Part 39 (1/2)
”I don't feel quite myself, Elizabeth.”
And when her servant soothed her in the long-familiar way, telling her she would be better in the morning, she smiled contentedly, and turned to go to sleep.
Nevertheless, Elizabeth did not go to her bed, but sat behind the curtain, motionless, for an hour or more.
Toward the middle of the night, when her baby was brought to her, and the child instinctively refused its natural food, and began screaming violently, Mrs. Ascott's troubled look returned.
”What is the matter? What are you doing, nurse? I won't be parted from my baby--I won't, I say!”
And when, to sooth her, the little thing was again put into her arms, and again turned from her, a frightened expression came into the mother's face.
”Am I going to be ill?--is baby--”
She stopped; and as nurse determinately carried it away, she attempted no resistance, only followed it across the room with eager eyes. It was the last glimmer of reason there. From that time her, mind began to wander, and before morning she was slightly delirious.
Still n.o.body apprehended danger. n.o.body really knew any thing about the matter except nurse, and she, with a selfish fear of being blamed for carelessness, resisted sending for the doctor till his usual hour of calling. In that large house, as in many other large houses, every body's business was n.o.body's business, and a member of the family, even the mistress, might easily be sick or dying in some room therein, while all things else went on just as usual, and no one was any the wiser.
About noon even Elizabeth's ignorance was roused up to the conviction that something was very wrong with Mrs. Ascott, and that nurse's skill could not counteract it. On her own responsibility she sent, or rather she went to fetch the doctor. He came; and his fiat threw the whole household into consternation.
Now they knew that the poor lady whose happiness had touched the very stoniest hearts in the establishment hovered upon the brink of the grave. Now all the women-servants, down to the little kitchen-maid with her dirty ap.r.o.n at her eyes, crept up stairs, one after the other, to the door of what had been such a silent, mysterious room, and listened, unhindered, to the ravings that issued thence. ”Poor Missis,” and the ”poor little baby,” were spoken of softly at the kitchen dinner table, and confidentially sympathized over with inquiring tradespeople at the area gate. A sense of awe and suspense stole over the whole house, gathering thicker hour by hour of that dark December day.
When her mistress was first p.r.o.nounced ”in danger,” Elizabeth, aware that there was no one to act but herself, had taken a brief opportunity to slip from the room and write two letters, one to her master in Edinburgh, and the other to Miss Hilary. The first she gave to the footman to post; the second she charged him to send by special messenger to Richmond. But he, being lazily inclined, or else thinking that, as the order was only given by Elizabeth, it was of comparatively little moment, posted them both. So vainly did the poor girl watch and wait; neither Miss Leaf nor Miss Hilary came.
By night Mrs. Ascott's delirium began to subside, but her strength was ebbing fast. Two physicians--three--stood by the unconscious woman, and p.r.o.nounced that all hope was gone, if, indeed, the case had not been hopeless from the beginning.
”Where is her husband? Has she no relations--no mother or sisters?”
asked the fas.h.i.+onable physician, Sir ---- ----, touched by the slight or this poor lady dying alone, with only a nurse and a servant about her. ”If she has, they ought to be sent for immediately.”
Elizabeth ran down stairs, and rousing the old butler from his bed, prevailed on him to start immediately in the carriage to bring back Miss Leaf and Miss Hilary. It would be midnight before he reached Richmond; still it must be done.
”I'll do it, my girl,” said he, kindly; ”and I'll tell them as gently as I can. Never fear.”
When Elizabeth returned to her mistress's room the doctors were all gone, and nurse, standing at the foot of Mrs. Ascott's bed, was watching her with the serious look which even a hireling or a stranger wears in the presence of that sight which, however familiar, never grows less awful--a fellow creature slowly pa.s.sing from this life into the life unknown. Elizabeth crept up to the other side. The change, indescribable yet unmistakable, which comes over a human face when the warrant for its dissolution has gone forth, struck her at once. Never yet had Elizabeth seen death. Her father's she did not remember, and among her few friends and connections none other had occurred. At twenty-three years of age she was still ignorant of that solemn experience which every woman must go through some time, often many times during her life. For it is to women that all look in their extreme hour. Very few men, even the tenderest hearted, are able to watch by the last struggle and close the eyes of the dying.
For the moment, as she glanced round the darkened room, and then at the still figure on the bed, Elizabeth's courage failed. Strong love might have overcome this fear--the natural recoil of youth and life from coming into contact with death and mortality; but love was not exactly the bond between her and Mrs. Ascott. It was rather duty, pity, the tenderness that would have sprung up in her heart toward any body she had watched and tended so long.
”If she should die, die in the night, before Miss Hilary comes!”
thought the poor girl, and glanced once more around the shadowy room, where she was now left quite alone. For nurse, thinking with true worldly wisdom of the preservation of the ”son and heir,” which was decidedly the most important question now, had stolen away, and was busy in the next room, seeing various young women whom the doctors had sent, one of whom was to supply to the infant the place of the poor mother whom it would never know. There was n.o.body left but herself to watch this dying mother, so Elizabeth took her lot upon her, smothered down her fears, and sat by the bedside waiting for the least expression of returning reason in the sunken face, which was very quiet now. Consciousness did return at last, as the doctors had said it would. Mrs. Ascott opened her eyes; they wandered from side to side, and then she said, feebly, ”Elizabeth, where's my baby?”
What Elizabeth answered she never could remember; perhaps nothing, or her agitation betrayed her, for Mrs. Ascott said again, ”Elizabeth, am I going to--to leave my baby?”
Some people might have considered it best to reply with a lie--the frightened, cowardly lie that is so often told at death-beds to the soul pa.s.sing direct to its G.o.d. But this girl could not and dared not.
Leaning over her mistress, she whispered as softly as she could, choking down the tears that might have disturbed the peace which, mercifully, seemed to have come with dying,
”Yes, you are going very soon--to G.o.d. He will watch over baby, and give him back to you again some day quite safe.”
”Will He?”
The tone was submissive, half-inquiring; like that of a child learning something it had never learned before--as Selina was now learning. Perhaps even those three short weeks of motherhood had power so to raise her whole nature that she now gained the composure with which even the weakest soul can sometimes meet death, and had grown not unworthy of the dignity of a Christian's dying.