Part 39 (1/2)
Sarah, who had for about a half minute been examining Mave on her part, now started, and exclaimed with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, and we may add, a bursting and distracted heart--
”Well, Mave Sullivan, I have often seen you, but never so well as now.
You have goodness an' truth in your face. Oh, it's a purty face--a lovely face. But why do you state a falsehood here--for what you've just said is false; I know it.”
Mave started, and in a moment her pale face and neck were suffused by one burning blush, at the idea of such an imputation. She looked around her, as if enquiring from all those who were present the nature of the falsehood attributed to her; and then with a calm but firm eye, she asked Sarah what she could mean by such language.
”You're afther sayin',” replied Sarah, ”that you're come here to nurse Nancy there. Now that's not true, and you know it isn't. You come here to nurse young Con Dalton: and you came to nurse him, bekaise you love him. No, I don't blame you for that, but I do for not saying so, without fear or disguise--for I hate both.”
”That wouldn't be altogether true either,” replied Mave, ”if I said so; for I did come to nurse Nancy, and any others of the family that might stand in need of it. As to Con, I'm neither ashamed to love him, nor afeard to acknowledge it; and I had no notion of statin' a falsehood when I said what I did. I tell you, then, Sarah M'Gowan, that you've done me injustice. If there appeared to be a falsehood in my words, there was none in my heart.”
”That's truth; I know, I feel that that's truth,” replied Sarah, quickly; ”but oh, how wrong I am,” she exclaimed, ”to mention that or anything else here that might distract him! Ah,” she proceeded, addressing Mave, ”I did you injustice--I feel I did, but don't be angry with me, for I acknowledge it.”
”Why should I be angry with you?” replied Mave, ”you only spoke what you thought, an' this, by all accounts, is what you always do.”
”Let us talk as little as possible here,” replied Sarah, the sole absorbing object of whose existence lay in Dalton's recovery. ”I will speak to you on your way home, but not here--not here;” and while uttering the last words she pointed to Dalton, to intimate that further conversation might disturb him.
”Dear Mave,” observed Mary, now rising from her chair, ”you are stayin'
too long; oh, for G.o.d's sake, don't stop; you can't dhrame of the danger you're in.”
”But,” replied Mave, calmly, ”you know, Mary, that I came to stop and to do whatever I can do till the family comes round. You are too feeble to undertake anything, and might only get into a relapse if you attempted it.”
”But, then we have Sarah M'Gowan,” she replied, ”who came, as few would--none livin' this day, I think, barrin' yourself and her--to stay with us, and to do anything that she can do for us all. May G.o.d for ever bless her! for short as the time is, I think she has saved some of our lives--Condy's without a doubt.”
Mave turned towards Sarah, and, as she looked upon her, the tears started to her eyes.
”Sarah M'Gowan,” said she, ”you are fond of truth, an' you are right; I can't find words to thank you for doin' what you did, G.o.d bless and reward you!”
She extended her hand as she spoke, but Sarah put it back. ”No,” said she, indignantly, ”never from you; above all that's livin' don't you thank me. You, you, why you arn't his wife yet,” she exclaimed, in a suppressed voice of deep agitation, ”an maybe you never will. You don't know what may happen--you don't know--”
She immediately seemed to recollect something that operated as a motive to restrain any exhibition of strong feeling or pa.s.sion on her part, for all at once she composed herself, and sitting down, merely said:--
”Mave Sullivan, I'm glad you love truth, and I believe you do; I can't, then, resave any thanks from you, nor I won't; an' I would tell you why, any place but here.”
”I don't at all understand you,” replied Mave; ”but for your care and attention to him, I'm sure it's no harm to say, may G.o.d reward you! I will never forget it to you.”
”While I have life,” said Dalton feebly, and fixing his eyes upon Sarah's face, ”I, for one, won't forget her kindness.”
”Kindness!” she re-echoed--”ha, ha!--well, it's no matter--it's no matter!”
”She saved my life, Mave; I was lyin' here, and hadn't even a drink of water, and there was no one else in the house; Mary, there, was out, an'
poor Nancy was ravin' an' ragin' with illness and pain; but she, Sarah, was here to settle us, to attend us, to get us a drink whenever we wanted it--to raise us up, an' to put it to our lips, an' to let us down with as little pain as possible. Oh, how could I forget all this? Dear, dear Sarah, how could I forget this if I was to live a thousand years?”
Con's face, while he spoke, became animated with the enthusiasm of the feeling to which he gave utterance, and, as his eyes were fixed on Sarah with a suitable expression, there appeared to be a warmth of emotion in his whole manner which a sanguine person might probably interpret in something beyond grat.i.tude.
Sarah, after he had concluded, looked upon him with a long, earnest, but uncertain gaze; so long, indeed, and so intensely penetrating was it, that the whole energy of her character might, for a time, be read clearly in the singular expression of her eyes. It was evident that her thoughts were fluttering between pleasure and pain, cheerfulness and gloom; but at length her countenance lost, by degrees its earnest character, the alternate play of light and shadow over it ceased, and the gaze changed, almost imperceptibly, into one of settled abstraction.
”It might be,” she said, as if thinking aloud--”it might be--but time will tell; and, in the manetime, everything must be done fairly--fairly; still, if it shouldn't come to pa.s.s--if it should not--it would be betther if I had never been born; but it may be, an' time will tell.”