Part 9 (1/2)
The poor woman looked at him with tears of gladness in her eyes.
”G.o.d bless you, Fred!” she murmured. ”It is long, long, since you spoke like that. But I knew you would. I have always expected that you would. Praise the Lord!”
Fred tried to speak, and again found that he could not, but the fountain of his soul was opened. He laid his face on his mother's hand and sobbed bitterly.
Those who witnessed this scene stood as if spellbound. As far as sound or motion went these two might have been in the room alone. Presently the sound of sobbing ceased, and Fred, raising his head, began gently to stroke the hand he held in his. Sometime in his wild career, he knew not when or where, he had heard it said that this slight action had often a wonderful power to soothe the sick. He continued it for some time. Then the doctor advanced and gazed into the invalid's countenance.
”She sleeps,” he said, in a low tone.
”May I stay beside her?” whispered Fred.
Lawrence nodded a.s.sent, and then motioning to the others to withdraw, followed them into Mrs Roby's room, where he told them that her sleeping was a good sign, and that they must do their best to prevent her being disturbed.
”It won't be necessary for any one to watch. Her son will prove her best attendant just now; but it may be as well that some one should sit up in this room, and look in now and then to see that the candle doesn't burn out, and that all is right. I will go now, and will make this my first visit in the morning.”
”Captain Wopper,” said Lewis Stoutley, in a subdued voice, when Lawrence had left, ”I won this ten-pound note to-night from Fred. I--I robbed him of it. Will you give it to him in the morning?”
”Yes, my lad, I will,” said the Captain.
”And will you let me sit up and watch here tonight?”
”No, my lad, I won't. I mean to do that myself.”
”But do let me stay an hour or so with you, in case anything is wanted,”
pleaded Lewis.
”Well, you may.”
They sat down together by the fireside, Mrs Roby having lain down on her bed with her clothes on, but they spoke never a word; and as they sat there, the young man's busy brain arrayed before him many and many a scene of death, and sickness, and suffering, and sorrow, and madness, and despair, which, he knew well from hearsay (and he now believed it), had been the terrible result of gambling and drink.
When the hour was past, the Captain rose and said, ”Now, Lewis, you'll go, and I'll take a look at the next room.”
He put off his shoes and went on tiptoe. Lewis followed, and took a peep before parting.
Fred had drawn three chairs to the bedside and lain down on them, with his shoulders resting on the edge of the bed, so that he could continue to stroke his mother's hand without disturbing her. He had continued doing so until his head had slowly drooped upon the pillow; and there they now lay, the dissipated son and the humble Christian mother, sleeping quietly together.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
THE GREAT WHITE MOUNTAIN.
We are in Switzerland now; in the ”land of the mountain and the flood”-- the land also of perennial ice and snow. The solemn presence of the Great White Mountain is beginning to be felt. Its pure summit was first seen from Geneva; its shadow is now beginning to steal over us.
We are on the road to Chamouni, not yet over the frontier, in a carriage and four. Mrs Stoutley, being a lady of unbounded wealth, always travels post in a carriage and four when she can manage to do so, having an unconquerable antipathy to railroads and steamers. She could not well travel in any other fas.h.i.+on here, railways not having yet penetrated the mountain regions in this direction, and a mode of ascending roaring mountain torrents in steamboats not having yet been discovered. She might, however, travel with two horses, but she prefers four. Captain Wopper, who sits opposite Emma Gray, wonders in a quiet speculative way whether ”the Mines” will produce a dividend sufficient to pay the expenses of this journey. He is quite disinterested in the thought, it being understood that the Captain pays his own expenses.
But we wander from our text, which is--the Great White Mountain. We are driving now under its shadow with Mrs Stoutley's party, which, in addition to the Captain and Miss Gray, already mentioned, includes young Dr George Lawrence and Lewis, who are on horseback; also Mrs Stoutley's maid (Mrs Stoutley never travels without a maid), Susan Quick, who sits beside the Captain; and Gillie White, _alias_ the Spider and the Imp, who sits beside the driver, making earnest but futile efforts to draw him into a conversation in English, of which language the driver knows next to nothing.
But to return: Mrs Stoutley and party are now in the very heart of scenery the most magnificent; they have penetrated to a great fountain-head of European waters; they are surrounded by the cliffs, the gorges, the moraines, and are not far from the snow-slopes and ice-fields, the couloirs, the seracs, the creva.s.ses, and the ice-precipices and pinnacles of a great glacial world; but not one of the party betrays the smallest amount of interest, or expresses the faintest emotion of surprise, owing to the melancholy fact that all is shrouded in an impenetrable veil of mist through which a thick fine rain percolates as if the mountain monarch himself were bewailing their misfortunes.
”Isn't it provoking?” murmured Mrs Stoutley drawing her shawl closer.