“Mother, you must rest, for Susan’s sake; if you make yourself ill, who will be able to take care of her?” said Vincent, who felt her hand tremble in his, and saw with how much difficulty she sustained the nervous shivering of her frame. She looked up into his face with those anxious eyes which strove to read his without being able to comprehend all the meanings there. Then the widow turned with a feminine artifice to Dr. Rider.
“Doctor, if you will bring me word that my child is still asleep—if you will tell me exactly what you think, and that she is going on well,” said Mrs. Vincent; “you are always so kind. Oh, Arthur, my dear boy,” cried the widow, taking his hand and caressing it between her own, “now that he is gone, tell me. Is it quite true?—is all well again? but you must never bring in Susan’s name. Nobody must have it in their power to say a word about your sister, Arthur dear. And, oh, I hope you have been prudent and not said anything among your people. Hush! he will be coming back; is it quite true, Arthur? Tell me that my dear child has come safe out of it all, and nothing has happened. Tell me! Oh, speak to me, Arthur dear!”
“It is quite true,” said Vincent, meeting his mothers eyes with a strange blending of pity and thankfulness. He did not say enough to satisfy her. She drew him closer, looking wistfully into his face. The winter afternoon was darkening, the room was cold, the atmosphere dreary. The widow held her son close, and fixed upon him her anxious inquiring eyes. “It is quite true, Arthur! There is nothing behind that you are hiding from me?” she said, with her lips almost touching his cheek, and her wistful eyes searching his meaning. “Oh, my dear boy, don’t hide anything from me. I am able to bear it, Arthur. Whatever it is, I ought to know.”
“What I have told you is the simple truth, mother,” said Vincent, not without a pang. “He has made a declaration before the magistrates—”
Mrs. Vincent started so much that the bed on which she sat shook. “Before the magistrates!” she said, with a faint cry. Then after a pause—“But, thank God, it is not here, Arthur, nor at Lonsdale, nor anywhere where we are known. And he said that—that—he had never harmed my child? Oh, Arthur, Arthur—your sister!—that she should ever be spoken of so! And he was not killed? I do not understand it, my dear. I cannot see all the rights of it; but it is a great comfort to have you to myself for a moment, and to feel as if perhaps things might come right again. Hush! I think the doctor must be coming. Speak very low. My dear boy, you don’t mean it, but you are imprudent; and, oh, Arthur, with a troublesome flock like yours you must not commit yourself! You must not let your sister’s name be talked of among the people. Hush, hush, I hear the doctor at the door.”
And the widow put her son away from her, and leant her head upon her hands instead of on his shoulder. She would not even let the doctor suppose that she had seized that moment to inquire further, or that she was anything but sure and confident that all was going well.
“She is in the most beautiful sleep,” said the enthusiastic doctor, “and Nettie is by her. Now, Mrs. Vincent, here is something you must take; and when you wake up again I will take you to your daughter, and I have very little doubt you will find her on the fair way for recovery—recovery in every sense,” added Dr. Rider, incautiously; “twice saved—and I hope you will have no more of such uneasiness as you have suffered on her behalf.”
“Indeed, I have had very little uneasiness with my children,” said Mrs. Vincent, drawing up her little figure on the bed. “Susan never had a severe illness before. When she came here first she was suffering from a—a bad fright, doctor. I told you so at the time; and I was so weak and so alarmed, Arthur dear, that I fear Dr. Rider has misunderstood me. When one is not much used to illness,” said the mother, with her pathetic Jesuitry, “one thinks there never was anything so bad as one’s own case, and I was foolish and upset. Yes, I will take it, doctor. Now that I am easy in my mind, I will take anything you please; and you will let me know if she wakes, or if she stirs. Whatever happens, you will let me know that moment? Arthur, you will see that they let me know.”
The doctor promised, anxiously putting the draught into her hands: he would have promised any impossible thing at the moment, so eager was he to get her persuaded to rest.
“I have not talked so much for—I wonder how long it is?” said the widow, with a faint smile. “Oh, Arthur dear, I feel as if somehow a millstone had been on my heart, and God had taken it off. Doctor, it is—it is—all your doing, under Providence,” said the little woman, looking full in his face. Perhaps she believed it—at least she meant him to believe so. She swallowed the draught he gave her with that smile upon her face, and laid down her throbbing head in the quietness and darkness. “Go with the doctor, Arthur dear,” she said, denying the yearning in her heart to question her son farther, lest Dr. Rider might perhaps suppose all was not so well as she said; “and, oh be sure to tell me the very moment that Susan wakes?” She watched them gliding noiselessly out of the room, two dark figures, in the darkness.
