We sat on and on in the dusk. After a time Hannah went away. We
scarcely noticed her when she got up. She stooped and kissed us, and
said, "Poor children!" and it seemed to me as she left the room as
though she were our old nurse back again, caring for us as she used to
do when we were motherless and too young to see after ourselves. But
she went, and she had scarcely disappeared through the door before we
forgot her, we were so absorbed waiting for the message which might come
to us any moment from upstairs.
Hannah had not been gone ten minutes before we heard a carriage with a
pair of horses dash up to the door. It stopped. We heard the muffled
thud of the wheels on the thick straw outside, and we heard the door of
the carriage being opened, and two men got out. They were not kept
waiting an instant at the door. Muriel, our parlour-maid, must have
been expecting them. We heard them enter, and they went upstairs quite
softly, making little sound on the thick carpets.
Then there was silence. Alex clasped my hand and squeezed it very hard;
and as to Charley, he rumpled up his hair and finally buried his head in
my lap and began to sob afresh. I was glad to be with them both; I felt
very close to them. All else was forgotten except the two boys who
belonged to me, who were my very, very own, and the father who might be
dying upstairs.
By-and-by the doctors went away; the carriage disappeared, and there was
silence again in the house, only the muffled sound of carts and
carriages going over the street outside; but nobody came near us.
"It looks bad," said Alex.
He raised his face. The room was quite dark. Muriel had not come in to
turn on the gas or to build up the fire. We were glad she had not done
so. We thought it kind of her. A piece of coal fell into a great chasm
of red now, and broke into a flame, and I saw Alex's face; it was
ghastly white.
"It is quite awful, isn't it?" he said.
"She certainly said she would come down if there was no hope," I said.
"But oughtn't she to let us know, Dumps?"
"She would certainly come if she could," I answered.
After a time my cramped limbs compelled me to rise. I stood up, and the
two boys looked at me reflectively.
"Where are you going, Rachel? Where are you going?"
"I can't stand it any longer," I said. "I am his daughter, and you are
his sons, and I think we ought to be there. I do--I do."
"No," said Alex firmly; "I am not going against _her_. She has managed
him all along. It would be frightfully unkind to do anything to risk
giving him a start or anything of that sort. She said she'd bring us to
him if it were necessary. I am not going to stir."
"Will you come, Charley?" I said.
"No; I'll stick to Alex," he responded.
He went closer to his brother as he spoke, and flung his arm round him
with all the abandon of one who was altogether carried out of himself.
I did not speak. I felt alone again, outside my brothers and their
love; but just because I was so alone I thought more than ever of my
father. I had rushed away from Paris to be in time; I would see him
again. I left the room and crept softly upstairs. All day long I had
been wearing my travelling-boots; it did not seem worth while to take
them off; nobody had given me a thought. For the first time since my
step-mother came I had been neglected in our now comfortable home.
When I reached the landing where the great, desolate room which had been
made so comfortable by my step-mother was situated, I took off my shoes
and stood very quiet. I saw that the door of my father's room was
slightly ajar. Inside there was the flickering light of a fire--not a
very big fire; there was a screen round the bed. I felt more and more a
keen and passionate desire to enter the room. I could bear it no
longer. I crept inside the door and round by the screen. Then I saw
that the room had been changed since I had noticed it last. The great
four-poster was removed, and a man was lying on a little iron bedstead
drawn out almost into the middle of the room. There was a woman seated
close to him. She sat very still; she did not seem to move. The man
also, who was lying on his back, was motionless. A wild terror seized
me. Was he dead? Oh! I feared death at that moment, but still that
impulse, uncontrollable, growing stronger each moment, compelled me
forward, and still more forward, and at last I came very near the woman.
She roused herself when she saw me. There was no reproach of any sort
on her face. It was very white, but her eyes had never looked sweeter.
Just for an instant I wondered if she would rise and take me by the hand
and lead me from the room; but, instead of that, she held out her hand
to me and drew me close, and motioned to me to kneel by the bed. I did
kneel. I heard the quick breathing, and noticed the cadaverous, worn
face, the dark lashes lying on the cheeks, the hair tossed back from the
lofty and magnificent brow. Something seemed to clutch at my heart;
then my step-mother's voice sounded in my ears:
"You and I will watch by him together."
After that I felt that nothing really mattered; and I knew also that the
barrier between my step-mother's heart and mine had vanished. I looked
at her; my eyes were full; I took her hand and, stooping, kissed it
several times. Then she too dropped on her knees, and we remained
motionless together.
All night long we knelt by the Professor's side, and all night long he
slept. It was about five in the morning when he opened his eyes. Dr
Robinson was standing by the other side of the bed; he was holding his
hand and feeling his pulse.
"Come," said the doctor in a cheerful tone, "you have had a famous
sleep. You are better; and now you must take this;" and he put a strong
restorative between my father's white lips.
"Take me away--_mother_!" I said.
I could not contain myself. She led me as far as the door. I do not
think she said a word; but she herself returned to the room. I rushed
up to my own room, and there I flung myself on my bed and cried as
though my very heart would break.
Oh, shadow, shadow of my own mother, were you really angry with me then?
Or did you, in the light of God's Presence, understand too well what
love really meant ever to be angry any more? For everything that was
not love, that was not gratitude towards the new mother who had come
into my life, had vanished for ever and ever while I knelt that night by
my father's bedside.
By-and-by, in the course of that day, I kissed her and told her
something of what I felt. She understood, as I think she always did
understand even my thoughts before they were uttered.
And so I turned over a new page in life, and my father was spared to us
after all.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The End.