"No, Dolf, no. It was me! Me!" cried Mrs. Tetterby.
"My little woman," said her husband, "don"t. You make me reproach myself dreadful, when you show such a n.o.ble spirit. Sophia, my dear, you don"t know what I thought. I showed it bad enough, no doubt; but what I thought, my little woman!--"
"Oh, dear Dolf, don"t! Don"t!" cried his wife.
"Sophia," said Mr. Tetterby, "I must reveal it. I couldn"t rest in my conscience unless I mentioned it. My little woman--"
"Mrs. William"s very nearly here!" screamed Johnny at the door.
"My little woman, I wondered how," gasped Mr. Tetterby, supporting himself by his chair, "I wondered how I had ever admired you--I forgot the precious children you have brought about me, and thought you didn"t look as slim as I could wish. I--I never gave a recollection," said Mr. Tetterby, with severe self-accusation, "to the cares you"ve had as my wife, and along of me and mine, when you might have had hardly any with another man, who got on better and was luckier than me (anybody might have found such a man easily I am sure); and I quarrelled with you for having aged a little in the rough years you have lightened for me. Can you believe it, my little woman? I hardly can myself."
Mrs. Tetterby, in a whirlwind of laughing and crying, caught his face within her hands, and held it there.
"Oh, Dolf!" she cried. "I am so happy that you thought so; I am so grateful that you thought so! For I thought that you were common- looking, Dolf; and so you are, my dear, and may you be the commonest of all sights in my eyes, till you close them with your own good hands. I thought that you were small; and so you are, and I"ll make much of you because you are, and more of you because I love my husband. I thought that you began to stoop; and so you do, and you shall lean on me, and I"ll do all I can to keep you up. I thought there was no air about you; but there is, and it"s the air of home, and that"s the purest and the best there is, and G.o.d bless home once more, and all belonging to it, Dolf!"
"Hurrah! Here"s Mrs. William!" cried Johnny.
So she was, and all the children with her; and so she came in, they kissed her, and kissed one another, and kissed the baby, and kissed their father and mother, and then ran back and flocked and danced about her, trooping on with her in triumph.
Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby were not a bit behind-hand in the warmth of their reception. They were as much attracted to her as the children were; they ran towards her, kissed her hands, pressed round her, could not receive her ardently or enthusiastically enough. She came among them like the spirit of all goodness, affection, gentle consideration, love, and domesticity.
"What! are YOU all so glad to see me, too, this bright Christmas morning?" said Milly, clapping her hands in a pleasant wonder. "Oh dear, how delightful this is!"
More shouting from the children, more kissing, more trooping round her, more happiness, more love, more joy, more honour, on all sides, than she could bear.
"Oh dear!" said Milly, "what delicious tears you make me shed. How can I ever have deserved this! What have I done to be so loved?"
"Who can help it!" cried Mr. Tetterby.
"Who can help it!" cried Mrs. Tetterby.
"Who can help it!" echoed the children, in a joyful chorus. And they danced and trooped about her again, and clung to her, and laid their rosy faces against her dress, and kissed and fondled it, and could not fondle it, or her, enough.
"I never was so moved," said Milly, drying her eyes, "as I have been this morning. I must tell you, as soon as I can speak.--Mr.
Redlaw came to me at sunrise, and with a tenderness in his manner, more as if I had been his darling daughter than myself, implored me to go with him to where William"s brother George is lying ill. We went together, and all the way along he was so kind, and so subdued, and seemed to put such trust and hope in me, that I could not help trying with pleasure. When we got to the house, we met a woman at the door (somebody had bruised and hurt her, I am afraid), who caught me by the hand, and blessed me as I pa.s.sed."
"She was right!" said Mr. Tetterby. Mrs. Tetterby said she was right. All the children cried out that she was right.
"Ah, but there"s more than that," said Milly. "When we got up stairs, into the room, the sick man who had lain for hours in a state from which no effort could rouse him, rose up in his bed, and, bursting into tears, stretched out his arms to me, and said that he had led a mis-spent life, but that he was truly repentant now, in his sorrow for the past, which was all as plain to him as a great prospect, from which a dense black cloud had cleared away, and that he entreated me to ask his poor old father for his pardon and his blessing, and to say a prayer beside his bed. And when I did so, Mr. Redlaw joined in it so fervently, and then so thanked and thanked me, and thanked Heaven, that my heart quite overflowed, and I could have done nothing but sob and cry, if the sick man had not begged me to sit down by him,--which made me quiet of course.
As I sat there, he held my hand in his until he sank in a doze; and even then, when I withdrew my hand to leave him to come here (which Mr. Redlaw was very earnest indeed in wishing me to do), his hand felt for mine, so that some one else was obliged to take my place and make believe to give him my hand back. Oh dear, oh dear," said Milly, sobbing. "How thankful and how happy I should feel, and do feel, for all this!"
While she was speaking, Redlaw had come in, and, after pausing for a moment to observe the group of which she was the centre, had silently ascended the stairs. Upon those stairs he now appeared again; remaining there, while the young student pa.s.sed him, and came running down.
"Kind nurse, gentlest, best of creatures," he said, falling on his knee to her, and catching at her hand, "forgive my cruel ingrat.i.tude!"
"Oh dear, oh dear!" cried Milly innocently, "here"s another of them! Oh dear, here"s somebody else who likes me. What shall I ever do!"
The guileless, simple way in which she said it, and in which she put her hands before her eyes and wept for very happiness, was as touching as it was delightful.
"I was not myself," he said. "I don"t know what it was--it was some consequence of my disorder perhaps--I was mad. But I am so no longer. Almost as I speak, I am restored. I heard the children crying out your name, and the shade pa.s.sed from me at the very sound of it. Oh, don"t weep! Dear Milly, if you could read my heart, and only knew with what affection and what grateful homage it is glowing, you would not let me see you weep. It is such deep reproach."
"No, no," said Milly, "it"s not that. It"s not indeed. It"s joy.
It"s wonder that you should think it necessary to ask me to forgive so little, and yet it"s pleasure that you do."
"And will you come again? and will you finish the little curtain?"
"No," said Milly, drying her eyes, and shaking her head. "You won"t care for my needlework now."
"Is it forgiving me, to say that?"
She beckoned him aside, and whispered in his ear.
"There is news from your home, Mr. Edmund."
"News? How?"
"Either your not writing when you were very ill, or the change in your handwriting when you began to be better, created some suspicion of the truth; however that is--but you"re sure you"ll not be the worse for any news, if it"s not bad news?"
"Sure."
"Then there"s some one come!" said Milly.
"My mother?" asked the student, glancing round involuntarily towards Redlaw, who had come down from the stairs.
"Hush! No," said Milly.
"It can be no one else."
"Indeed?" said Milly, "are you sure?"
"It is not -" Before he could say more, she put her hand upon his mouth.
"Yes it is!" said Milly. "The young lady (she is very like the miniature, Mr. Edmund, but she is prettier) was too unhappy to rest without satisfying her doubts, and came up, last night, with a little servant-maid. As you always dated your letters from the college, she came there; and before I saw Mr. Redlaw this morning, I saw her. SHE likes me too!" said Milly. "Oh dear, that"s another!"
"This morning! Where is she now?"
"Why, she is now," said Milly, advancing her lips to his ear, "in my little parlour in the Lodge, and waiting to see you."
He pressed her hand, and was darting off, but she detained him.
"Mr. Redlaw is much altered, and has told me this morning that his memory is impaired. Be very considerate to him, Mr. Edmund; he needs that from us all."
The young man a.s.sured her, by a look, that her caution was not ill- bestowed; and as he pa.s.sed the Chemist on his way out, bent respectfully and with an obvious interest before him.
Redlaw returned the salutation courteously and even humbly, and looked after him as he pa.s.sed on. He dropped his head upon his hand too, as trying to reawaken something he had lost. But it was gone.
The abiding change that had come upon him since the influence of the music, and the Phantom"s reappearance, was, that now he truly felt how much he had lost, and could compa.s.sionate his own condition, and contrast it, clearly, with the natural state of those who were around him. In this, an interest in those who were around him was revived, and a meek, submissive sense of his calamity was bred, resembling that which sometimes obtains in age, when its mental powers are weakened, without insensibility or sullenness being added to the list of its infirmities.