Chapter XXIV.

       With the Dying

       Table of Contents

      "O sad and solemn is the trembling watch

       Of those who sit and count the heavy hours,

       Beside the fevered sleep of one they love!

       O awful is it in the hushed mid night,

       While gazing on the pallid, moveless form,

       To start and ask, 'Is it now sleep—or death?'"

      Anonymous.

      Mary could not be patient in her loneliness; so much painful thought weighed on her mind; the very house was haunted with memories and foreshadowings.

      Having performed all duties to Jem, as far as her weak powers, yet loving heart could act; and a black veil being drawn over her father's past, present, and future life, beyond which she could not penetrate to judge of any filial service she ought to render; her mind unconsciously sought after some course of action in which she might engage. Any thing, any thing, rather than leisure for reflection.

      And then came up the old feeling which first bound Ruth to Naomi; the love they both held towards one object; and Mary felt that her cares would be most lightened by being of use, or of comfort to his mother. So she once more locked up the house, and set off towards Ancoats; rushing along with down-cast head, for fear lest any one should recognise her and arrest her progress.

      Jane Wilson sat quietly in her chair as Mary entered; so quietly, as to strike one by the contrast it presented to her usual bustling and nervous manner.

      She looked very pale and wan; but the quietness was the thing that struck Mary most. She did not rise as Mary came in, but sat still and said something in so gentle, so feeble a voice, that Mary did not catch it.

      Mrs. Davenport, who was there, plucked Mary by the gown, and whispered,

      "Never heed her; she's worn out, and best let alone. I'll tell you all about it, up-stairs."

      But Mary, touched by the anxious look with which Mrs. Wilson gazed at her, as if awaiting the answer to some question, went forward to listen to the speech she was again repeating.

      "What is this? will you tell me?"

      Then Mary looked and saw another ominous slip of parchment in the mother's hand, which she was rolling up and down in a tremulous manner between her fingers.

      Mary's heart sickened within her, and she could not speak.

      "What is it?" she repeated. "Will you tell me?" She still looked at Mary, with the same child-like gaze of wonder and patient entreaty.

      What could she answer?

"I telled ye not to heed her," said Mrs. Davenport, a little angrily. "She knows well enough what it is,—too well, belike. I was not in when they sarved it; but Mrs. Heming (her as lives next door) was, and she spelled out the meaning, and made it all clear to Mrs. Wilson. It's a summons to be a witness on Jem's trial—Mrs. Heming thinks, to swear to the gun; for, yo see, there's nobbut47 her as can testify to its being his, and she let on so easily to the policeman that it was his, that there's no getting off her word now. Poor body; she takes it very hard, I dare say!"

      Mrs. Wilson had waited patiently while this whispered speech was being uttered, imagining, perhaps, that it would end in some explanation addressed to her. But when both were silent, though their eyes, without speech or language, told their hearts' pity, she spoke again in the same unaltered gentle voice (so different from the irritable impatience she had been ever apt to show to every one except her husband,—he who had wedded her, broken-down and injured)—in a voice so different, I say, from the old, hasty manner, she spoke now the same anxious words,

      "What is this? Will you tell me?"

      "Yo'd better give it me at once, Mrs. Wilson, and let me put it out of your sight.—Speak to her, Mary, wench, and ask for a sight on it; I've tried, and better-tried to get it from her, and she takes no heed of words, and I'm loth to pull it by force out of her hands."

Mary drew the little "cricket"48 out from under the dresser, and sat down at Mrs. Wilson's knee, and, coaxing one of her tremulous, ever-moving hands into hers, began to rub it soothingly; there was a little resistance—a very little, but that was all; and presently, in the nervous movement of the imprisoned hand, the parchment fell to the ground.

      Mary calmly and openly picked it up without any attempt at concealment, and quietly placing it in sight of the anxious eyes that followed it with a kind of spell-bound dread, went on with her soothing caresses.

      "She has had no sleep for many nights," said the girl to Mrs. Davenport, "and all this woe and sorrow,—it's no wonder."

      "No, indeed!" Mrs. Davenport answered.

      "We must get her fairly to bed; we must get her undressed, and all; and trust to God, in His mercy, to send her to sleep, or else,—"

      For, you see, they spoke before her as if she were not there; her heart was so far away.

      Accordingly they almost lifted her from the chair in which she sat motionless, and taking her up as gently as a mother carries her sleeping baby, they undressed her poor, worn form, and laid her in the little bed up-stairs. They had once thought of placing her in Jem's bed, to be out of sight or sound of any disturbance of Alice's, but then again they remembered the shock she might receive in awakening in so unusual a place, and also that Mary, who intended to keep vigil that night in the house of mourning, would find it difficult to divide her attention in the possible cases that might ensue.

      So they laid her, as I said before, on that little pallet-bed; and, as they were slowly withdrawing from the bed-side, hoping and praying that she might sleep, and forget for a time her heavy burden, she looked wistfully after Mary, and whispered,

      "You haven't told me what it is. What is it?"

      And gazing in her face for the expected answer, her eye-lids slowly closed, and she fell into a deep, heavy sleep, almost as profound a rest as death.

      Mrs. Davenport went her way, and Mary was alone,—for I cannot call those who sleep allies against the agony of thought which solitude sometimes brings up.

      She dreaded the night before her. Alice might die; the doctor had that day declared her case hopeless, and not far from death; and at times the terror, so natural to the young, not of death, but of the remains of the dead, came over Mary; and she bent and listened anxiously for the long-drawn, pausing breath of the sleeping Alice.

      Or Mrs. Wilson might awake