Captain and crew went quietly about their occupations, while those red flames curled upwards, and a strange sense of nightmare withheld the Colonel from uttering a sound. Rhona stood by him still, but his mother's form was changing.

"Must I lose all again?" he vainly strove to say.

And she answered the unspoken question in soft far-off tones, "Yes,—all,—until my Harry learns to know and to serve JESUS."

She seemed to pass away like a mist-wreath into the flames, with a smile upon her lips.

Then at length, the cry of "Fire! Fire!" burst from the Colonel, but nobody paid attention.

He called aloud in vain, while the flames drew nearer, and he was rooted to the spot. He struggled fiercely in his sleep, under the sense of helplessness. And as he strove, Rhona turned to him with an ineffable smile, and the Name upon her lips which she so loved to utter. Then she too passed upwards, and the Colonel was left alone, feeling himself cut off from her for ever.

"Rhona! Rhona! Come back!" he cried, and there the dream ended.

Colonel Smyth awoke, absolutely trembling, and covered with cold perspiration. "Pshaw!" he exclaimed. "How utterly absurd! I never dreamt such nonsense in my life."

He pulled out his watch mechanically. "Half-past one! Unearthly hours! No wonder I took to dreaming. Something at dinner must have disagreed with me. Well,—I must go to bed at once."

Ha! What was this strange odour, and the thick mistiness filling the air, both of which the Colonel had at the first moment been too bewildered to perceive?

"Smoke! That's not right!" He started immediately into full wakefulness.

Three strides took him to the door, but when he flung it open, eddying wreaths came rolling in. The Colonel recoiled, aghast. A strong smell of burning pervaded the atmosphere, and distant crackling with a continuous low roar struck upon his ear.

The house was on fire,—and not a soul among the sleepers aware of the fact. Standing there,—as for one half-second he did stand,—he could distinctly hear the landlady's nasal utterances upstairs.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" Shouts from the street now reached him. Had the outer world only just become aware of the terrible fact?

"Fire! Fire! Wake up! The house is on fire!" rang through the passages in the Colonel's stentorian tones.

An answering shriek from above showed that he was heard. Disregarding all else, he rushed into Rhona's room.

A fierce glow from beneath cast sufficient light through the striped blind to guide his steps. But the heat was intense, and the smoke stifling. The fire seemed to have originated on this side of the house.

A sharp shake aroused Bertha, and she sprang up, stupefied yet conscious. Five minutes later, she would have been past easy awakening.

"Quick, not a minute to spare," the Colonel said, as he passed on, and caught up the sleeping child, wrapping a large woollen shawl around her.

"Throw on anything—dressing-gown and blanket. Ha!" as the contact of her bare feet with the floor caused an exclamation. "Yes, your shoes. Quick, my good girl."

Rhona lay heavily in his arms, uttering not a sound. The Colonel paused an instant to snatch up a long towel, plunge it in water, and twist it round the lower part of his face, letting one end drop protectingly over Rhona's mouth and nose. He dipped a second, and flung it to Bertha.

"Do as I do," he said briefly. "Now come."

Opening the door, he went straight to the stairs, followed closely by Bertha. What had become of the two upstairs, he could not pause to think. His whole energies were bent on saving little Rhona first from the terrible death with which she was threatened.

Thick waves of smoke met them, stinging and choking. But for the protecting towels, they could not have advanced a dozen steps.

Descent by the staircase was impossible. That soon became evident. The roar of flames and the rush of burning smoke increased each instant.

Colonel Smyth grasped Bertha's arm, feeling her stagger. "Back! Back!" he said. "Upstairs at once! To my bedroom! This way is hopeless."

How they managed the ascent, he never afterwards knew. Supporting the child on one arm, upholding and urging Bertha with the other, he seemed possessed of almost superhuman strength. Leaving the drawing-room floor behind, they pressed upwards, guided by the glare of light from below, and by screams from above.

Mrs. Burrell and Hope had quitted their own bedroom at the back of the house, for a glance downstairs, being at once beaten back by the sights and sounds encountered. They had rushed into the Colonel's front bedroom, to find no Colonel there. Hope was leaning out of one window in her nightdress, shrieking continuously; and Mrs. Burrell, in a red shawl, stood by her, wearing a look of utter despair.