The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

Not till I was released did I learn from Sandy Mackaye that my cousin George was the vicar of his church, and that he was about to marry Lillian Winnstay.

IV.--In Exile

Brave old Sandy Mackaye died on the morning of the tenth of April, 1848, the day of the great Chartist demonstration at Kennington Common. Mackaye had predicted failure, and every one of his predictions came true. The people did not rise. Whatever sympathy they had with us, they did not care to show it. The meeting broke up pitiably piecemeal, drenched and cowed, body and soul, by pouring rain.

That same night, after wandering dispiritedly in the streets by the river, I was sick with typhus fever.

I know not for how long my dreams and delirium lasted, but I know that at last I sank into a soft, weary, happy sleep.

Then the spell was snapped. My fever and my dreams faded away together, and I woke to the twittering of the sparrows and the scent of the poplars, and found Eleanor, Lady Ellerton, and her uncle sitting by my bed, and with them Crossthwaite's little wife.

I would have spoken, but Eleanor laid her finger on her lips, and taking her uncle's arm, glided from the room.

Slowly, and with relapses into insensibility, I passed, like one who recovers from drowning, through the painful gate of birth into another life.

Crossthwaite and his wife, as they sat by me, tender and careful nurses both, told me in time that to Eleanor I owed all my comforts. "She's an angel out of heaven," he said. "Ah, Alton, she was your true friend all the time, and not that other one, if you had but known it."

I could not rest till I had heard more of Lady Ellerton.

"Why, then, she lives not far off. When her husband died, she came, my wife Katie tells me, and lived for one year down somewhere in the East End, among the needlewomen. And now she's got a large house hereby, with fifty or more in it, all at work together, sharing the earnings among themselves, and putting into their own pockets the profits which would have gone to their tyrants; and she keeps the accounts for them, and gets the goods sold, and manages everything, and reads to them while they work, and teaches them every day."

Crossthwaite went on to speak of Mackaye.

"When old Mackaye's will was read, he had left £400 he'd saved, to be parted between you and me, on condition that we'd go and cool down across the Atlantic, and if it hadn't been for your illness, I'd have been in Texas now."

Often did I see Eleanor in those days of convalescence, but it was not till a month had gone by that I summoned courage to ask after my cousin. Eleanor looked solemnly at me.

"Did you not know it? He is dead--of typhus fever. He died three weeks ago; and not only he, but the servant who brushed his clothes, and the shopman who had a few days before brought him a new coat home."