THIS night was the strangest in Bee Kingsward’s life. She had never known what it was to remain silent and awake in the darkness and warmth of a sick room, which of itself is a strange experience for a girl, and shows the young spirit its own weakness, its craving for rest and comfort, the difficulty of overcoming the instincts of nature—with such a sense of humiliation as nothing else could give. Could you not watch with me one hour? She believed that she had lain awake crying all night when her dream of happiness had so suddenly been broken in upon at Cologne; but now, while she sat by her mother’s side, and the little soft crooning of the song, which Mrs. Kingsward supposed herself to be singing to put her child to sleep, sank into a soft murmur, and the poor lady succeeded in hushing herself into a doze by this characteristic method. Bee’s head dropped too, and her eyelids closed. Then she woke, with a little shiver, to see the large figure of Moulsey like a ghost by the bed, and struggled dumbly back to her senses, only remembering that she must not start nor cry to disturb Mrs. Kingsward, whose quick breathing filled the room with a sensation of danger and dismay to which the girl was sensible as soon as the film of sleep that had enveloped her was broken. Mrs. Kingsward’s head was thrown back on the pillow; now and then a faint note of the lullaby which she had been singing came from the parted lips, through which the hot, quick breath came so audibly. Now and then she stirred in her feverish sleep. Moulsey stood indistinguishable with her back to the light, a mass of solid shadow by the bedside. She shook her head. “Sleep’s best,” she said, in the whisper which the patient hated. “Sleep’s better than the best of physic.” Bee caught those solid skirts with a sensation of hope, to feel them so real and substantial in her hand. She did not care to speak, but lifted her face, pale with alarm and trouble, to the accustomed nurse. Moulsey shook her head again. It was all the communication that passed between them, and it crushed the hope that was beginning to rise in Bee’s mind. She had thought when she heard the doctor go away that death might be coming as soon as his back was turned. She had felt when her mother fell asleep as if the danger must be past. Now she sank into that second stage of hopelessness, when there is no longer any immediate panic, when the unaccustomed intelligence dimly realises that the sufferer may be better, and may live through the night, or through many nights, and yet there may be no real change. Very dim as yet was this consciousness in Bee’s heart, and yet the first dawning of it bowed her down.
In the middle of the night—after hours so long!—more like years, when Bee seemed to have sat there half her life, to have become used to it, to be uncertain about everything outside, but only that her mother lay there more ill than words could say—Mrs. Kingsward awoke. She opened her eyes without any change of position with the habit of a woman who has been long ill, without acknowledging her illness. It was Moulsey who saw a faint reflection of the faint light in the softly opening eyes, and detected that little change in the breathing which comes with returning consciousness. Bee, with her head leant back upon her chair and her eyes closed, was dozing again.
“You must take your cordial, ma’am, now you’re awake. You’ve had such a nice sleep.”
“Have I? I thought I was with the children and singing to baby. Who’s this that has my hand—Bee?”
“Mamma,” cried the girl, with a little start, and then, “Oh! I have waked her, Moulsey, I have waked her!”
“Is this her little hand? Poor little Bee! No, you have not waked me, love; but why, why is the child here?”
“The doctor said she might stay—to send for him if you wanted anything—and—and to satisfy her.”
“To satisfy her, why so, why so? Am I so bad? Did he think I would die—in the night?”
“No, no, no,” said Moulsey, standing by her, patting her shoulder, as if she had been a fretful child. “What a thing to fancy! As if he’d have sent the child here for that!”
“No,” said the poor lady, “he wouldn’t have sent the child, would he—not the child—for that—to frighten her! But Bee must go to bed. I’m so much better. Go to bed. Moulsey; poor Moulsey, never tires, she’s so good. But you must go to bed.”
“Oh, mother, let me stay. When you sleep, I sleep too; and I’m so much happier here.”
“Happier, are you? Well—but there was something wrong. Something had happened. What was it that happened? And your father away! It never does for anything to happen when—my husband is away. I’ve grown so silly. I never know what to do. What was it that happened, Bee?”
“There was—nothing,” said Bee, with a sudden chill of despair. She had forgotten everything but the dim bed-chamber, the faint light, the quick, quick breathing. And now there came a stab at her poor little heart. She scarcely knew what it was, but a cut like a knife going to the very centre of her being. Then there came the doctor’s words, as if they were written in light across the darkness of the room—“Ready, and steady.” She said in a stronger voice, “You have been dreaming. There was nothing, mamma.”
Mrs. Kingsward, who had raised herself on her elbow, sank back again on her pillow.
“Yes,” she said, “I must have been dreaming. I thought somebody came—and told us. Dreams are so strange. People say they’re things you’ve been—thinking of. But I was not thinking of that—the very last thing! Bee, it’s a pity—it’s a great pity—when a woman with so many children falls into this kind of silly, bad health.”
“Oh, mamma,” was all that poor Bee could say.
“Oh—let me alone, Moulsey—I want to talk a little. I’ve had such a good sleep, you said; sometimes—I want to talk, and Moulsey won’t let me—nor your father, and I have it all here,” she said, putting her hand to her heart, “or here,” laying it over her eyebrows, “and I never get it out. Let me talk, Moulsey—let me talk.”
Bee, leaning forward, and Moulsey standing over her by the bedside, there was a pause. Their eyes, accustomed to the faint light, saw her eyes shining from the pillow, and the flush of her cheeks against the whiteness of the bed. Then, after a while, there came a little faint laugh, and, “What was I saying?” Mrs. Kingsward asked. “You look so big, Moulsey, like the shadows I used to throw on the wall to please the children. You always liked the rabbit best, Bee. Look!” She put up her hands as if to make that familiar play upon the wall. “But Moulsey,” she added, “is so big. She shuts out all the light, and what is Bee doing here at this hour of the night? Moulsey, send Miss Bee to bed.”
“Oh, mother, let me stay. You were going to tell me something.”
“Miss Bee, you must not make her talk.”
“How like Moulsey!” said the invalid. “Make me talk! when I have wanted so much to talk. Bee, it’s horrid to go on in this silly ill way, when—when one has children to think of. Your father’s always good—but a man often doesn’t understand. About you, now—if I had been a little stronger, it might have been different. What was it we heard? I don’t think it was true what we heard.”
“Oh, mamma, don’t think of that, now.”
“It is so silly, always being ill! And there’s nothing really the matter. Ask the doctor. They all say there’s nothing really the matter. Your father—but then he doesn’t know how a woman feels. I feel as if I were sinking, sinking down through the bed and the floor and everything, away, I don’t know where. So silly, for nothing hurts me—I’ve no pain—except that I always want more air. If you were to open the window, Moulsey; and Bee, give me your hand and hold me fast, that I mayn’t sink away. It’s all quite silly, you know, to think so,” she added, with again a faint laugh.
Bee’s eyes sought those of Moulsey with a terrified question in them; the great shadow only slightly shook its head.
“Do you remember, Bee, the picture—we saw it in Italy, and I’ve got a photograph—where there is a saint lying so sweetly in the air, with angels holding her up? They’re flying with her through the blue sky—two at her head, and other two—and her mantle so wrapped round her, and she lying, oh! so easy, resting, though there’s nothing but the air and the angels. Do you remember, Bee?”
“Yes, mamma. Oh, mamma, mamma!”
“That’s what I should like,” said Mrs. Kingsward; “it’s strange, isn’t it? The bed’s solid, and the house is solid, and Moulsey there, she’s very solid too, and air isn’t solid at all. But there never was anybody that lay so easy and looked so safe as that woman in the air. Their arms must be so soft under her, and yet so strong, you know; stronger than your father’s. He’s so kind, but he hurries me sometimes; and soft—you’re soft, Bee, but you’re not strong. You’ve got a soft little hand, hasn’t she, Moulsey? Poor little thing! And to think one doesn’t know what she may have to do with it before she is like me.”
“She’ll have no more to do with it, ma’am, than a lady should, no more than you’ve had. But you must be quiet, dear lady, and try and go to sleep.”
“I might never have such a good chance of talking to her again. The middle of the night and nobody here—her father not even in the house. Bee, you must try never to begin being ill in any silly way, feeling not strong and that sort of foolish thing, and say out what you think. Don’t be frightened. It’s—it’s bad for him as well as for you. He gets to think you haven’t any opinion. And then all at once they find out—And, perhaps, it’s too late—.”
“Mamma, you’re not very ill? Oh, no; you’re looking so beautiful, and you talk just as you always did.”
“She says am I very ill, Moulsey? Poor little Bee! I feel a great deal better. I had surely a nice sleep. But why should the doctor be here, and you made to sit up, you poor little thing. Moulsey, why is the doctor here?”
“I never said, ma’am, as he was here. He’s coming round first thing in the morning. He’s anxious—because the Colonel’s away.”
“Ah! you think I don’t know. I’m not so very bad; but he thinks—he thinks—perhaps I might die, Bee.”
“Mamma, mamma!”
“Don’t be frightened,” said Mrs. Kingsward, drawing the girl close to her. “That’s a secret; he doesn’t think I know. It would be a curious, curious thing, when people think you are only ill to go and die. It would surprise them so. And so strange altogether—instead of worries, you know, every day, to be all by yourself, lying so easy and the angels carrying you. No trouble at all then to think whether he would be pleased—or anything; giving yourself to be carried like that, like a little child.”
“But mamma,” cried Bee, “you could not, would not leave us—you wouldn’t, would you, mamma?—all the children, and me; and I with nobody else, no one to care for me. You couldn’t, mother, leave us; you wouldn’t! Say you wouldn’t! Oh! Moulsey! Moulsey! look how far away she is looking, as if she didn’t see you and me!”
“You forget, Bee,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “How easy it looked for that saint in the picture. I always liked to watch the birds floating down on the wind, never moving their wings. That’s what seems no trouble, so easy; not too hot nor too cold, nor tiring, neither to the breath nor anything. I shouldn’t like to leave you. No—But then:” she added, with a smile, “I should not require to leave you. I’d—I’d—What was I saying? Moulsey, will you please give me some—more—”
She held out her hand again for the glass which Moulsey had just put down.
“It makes me strong—it makes me speak. I’m—sinking away again, Bee. Hold me—hold me tight. If I was to slip away—down—down—down to the cellars or somewhere.” The feeble laugh was dreadful for the listeners to hear.
“Run,” cried Moulsey, in Bee’s ear, “the doctor—the doctor! in the library.”
And then there was a strange phantasmagoria that seemed to fill the night, one scene melting into another. The doctor rousing from his doze, his measured step coming back; the little struggle round the bed; Moulsey giving place to the still darker shadow; the glow of Mrs. Kingsward’s flushed and feverish countenance between; then the quiet, and then again sleep—sleep broken by feeble movements, by the quick panting of the breath.
“She’ll be easier now,” the doctor said. “You must go to bed, my dear young lady. Moulsey can manage for the rest of the night.”
“Doctor,” said Bee, with something in her throat that stopped the words, “doctor—will she—must she? Oh, doctor, say that is not what it means? One of us, it would not matter, but mother—mother!”
“It is not in our hands,” the doctor said. “It is not much we can do. Don’t look at me as if I were God. It is little, little I can do.”
“They say,” cried poor Bee, “that you can do anything. It is when there is no doctor, no nurse that people—— Oh, my mother—my mother! Doctor, don’t let it be.”
“You are but a child,” said the doctor, patting her kindly on the shoulder, “you’ve not forgotten how to say your prayers. That’s the only thing for you to do. Those that say such things of doctors know very little. We stand and look on. Say your prayers, little girl—if they do her no good, they’ll do you good. And now she’ll have a little sleep.”
Bee caught him by the arm. “Sleep,” she said, looking at him suspiciously. “Sleep?”
“Yes, sleep—that may give her strength for another day. Oh, ask no more, child. Life is not mine to give.”
What a night! Out of doors it was moonlight as serene as heaven—the moon departing in the west, and another faint light that was day coming on the other side, and the first birds beginning to stir in the branches; but not even baby moving in the house. All fast asleep, safe as if trouble never was, as if death could not be. Bee went upstairs to her chill, white room, where the white bed, unoccupied, looked to her like death itself—all cold, dreadful, full of suggestion. Bee’s heart was more heavy than could be told. She had nothing to fall back upon, no secret strength to uphold her. She had forgotten how wretched she had been, but she felt it, nevertheless, behind the present anguish. Nevertheless, she was only nineteen, and when she flung herself down to cry upon her white pillow—only to cry, to get her passion out—beneficent nature took hold of the girl and made her sleep. She did not wake for hours. Was it beneficent? For when she was roused by the opening of the door and sat up in her bed, and found herself still dressed in her evening frock, with her little necklace round her throat, there pressed back upon Bee such a flood of misery and trouble as she thought did not exist in the world.
“Miss Bee, Miss Bee! Master’s come home. He’s been travelling all night—and I dare not disturb Mrs. Moulsey in Missis’s room; and he wants to see you this minit, please. Oh, come, come, quick, and don’t keep the Colonel waiting,” the woman said.
Half awakened, but wholly miserable, Bee sprang up and rushed downstairs to her father. He came forward to meet her at the door, frowning and pale.
“What is this I hear?” he said. “What have you been doing to upset your mother? She was well enough when I went away. What have you been doing to your mother? You children are the plague of our lives!”