"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.
"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.
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?"