“Who is that lady, uncle, standing beside you at the bed-foot?”
“Good God!” he ejaculated. “She’s not wandering, is she, ma’am?”
Mrs. Pryor smiled.
“I am wandering in a pleasant world,” said Caroline, in a soft, happy voice, “and I want you to tell me whether it is real or visionary. What lady is that? Give her a name, uncle.”
“We must have Dr. Rile again, ma’am; or better still, MacTurk. He’s less of a humbug. Thomas must saddle the pony and go for him.”
“No; I don’t want a doctor. Mamma shall be my only physician. Now, do you understand, uncle?”
Mr. Helstone pushed up his spectacles from his nose to his forehead, handled his snuffbox, and administered to himself a portion of the contents. Thus fortified, he answered briefly, “I see daylight. You’ve told her then, ma’am?”
“And is it true?” demanded Caroline, rising on her pillow. “Is she really my mother?”
“You won’t cry, or make any scene, or turn hysterical, if I answer Yes?”
“Cry! I’d cry if you said No. It would be terrible to be disappointed now. But give her a name. How do you call her?”
“I call this stout lady in a quaint black dress, who looks young enough to wear much smarter raiment, if she would – I call her Agnes Helstone. She married my brother James, and is his widow.”
“And my mother?”
“What a little skeptic it is! Look at her small face, Mrs. Pryor, scarcely larger than the palm of my hand, alive with acuteness and eagerness.” To Caroline—“She had the trouble of bringing you into the world at any rate. Mind you show your duty to her by quickly getting well, and repairing the waste of these cheeks. – Heigh-ho! she used to be plump. What she has done with it all I can’t, for the life of me, divine.”
“If wishing to get well will help me, I shall not be long sick. This morning I had no reason and no strength to wish it.”
Fanny here tapped at the door, and said that supper was ready.
“Uncle, if you please, you may send me a little bit of supper – anything you like, from your own plate. That is wiser than going into hysterics, is it not?”
“It is spoken like a sage, Cary. See if I don’t cater for you judiciously. When women are sensible, and, above all, intelligible, I can get on with them. It is only the vague, superfine sensations, and extremely wire-drawn notions, that put me about. Let a woman ask me to give her an edible or a wearable – be the same a roc’s egg or the breastplate of Aaron, a share of St. John’s locusts and honey or the leathern girdle about his loins – I can, at least, understand the demand; but when they pine for they know not what – sympathy, sentiment, some of these indefinite abstractions – I can’t do it; I don’t know it; I haven’t got it. – Madam, accept my arm.”
Mrs. Pryor signified that she should stay with her daughter that evening. Helstone, accordingly, left them together. He soon returned, bringing a plate in his own consecrated hand.
“This is chicken,” he said, “but we’ll have partridge tomorrow. – Lift her up, and put a shawl over her. On my word, I understand nursing. – Now, here is the very same little silver fork you used when you first came to the rectory. That strikes me as being what you may call a happy thought – a delicate attention. Take it, Cary, and munch away cleverly.”
Caroline did her best. Her uncle frowned to see that her powers were so limited. He prophesied, however, great things for the future; and as she praised the morsel he had brought, and smiled gratefully in his face, he stooped over her pillow, kissed her, and said, with a broken, rugged accent, “Good night, bairnie! God bless thee!”
Caroline enjoyed such peaceful rest that night, circled by her mother’s arms, and pillowed on her breast, that she forgot to wish for any other stay; and though more than one feverish dream came to her in slumber, yet, when she woke up panting, so happy and contented a feeling returned with returning consciousness that her agitation was soothed almost as soon as felt.
As to the mother, she spent the night like Jacob at Peniel. Till break of day she wrestled with God in earnest prayer.
Chapter XXV The West Wind Blows
Not always do those who dare such divine conflict prevail. Night after night the sweat of agony may burst dark on the forehead; the supplicant may cry for mercy with that soundless voice the soul utters when its appeal is to the Invisible. “Spare my beloved,” it may implore. “Heal my life’s life. Rend not from me what long affection entwines with my whole nature. God of heaven, bend, hear, be clement!” And after this cry and strife the sun may rise and see him worsted. That opening morn, which used to salute him with the whisper of zephyrs, the carol of skylarks, may breathe, as its first accents, from the dear lips which colour and heat have quitted, “Oh! I have had a suffering night. This morning I am worse. I have tried to rise. I cannot. Dreams I am unused to have troubled me.”
Then the watcher approaches the patient’s pillow, and sees a new and strange moulding of the familiar features, feels at once that the insufferable moment draws nigh, knows that it is God’s will his idol shall be broken, and bends his head, and subdues his soul to the sentence he cannot avert and scarce can bear.
Happy Mrs. Pryor! She was still praying, unconscious that the summer sun hung above the hills, when her child softly woke in her arms. No piteous, unconscious moaning – sound which so wastes our strength that, even if we have sworn to be firm, a rush of unconquerable tears sweeps away the oath – preceded her waking. No space of deaf apathy followed. The first words spoken were not those of one becoming estranged from this world, and already permitted to stray at times into realms foreign to the living. Caroline evidently remembered with clearness what had happened.
“Mamma, I have slept so well. I only dreamed and woke twice.”
Mrs. Pryor rose with a start, that her daughter might not see the joyful tears called into her eyes by that affectionate word “mamma,” and the welcome assurance that followed it.
For many days the mother dared rejoice only with trembling. That first revival seemed like the flicker of a dying lamp. If the flame streamed up bright one moment, the next it sank dim in the socket. Exhaustion followed close on excitement.
There was always a touching endeavour to appear better, but too often ability refused to second will; too often the attempt to bear up failed. The effort to eat, to talk, to look cheerful, was unsuccessful. Many an hour passed during which Mrs. Pryor feared that the chords of life could never more be strengthened, though the time of their breaking might be deferred.
During this space the mother and daughter seemed left almost alone in the neighbourhood. It was the close of August; the weather was fine – that is to say, it was very dry and very dusty, for an arid wind had been blowing from the east this month past; very cloudless, too, though a pale haze, stationary in the atmosphere, seemed to rob of all depth of tone the blue of heaven, of all freshness the verdure of earth, and of all glow the light of day. Almost every family in Briarfield was absent on an excursion. Miss Keeldar and her friends were at the seaside; so were Mrs. Yorke’s household. Mr. Hall and Louis Moore, between whom a spontaneous intimacy seemed to have arisen – the result, probably, of harmony of views and temperament – were gone “up north” on a pedestrian excursion to the Lakes. Even Hortense, who would fain have stayed at home and aided Mrs. Pryor in nursing Caroline, had been so earnestly entreated by Miss Mann to accompany her once more to Wormwood Wells, in the hope of alleviating sufferings greatly aggravated by the insalubrious weather, that she felt obliged to comply; indeed, it was not in her nature to refuse a request that at once appealed to her goodness of heart, and, by a confession of dependency, flattered her amour propre. As for Robert, from Birmingham he had gone on to London, where he still sojourned.