Oh, the strong eyes, and the weak frame! The eyes that turned so eagerly and brightly to the door when Harriet came in; the feeble head that could not raise itself, and moved so slowly round upon its pillow!
“Alice!” said the visitor’s mild voice, “am I late tonight?”
“You always seem late, but are always early.”
Harriet had sat down by the bedside now, and put her hand upon the thin hand lying there.
“You are better?”
Mrs. Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, like a disconsolate spectre, most decidedly and forcibly shook her head to negative this position.
“It matters very little!” said Alice, with a faint smile. “Better or worse today, is but a day’s difference—perhaps not so much.”
Mrs. Wickam, as a serious character, expressed her approval with a groan; and having made some cold dabs at the bottom of the bedclothes, as feeling for the patient’s feet and expecting to find them stony; went clinking among the medicine bottles on the table, as who should say, “while we are here, let us repeat the mixture as before.”
“No,” said Alice, whispering to her visitor, “evil courses, and remorse, travel, want, and weather, storm within, and storm without, have worn my life away. It will not last much longer.”
She drew the hand up as she spoke, and laid her face against it.
“I lie here, sometimes, thinking I should like to live until I had had a little time to show you how grateful I could be! It is a weakness, and soon passes. Better for you as it is. Better for me!”
How different her hold upon the hand, from what it had been when she took it by the fireside on the bleak winter evening! Scorn, rage, defiance, recklessness, look here! This is the end.
Mrs. Wickam having clinked sufficiently among the bottles, now produced the mixture. Mrs. Wickam looked hard at her patient in the act of drinking, screwed her mouth up tight, her eyebrows also, and shook her head, expressing that tortures shouldn’t make her say it was a hopeless case. Mrs. Wickam then sprinkled a little cooling-stuff about the room, with the air of a female gravedigger, who was strewing ashes on ashes, dust on dust—for she was a serious character—and withdrew to partake of certain funeral baked meats downstairs.
“How long is it,” asked Alice, “since I went to you and told you what I had done, and when you were advised it was too late for anyone to follow?”
“It is a year and more,” said Harriet.
“A year and more,” said Alice, thoughtfully intent upon her face. “Months upon months since you brought me here!”
Harriet answered “Yes.”
“Brought me here, by force of gentleness and kindness. Me!” said Alice, shrinking with her face behind her hand, “and made me human by woman’s looks and words, and angel’s deeds!”
Harriet bending over her, composed and soothed her. By and bye, Alice lying as before, with the hand against her face, asked to have her mother called.
Harriet called to her more than once, but the old woman was so absorbed looking out at the open window on the darkness, that she did not hear. It was not until Harriet went to her and touched her, that she rose up, and came.
“Mother,” said Alice, taking the hand again, and fixing her lustrous eyes lovingly upon her visitor, while she merely addressed a motion of her finger to the old woman, “tell her what you know.”
“Tonight, my deary?”
“Ay, mother,” answered Alice, faintly and solemnly, “tonight!”
The old woman, whose wits appeared disorderly by alarm, remorse, or grief, came creeping along the side of the bed, opposite to that on which Harriet sat; and kneeling down, so as to bring her withered face upon a level with the coverlet, and stretching out her hand, so as to touch her daughter’s arm, began:
“My handsome gal—”
Heaven, what a cry was that, with which she stopped there, gazing at the poor form lying on the bed!
“Changed, long ago, mother! Withered, long ago,” said Alice, without looking at her. “Don’t grieve for that now.”
“—My daughter,” faltered the old woman, “my gal who’ll soon get better, and shame ’em all with her good looks.”
Alice smiled mournfully at Harriet, and fondled her hand a little closer, but said nothing.
“Who’ll soon get better, I say,” repeated the old woman, menacing the vacant air with her shrivelled fist, “and who’ll shame ’em all with her good looks—she will. I say she will! she shall!”—as if she were in passionate contention with some unseen opponent at the bedside, who contradicted her—“my daughter has been turned away from, and cast out, but she could boast relationship to proud folks too, if she chose. Ah! To proud folks! There’s relationship without your clergy and your wedding rings—they may make it, but they can’t break it—and my daughter’s well related. Show me Mrs. Dombey, and I’ll show you my Alice’s first cousin.”
Harriet glanced from the old woman to the lustrous eyes intent upon her face, and derived corroboration from them.
“What!” cried the old woman, her nodding head bridling with a ghastly vanity. “Though I am old and ugly now—much older by life and habit than years though—I was once as young as any. Ah! as pretty too, as many! I was a fresh country wench in my time, darling,” stretching out her arm to Harriet, across the bed, “and looked it, too. Down in my country, Mrs. Dombey’s father and his brother were the gayest gentlemen and the best-liked that came a visiting from London—they have long been dead, though! Lord, Lord, this long while! The brother, who was my Ally’s father, longest of the two.”
She raised her head a little, and peered at her
