Alice had heard of the sickness of her little nephews several days before, and had locked her cellar door, and gone off straight to her brother’s house, in Ancoats; but she was often absent for days, sent for, as her neighbours knew, to help in some sudden emergency of illness or distress, so that occasioned no surprise.
Margaret met Jem Wilson several days after his brothers were seriously ill, and heard from him the state of things at his home. She told Mary of it as she entered the court late that evening; and Mary listened with saddened heart to the strange contrast which such woeful tidings presented to the gay and loving words she had been hearing on her walk home. She blamed herself for being so much taken up with visions of the golden future that she had lately gone but seldom on Sunday afternoons, or other leisure time, to see Mrs. Wilson, her mother’s friend; and with hasty purpose of amendment she only stayed to leave a message for her father with the next-door neighbour, and then went off at a brisk pace on her way to the house of mourning.
She stopped with her hand on the latch of the Wilsons’ door, to still her beating heart, and listened to the hushed quiet within. She opened the door softly; there sat Mrs. Wilson in the old rocking-chair, with one sick death-like boy lying on her knee, crying without let or pause, but softly, gently, as fearing to disturb the troubled, gasping child; while behind her, old Alice let her fast-dropping tears fall down on the dead body of the other twin, which she was laying out on a board placed on a sort of sofa-settee in a corner of the room. Over the child, which yet breathed, the father bent, watching anxiously for some ground of hope, where hope there was none. Mary stepped slowly and lightly across to Alice.
“Ay, poor lad! God has taken him early, Mary.”
Mary could not speak, she did not know what to say; it was so much worse than she had expected. At last she ventured to whisper—
“Is there any chance for the other one, think you?”
Alice shook her head, and told with a look that she believed there was none. She next endeavoured to lift the little body, and carry it to its old accustomed bed in its parents’ room. But earnest as the father was in watching the yet-living, he had eyes and ears for all that concerned the dead, and sprang gently up, and took his dead son on his hard couch in his arms with tender strength, and carried him upstairs as if afraid of wakening him.
The other child gasped louder, longer, with more of effort.
“We mun get him away from his mother. He cannot die while she’s wishing him.”
“Wishing him?” said Mary, in a tone of inquiry.
“Ay; donno’ ye know what ‘wishing’ means? There’s none can die in the arms of those who are wishing them sore to stay on earth. The soul o’ them as holds them won’t let the dying soul go free; so it has a hard struggle for the quiet of death. We mun get him away fra’ his mother, or he’ll have a hard death, poor lile fellow.”
Lile,” a north-country word for “little.” “Wit leil labour to live.”—Piers Plowman.
So without circumlocution she went and offered to take the sinking child. But the mother would not let him go, and looking in Alice’s face with brimming and imploring eyes, declared, in earnest whispers, that she was not wishing him, that she would fain have him released from his suffering. Alice and Mary stood by with eyes fixed on the poor child, whose struggles seemed to increase, till at last his mother said, with a choking voice—
“May happen yo’d better take him, Alice; I believe my heart’s wishing him a’ this while, for I cannot, no, I cannot bring mysel to let my two childer go in one day; I cannot help longing to keep him, and yet he shan’t suffer longer for me.”
“May happen,” perhaps.
She bent down, and fondly, oh! with what passionate fondness, kissed her child, and then gave him up to Alice, who took him with tender care. Nature’s struggles were soon exhausted, and he breathed his little life away in peace.
Then the mother lifted up her voice and wept. Her cries brought her husband down to try with his aching heart to comfort hers. Again Alice laid out the dead, Mary helping with reverent fear. The father and mother carried him upstairs to the bed, where his little brother lay in calm repose.
Mary and Alice drew near the fire, and stood in quiet sorrow for some time. Then Alice broke the silence by saying—
“It will be bad news for Jem, poor fellow, when he comes home.”
“Where is he?” asked Mary.
“Working over-hours at th’ shop. They’n getten a large order fra’ forrin parts; and yo know, Jem mun work, though his heart’s wellnigh breaking for these poor laddies.”
Again they were silent in thought, and again Alice spoke first.
“I sometimes think the Lord is against planning. Whene’er I plan overmuch, He is sure to send and mar all my plans, as if He would ha’ me put the future into His hands. Afore Christmas time I was as full as full could be, of going home for good and all; yo han heard how I’ve wished it this terrible long time. And a young lass from behind Burton came into place in Manchester last Martinmas; so after awhile she had a Sunday out, and she comes to me, and tells me some cousins o’ mine bid her find me out, and say how glad they should be to ha’ me to bide wi’ ‘em, and look after th’ childer, for they’n getten a big farm, and she’s a deal to do among th’ cows. So many’s a winter’s night did I lie awake and think, that please God, come summer, I’d bid George and his wife goodbye, and go home at last. Little did I think how God Almighty would balk me, for not leaving my days in His hands, who had led me through the wilderness hitherto. Here’s George out of work, and more cast down than ever I seed him; wanting every chip o’ comfort he can get, e’en afore this last heavy stroke; and now I’m thinking the Lord’s finger points very clear to my fit abiding-place; and I’m sure if George and Jane can say ‘His will be done,’ it’s no more than what I’m beholden to do.”
So saying, she fell to tidying the room, removing as much as she could every vestige of sickness; making up the fire, and setting on the kettle for a cup of tea for her sister-in-law, whose low moans and sobs were occasionally heard in the room below.
Mary helped her in all these little offices. They were busy in this way when the door was softly opened, and Jem came in, all grimed and dirty from his night-work, his soiled apron wrapped round his middle, in guise and apparel in which he would have been sorry at another time to have been seen by Mary. But just now he hardly saw her; he went straight up to Alice, and asked how the little chaps were. They had been a shade better at dinner-time; and he had been working away through the long afternoon, and far into the night, in the belief that they had taken the turn. He had stolen out during the half-hour allowed at the works for tea, to buy them an orange or two, which now puffed out his jacket-pocket.
He would make his aunt speak: he would not understand her shake of the head and fast coursing tears.
“They’re both gone,” said she.
“Dead!”
“Ay! poor fellows. They took worse about two o’clock. Joe went first, as easy as a lamb, and Will died harder like.”
“Both!”
“Ay, lad! both. The Lord has ta’en them from some evil to come, or He would na’ ha’ made choice o’ them. Ye may rest sure o’ that.”
Jem went to the cupboard, and quietly extricated from his pocket the oranges he had bought. But he stayed long there, and at last his sturdy frame shook with his strong agony. The two women were frightened, as women always are, on witnessing a man’s overpowering grief. They cried afresh in company. Mary’s heart melted within her as she witnessed Jem’s sorrow, and she stepped gently up to the corner where he stood, with his back turned to them, and putting her hand softly on his arm, said—