"Yes, thank God, she's alive, and while there's life there's hope."
We travelled straight through without stopping and arrived at Blackwater
at seven the same evening. There we took train, for railways were
running in Ellan now, and down the sweet valleys that used to be green
with grass, and through the little crofts that used to be red with
fuchsia, there was a long raw welt of upturned earth.
At the station of our village my father's carriage was waiting for us
and a strange footman shrugged his shoulders in answer to some whispered
question of Father Dan's, and from that I gathered that my mother's
condition was unchanged.
We reached home at dusk, just as somebody was lighting a line of new
electric lamps that had been set up in the drive to show the way for the
carriage under the chestnuts in which the rooks used to build and caw.
I knew the turn of the path from which the house could be first seen,
and I looked for it, remembering the last glimpse I had of my mother at
her window. Father Dan looked, too, but for another reason--to see if
the blinds were down.
Aunt Bridget was in the hall, and when Father Dan, who had grown more
and more excited as we approached the end of our journey, asked how my
mother was now, poor thing, she answered:
"Worse; distinctly worse; past recognising anybody; so all this trouble
and expense has been wasted."
As she had barely recognised me I ran upstairs with a timid and quiet
step and without waiting to take off my outer clothes made my way to my
mother's bedroom.
I remember the heavy atmosphere of the room as I opened the door. I
remember the sense I had of its being lower and smaller than I thought.
I remember the black four-foot bedstead with the rosary hanging on a
brass nail at the pillow end. I remember my little cot which still stood
in the same place and contained some of the clothes I had worn as a
child, and even some of the toys I had played with.
A strange woman, in the costume of a nurse, turned to look at me as I
entered, but I did not at first see my mother, and when at length I did
see her, with her eyes closed, she looked so white and small as to be
almost hidden in the big white bed.
Presently Father Dan came in, followed by Doctor Conrad and Aunt
Bridget, and finally my father, who was in his shirt sleeves and had a
pen in his ear, I remember.
Then Father Dan, who was trembling very much, took me by the hand and
led me to my mother's side, where stooping over her, and making his
voice very low, yet speaking as one who was calling into a long tunnel,
he said:
"My daughter! My daughter! Here is our little Mary. She has come home to
see you."
Never shall I forget what followed. First, my mother's long lashes
parted and she looked at me with a dazed expression as if still in a
sort of dream. Then her big eyes began to blaze like torches in dark
hollows, and then (though they had thought her strength was gone and her
voice would never be heard again) she raised herself in her bed,
stretched out her arms to me, and cried in loud strong tones:
"Mally veen! My Mally veen!"
How long I lay with my arms about my mother, and my mother's arms about
me I do not know. I only know that over my head I heard Father Dan
saying, as if speaking to a child:
"You are happy now, are you not?"
"Yes, yes, I am happy now," my mother answered.
"You have everything you want?"
"Everything--everything!"
Then came my father's voice, saying:
"Well, you've got your girl, Isabel. You wanted her, so we sent for her,
and here she is."
"You have been very good to me, Daniel," said my mother, who was kissing
my forehead and crying in her joy.
When I raised my head I found Father Dan in great excitement.
"Did you see that then?" he was saying to Doctor Conrad.
"I would have gone on my knees all the way to Blackwater to see it."
"I couldn't have believed it possible," the Doctor replied.
"Ah, what children we are, entirely. God confounds all our reckoning. We
can't count with His miracles. And the greatest of all miracles is a
mother's love for her child."
"Let us leave her now, though," said the Doctor. "She's like herself
again, but still . . ."
"Yes, let us leave them together," whispered Father Dan, and having
swept everybody out before him (I thought Aunt Bridget went away
ashamed) he stepped off himself on tiptoe, as if treading on holy
ground.
Then my mother, who was holding my hand and sometimes putting it to her
lips, said:
"Tell me everything that has happened."
As soon as my little tongue was loosed I told her all about my life at
the Convent--about the Reverend Mother and the nuns and the novices and
the girls (all except Sister Angela and Alma) and the singing of the
hymn to the Virgin--talking on and on and on, without observing that,
after a while, my mother's eyes had closed again, and that her hand had
become cold and moist.