"Cheer up, missus. There"s a doctor outside waiting to see you."
This time there was no audible reply. The boy showed himself to me at the door. "Please to come in, sir. _I_ can"t make anything of her."
It would have been misplaced delicacy to have hesitated any longer to enter the room. I went in.
There, at the opposite end of a miserably furnished bed-chamber, lying back feebly in a tattered old arm-chair, was one more among the thousands of forlorn creatures, starving that night in the great city.
A white handkerchief was laid over her face as if to screen it from the flame of the fire hard by. She lifted the handkerchief, startled by the sound of my footsteps as I entered the room. I looked at her, and saw in the white, wan, death-like face the face of the woman I loved!
For a moment the horror of the discovery turned me faint and giddy. In another instant I was kneeling by her chair. My arm was round her--her head lay on my shoulder. She was past speaking, past crying out: she trembled silently, and that was all. I said nothing. No words pa.s.sed my lips, no tears came to my relief. I held her to me; and she let me hold her. The child, devouring its bread-and-b.u.t.ter at a little round table, stared at us. The boy, on his knees before the grate, mending the fire, stared at us. And the slow minutes lagged on; and the buzzing of a fly in a corner was the only sound in the room.
The instincts of the profession to which I had been trained, rather than any active sense of the horror of the situation in which I was placed, roused me at last. She was starving! I saw it in the deadly color of her skin; I felt it in the faint, quick flutter of her pulse. I called the boy to me, and sent him to the nearest public-house for wine and biscuits. "Be quick about it," I said; "and you shall have more money for yourself than ever you had in your life!" The boy looked at me, spit on the coins in his hand, said, "That"s for luck!" and ran out of the room as never boy ran yet.
I turned to speak my first words of comfort to the mother. The cry of the child stopped me.
"I"m so hungry! I"m so hungry!"
I set more food before the famished child and kissed her. She looked up at me with wondering eyes.
"Are you a new papa?" the little creature asked. "My other papa never kisses me."
I looked at the mother. Her eyes were closed; the tears flowed slowly over her worn, white cheeks. I took her frail hand in mine. "Happier days are coming," I said; "you are _my_ care now." There was no answer.
She still trembled silently, and that was all.
In less than five minutes the boy returned, and earned his promised reward. He sat on the floor by the fire counting his treasure, the one happy creature in the room. I soaked some crumbled morsels of biscuit in the wine, and, little by little, I revived her failing strength by nourishment administered at intervals in that cautious form. After a while she raised her head, and looked at me with wondering eyes that were pitiably like the eyes of her child. A faint, delicate flush began to show itself in her face. She spoke to me, for the first time, in whispering tones that I could just hear as I sat close at her side.
"How did you find me? Who showed you the way to this place?"
She paused; painfully recalling the memory of something that was slow to come back. Her color deepened; she found the lost remembrance, and looked at me with a timid curiosity. "What brought you here?" she asked.
"Was it my dream?"
"Wait, dearest, till you are stronger, and I will tell you all."
I lifted her gently, and laid her on the wretched bed. The child followed us, and climbing to the bedstead with my help, nestled at her mother"s side. I sent the boy away to tell the mistress of the house that I should remain with my patient, watching her progress toward recovery, through the night. He went out, jingling his money joyfully in his pocket. We three were left together.
As the long hours followed each other, she fell at intervals into a broken sleep; waking with a start, and looking at me wildly as if I had been a stranger at her bedside. Toward morning the nourishment which I still carefully administered wrought its healthful change in her pulse, and composed her to quieter slumbers. When the sun rose she was sleeping as peacefully as the child at her side. I was able to leave her, until my return later in the day, under the care of the woman of the house.
The magic of money transformed this termagant and terrible person into a docile and attentive nurse--so eager to follow my instructions exactly that she begged me to commit them to writing before I went away. For a moment I still lingered alone at the bedside of the sleeping woman, and satisfied myself for the hundredth time that her life was safe, before I left her. It was the sweetest of all rewards to feel sure of this--to touch her cool forehead lightly with my lips--to look, and look again, at the poor worn face, always dear, always beautiful, to _my_ eyes.
change as it might. I closed the door softly and went out in the bright morning, a happy man again. So close together rise the springs of joy and sorrow in human life! So near in our heart, as in our heaven, is the brightest sunshine to the blackest cloud!
CHAPTER XXVI. CONVERSATION WITH MY MOTHER.
I REACHED my own house in time to s.n.a.t.c.h two or three hours of repose, before I paid my customary morning visit to my mother in her own room. I observed, in her reception of me on this occasion, certain peculiarities of look and manner which were far from being familiar in my experience of her.
When our eyes first met, she regarded me with a wistful, questioning look, as if she were troubled by some doubt which she shrunk from expressing in words. And when I inquired after her health, as usual, she surprised me by answering as impatiently as if she resented my having mentioned the subject. For a moment, I was inclined to think these changes signified that she had discovered my absence from home during the night, and that she had some suspicion of the true cause of it. But she never alluded, even in the most distant manner, to Mrs. Van Brandt; and not a word dropped from her lips which implied, directly or indirectly, that I had pained or disappointed her. I could only conclude that she had something important to say in relation to herself or to me--and that for reasons of her own she unwillingly abstained from giving expression to it at that time.
Reverting to our ordinary topics of conversation, we touched on the subject (always interesting to my mother) of my visit to Shetland.
Speaking of this, we naturally spoke also of Miss Dunross. Here, again, when I least expected it, there was another surprise in store for me.
"You were talking the other day," said my mother, "of the green flag which poor Dermody"s daughter worked for you, when you were both children. Have you really kept it all this time?"
"Yes."
"Where have you left it? In Scotland?"
"I have brought it with me to London."
"Why?"
"I promised Miss Dunross to take the green flag with me, wherever I might go."
My mother smiled.
"Is it possible, George, that you think about this as the young lady in Shetland thinks? After all the years that have pa.s.sed, you believe in the green flag being the means of bringing Mary Dermody and yourself together again?"
"Certainly not! I am only humoring one of the fancies of poor Miss Dunross. Could I refuse to grant her trifling request, after all I owed to her kindness?"
The smile left my mother"s face. She looked at me attentively.
"Miss Dunross seems to have produced a very favorable impression on you," she said.
"I own it. I feel deeply interested in her."
"If she had not been an incurable invalid, George, I too might have become interested in Miss Dunross--perhaps in the character of my daughter-in-law?"
"It is useless, mother, to speculate on what _might_ have happened. The sad reality is enough."
My mother paused a little before she put her next question to me.
"Did Miss Dunross always keep her veil drawn in your presence, when there happened to be light in the room?"
"Always."
"She never even let you catch a momentary glance at her face?"
"Never."
"And the only reason she gave you was that the light caused her a painful sensation if it fell on her uncovered skin?"
"You say that, mother, as if you doubt whether Miss Dunross told me the truth."
"No, George. I only doubt whether she told you _all_ the truth."
"What do you mean?"
"Don"t be offended, my dear. I believe Miss Dunross has some more serious reason for keeping her face hidden than the reason that she gave _you_."
I was silent. The suspicion which those words implied had never occurred to my mind. I had read in medical books of cases of morbid nervous sensitiveness exactly similar to the case of Miss Dunross, as described by herself--and that had been enough for me. Now that my mother"s idea had found its way from her mind to mine, the impression produced on me was painful in the last degree. Horrible imaginings of deformity possessed my brain, and profaned all that was purest and dearest in my recollections of Miss Dunross. It was useless to change the subject--the evil influence that was on me was too potent to be charmed away by talk.
Making the best excuse that I could think of for leaving my mother"s room, I hurried away to seek a refuge from myself, where alone I could hope to find it, in the presence of Mrs. Van Brandt.
CHAPTER XXVII. CONVERSATION WITH MRS. VAN BRANDT.