A Country Sweetheart. Dora Russell
is sad, but there is no doubt football is a dangerous game.”
“How—how long will he be spared to us?” now inquired Mr. Temple with quivering lips.
“He will drift away probably during the night, or in the small hours of the morning. He will not regain consciousness; the injury to the base of the brain is too severe.”
The great surgeon only stayed a few minutes longer in the grief-stricken household after this, and then was driven away. And when he was gone, with a heavy sigh—almost a moan—Mr. Temple began to ascend the staircase, and on the first landing a lady was standing waiting for him with terrible anxiety written on her pale face.
Mr. Temple looked up when he saw her, and shook his head, and as he did this the lady sprang forward and gripped his hand.
“What did he say?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Come in here, my poor Rachel,” he answered gently, and as he spoke he led her forward into a room on the landing, the door of which chanced to be open, and then closed it behind them. “My dear—I grieve very much to say—Sir Henry’s opinion is not very favorable.”
His voice broke and faltered as he said these words, and a sort of gasping sigh escaped the lady’s lips as she listened to them.
“What did he say?” she repeated, with her eyes fixed in a wild stare on Mr. Temple’s face.
“He—he said we must prepare—”
“No, no! not to lose him!” cried the lady with a sudden passionate wail. “Phillip, I can not, I will not! He was so bright a few hours ago—so bright and well—my Phil, my boy—and now, now—it will kill me if he dies!”
She flung herself on the floor in a frantic passion of grief before her husband could prevent her, and lay there writhing in a terrible paroxysm of despair, while the gray-haired man beside her bent over her, and tried in vain to comfort or soothe her. She was his wife, but fully twenty years younger than he was; a handsome dark-eyed woman, of some thirty-five years, and the injured boy lying in the darkened room was her only child.
“Who did it?” she suddenly cried, raising herself up. “Who murdered him? Which of the boys?”
“My dear, it is so difficult to tell in a scramble—so difficult to find out.”
“I will find out!” went on Mrs. Temple, passionately. “I do not believe it was an accident; someone must have struck him on the head. Oh! my boy, my darling!” she continued, rocking herself to and fro; “the one thing I had to love; the only one that loved me—must, must I lose you, too!”
“It is a terrible blow, Rachel—but—”
“Why not try someone else? Do you hear, Phillip?” said Mrs. Temple, now starting to her feet, and grasping her husband’s arm. “Send or telegraph for another doctor at once.”
“My dear, it would do no good,” answered Mr. Temple, sadly. “You heard what Doctor Brown said; Sir Henry Fairfax is one of the first surgeons in town—and—he said there was no hope.”
A wild shriek broke from Mrs. Temple’s lips as she heard this fatal verdict. Her agonized grief was indeed pitiful to behold. Again and again she repeated that her boy was the one being that she had to love; was the only one she loved, and the gray-haired old man sighed deeply as he listened to her frantic words.
She never seemed to think of his grief, nor even to remember it. It was her own loss she harped on; her own misery. But Mr. Temple did not reproach her with this. He did not say my heart, too, is broken; the spring of my life is gone. Yet this was so. The poor lad Phillip Temple, drifting away so fast from life, had been the center of all his hopes, the pivot of all his joy. And he, too, was telling himself sadly, as he listened to his wife’s moans, that the boy had been the only one who had loved him, or who had cared for his love.
“She never loved me,” he thought, looking at the handsome grief-stricken woman before him; and as he did so his memory went back to fifteen years ago; back to the days when he, the squire, had gone wooing to the whitewashed parsonage house, and had won the dark-eyed girl on whom he had set his heart. He had not asked himself then if her heart was his. She seemed to like him; she smiled on him and accepted his presents, and her mother hinted at the advantages of an early wedding-day.
So they were married, and by and by Mr. Temple found out his mistake. She had never loved him, and one morning fell fainting from her chair when she read the news that a soldier cousin had been killed at some distant Indian outpost.
And in the days that followed he learnt the truth. Her cousin had been her lover, but the old hindrance, want of money, had stood between them, and thus Mr. Temple had won his wife. She made very little secret of this to her husband, and did not affect love she could not feel. Her child became her idol, and from the time when the baby boy began first to lisp her name she worshiped him with the whole strength of her passionate, ill-regulated heart.
The boy, however, had been a bond between the husband and wife, and they had got on fairly well together for his sake. They used to talk to each other of his future, and it was a subject equally dear to them both. He was a fine, healthy, clever lad of fourteen when he went out to play football on the fatal day when he was carried back to his father’s house insensible. He had somehow fallen, and a rush of boys had swept over him, and when they raised him up he never spoke again. They took him back to Woodlea Hall; the village doctor was sent for in all haste, and at once advised further advice to be telegraphed for. This was done, and Sir Henry Fairfax arrived from town only to pronounce the case to be hopeless.
It was a terrible affair, people said, terrible for the poor mother and for the poor squire, who somehow was the most popular of the two. Country neighbors called at the lodge gates, with commiserating inquiries, while the parents hung over the speechless boy, waiting in terrible anxiety for Sir Henry Fairfax’s arrival. He came late in the afternoon, and did not stay long. He carefully examined the unconscious lad, heard what the country doctor had to say, and then told the father the truth.
The boy was dying; the little heir to the broad acres and the old name was about done with earthly things. It had been a beautiful day; the sun had blazed down from a cloudless sky on the wide park, the glowing flower-beds, and the green lawns of Woodlea Hall. It seemed a mockery; outside so bright, inside so full of gloom. Still, until Sir Henry Fairfax’s arrival, there had been hope. Doctor Brown, the country doctor, had spoken of “returning consciousness” to the anxious mother. They had watched and waited, however, for that “returning consciousness” in vain. The lad lay white and still, breathing slowly, with closed eyes. He took no notice of his mother’s tender words, of her fond appeals. He did not hear them, and his bright eyes were closed to smile no more.
“Rachel, my dear, will you leave him any longer alone?” at last Mr. Temple ventured to say, as his wife wept and moaned, and he laid his hand on her shoulder as he spoke.
She started and looked up.
“Did you say no hope?” she asked, wildly.
“Sir Henry said—” faltered Mr. Temple.
“Then there is none for me—none, none!” went on the wretched woman, in her despair. “Why should I lose everything? Why should God take everything from me? I have been a good woman for Phil’s sake, and He is going to take him—all the good that is in me will be buried in his grave!”
“Hush, hush, my poor girl; do not talk thus.”
“What do you understand,” continued Mrs. Temple, yet more wildly, “of love like mine? You are old—you do not suffer—”
“I do, God knows I do!” cried the unhappy man, and tears rushed into his eyes, and ran down his furrowed cheeks as he spoke.
“When George Hill died, I bore it for Phil’s sake,” went on Mrs. Temple, regardless, or forgetful, of the useless pain she was inflicting; “and now—and now, my darling, my darling, must I lose