When Mrs. Tozer had laid her head, all nodding with white muslin frills, edged with cotton lace, upon her pillow, Phoebe, noiseless in her soft merino gown, went back, accompanied by Martha, to the Parsonage, where Ursula’s careworn face lighted a little at sight of her. Ursula had left her father for the moment in Betsy’s care, to get something that was wanted, and she stole into the dining-room on hearing of her friend’s arrival, and talked a little in a whisper, though the sick man was on the upper floor, and could not possibly have heard anything. Northcote was still there, sitting with Reginald, too anxious and excited to go away; and they all conversed in whispers, the three of them talking together for the benefit of the newcomer.
“Not paralysis; at least, he does not think so; a great mental shock—but we can’t tell a bit what it was—coming when he was dreadfully tired, and not able to bear it.”
They all spoke together, each of them saying a few words, and kept close together in the centre of the room, a curious little half-frightened group, overawed and subdued by the sudden change and strange calamity dropt into their midst. Phoebe seemed to bring them new life and hope.
“If it is going to be an illness,” she said, “you gentlemen had better go home and go to bed, to be able to help us when we want help. Anyhow, what good can they do, Ursula? They had much better go to bed.”
Ursula looked at them with a certain regret; though they could not do much good, it was a relief to come and whisper a few words to them now and then, giving them news of the patient. But Phoebe was right, and there was nothing to be said against her decision. The two young women and the faithful Betsy were enough, and, indeed, more than enough to watch over Mr. May.
XLI
A Morning’s Work
“Go and lie down for an hour,” whispered Phoebe. “I am not sleepy at all. I have sat up before, and never felt it, you never did, I can see it in your poor little white face; and besides, I am steadier, because I am not so anxious. Now go, Ursula, if you are really fond of me, as you say—”
“Oh, Phoebe! if you think he is a little better. Oh, how horrible it is to be sleepy, as if you were all body, and had no heart at all!”
“You have plenty of heart, but you have never been used to this nursing. Leave your door open, so that I may call you in a moment. I have sat up often. Now go, to please me,” said Phoebe. She had another object than mere rest to her friend, who at last, very much ashamed and crying softly, yet so weary that nothing on this earth seemed so desirable to her as sleep, crept to her room, and lay down there as the pale morning began to dawn. Betsy slept heavily in an easy-chair outside the door of the sickroom. She was there at hand in case anything was wanted, but she was happily unconscious where she was, sleeping the sleep of hard work and a mind undisturbed. Phoebe had seen that the patient was stirring out of the dull doze in which his faculties had been entirely stilled and stupefied. He was rousing to uneasiness, if not to full consciousness. Two or three times he made a convulsive movement, as if to raise himself; once his eyes, which were half open, seemed to turn upon her with a vague glimmer of meaning. How strangely she felt towards him, as she sat there in the grey of the morning, sole guardian, sole confidant of this erring and miserable man! The thought ran through her with a strange thrill. He was nothing to her, and yet he was absolutely in her power, and in all heaven and earth there seemed no one who was capable of protecting him, or cared to do so, except herself only. She sat looking at him with a great pity in her mind, determined to be his true protector, to deliver him from what he himself had done. She had not realized at first what it was he had done, and indeed it was only now that its full enormity, or rather its full consequences (which were the things that affected her most urgently), made themselves apparent to her. Generalizations are unsafe things; and whether it was because she was a woman that Phoebe, passing over the crime, fixed her thoughts upon the punishment, I do not venture to say; but she did so. After all a few lines of writing on a bit of paper is not a crime which affects the imagination of the inexperienced. Had it been a malicious slander Phoebe would have realized the sin of it much more clearly; but the copy of her grandfather’s signature did not wound her moral sense in the same way, though it was a much more serious offence. That Mr. May could have intended to rob him of the money appeared impossible to her; and no doubt the borrowing of the signature was wrong—very wrong. Yes, of course it was horribly, fatally wrong; but still it did not set her imagination aglow with indignant horror, as smaller affairs might have done. But the consequences—disgrace, ruin, the loss of his position, the shame of his profession, moral death indeed, almost as frightful as if he had been hanged for murder. She shivered as she sat by him, veiled by the curtain, and thought of her grandfather’s vindictive fierceness; only she stood between him and destruction, and Phoebe felt that it was by no legitimate means that she was doing so, not by her influence over her grandfather as she had hoped, but only by an unjustifiable expedient which in itself was a
