THE DEATH CHAMBER.
By the side of William Carlyle’s dying bed knelt the Lady Isabel. The
time was at hand, and the boy was quite reconciled to his fate.
Merciful, indeed, is God to dying children! It is astonishing how very
readily, when the right means are taken, they may be brought to look
with pleasure, rather than fear, upon their unknown journey.
The brilliant hectic, type of the disease, had gone from his cheeks, his
features were white and wasted, and his eyes large and bright. His silky
brown hair was pushed off his temples, and his little hot hands were
thrown outside the bed.
“It won’t be very long to wait, you know, will it, Madame Vine?”
“For what, darling?”
“Before they all come. Papa and mamma, and Lucy, and all of them.”
A jealous feeling shot across her wearied heart. Was she nothing to him?
“Do you not care that I should come to you, William?”
“Yes, I hope you will. But do you think we shall know everybody in
Heaven? Or will it be only our own relations?”
“Oh, child! I think there will be no relations, as you call it, up
there. We can trust all that to God, however it may be.”
William lay looking upward at the sky, apparently in thought, a dark
blue, serene sky, from which shone the hot July sun. His bed had been
moved toward the window, for he liked to sit in it, and look at the
landscape. The window was open now, and the butterflies and bees sported
in the summer air.
“I wonder how it will be?” pondered he, aloud. “There will be the
beautiful city, its gates of pearl, and its shining precious stones, and
its streets of gold; and there will be the clear river, and the trees
with their fruits and their healing leaves, and the lovely flowers; and
there will be the harps, and music, and singing. And what else will
there be?”
“Everything that is desirable and beautiful, William; but, what we may
not anticipate here.”
Another pause. “Madame Vine, will Jesus come for me, do you think, or
will He send an angel?”
“Jesus has promised to come for His own redeemed--for those who love Him
and wait for Him.”
“Yes, yes, and then I shall be happy forever. It will be so pleasant to
be there, never to be tired or ill again.”
“Pleasant? Ay! Oh, William! Would that the time were come!”
She was thinking of herself--of her freedom--though the boy knew it not.
She buried her face in her hands and continued speaking; William had to
bend his ear to catch the faint whisper.
“‘And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying: neither
shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.’”
“Madame Vine, do you think mamma will be there?” he presently asked. “I
mean mamma that was.”
“Ay, ere long.”
“But how shall I know her? You see, I have nearly forgotten what she was
like.”
She leaned over him, laying her forehead upon his wasted arm, and burst
into a flood of impassioned tears. “You will know her, never fear,
William; she has not forgotten you.”
“But how can we be sure that she will be there?” debated William, after
a pause of thought. “You know”--sinking his voice, and speaking with
hesitation--“she was not quite good; she was not good enough to papa or
to us. Sometimes I think, suppose she did not grow good, and did not ask
God to forgive her!”
“Oh, William!” sobbed the unhappy lady, “her whole life, after she left
you, was one long scene of repentance, of seeking forgiveness. Her
repentance, her sorrow, was greater than she could bear, and----”
“And what?” asked William, for there was a pause.
“Her heart broke in it--yearning after you and your father.”
“What makes you think it?”
“Child, I know it!”
William considered. Then, had he been strong enough, he would have
started up with energy. “Madame Vine, you could only know that by
mamma’s telling you! Did you ever see her? Did you know her abroad?”
Lady Isabel’s thoughts were far away--up in the clouds perhaps. She
reflected not on the possible consequences of her answer, or she had
never given it.
“Yes, I knew her abroad.”
“Oh!” said the boy. “Why did you never tell us? What did she say? What
was she like?”
“She said”--sobbing wildly--“that she was parted from her children here;
but she should meet them in Heaven, and be with them forever. William,
darling! all the awful pain, and sadness, and guilt of this world will
be washed out, and God will wipe your tears away.”
“What was her face like?” he questioned softly.
“Like yours. Very much like Lucy’s.”
“Was she pretty?”
A momentary pause. “Yes.”
“Oh, dear, I am ill. Hold me!” cried out William, as his head sank to
one side, and great drops, as large as peas, broke forth upon his clammy
face. It appeared to be one of the temporary faint attacks that
overpowered him at times lately, and Lady Isabel rang the bell hastily.
Wilson came in, in answer. Joyce was the usual attendant upon the sick
room; but Mrs. Carlyle, with her infant, was passing the day at the
Grove; unconscious of the critical state of William, and she had taken
Joyce with her. It was the day following the trial. Mr. Justice Hare had
been brought to West Lynne in his second attack, and Barbara had gone to
see him, to console her mother, and to welcome Richard to his home
again. If one carriage drove, that day, to the Grove, with cards and
inquiries, fifty did, not to speak of the foot callers. “It is all meant
by way of attention to you, Richard,” said gentle Mrs. Hare, smiling
through her loving tears at her restored son. Lucy and Archie were
dining at Miss Carlyle’s, and Sarah attended little Arthur, leaving
Wilson free. She came in, in answer to Madame Vine’s ring.
“Is he off in another faint?” unceremoniously cried she, hastening to
the bed.
“I think so. Help to raise him.”
William did not faint. No; the attack was quite different from those he
was subject to. Instead of losing consciousness and power, as was
customary, he shook as if he had the ague, and laid hold both of Madame
Vine and Wilson, grasping them convulsively.
“Don’t let me fall! Don’t let me fall!” he gasped.
“My dear, you cannot fall,” responded Madame Vine. “You forget that you
are on the bed.”
He clasped them yet, and trembled still, as from fear. “Don’t let me
fall! Don’t let me fall” the incessant burden of his cry.
The paroxysm passed. They wiped his brow, and stood looking at him;
Wilson with a pursed up mouth, and a peculiar expression of face. She
put a spoonful of restorative jelly between his lips, and he swallowed
it, but shook his head when she would have given him another. Turning
his face to the pillow, in a few minutes he was in a doze.
“What could it have been?” exclaimed Lady Isabel, in an undertone, to
Wilson.
“I know,” was the oracular answer. “I saw this same sort of an attack
once before, madame.”
“And what caused it?”
“Twasn’t in a child though,” went on Wilson--“‘twas in a grown person.
But that’s nothing, it comes for the same thing in all. I think he was
taken for death.”
“Who?” uttered Lady Isabel, startled.
Wilson made no reply in words, but she pointed with her finger to the
bed.
“Oh, Wilson, he is not so ill as that. Mr. Wainwright said this morning,
that he might last a week or two.”
Wilson composedly sat herself down in the easiest chair. She was not
wont to put herself out of the way for the governess; and that governess
was too much afraid of her, in one sense, to let her know her place. “As
to Wainwright, he’s nobody,” quoth she. “And if he saw the child’s
breath going out before his face, and knew that the next moment would be
his last, he’d vow to us all that he was good for twelve hours to come.
You don’t know Wainwright as I do, madame. He was our doctor at
mother’s; and he has attended in all the places I have lived in since I
went out to service. Five years I was maid at Mrs. Hare’s. I came here
when Miss Lucy was a baby, and in all my places has he attended, like
one’s shadow. My Lady Isabel thought great guns of old Wainwright, I
remember. It was more than I did.”
My Lady Isabel made no response to this. She took a seat and watched
William through her glasses. His breathing was more labored than usual.
“That idiot, Sarah, says to me to-day, says she, ‘Which of his two
grandpapas will they bury him by, old Mr. Carlyle or Lord Mount Severn?’
‘Don’t be a calf!’ I answered her. ‘D’ye think they’ll stick him out in
the corner with my lord?--he’ll be put into the Carlyle vault, of
course,’ It would have been different, you see, Madame Vine, if my lady
had died at home, all proper--Mr. Carlyle’s wife. They’d have buried
her, no doubt, by her father, and the boy would have been laid with her.
But she did not.”
No reply was made by Madame Vine, and a silence ensued; nothing to be
heard but that fleeting breath.
“I wonder how that beauty feels?” suddenly broke forth Wilson again, her
tone one of scornful irony.
Lady Isabel, her eyes and her thoughts absorbed by William, positively
thought Wilson’s words must relate to him. She turned to her in
surprise.
“That bright gem in the prison at Lynneborough,” exclaimed Wilson. “I
hope he may have found himself pretty well since yesterday! I wonder how
many trainfuls from West Lynne will go to his hanging?”
Isabel’s face turned crimson, her heart sick. She had not dared to
inquire how the trial terminated. The subject altogether was too
dreadful, and nobody had happened to mention it in her hearing.
“Is he condemned?” she breathed, in a low tone.
“He is condemned, and good luck to him! And Mr. Otway Bethel’s let loose
again, and good luck to him. A nice pair they are! Nobody went from this
house to hear the trial--it might not have been pleasant, you know, to
Mr. Carlyle; but people came in last night and told us all about it.
Young Richard Hare chiefly convicted him. He is back again, and so nice-
looking, they say--ten times more so than he was when quite a young man.
You should have heard, they say, the cheering and shouts that greeted
Mr. Richard when his innocence came out; it pretty near rose off the
roof of the court, and the judge didn’t stop it.”
Wilson paused, but there was no answering comment. On she went again.
“When Mr. Carlyle brought the news home last evening, and broke it to
his wife, telling her how Mr. Richard had been received with
acclamations, she nearly fainted, for she’s not strong yet. Mr. Carlyle
called out to me to bring some water--I was in the next room with the
baby--and there she was, the tears raining from her eyes, and he holding
her to him. I always said there was a whole world of love between those
two; though he did go and marry another. Mr. Carlyle ordered me to put
the water down, and sent me away again. But I don’t fancy he told her of
old Hare’s attack until this morning.”
Lady Isabel lifted her aching forehead. “What attack?”
“Why, madame, don’t you know. I declare you box yourself up in the
house, keeping from everybody, and you hear nothing. You might as well
be living at the bottom of a coal-pit. Old Hare had another stroke in
the court at Lynneborough, and that’s why my mistress is gone to the
Grove to-day.”
“Who says Richard Hare’s come home, Wilson?”
The question--the weak, scarcely audible question--had come from the
dying boy. Wilson threw up her hands, and made a bound to the bed. “The
like of that!” she uttered, aside to Mrs. Vine. “One never knows when to
take these sick ones. Master William, you hold your tongue and drop to
sleep again. Your papa will be home soon from Lynneborough; and if you
talk and get tired, he’ll say it’s my fault. Come shut your eyes. Will
you have a bit more jelly?”
William, making no reply to the offer of jelly, buried his face again on
the pillow. But he was grievously restless; the nearly worn-out spirit
was ebbing and flowing.
Mr. Carlyle was at Lynneborough. He always had much business there at
assize time and the Nisi Prius Court; but the previous day he had not
gone himself, Mr. Dill had been dispatched to represent him.
Between seven and eight he returned home, and came into William’s
chamber. The boy brightened up at the well-known presence.
“Papa!”
Mr. Carlyle sat down on the bed and kissed him. The passing beams of the
sun, slanting from the horizon, shone into the room, and Mr. Carlyle
could view well the dying face. The gray hue of death was certainly on
it.
“Is he worse?” he exclaimed hastily, to Madame Vine, who was jacketed,
and capped, and spectacled, and tied up round the throat, and otherwise
disguised, in her universal fashion.
“He appears worse this evening, sir--more weak.”
“Papa,” panted William, “is the trial over?”
“What trial, my boy?”
“Sir Francis Levison’s.”
“It was over yesterday. Never trouble your head about him, my brave boy,
he is not worth it.”
“But I want to know. Will they hang him?”
“He is sentenced to it.”
“Did he kill Hallijohn?”
“Yes. Who has been talking to him upon the subject?” Mr. Carlyle
continued to Madame Vine, with marked displeasure in his tone.
“Wilson mentioned it, sir,” was the low answer.
“Oh, papa! What will he do? Will Jesus forgive him?”
“We must hope it.”
“Do you hope it, papa?”
“Yes. I wish that all the world may be forgiven, William, whatever may
have been their sins. My child, how restless you seem!”
“I can’t keep in one place; the bed gets wrong. Pull me up on the
pillow, will you Madame Vine?”
Mr. Carlyle gently lifted the boy himself.
“Madame Vine is an untiring nurse to you, William,” he observed,
gratefully casting a glance toward her in the distance, where she had
retreated, and was shaded by the window curtain.
William made no reply; he seemed to be trying to recall something. “I
forget! I forget!”
“Forget what?” asked Mr. Carlyle.
“It was something I wanted to ask you, or to tell you. Isn’t Lucy come
home?”
“I suppose not.”
“Papa, I want Joyce.”
“I will send her home to you. I am going for your mamma after dinner.”
“For mamma?--oh, I remember now. Papa, how shall I know mamma in Heaven?
Not this mamma.”
Mr. Carlyle did not immediately reply. The question may have puzzled
him. William continued hastily; possibly mistaking the motive of the
silence.
“She will be in Heaven, you know.”
“Yes, yes, child,” speaking hurriedly.
“Madame Vine knows she will. She saw her abroad; and mamma told her
that--what was it, madame?”
Madame Vine grew sick with alarm. Mr. Carlyle turned his eyes upon her
scarlet face--as much as he could get to see of it. She would have
escaped from the room if she could.
“Mamma was more sorry than she could bear,” went on William, finding he
was not helped. “She wanted you, papa, and she wanted us, and her heart
broke, and she died.”
A flush rose to Mr. Carlyle’s brow. He turned inquiringly to Madame
Vine.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, sir,” she murmured, with desperate energy. “I
ought not to have spoken; I ought not to have interfered in your family
affairs. I spoke only as I thought it must be, sir. The boy seemed
troubled about his mother.”
Mr. Carlyle was at sea. “Did you meet his mother abroad? I scarcely
understand.”
She lifted her hand and covered her glowing face. “No, sir.” Surely the
recording angel blotted out the words! If ever a prayer for forgiveness
went up from an aching heart, it must have gone up then, for the
equivocation over her child’s death-bed!
Mr. Carlyle went toward her. “Do you perceive the change in his
countenance?” he whispered.
“Yes, sir. He has looked like this since a strange fit of trembling that
came on in the afternoon. Wilson thought he might be taken for death. I
fear that some four and twenty hours will end it.”
Mr. Carlyle rested his elbow on the window frame, and his hand upon his
brow, his drooping eyelids falling over his eyes. “It is hard to lose
him.”
“Oh, sir, he will be better off!” she wailed, choking down the sobs and
the emotion that arose threateningly. “We can bear death; it is not the
worst parting that the earth knows. He will be quit of this cruel world,
sheltered in Heaven. I wish we were all there!”
A servant came to say that Mr. Carlyle’s dinner was served, and he
proceeded to it with what appetite he had. When he returned to the sick
room the daylight had faded, and a solitary candle was placed where its
rays could not fall upon the child’s face. Mr. Carlyle took the light in
his hand to scan that face again. He was lying sideways on the pillow,
his hollow breath echoing through the room. The light caused him to open
his eyes.
“Don’t, papa, please. I like it dark.”
“Only for a moment, my precious boy.” And not for more than a moment did
Mr. Carlyle hold it. The blue, pinched, ghastly look was there yet.
Death was certainly coming on quick.
At that moment Lucy and Archibald came in, on their return from their
visit to Miss Carlyle. The dying boy looked up eagerly.
“Good-bye, Lucy,” he said, putting out his cold, damp hand.
“I am not going out,” replied Lucy. “We have but just come home.”
“Good-bye, Lucy,” repeated he.
She laid hold of the little hand then, leaned over, and kissed him.
“Good-bye, William; but indeed I am not going out anywhere.”
“I am,” said he. “I am going to Heaven. Where’s Archie?”
Mr. Carlyle lifted Archie on to the bed. Lucy looked frightened, Archie
surprised.
“Archie, good-bye; good-bye, dear, I am going to Heaven; to that bright,
blue sky, you know. I shall see mamma there, and I’ll tell her that you
and Lucy are coming soon.”
Lucy, a sensitive child, broke into a loud storm of sobs, enough to
disturb the equanimity of any sober sick room. Wilson hastened in at the
sound, and Mr. Carlyle sent the two children away, with soothing
promises that they should see William in the morning, if he continued
well enough.
Down on her knees, her face buried in the counterpane, a corner of it
stuffed into her mouth that it might help to stifle her agony, knelt
Lady Isabel. The moment’s excitement was well nigh beyond her strength
of endurance. Her own child--his child--they alone around its death-bed,
and she might not ask or receive a word of comfort, of consolation!
Mr. Carlyle glanced at her as he caught her choking sobs just as he
would have glanced at any other attentive governess--feeling her
sympathy, doubtless, but nothing more; she was not heart and part with
him and his departing boy. Lower and lower bent he over that boy; for
his eyes were wet. “Don’t cry, papa,” whispered William, raising his
feeble hand caressingly to his father’s cheek, “I am not afraid to go.
Jesus is coming for me.”
“Afraid to go! Indeed I hope not, my gentle boy. You are going to God--
to happiness. A few years--we know not how few--and we shall all come to
you.”
“Yes, you will be sure to come; I know that. I shall tell mamma so. I
dare say she is looking out for me now. Perhaps she’s standing on the
banks of the river, watching the boats.”
He had evidently got that picture of Martin’s in his mind, “The Plains
of Heaven.” Mr. Carlyle turned to the table. He saw some strawberry
juice, pressed from the fresh fruit, and moistened with it the boy’s
fevered lips.
“Papa, I can’t think how Jesus can be in all the boats! Perhaps they
don’t go quite at the same time. He must be, you know, because He comes
to fetch us.”
“He will be yours, darling,” was the whispered, fervent answer.
“Oh, yes. He will take me all the way up to God, and say, ‘Here’s a poor
little boy come, you must please to forgive him and let him go into
Heaven, because I died for him!’ Papa did you know that mamma’s heart
broke?”
“William, I think it likely that your poor mamma’s heart did break, ere
death came. But let us talk of you, not of her. Are you in pain?”
“I can’t breathe; I can’t swallow. I wish Joyce was here.”
“She will not be long now.”
The boy nestled himself in his father’s arms, and in a few minutes
appeared to be asleep. Mr. Carlyle, after a while, gently laid him on
his pillow, and watched him, and then turned to depart.
“Oh, papa! Papa!” he cried out, in a tone of painful entreaty, opening
wide his yearning eyes, “say good-bye to me!”
Mr. Carlyle’s tears fell upon the little upturned face, as he once more
caught it to his breast.
“My darling, your papa will soon be back. He is going to bring mamma to
see you.”
“And pretty little baby Anna?”
“And baby Anna, if you would like her to come in. I will not leave my
darling boy for long; he need not fear. I shall not leave you again to-
night, William, when once I am back.”
“Then put me down, and go, papa.”
A lingering embrace--a fond, lingering, tearful embrace--Mr. Carlyle
holding him to his beating heart, then he laid him comfortably on his
pillow, gave him a teaspoonful of strawberry juice, and hastened away.
“Good-bye, papa!” came forth the little feeble cry.
It was not heard. Mr. Carlyle was gone, gone from his living child--
forever. Up rose Lady Isabel, and flung her arms aloft in a storm of
sobs!
“Oh, William, darling! in this dying moment let me be to you as your
mother!”
Again he unclosed his wearied eyelids. It is probable that he only
partially understood.
“Papa’s gone for her.”
“Not her! I--I----” Lady Isabel checked herself, and fell sobbing on the
bed. No; not even at the last hour when the world was closing on him,
dared she say, I am your mother.
Wilson re-entered. “He looks as if he were dropping off to sleep,” quoth
she.
“Yes,” said Lady Isabel. “You need not wait, Wilson. I will ring if he
requires anything.”
Wilson though withal not a bad-hearted woman, was not one to remain for
pleasure in a sick-room, if told she might leave it. She, Lady Isabel,
remained alone. She fell on her knees again, this time in prayer for the
departing spirit, on its wing, and that God would mercifully vouchsafe
herself a resting-place with it in heaven.
A review of the past then rose up before her, from the time of her first
entering that house, the bride of Mr. Carlyle, to her present sojourn in
it. The old scenes passed through her mind like the changing picture in
a phantasmagoria.
Why should they have come, there and then? She knew not.
William slept on silently; she thought of the past. The dreadful
reflection, “If I had not done as I did, how different would it have
been now!” had been sounding its knell in her heart so often that she
had almost ceased to shudder at it. The very nails of her hands had,
before now, entered the palms, with the sharp pain it brought. Stealing
over her more especially this night, there, as she knelt, her head lying
on the counterpane, came the recollection of that first illness of hers.
How she had lain, and, in that unfounded jealousy, imagined Barbara the
house’s mistress. She dead! Barbara exalted to her place. Mr. Carlyle’s
wife, her child’s stepmother! She recalled the day when, her mind
excited by a certain gossip of Wilson’s--it was previously in a state of
fever bordering on delirium--she had prayed her husband, in terror and
anguish, not to marry Barbara. “How could he marry her?” he had replied,
in his soothing pity. “She, Isabel, was his wife. Who was Barbara?
Nothing to them?” But it had all come to pass. She had brought it forth.
Not Mr. Carlyle; not Barbara; she alone. Oh, the dreadful misery of the
retrospect!
Lost in thought, in anguish past and present, in self-condemning
repentance, the time passed on. Nearly an hour must have elapsed since
Mr. Carlyle’s departure, and William had not disturbed her. But who was
this, coming into the room? Joyce.
She hastily rose up, as Joyce, advancing with a quiet step drew aside
the clothes to look at William. “Master says he has been wanting me,”
she observed. “Why--oh!”
It was a sharp, momentary cry, subdued as soon as uttered. Madame Vine
sprang forward to Joyce’s side, looking also. The pale young face lay
calm in its utter stillness; the busy little heart had ceased to beat.
Jesus Christ had indeed come and taken the fleeting spirit.
Then she lost all self-control. She believed that she had reconciled
herself to the child’s death, that she could part with him without too
great emotion. But she had not anticipated it would be quite so soon;
she had deemed that some hours more would at least be given him, and now
the storm overwhelmed her. Crying, sobbing, calling, she flung herself
upon him; she clasped him to her; she dashed off her disguising glasses;
she laid her face upon his, beseeching him to come back to her, that she
might say farewell--to her, his mother; her darling child, her lost
William!
Joyce was terrified--terrified for consequences. With her full strength
she pulled her from the boy, praying her to consider--to be still. “Do
not, do not, for the love of Heaven! My lady! My lady!”
It was the old familiar title that struck upon her fears and induced
calmness. She stared at Joyce, and retreated backward, after the manner
of one receding from some hideous vision. Then, as recollection came to
her, she snatched her glasses up and hurried them on.
“My lady, let me take you into your room. Mr. Carlyle is come; he is
just bringing up his wife. Only think if you should give way before him!
Pray come away!”
“How did you know me?” she asked in a hollow voice.
“My lady, it was that night when there was an alarm of fire. I went
close up to you to take Master Archibald from your arms; and, as sure as
I am now standing here, I believe that for the moment my senses left me.
I thought I saw a spectre--the spectre of my dead lady. I forgot the
present; I forgot that all were standing round me; that you, Madame
Vine, were alive before me. Your face was not disguised then; the
moonlight shone full upon it, and I knew it, after the first few moments
of terror, to be, in dreadful truth, the living one of Lady Isabel. My
lady, come away! We shall have Mr. Carlyle here.”
Poor thing! She sank upon her knees, in her humility, her dread. “Oh,
Joyce, have pity upon me! don’t betray me! I will leave the house;
indeed I will. Don’t betray me while I am in it!”
“My lady, you have nothing to fear from me. I have kept the secret
buried within my breast since then. Last April! It has nearly been too
much for me. By night and by day I have had no peace, dreading what
might come out. Think of the awful confusion, the consequences, should
it come to the knowledge of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. Indeed, my lady, you
never ought to have come.”
“Joyce,” she said, hollowly, lifting her haggard face, “I could not keep
away from my unhappy children. Is it no punishment to me, think you, the
being here?” she added, vehemently. “To see him--my husband--the husband
of another! It is killing me.”
“Oh, my lady, come away! I hear him; I hear him!”
Partly coaxing, partly dragging her, Joyce took her into her own room,
and left her there. Mr. Carlyle was at that moment at the door of the
sick one. Joyce sprang forward. Her face, in her emotion and fear, was
of one livid whiteness, and she shook as William had shaken, poor child,
in the afternoon. It was only too apparent in the well-lighted corridor.
“Joyce,” he exclaimed, in amazement, “what ails you?”
“Sir! master!” she panted; “be prepared. Master William--Master William-
---”
“Joyce! Not dead!”
“Alas, yes, sir!”
Mr. Carlyle strode into the chamber. But ere he was well across it, he
turned back to slip the bolt of the door. On the pillow lay the white,
thin face, at rest now.
“My boy! my boy! Oh, my God!” he murmured, in bowed reverence, “mayest
Thou have received this child to rest in Jesus, even as, I trust, Thou
hadst already received his unhappy mother!”