"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 fashionable 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.
Suddenly she shivered. "I am afraid; I never thought of--this. Will n.o.body come and speak to me?"
Oh, how Elizabeth longed for Miss Hilary, for any body, who would have known what to say to the dying woman; who perhaps, as her look and words implied, till this hour had never thought of dying. Once it crossed the servant"s mind to send for some clergyman; but she knew none, and was aware that Mrs. Ascott did not either. She had no superst.i.tious feeling that any clergyman would do; just to give a sort of spiritual extreme unction to the departing soul. Her own religious faith was of such an intensely personal silent kind, that she did not believe in any good to be derived from a strange gentleman coming and praying by the bedside of a stranger, repeating set sayings with a set countenance, and going away again. And yet with that instinct which comes to almost every human soul, fast departing, Mrs. Ascott"s white lips whispered, "Pray."
Elizabeth had no words, except those which Miss Leaf used to say night after night in the little parlor at s...o...b..ry. She knelt down, and in a trembling voice repeated in her mistress"s ear--"Our Father which art in heaven"--to the end.
After it Mrs. Ascott lay very quiet. At length she said, "Please--bring--my--baby." It had been from the first, and was to the last, "my" baby. The small face was laid close to hers that she might kiss it.
"He looks well; he does not miss me much yet, poor little fellow!"
And the strong natural agony came upon her, conquering even the weakness of her last hour. "Oh, it"s hard, hard! Will n.o.body teach my baby to remember me?"
And then lifting herself up on her elbow she caught hold of nurse.
"Tell Mr. Ascott that Elizabeth is to take care of baby. Promise, Elizabeth. Johanna is old--Hilary may be married; you will take care of my baby?"
"I will--as long as I live," said Elizabeth Hand.
She took the child in her arms, and for almost another hour stood beside the bed thus, until nurse whispered, "Carry it away; its mother doesn"t know it now."
But she did; for she feebly moved her fingers as if in search of something. Baby was still asleep, but Elizabeth contrived, by kneeling down close to the bed, to put the tiny hand under those cold fingers; they closed immediately upon it, and so remained till the last. When Miss Leaf and Miss Hilary came in, Elizabeth was still kneeling there, trying softly to take the little hand away; for the baby had wakened and began its piteous wail. But it did not disturb the mother now.
"Poor Selina" was no more. Nothing of her was left to her child except the name of a mother. It may have been better so.
CHAPTER XXV.
"IN MEMORY OF SELINA, THE BELOVED WIFE OF PETER ASCOTT, ESQ., OF RUSSELL SQUARE, LONDON, AND DAUGHTER OF THE LATE HENRY LEAF, ESQ., OF THIS TOWN.
DIED DECEMBER 24, 1839.
AGED 41 YEARS."
Such was the inscription which now, for six months, had met the eyes of the inhabitants of s...o...b..ry, on a large, dazzlingly white marble monument, the first that was placed in the Church-yard of the New Church. What motive induced Mr. Ascott to inter his wife here--whether it was a natural wish to lay her, and some day lay beside her, in their native earth; or the less creditable desire of showing how rich he had become, and of joining his once humble name, even on a tombstone, with one of the oldest names in the annals of s...o...b..ry--n.o.body could find out. Probably n.o.body cared.
The Misses Leaf were content that he should do as he pleased in the matter: he had shown strong but not exaggerated grief at his loss; if any remorse mingled therewith, Selina"s sisters happily did not know it. n.o.body ever did know the full history of things except Elizabeth, and she kept it to herself. So the family skeleton was buried quietly in Mrs. Ascott"s grave.
Peter Ascott showed, in his coa.r.s.e fashion, much sympathy and consideration for his wife"s sisters. He had them staying in the house till a week after the funeral was over, and provided them with the deepest and handsomest mourning. He even, in a formal way took counsel with them as to the carrying out of Mrs. Ascott"s wishes, and the retaining of Elizabeth in charge of the son and heir, which was accordingly settled. And then they went back to their old life at Richmond, and the widower returned to his solitary bachelor ways. He looked as usual; went to and from the City as usual; and his brief married life seemed to have pa.s.sed away from him like a dream.
Not altogether a dream. Gradually he began to awake to the consciousness of an occasional child"s cry in the house--that large, silent, dreary house, where he was once more the sole, solitary master. Sometimes, when he came in from church of Sundays, he would mount another flight of stairs, walk into the nursery at the top of the house, and stare with distant curiosity at the little creature in Elizabeth"s arms, p.r.o.nounce it a "fine child, and did her great credit!" and then walk down again. He never seemed to consider it as his child, this poor old bachelor of so many years" standing; he had outgrown apparently all sense of the affections or the duties of a father. Whether they ever would come into him; whether, after babyhood was pa.s.sed, he would begin to take an interest in the little creature who throve and blossomed into beauty--which, as if watched by guardian angles, dead mothers" children often seem to do--was a source of earnest speculation to Elizabeth.
In the mean time he treated both her and the baby with extreme consideration, allowed her to do just as she liked, and gave her indefinite sums of money to expend upon the nursery.
When summer came, and the doctor ordered change of air, Mr. Ascott consented to her suggestion of taking a lodging for herself and baby near baby"s aunts at Richmond; only desiring that the lodging should be as handsome as could be secured, and that every other Sunday she should bring up his son to spend the day at Russell Square.
And so, during the long summer months, the motherless child, in its deep mourning--which looks so pathetic on a very young baby--might be seen carried about in Elizabeth"s arms every where. When, after the first six weeks, the wet nurse left--in fact, two or three nurses successively were abolished--she took little Henry solely under her own charge. She had comparatively small experience, but she had common sense, and the strong motherly instinct which comes by nature to some women. Besides, her whole soul was wrapped up in this little child.
From the hour when, even with her mistress dying before her eyes, Elizabeth had felt a strange thrill of comfort in the new duty which had come into her blank life, she took to this duty as women only can whose life has become a blank. She received the child as a blessing sent direct from G.o.d; by unconscious hands--for Mrs. Ascott knew nothing of what happened; something that would heal her wounded heart, and make her forget Tom.
And so it did. Women and mothers well know how engrossing is the care of an infant; how each minute of the day is filled up with something to be done or thought of; so that "fretting" about extraneous things becomes quite impossible. How gradually the fresh life growing up and expanding puts the worn out or blighted life into the back ground, and all the hopes and fancies cling around the small, beautiful present, the ever developing, the ever marvelous mystery of a young child"s existence! Why it should be so, we can only guess; but that it is so, many a wretched wife, many a widowed mother, many a broken hearted, forlorn aunt, has thankfully proved.