With this thought in his mind he went to the sickroom, where everything seemed quiet, not quite sure that his mother, absorbed as she was in Susan’s present danger, could be able to realise the wonderful deliverance which had come to them. But matters were changed there as elsewhere. Between the door and the bed on which Susan lay, a large folding-screen had been set up, and in the darkened space between this and the door sat Mrs. Vincent, with Dr. Rider and his wife on each side, evidently persuading and arguing with her on some point which she was reluctant to yield to them. They were talking in whispers under their breath, and a certain air of stillness, of calm and repose, which Vincent could scarcely comprehend, was in the hushed room.
“I assure you, on my word,” said Dr. Rider, lifting his eyes as Vincent opened the door, and beckoning him softly to come in, “that this change is more than I dared hope for. The chances are she will wake up out of danger. Nothing can be done for her but to keep her perfectly quiet; and my wife will watch, if you will rest;—for our patient’s sake!” said the anxious doctor, still motioning Vincent forward, and appealing to him with his eyes.
“Mr. Vincent has something to tell you,” said the quick little woman, impetuous even in her whisper, who was Dr. Rider’s wife. “He must not come and talk here. He might wake her. Take him away. Edward, take them both away. Mrs. Vincent, you must go and hear what he has to say.”
“Oh, Arthur! my dear boy,” cried his mother, looking up to him with moist eyes. “It is I who have something to tell. My child is perhaps to get well, Arthur. Oh! my own boy, after all, she is going to get better. We shall have Susan again. Hush! doctor, please let me go back again; something stirred—I think something stirred; and perhaps she might want something, and the nurse would not observe. Tired?—no, no; I am not tired. I have always watched them when they were ill, all their lives. They never had any nurse in sickness but their mother. Arthur, you know I am not tired. Oh! doctor, perhaps you would order something while he is here, for my son; he has been agitated and anxious, and he is not so strong—not nearly so strong as I am; but, my dear,” said the widow, looking up in her son’s face with a wistful eagerness, “when Susan gets better, all will be—well.”
She said the last words with a trembling, prolonged sigh. Poor mother, in that very moment she had recalled almost for the first time how far from well everything would be. Her face darkened over piteously as she spoke. She rose up, stung into new energy by this dreadful thought, which had been hitherto mercifully obscured by Susan’s danger. “Let me go back—don’t say anything. Nobody can watch my child but me,” said the heartbroken woman; and once more she looked in her son’s face. She wanted to read there what had happened—to ascertain from him, without anyone else being the wiser, all the dreadful particulars which now, in the first relief of Susan’s recovery, had burst into sudden shape upon her sight. “Doctor, we will not detain you; her brother and I will watch my child,” said Mrs. Vincent. The light forsook her eyes as she rose in that new and darker depth of anxiety; her little figure tottered trying to stand as she held out her hand to her son. “You and me—only you and me, Arthur—we must never leave her; though everybody is so kind—” said the minister’s mother, turning with her smile of martyrdom, though her eyes were blind and she could not see them, to Dr. Rider and his wife.
Vincent took his mother’s hands and put her tenderly back in her chair. “I have good news, too,” he said; “all will be well, mother dear. This man who has wrought us so much trouble is not dead. I told you, but you did not understand it; and he declares that Susan—”
“Arthur!” cried Mrs. Vincent, with a sharp outcry of alarm and remonstrance. “Oh, God forgive me! I shall wake my child. Arthur! The doctor is very good,” added the widow, looking round upon them always with the instinct of conciliating Arthur’s friends; “and so is Mrs. Rider; but every family has its private affairs,” she concluded, with a wistful, deprecating smile, all the time making signs to Arthur to stop him in his indiscreet revelations. “My dear, you will tell me presently when we are alone.”
“Ah, mother,” said Vincent, with a suppressed groan, “there is nothing private now in our family affairs. Hush! listen—Susan is cleared; he swears she had nothing to do with it; he swears that she was his daughter’s companion only. Mother! Good heavens! doctor, what has happened? She looks as if she were dying. Mother! What have I done? I have killed her with my good news.”
“Hush, hush—she has fainted—all will come right; let us get her away,” cried Dr. Rider under his breath. Between them the two young men carried her out of the room, which Mrs. Rider closed after them with a certain triumph. The widow was not in so deep a faint but the fresher air outside and the motion revived her. It was more a sudden failing of her faculties in the height of emotion than actual insensibility. She made a feeble effort to resist
